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[Aquillion]

It would be interesting (and useful) if there was a button or something players could push to make sounds visible.  It would be even better if they could do this while time is running.

This would let players take this into account when placing bedrooms and so forth, without having to look up the exact distances in the wiki.

[Capntastic]

This is one of those things that's a decent idea, but not really important.   Besides, if you're the sort of person who wants to know the closest you can get to mining/etc without having sound overlap, you're probably going to be using the wiki for other things anyways.

[Tormy]

This is one of those things that's a decent idea, but not really important.   

Agreed. 

[Neonivek]

There is ONE thing it is needed for though.

A Noise Viewer so you know where to put your Bedrooms.

[BlackSash]

No, not really. At the time of writing, the distance noise from workshops and the like will travel is 4 squares in all directions. Basic counting skills will give you the answer to the question of 'Where to put bedrooms' in 2 seconds:
Anywhere further away than 4 squares

It's really that simple.

[chucks]

I like it.  It could also incorporate other sounds sources (such as mining, construction, etc) that wouldn't be easily caught by just counting 4 squares away from every workshop.

[smjjames]

Well, there is only one small problem. According to the wiki, placing furniture or buildings creates a cube 16 squares on all sides, which is likely a bug (and doesn't make sense to me either since it wouldn't be louder than a workshop). Which means that most of the time, you can't avoid that.

Realistically placing furniture and stuff should only make noise within maybe 2 tiles, perhaps 3 for large/heavy objects.

[Remalle]

Wait, it's four for a workshop and sixteen for other buildings?  Damn, and I've been building my rooms sixteen levels below my workshops...

[smjjames]

Or just don't build them when dwarves are sleeping. You could also just offset them 16 or more tiles away from the workshop, they don't neccesarily have to be 16 levels belowtrs

http://dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Noise

Really, you could have it down one level and 20 tiles away and it should be fine. The noise spread kind of seems more like a cylinder or a rectangle in the minds eye. At least to me anyways.

[Bricks]

I don't really understand why this is treated like such a simple topic, nor why players should be expected to read an oft unreliable wiki page to try and decipher this totally opaque topic.  If it is a feature of the game, the game should make some effort to illustrate it and explain it.  (Unless noise is an easter egg, in which case I'm totally scared of the end product).  I still can't recall whether the center or the edge of a workshop generates sound.

"Basic counting skills" don't really apply to 3D space, especially since trying to coordinate between z-levels and movement in the x/y planes is already an exercise in self-doubt.  It's hard to even tell when you screw up placing your noisy workshops or furniture, unless you constantly flip through the thoughts of your dwarfs and make spreadsheets to track their bedrooms.  Hell, just a "Noisy" or "Quiet" tag when loo'k'ing would be appreciated.  Sound currently has no visual/spatial coordination, whereas most other problems in a fort have noticeable consequences - miasma, dust, vomit, growing pools of bright red tildes/integers.

Granted, things like this will probably be explained in the eventual tutorials, and I'd imagine sound will be updated at some point.

[Craftling]

I think its a good idea(thats probably a bad thing). But it should be put in even if it isnt important.

[Footkerchief]

Sound should probably use a floodfill rather than a distance check, so that it won't travel through walls quite so readily.  Yes, floodfills are a tiny bit expensive, but it would only have to be updated after the relatively infrequent map/building changes.  If you still wanted sound to travel with walls, you could flood through the walls (rather than around them) but with a sharper dropoff to mimic the wall's impedence of sound.  These floodfills, overlapping as necessary, can then be used to determine a sound value for each tile, which the player can then view an approximation of (on a logarithmic scale, of course) -- "Deafingly Loud," "Very Noisy," "Quiet," "Silent" etc.

[Capntastic]

I don't see why people care so much if their mining and building annoys their sleeping dwarves anyways.   Losing is fun.