Sound distorting

[SFG 1]

I have the latest drivers of Soundblaster Pro Live! 5.1

After about 5-10 minutes of play in Flashpoint (sometimes randomly) The sound starts to sound like there is a really bad electric guitar ofkey at 4000 decibles. and makes some odd sounds and continues to loop. Ive only noticed this after 1.75

Amd Athlon XP 1800+

Windows XP

1.6 Gig

1024 PC2100 DDR Ram

Geforce 3 Ti 500 64meg

Hope someone has a cure or BIS can look into this.

[hovmand 0]

I have just downloadet the newest drivers from creative, and they have really messed up my sounds, so that might be your problem, try and install some old ones, i know i will.

[Mister Frag 0]

Microsoft's drivers are the most trouble-free, but they don't support EAX. If you can live without that, use the drivers that came with Windows.

[hovmand 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Mister Frag @ Sep. 06 2002,17:18)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Microsoft's drivers are the most trouble-free, but they don't support EAX. If you can live without that, use the drivers that came with Windows.<span id='postcolor'>

Sure you can, you just have to turn hardware accerleration in windows all the way up.

[Mister Frag 0]

Microsoft's drivers support hardware acceleration, but they do not support EAX.

[SFG 1]

I have EAX off in ofp. I still get it occasionaly.

[Mister Frag 0]

I didn't say that EAX was causing the problem. If you can live without EAX, I would suggest you try the Microsoft drivers that came with the OS. Also, if you have a VIA-based motherboard, make sure you have the 4-in-1 drivers installed, there are lots of issues with VIA motherboards and SoundBlaster cards. You can also try these drivers.

[Falconer 0]

Dear people,

I recently installed XP Pro and using the latest SBLive! drivers has condemned me to suffering from the exact same problems as you. Severe sound distortion, especially when driving vehicles, is the most noticeable effect. The only `solution' there seemed to be was the complete elimination of hardware accelerated sound. Now for the good news. After pondering and tinkering for several days I stumbled upon a registry key named "Turbo". Not a very unusual name you might think, but on second thought, maybe it is odd indeed if it occurs in the context of your soundcard's driver settings. Anyway, changing its value to "0" instead of the default "1" seems to alleviate the distortion I experience by many factors. But, alas, it is not gone completely. The distortion rears its ugly head again when higher pitched sounds play. In practice this means you can now drive a tank at full speed and refrain from covering your ears, but not a jeep. Maybe you are more lucky than me.

Paste the following into a text file and name it noturbo.reg or somesuch, just get the .reg extension in there:

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CreativeTech\Emu10kx\DriverSettings\Wave\Pin#00000002]

"Turbo"=dword:00000000

<span id='postcolor'>

When you have saved the file, double-click it to update the registry. No reboot is necessairy before running OFP.

Please do report back with your findings. I would be especially interested to know at what kinds of sounds you experience distortion. For me it seem to be the high pitched sounds, which leads me to believe the sound driver is over-amplifying certain tones. Maybe someone has further ideas as to where settings might be hidden? I would also be thankful to any Windows 98 user that could look for similar registry entries in his register, and tell us about any interesting settings he or she might find.

Yours,

Falconer

PS.

The above hack has completely solved comparable distortion problems I suffered in IL2 Sturmovik.

[SFG 1]

Odd, I only get it in Flashpoint

[Guest]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Mister Frag @ Sep. 06 2002,19:25)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Microsoft's drivers support hardware acceleration, but they do not support EAX.<span id='postcolor'>

I think that they do actually. Surround sound works quite fine in OFP with the microsoft drivers. The drivers themselves work much better then the creative ones.

There is however one catch (there alway is ): The soundblaster programs (mixer to be specific) don't work with the MS drivers. Unfortunately I need the 3d panning option (where you can reposition the center of the sound target) and I have not been able to find any similar app.

[Mister Frag 0]

Surround sound is not the same as EAX.

Microsoft's drivers support speaker configurations that go beyond simple stereo sound, but they do not support EAX's environmental effects, panning, spatialization, occlusion, etc.

[Guest]

Yes, that is true. But does OFP really use any EAX effects at all? The only difference that I have noticed is that when I select EAX I get my 5.1 sound working while with it disabled I only get stereo.

[Mister Frag 0]

I think you are right that OFP doesn't really take advantage of EAX, at least not the long laundry list of features and capabilities that it has. This is a question that one of the developers would have to answer.

[SFG 1]

Before 1.75 it did you could hear footsteps far away.

[Mister Frag 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (SFG @ Sep. 09 2002,20:20)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Before 1.75 it did you could hear footsteps far away.<span id='postcolor'>

Suma explained that that was caused by an incorrect implementation of sound ramping in the Creative Labs drivers.

With 3D sound APIs, among other things, the programmer tells the engine where the sound sources are, and what sounds they should be playing. Based on the location and distance to the player, the engine then mixes the sounds with the proper volume and spatial references.

The way I understand it, the problem was that the distances used by OFP with its huge outdoor environments were something that the sound ramping was either never intended for, or at least not tested with. In games such as the Rainbox Six series or Counterstrike, the distances are far shorter, so the problem went unnoticed for a very long time.

[shortylaforge 0]

Ive pasted this one and it works fine!! ;o)

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">

Paste the following into a text file and name it noturbo.reg or somesuch, just get the .reg extension in there:

Code Sample

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CreativeTech\Emu10kx\DriverSettings\Wave\Pin#00000002]

"Turbo"=dword:00000000

When you have saved the file, double-click it to update the registry. No reboot is necessairy before running OFP.<span id='postcolor'>

[mikewho 0]

I had a SBL! 5.1 and I had that sound dissortion problem. The vehicles' sounds were sometime crackling. But I just had to turn the camera out and in and my sound was OK. When other vehicles sounds were corrupted I just had to turn the game menu on and off and all the sounds were OK.

Now few words about cheap 3D audio cards having this problem. It's NOT the SBL! problem they are just bad in 3D audio. I had one with 5.1 audio recently (between SBL! and SBL!A, for 1 day) and I know what I'm saying . So when you have some cheap card... you can do nothing about the way they sound, and in my opinion it's not the OFP sound engine...

There are only two solutions to fix the audio bug which worked on my computer:

1) If you have WinME, WinXP (I guess Win2k too, but haven't tried...) go back in time and try Win98SE. On newest hardware there may be some problems but the sound works (in my case 100%, no bugs at SBL!5.1). I had a boot menager installed so I could choose between two systems: an "OFP Only" (just a 2.5GB part), and Normal.

2) (If you have SBL! go to nearest PC H/W store and buy a SBL!Audigy. On my system this solution worked: no sound bug, new better sound quality and Advanced HD! (Guys from Creative hearing this? )

MikeL

This is my MP3HS page

[Polish only... ]

My Webpage MP3HS

mikewho@go2.pl

[SFG 1]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (shortylaforge @ Sep. 10 2002,06:14)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Ive pasted this one and it works fine!! ;o)

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">

Paste the following into a text file and name it noturbo.reg or somesuch, just get the .reg extension in there:

Code Sample

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CreativeTech\Emu10kx\DriverSettings\Wave\Pin#00000002]

"Turbo"=dword:00000000

When you have saved the file, double-click it to update the registry. No reboot is necessairy before running OFP.<span id='postcolor'><span id='postcolor'>

I did that, still does it