Bricktop 0 Posted January 5, 2003 http://kxproject.spb.ru/ These are A : Awesome Drivers B : No more sound Problems in OFP. Downside : EAX not fully supported, but I never use it so I dont care, Ill take no crackling in vehicles anyday over EAX. Hope this helps some of you. I bought a new soundcard to fix this prob but the Live went in another machine and I have crackle free audio on Both. Cheers BT Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bn880 5 Posted January 5, 2003 Although I love my EAX, I will try these drivers, thanks for sharing. Edit: Dang, only stereo speakers supported... maybe they will get upto speed with DirectSound3D soon, until then I have to stick with crackling. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Bricktop 0 Posted January 5, 2003 Honestly I find these sound 100 x better than anything Creative ever released. Directsound 3d is not very good when it does work and you will find that the footstep problem (People who are 200 yards away sounding like they are beside you) is removed as well as well as hearing riccochets over 200 yards away. I'm not missing it and I am thouroughly enjoying OFP again. It may not have EAX but it has configurable Reverb, Chorus etc and you can Emulate the EAX sound easily if you play around. I am using it with 4 point surround or Headphones and on either, it sounds awesome. Cheers BT PS : I might add that the sound quality when using these drivers seems to be much better as well. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bn880 5 Posted January 5, 2003 Yes but the drivers are said to be stereo only. I have a 5 point surround setup here, and I actually use it. I find that in the new versions of OFPR the distance attuenuation with Creative drivers actually impairs the hearing of sounds too much (IMO). And no loud footstep sound anymore with Creative drivers. Attenuation Calcs. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Bricktop 0 Posted January 5, 2003 Hey, what can I tell you ... I am playing the game with 5.1 setup and it sounds 100 x better than it did with the latest Creative Drivers ... we can talk about attentuation and occlusion all day but I am talking about what sounds better, not fancy words that Creative uses to sell cards. Anyway, I couldn't deal with that crackle and I am happy I have found an alternative. I know others here are like minded. OFP doesn't support/wasn't created using 5.1 as far as I know so even if you set the output to 5.1 on your Breakout/Amp or whatever, you aren't getting true 5.1 from OFP. But to each their own. Cheers BT Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Locke@Germany 0 Posted January 5, 2003 Whats up with you guys , the problem with the footsteps heared over large distances was solved some patches ago. Also i was experiencing those crackling-noises only under Win XP and with EAX and Hardwareaccelaration turned on. So i think its rather useless to download these drivers, cause the only thing that prevents the crackling is to turn of EAX under Win XP and the reason why these drivers are not crackling is they just don`t support EAX ! Btw. I'am running 2 OS's on my computer Win XP & Win98SE Under Win98SE i don't have any soundproblems, so i suggest playing OFP under Win98SE is the only usefull solution to this crackling-problem while using EAX Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nyles 11 Posted January 5, 2003 I have just Win XP on my Computer, so no option for me. The problem I have is that when I turn off EAX and hardware acceleration, my sound completly fades after some minutes. Only way to get it back is to switch EAX and hard acc. back on. So that leaves me with no choice than playing with crackling. I have tried stereo-only drivers before and I must say that, even though without crackling, they sound like shit compared to the standard creative drivers. Well, at least I have the option to partly get rid of the crackling by switching to 3rd person when it crackles again, as long as I am in a vehicle. The crackling will be gone for some time then, until I start the vehicle engine again. Maybe BIS could work out a solution based on this viewpoint change? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
benu 1 Posted January 5, 2003 Bricktop: those words are not something creative came up with and of DOES support 5.1, it's called EAX. You obviously have no clue. It's good that these drivers solve your sound issues and they may be worth a try for others but don't post stuff that just is not true. There is stuff like occlusion, there is stuff like eax and 5.1 surround sound is possible with any game that supports eax. That's what eax is for. I am using a soundblaster card and 5.1 surround sound myself. And i never had any crackling issues, or footprints, or else. I also never had any T&L issues with graphics btw. This doesn't mean i'm too happy with soundblaster cards, my next card will be a terratec, turtle beach or hercules. But that's beside the point. You like the drivers. Good. But that does not mean that everyone who doesn't like them is an idiot like you insinuate. There are reasons to use eax and a surround sound setup may be the best one. I'd rather advise people to buy a decent soundcard and not stuff from creative labs. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bn880 5 Posted January 5, 2003 </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Bricktop @ Jan. 05 2003,02:41)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Hey, what can I tell you ... I am playing the game with 5.1 setup and it sounds 100 x better than it did with the latest Creative Drivers ... we can talk about attentuation and occlusion all day but I am talking about what sounds better, not fancy words that Creative uses to sell cards. Anyway, I couldn't deal with that crackle and I am happy I have found an alternative. I know others here are like minded.<span id='postcolor'> Okay, don't get defensive, I am not saying you did not provide a service to the community here. I told you already, thanks for sharing, and I find this to be a very valuable post as in the future these drivers should finally fix all the Creative sound problems. (once they figure out all of DirectSound3D) Now about the 5.1 stuff: If the drivers are stereo only that means you will not be able to tell the direction of the sound(not well). That is unless you use EAX with stereo headphones... the clarity of sound matters, but the direction is much more important for a simulation. For you the crackling is unbearable, for me it's almost the same, but that's not the point. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Bricktop 0 Posted January 5, 2003 Benu - Â I never said Occlusion etc wasnt in the game, I said OFP wasnt mastered using 5.1, and to my knowledge thats a fact. I can tell which direction things are coming from just fine so thats not an issue with these drivers. - I never called anyone an idiot, and I was in no way impolite, I merely stated "Different Strokes for different folks" Locke - The problem may well be EAX for you but that is not the case for me and many others ... the problem lies with Creative's drivers and no matter what I do it persists. With the Kx Drivers I no longer have that problem and the sound is way clearer. Bn880 - I totally understand your point as I am a hardcore OFP player and I do a lot of Mission Scripting, so it does count and it is important to be able to hear where things are coming from etc. I personally have no problem doing this with the Kx drivers although I would concede that EAX does it better (More Precisely). I believe this issue is a Ceative issue rather than a BIS issue but unfortunately, as Creative doesn't give a hoot about its customers .... unless they are Audigy (New Hardware related) I doubt we will ever see a fix from them. Cheers Bricktop Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Locke@Germany 0 Posted January 5, 2003 I can say it only again: The only solution to get rid of the crackling, even with CreativeLabs-Drivers, is to change your OS to WIN98SE !!! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Bricktop 0 Posted January 5, 2003 For me that is not an option, I am not installing an Obsolete and problematic OS just so I can have working audio, especially when these drivers fix the problem, even if they dont use EAX 100% Cheers Bricktop Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
benu 1 Posted January 6, 2003 Bricktop: Maybe i got your posting wrong, sorry if i overreacted. But from what i know i'd say that if a game supports eax (or a3d or similar techniques) those are used to locate sounds in space (direction, distence, etc) REGARDLESS of hardware (headphones, 2 speakers or 5 speakers). So, as ofp supports eax you CAN use 5.1 systems. And from what i've read factors like occlusion get computed into the sounds. This naturally only applies when the sound drivers work as they should. If you have to turn down hardware sound acceleration and turn off eax to get rid of the crackling bug you won't get much from your surround sound system. That's what i dislike about creative, their drivers seem to suck (well, the VIA bug was mostly caused by creative cards which put too much load on the pci bus afaik, so much for their hardware). But for me, i never had problems with footsteps or crackling and i have an old sb live and used win98se, win2k and now xp professional in the 1 1/2 years of playing ofp. I always had eax enabled and sound hardware acceleration set to maximum. I checked those drivers out a few weeks ago (i think i read about them in another post on this forum) and had not enough problems with creatives to actually try them out as they stated on their page that the drivers are beta and some things don't work yet. But if i ever get problems with creatives driver i maybe will do. Or test my 5.1 onboard sound. Or get a soundcard from another manufacturer Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bn880 5 Posted January 6, 2003 What the? My crackling is gone... after so long. I miss it now. I have an SB Live 5.1 Digital. Windows XP Professional, AMD XP, SiS Chipset. What did I do? I completely removed all SB Live drivers (including MIDI etc) restarted removed all the XP auto-detected drivers installed the KX beta driver tried it out after restarting and it gave me a shitload of crackling ingame uninstalled KX driver got the SB Live 5.1 DE driver here http://uk.europe.creative.com/support/drivers/welcome.asp installed restarted went to menu:Programs>Creative>Sound Blaster Live!>Speaker Preset Setup and once again selected 5.1 Speakers (that's my setup) restarted voila Now, this probably will not work for most people, but what the heck. I hope my problem remains fixed for a long time to come. How about as long as I had it, that would be good. EDIT: I installed everything included in the LiveDrvPack.exe Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Itchy 0 Posted January 6, 2003 You could try what I suggested in page 2 of this thread. Certainly works for a few people. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Locke@Germany 0 Posted January 6, 2003 Whats so problematic in WIN98SE It isn't even half the size of XP and supports everything you need. (At least to play OFP) I actualy have more problems under XP !!! For example there are certain games that just won't run under XP (maybe only on my computer), or they start but sound or graphics are so messed up that its impossible to play them. Also i don't need those tons of bullshit in XP that are only wasting resources ! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
choum 10 Posted January 6, 2003 i have a sound blaster 1024 : and when i enable eax in ofp + hardware acceleration = crackling sound ! i change my sb 1024 for an audigy 2 and now i can use eax and hardware acceleration there's no problems no crackling sound !! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Itchy 0 Posted January 6, 2003 </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Locke@Germany @ Jan. 06 2003,10:15)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Whats so problematic in WIN98SE It isn't even half the size of XP and supports everything you need. (At least to play OFP)<span id='postcolor'> The need to reboot to keep memory usage down, the crashing... When I say crashing, I mean it crashes after 48 hours without rebooting, while my Win2k system crashes after about 2 weeks of constant use. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Greg 0 Posted January 7, 2003 How do these KX Project drivers effect gaming performance? The SBLive ones can use up to 10% CPU time with lots of high quality sound on a 1ghz machine. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
benu 1 Posted January 7, 2003 I just talked to a friend (who also has no problems with his soundblaster card) and we both use the drivers ONLY. Nothing else of the creative software. He made the same experience as i: using that other stuff makes the system unstable... Maybe that helps. I can use eax and 5.1, hw sound acceleration set to max without any issues in 98se/2k/xp. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bn880 5 Posted January 7, 2003 </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (benu @ Jan. 07 2003,10:24)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I just talked to a friend (who also has no problems with his soundblaster card) and we both use the drivers ONLY. Nothing else of the creative software. He made the same experience as i: using that other stuff makes the system unstable... Maybe that helps. I can use eax and 5.1, hw sound acceleration set to max without any issues in 98se/2k/xp.<span id='postcolor'> Which drivers, KX or Creative? If creative, please state driver date or version number. Thanks Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Bricktop 0 Posted January 7, 2003 Yeah, which version?? I have tried that before and it doesn't work for me ... but maybe it is the version you are using!! BT Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
benu 1 Posted January 8, 2003 I use the creative drivers. Obviously, having used 3 different os it were different versions. Now with xp professional i downloaded the latest official drivers from their site, version info shows 5.12.2xx on some of the driver files, file was LiveDrvPack.exe, 24.7mb. You can select what to install iirc and i only installed the drivers and set my windows sound settings to 5.1. I used them some drivers for 2k i think. For 98se i'm not sure (it's been a while) but i have a file sblw9xup.exe, 5.42mb in my driver dir... Has anyone tried other stuff like irqs or something, cause i usually disable pnp in bios (although i don't think this will help much on my current box because of apic) and put most/all cards into pci slots which are NOT shared with other slots. Maybe it's something like this. Just an idea, i'll ask my friend if he does the same... lots of wild guessing on my part Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bn880 5 Posted January 8, 2003 Strange my driver in XP reads 01/07/2001 5.1.2535.0 , and it is crackling again. (was lucky only once I think) All my IRQ's are different, SB Live is on 11 ctwdm32.dll 5.0.0.2001 devcon32.dll 4.06.651 devldr32.exe 1,0,0,17 2gmgsmt.sf2 unknown ctlfacem.sys 5.12.01.2108 drmk.sys 5.1.2600.0 emu10k1m.sys 5.12.01.3300 ks.sys 5.1.2600.0 portcls.sys 5.1.2600.0 sfmanm.sys 4.10.3300 stream.sys 5.1.2600.0 ksproxy.as 5.1.2600.0 ksuser.dll 5.1.2600.0 sblfx.dll 5.12.01.3210 sfman32.dll 4.06.501 wdmaud.drv 5.1.2600.0 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nyles 11 Posted January 8, 2003 Can anybody else confirm that you can reduce the crackling effect by switching between 1st and 3rd person view while in a vehicle? I don't know if this is just for me or if it is a general solution. If more people can avoid crackling by doing so, maybe BIS could work out some temporary solution and add it via one of the next updates... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
