enable hardware sound or not?

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AllNamesTaken

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Sep 26, 2001
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Is my soundblaster live player broken or not, that's the question.

Why is it that in unreal/UT or any UT engine game (rune, ds9) if I enable hardware sound (or is it '3d sound', I forget the name of the option) the sound gets all fouled up, with weird hot spots of ambient sounds at full volume, which go silent if you move an inch away from that precise spot.

It happened in U and now it happens in UT. Both patched to latest versions, plus updated sblive drivers several times to latest version I can find. Haven't installed creative's eax patch, but surely that shouldn't be necessary to use hardware sound. Even without hardware sound Unreal used to lose certain sounds at times (the missing splash sound was reported as being fixed in one patch, but it wasn't)

This wretched card seems to have trouble with lots of other games also, SoF (enabling EAX = sound cutting out on some levels, no occlusion, broken volume control), Urban Chaos (sound cut outs), Sin (ditto), every EAX game except half life (which worked fine). Though in most of those searching the web reveals others have similar problems, but not everyone.

Is my card faulty, is it that Creative can't write drivers to save their lives or is it that EAX is just too difficult for games programmers to get right?

This has happened with the same card in two different machines, no via chipsets, using win98se.

Also I notice the latest Rune patch removed all reference to hardware sound, do the rune guys know that UT hardware sound doesn't work properly?

In short should I buy a new sound card or is UT known to have these problems?
 
Kokensu

Kokensu

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I've only experienced this effect in UT. I doubt your card is broken( I know mine is not). It's more like a driver/game engine problem. Whether or not it's been fixed I'm not sure. I used to think it was a design flaw in the way the map was created(i.e. you place ambient sound effects in certain spots and there may be a glitch there that causes this). For example you may be in between "zones"(this is what UT uses to distinguish when you are within range of a sound and when you are not) and UT can't distinguish which sound to play or it "burps" causing the volume levels to spike. I haven't experienced it in Rune or any other UT engine games though. I'm using Liveware 3.0(I think) and on patch 4.36. It's a relatively rare occurance for me so I never put much effort into fixing it.
 
Stosh

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One thing I noticed was this... UT has two check boxes. One for 3d sound, and one for Surround Sound. For some reason I had them both checked. This caused the same type of dynamic sound problem you were referring to.

Your in one zone and it's unusually loud... and another that was extremely quiet. I have a Sound Blaster Live Value card, with a set of Klipsh ProMedia 4.1. Since I unchecked the surround sound box, the sound has been crisp and clear.
 
Kokensu

Kokensu

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THAT is an issue too, although I assumed he wouldn't have that checked. Stosh is right though. The surround sound box is ONLY if you have a surround sound reciever hooked up to your PC. If you don't then DO NOT check this box as you'll get ALOT of weird sound anomalies. You should only need 3d hardware checked, but unfortunately(in my case anyway) you may still get these weird glitches.
 
Juguard

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Live cards only use 3dsound through software. Thats why the sound is messed up when selecting 3dsound. If you have a sound card that has hardware 3dsound, it will run much nicer.
 
Pillsbury Flow Boy

Pillsbury Flow Boy

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^ I was just about to say that :)

I have no problems with this, SBLive! platinum 5.1 hooked to Cambridge Soundworks FPS2000 Digital 4.1 multimedia speaker system, I have full 3D surround... stuff that is behind me and to the right sounds just like that... My friend has this problem, and from what I've seen, it's the way windows is reacting to all the different drivers, I don't think there is a real fix, but one easy way, is to go to the SB website, and check support, E-Mail them and see if a fix is on the way, or if it's been brought up or not...

Now, did you have the EAX patch installed, this happened to me after I uninstalled them, and removed them, I had to reinstall to get normal sounds back... you might wanna try a reinstall of UT... but if it happens in all other games I don't know :/

Tech support should be the step after this I guess ;)

One question though, how fast is your computer\how much RAM\what version SBLive!, 5.1 or original, or is it a value card?\and finally, what video card? Just for prosperity :)
 
Deathmaker

Deathmaker

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I get lockups with my SBLive! when I use the 3d hardware option, but only ever on certain maps and only when online.
Apart from this 'glitch' I can't fault this card, also the EAX libraries sound awsome. :tup:
 
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