Sound Question

Repost

I have a Huge game map with Buildings, trees, lampposts etc. The Player can move round in full Isometric 3d, with the camera taking an intelligent position depending on the situation.
Now some of the weapons that the player has do a continual determination damage, like acid eating the target, or rust.

So Obviously I keep track of the health of the building whilst it can still be within the players point of view, But once its out of view I just do a full calc of the total damage the building (or whatever) would take, and if the building is destroyed, then destroy it.

When the object is still in "Possible Sight" I keep its update going and if it falls down, then I destroy them.
Now here’s where the problem is, for some reason the sound buffer on my computer cannot handle a lot of buffered/Streamed sounds. So what I’ve been thinking is that I should calculate the volume that the sound would make when it reaches the player. And if its going to be well below the background level, then don’t emit a sound. But this would be a lot of work. So I’m inclined not to do it.

So to sum,

If a Tree, (say) falls down in the middle of a forest, and NoOne is there to hear it, should it make a sound?

Almost the same question can be found in Everest's Acoustic book.
The trouth is that it will create the physics fenomenons that our ears translate them to sound but as you are not there to hear it there is no sound for you.
Also the thing that you are saying about the backround level of the sound sounds tricky and good. For example a gun shot will cover almost all the sounds around you and you will hear only the gunshot.

I assume you are already cutting out sounds by viewing distance... no sense even bothing with sounds the player can't see the origin of... Unless you are in a situation where unseen sounds matter (like FPS) it is best to just cut them out.

If unseen sounds matter, or you already did that... then... I'm useless.

H&K, Do you accept it was a rubbish shaggy-dog story now ?
:)