annoying sound effects thingy

[Artighel]

I have little cracky sound too, little annoying for I tend to forget about it while playing... I'have a SBLIVE Value on Windows XP, VIA KT266A system. Latest Creative drivers (from october 2003), latest VIA 4in1 drivers.

[Lizard]

Yet more problems , whilst the sound is much better , I still experienced several pops and crackles within the game , additionally after around 5 minutes of play I recieved a hard lockup , I was unable to get back into windows to see if there was any kind of AV .

This was in IA on the map chill with default options .

[Lizard]

OK I've been doing some more experiments with the audio options , and it seems that changing the 2d and 3d audio buffer locations can aleviate the problem , but it isn't consistent . I found that setting the 2d audio buffer location to software and the 3d audio buffer location to auto would cure the problem , but upon quiting and restarting the game the popping and crackling would return .


EDIT : I haven't been able to replicate the hard lockup again , I've been running the game in windowed mode to try and catch any AV messages .

[Lizard]

Hard lockups occured everytime I tried to run BZ2 full screen with my onboard sound card ( both in 1.2 and 1.3 ) , so I'm now back to my SB live value again , and Square 1 , ie. awful popping and crackling , I'm gonna see if there are any newer SB live drivers  but after reading Artighel's post I don't hold out a lot of hope for that working .


One thing to note , turning off audio acceleration in DXdiag cured the popping and crackling but introduced a whole load more sound oddities , such as a really wierd echo effect .

[Lizard]

Ok I've done a fresh install of windows on a brand new hard drive with all the latest drivers etc. and this has greatly improved things , it's still not 100% perfect but it is a vast improvement . I still get the odd audio glitch a kind of pop sound and the sound from my thrusters seems to cut off rather abruptly every now and then , but overall it's a great deal better and I don't really notice it all that much .

[Red Devil]

How many IRQ's does your sound card share?

Also, try putting your sound card in the first slot and last slot.

Also, this link is a bit old, but has a *lot* of links to pertinent info:

Popping

[Lizard]

It's not an IRQ issue , my sound card only uses one IRQ , IRQ 12 , and it's not shared with anything .


Cheers for the link checking it now .

[Roy Fokker]

I too have experince problems with Audio.

I was just playing so my memory is bit fresh. It seemed as if the audio track for various buildings once activate, kept playing over and over again regardless my distance from it (it does eventually stop once i get far enough). But the audio doesn't start until i am very close to the building. Something i guess to do with Sphere of influnce for ambients audio.

Another thing was, if i face the object, then i don't hear the ambient audio from that object. and when i face away i do hear it. (at 1st i thought this had to do with 3d Audio, but the results don't seem to match with speakers and my orientation)

System Spec.
p4 3.0ghz
1.5gb ram
nvidia geforce fx 5950
Creative SB Audigy 2
Quad Speakers (Front and back, left and right, a square)
And i am running BZ2 at max possible settings (all audio setting are at 100%, save for music, channels are set at 62)
I have check all my drivers and they are the latest that are avaible from the vendor//manufacturer.


And thanks for spending time making this patch, i really appreciate it.

[Lizard]

OK now this is odd I went back into the game and my audio problems had returned , I was experimenting with the audio settings when I turned up the music volume ( which I normally have set to zero) and it seemed to fix the problem with the shell sounds , I turned the volume down again and the sounds were all ok , I exited the game and launched it again and the sounds were back to broken , so again I turned up the music volume and again the sounds were ok after that . Leaving the music on (shell music that is ) seems to cure the problem , but if I turn it down to zero and exit the game then re-enter the sounds sound broken again until I turn the music volume up .

Is someone trying to force me to listen to the shell music ?

[MowerMan]

You will hear the shell music...   You will hear the shell music...  You will hear the shell music...

[GSH]

Try putting the shell music at 1%. Won't drive you nuts until you know it's there and strain real hard to listen to it in the background.

I'm starting to suspect some drivers may be unhappy with all sounds going away. I could put in a bit where when music = 0, it plays a looping silence.wav instead.

-- GSH

[Lizard]

Having the music volume set to 1% works perfectly , I can't even hear it ,  having the CD music enabled at that volume also gets rid of any ingame problems .

[Red Devil]

Just curious, you have Ingame Music From CD: turned on perchance?

[Lizard]

as I said in my previous post having the CD music enabled but with the volume set to 1% cures the problems I've experienced with ingame sounds .

So I'm happy now ( until I find something else that annoys me , I haven't tried the editor yet )

[Red Devil]

LOL.  Sorry, I misinterpreted what you said there.  I was confusing the Shell Effects Volume: with the Music Volume:.