I have noticed an in game sound effect recently, but don’t know what it means. It sounds like three notes ascending but sometimes it’s three notes descending? Does anyone know what the sounds represent - the up notes sounds good/positive, and the down ones sounds the opposite? Please help…it’s very frustrating not knowing! Cheers Jo
Close The Gap!
Yeah, pretty annoying.
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yeah, they thought having the close the gap message pop up wasn’t annoying enough on its own so they also added a super annoying sound too.
Must have tested it on a very small group ride, go anywhere remotely busy and it is a nightmare.
I just turn the game sounds off, shouldn’t have to but they’re all massively annoying and add nothing to the game.
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Can this be the official make it stop plea? In a race you’ve already lost by the time it goes off and are watching closely anyway to stay in the draft, and if you’re free riding then it’s incredibly annoying on popular routes with all the different speeds. In a group ride the on-screen warning is plenty. Please, Zwift, make it stop!
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Thanks all. Glad I’ve discovered what this very popular and totally not annoying sound effect is! 
Maybe Zwift will add the option to be able to switch it off/mute it, if you don’t want it. Cheers Jo
I had no idea there was such a sound. I have everything on mute. 
Today was the first time in a long while that I have Zwifted with the game sounds on. (The pro racing calendar has pretty much ended, so I’m out of things to watch on GCN while riding.) So, this was the first time I have heard the ‘Close the Gap’ in-game sound. And while I could definitely do without the sound, the more ‘annoying’ piece of it is that the sound occurs after the message has disappeared from the screen (basically, after you have already ‘closed the gap’, or gotten so far behind the person in front that Zwift no longer thinks you can close the gap.) So, if took me a while to figure out the associate between the sound and what it was trying to tell me. My attention was largely distracted by following the in-game chat today, so I would hear the sound, look at the screen, and see nothing that looked like it warranted a sound. I had to pay attention for a while before figuring out what the sound was trying to tell me. Overall I would say that I didn’t find this added sound to be useful in anyway. If the sound happened when the ‘CtG’ message first appeared it might be helpful (even if still annoying). And then possibly a different sound when you do actually close the gap (some sort of ‘success!’ sound, perhaps).
Additionally, while the ‘CtG’ sound was a sort of tri-tone of increasing pitch, I also occasionally heard a four-tone sound of decreasing pitch that I could not associate with anything. Does anyone know what this is?
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was that the xp sound, every km or mile?
Hmmm. I’ll pay more attention next time, but it did not seem to be associated with that. The XP sound seemed like more of a ‘single’ tone.
I also keep Zwift sound FX super low volume and then play music on top of that out of the same speakers, so it mostly just gets drowned out.
The decreasing pitch sound is if you lose the gap and the dialogue goes off screen. There are two different sounds based on whether you close it and stay in the draft, or overshoot/fail to catch.
Thanks, Dave. I’ll have to pay attention on my next ride. I thought I was hearing the same sound both when catching and when being dropped by the rider in front. But I was mostly following along with the chat on this morning’s ride, so I wasn’t exactly sure when the sounds were happening. I’ll try it again soon and pay more attention.
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I think Nigel’s nailed the problem here.
Last week I rode Zwift for the first time in 6 months and couldn’t figure out what this noise was.
As Nigel says (and I didn’t figure out until I read it on here) the sound only appears as the “Close the Gap” or “OK” message LEAVES THE SCREEN (at least on my PC).
Therefore these sounds tell you a message in the past tense - they say “you HAVE CLOSED the gap” or “you HAVE FAILED TO close the gap”.
I think this could be a simple tweak for Zwift - surely, if you’re going to have sounds around closing the gap, they should match captions on screen - e.g. the audio warning should appear when “close the gap” appears on screen, so it wakes you up to close the gap?
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I have to say that the 3 tone “Close the Gap” sounds are extremely annoying.
I read @Dave_ZPCMR’s explaination of the difference between the rising and lowering tones, but I can’t seem to equate that to what I see and hear.
And, I agree with @Chris_Holton. The message pop up was annoying enough. Now there are tones with it, too.
I want to have {some} game sounds. But this is too over the top.
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Paul explained it best above. When the message goes off screen, you get a sound effect. Which one you hear depends on whether you make it into the draft (‘OK’) or not.
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It is odd that the sound appears AFTER the message goes away. Often, when I’m not paying attention on screen, (wiping the brow, getting a drink, checking if I still have knee caps, etc) I think “what was that sound”, and see nothing different on the screen.
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I agree, I think it’s odd. If it appeared when “close the gap” appeared on screen, or maybe when “ok” appeared, I could understand the point of it, but the fact it appears AFTER “ok” disappears from screen just doesn’t make sense to me.
This isn’t the first time changes have been made to Zwift sounds where I’ve thought “did anyone actually test that to check it worked?!
Reaction of Zwift: “I will be sure to include your opinion in the summary of this conversation. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Our user feedback makes Zwift a better game for everyone.” Let’s hope more people complain and Zwift offers an (on/off) option soon…
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