Voice Limits: Why Fewer Sounds at Once Is a Feature
Short answer: However many shapes are overlapping, only a few long sounds are allowed to play at once, and only one drone. When little is sounding, each sound is given a longer tail. When a lot is sounding, tails are cut shorter. The result is a field that thins out and fills up, and never turns into one thick wash.
What went wrong without it
Sound here starts when shapes touch. Put enough shapes on screen and a lot of them are touching at any moment. Each one is pleasant alone. Ten together are a grey blur in which you can't pick out anything.
Two people talking at a table are easy to follow. Twelve talking at once are just noise, even though more is being said.
The rules I ended up with
A cap on long sounds. Textures and drones are the ones that pile up, because they keep going for as long as their shape overlaps something. So only a few textures may sound together. If more are overlapping, the extra ones stay silent until there is room.
One drone at a time. The drone is the anchor of the whole scene and it sets the pulse. Two of them would be two anchors.
Tails that depend on the crowd. When only one or two things are sounding, they fade out slowly, and you get a long, clear tail. When many are sounding, they fade faster so they make room. A quiet moment gets to ring. A busy moment clears itself.
Space is stricter
In the Space world the caps are lower still, and there is a forced gap of quiet between the bigger events. Space is supposed to feel empty, and it stopped feeling empty the moment three things happened at once.
What I took from it
My instinct was to add. More layers, more variety, more going on. Almost every time the sound got better, it was because I took something away or stopped two things happening together. The limit is what lets you hear the shapes one at a time.
Try it: in Ocean, drag the Objects slider up and listen to how the field fills without clogging. It is free and starts in one click, with no account.
Open Ocean, free