[Trivial Psychic]

This used to happen to me from time to time, when the whole audio for FSO would just drop out for no apparent reason.  Usually, reinstalling OpenAL would do the job.  Sometimes, for some reason, updating the video drivers would solve the problem.  I've tried both, but have achieved no success.  I have tested my system's audio outside FSO, and it is still working.

Win10-64bit
Ryzen 570

[Captain Kal]

I had the same problem and I hadn't installed nVidias HD Audio driver, even though I use another Soundcard (Soundblaster ZxR).

Check the following:

-- Install your GPU Audio drivers

-- Enable all of your Audio Devices, even if you will not use them

-- Check Global Flags, at Knossos settings. There are some settings for disabling Audio. Make sure they are set to off.

-- Run Knossos as Admin!!

[Col. Fishguts]

The same happened to me yesterday, all audio was gone both in the Knossos installation and the older original installation (without having updated/modified either)... maybe some Win10 update broke something?
I downloaded the latest 23_2_RC8 and made sure to overwrite all the DLLs with the latest version. This fixed the audio in the original installation, but I don't know yet how to proceed with the Knossos folder.

[Trivial Psychic]

Well, just as mysteriously as it vanished, my audio has been restored.  I'm relieved that it works again, but disappointed that I don't know the reason or the solution.

[Col. Fishguts]

It's triggered by OpenAL. Re-installing doesn't help, since that simply copies OpenAL32.dll into C:\Windows\System32
But FSO keeps it's own version of OPenAL32.dll in the same folder as the EXE, so that version is "seen" first and used.

It seems the OpenAL32.dll that ships with FSO is significantly different than the latest OpenAL1.1 release
OpenAL32.dll from https://www.openal.org: 121 kB
OpenAL32.dll from Knossos: 853 kB

So I copied the 121kB-version to my Knossos folder (~\bin\FSO-23.0.0\windows\x64_avx\) and sound works normally again.
If I use the  853kB-version that comes with FSO, I get either no sound ingame, or FSO silently crashes and produces the attached .mdump (seems to be random which of the 2 cases happen)

The 853kB-version worked fine one month ago without any issues, so I suspect some Win10 update introduced some incompatibly with the DLL that ships with FSO.

Edit: For reference, my audio device is the onboard "Realtek High Definition Audio" with the default Win10 driver.

[taylor]

The 121 kB version is the OpenAL router, which will try and use hardware accelerated OpenAL support if available. I believe that Realtek drivers tend to include this support. This is great when the implementation is good and in working order, but since bugs are hardware specific it's pretty difficult for us to support.

The 853 kB version is a full software implementation of OpenAL from openal-soft.org. It's actively supported and available on all our platforms so it's preferred since it gives us fairly consistent performance across the board and reduces platform specific bugs that we have to track own. It generally works better than the router alternative but that's not always the case.

OpenAL-Soft supports multiple backends to route the sound through. Mostly likely something changed and the backend it's trying to use is either no longer available or just not working properly. There is a config file where you can tweak various settings, and more specifically change the backend, but I'm not really sure how to set that up properly on Windows.

[Col. Fishguts]

Thanks for the explanations. The issue on my end seems to be not specific to the Realtek device, since I get the same behavior when using my Razer USB headset (which shows up as a separate audio device).
Is there a way to get a more verbose error message? The log files just states:

"Initializing OpenAL...
CRASH DETECTED!!! Wrote crash dump to D:\Games\FreeSpace2\fs2_open_23_2_0_RC9_x64_SSE2-FASTDBG_20231008_171618.mdmp"

Or does the mdmp file contain anything useful?

Code: [Select]

==========================================================================
DEBUG SPEW: No debug_filter.cfg found, so only general, error, warning and
scripting categories can be shown and no debug_filter.cfg info will be saved.
==========================================================================
Opened log '.\data\fs2_open.log', Sun Oct 08 19:16:17 2023 ...
Legacy config mode is ENABLED.
Reason: Legacy mode enabled since the old config location was used more recently than the new location.
  Initializing SDL 2.0.10 (compiled with 2.0.10)...
FreeSpace 2 Open version: 23.2.0.RC9
Passed cmdline options:
  -fov 0.55
  -noheight
  -bloom_intensity 12
  -aa_preset 6
  -shadow_quality 3
  -enable_shadows
  -3dwarp
  -warp_flash
Building file index...
Found root pack 'D:\Games\FreeSpace2\Root_fs2.vp' with a checksum of 0x747372cc
Found root pack 'D:\Games\FreeSpace2\smarty_fs2.vp' with a checksum of 0xddeb3b1e
Found root pack 'D:\Games\FreeSpace2\sparky_fs2.vp' with a checksum of 0x164fe65a
Found root pack 'D:\Games\FreeSpace2\sparky_hi_fs2.vp' with a checksum of 0xa11d56f1
Found root pack 'D:\Games\FreeSpace2\stu_fs2.vp' with a checksum of 0xd77da83a
Found root pack 'D:\Games\FreeSpace2\tango1_fs2.vp' with a checksum of 0x4c25221e
Found root pack 'D:\Games\FreeSpace2\tango2_fs2.vp' with a checksum of 0x86920b82
Found root pack 'D:\Games\FreeSpace2\tango3_fs2.vp' with a checksum of 0x705e8d71
Found root pack 'D:\Games\FreeSpace2\warble_fs2.vp' with a checksum of 0xd85c305d
Searching root 'D:\Games\FreeSpace2\' ... 45 files
Searching root pack 'D:\Games\FreeSpace2\Root_fs2.vp' ... 157 files
Searching root pack 'D:\Games\FreeSpace2\smarty_fs2.vp' ... 10 files
Searching root pack 'D:\Games\FreeSpace2\sparky_fs2.vp' ... 3027 files
Searching root pack 'D:\Games\FreeSpace2\sparky_hi_fs2.vp' ... 1337 files
Searching root pack 'D:\Games\FreeSpace2\stu_fs2.vp' ... 2355 files
Searching root pack 'D:\Games\FreeSpace2\tango1_fs2.vp' ... 32 files
Searching root pack 'D:\Games\FreeSpace2\tango2_fs2.vp' ... 15 files
Searching root pack 'D:\Games\FreeSpace2\tango3_fs2.vp' ... 10 files
Searching root pack 'D:\Games\FreeSpace2\warble_fs2.vp' ... 52 files
Searching memory root ... 76 files
Found 27 roots and 14608 files.
Game Settings Table: Using Standard Loops For SEXP Arguments
Game Settings Table: Using standard event chaining behavior
Game Settings Table: External shaders are DISABLED
Game Settings Table: Parsed target version of 3.8.1
AutoLang: Language auto-detection successful...
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'mv_root-lcl.tbm' ...
Setting language to RETAIL HYBRID
TBM  =>  Starting parse of 'mv_root-lcl.tbm' ...
Initializing OpenAL...
CRASH DETECTED!!! Wrote crash dump to D:\Games\FreeSpace2\fs2_open_23_2_0_RC9_x64_SSE2-FASTDBG_20231008_171618.mdmp


[taylor]

I don't have the ability to properly check a mini dump unfortunately, since I don't use Windows.

But after checking I realized that the FSO included OpenAL dll is 6 years old. Trying a newer release might help. Unzip the attached dll, replacing the one that FSO ships with, and see if it helps at all. It's the newest version of OpenAL-Soft (v1.23.1) for 64-bit Windows.

[Col. Fishguts]

I tried the attached new OpenAL32.dll, and at least it does not crash anymore.
Ingame sound sometimes works, sometimes doesn't.
At first I though it was random, but after some testing it turns out that ingame sound only works if some other application is running that has sound output, e.g. a youtube tab in the browser or VLC player with some file played (it can be paused, but not stopped).
When I close the youtube tab or VLC and launch FSO again -> no ingame sound.

So it seems FSO struggles to get a sound device from Windows, if no other application is already using it?

[taylor]

I don't think FSO is doing anything weird sound wise, so that's just strange.

I haven't come up with any ideas for you yet but I'll keep at it, along with some more google searches, and let you know if I find anything.

[Captain Kal]

At first I though it was random, but after some testing it turns out that ingame sound only works if some other application is running that has sound output, e.g. a youtube tab in the browser or VLC player with some file played (it can be paused, but not stopped).
When I close the youtube tab or VLC and launch FSO again -> no ingame sound.

So it seems FSO struggles to get a sound device from Windows, if no other application is already using it?

I can also duplicate this behavior!!! There is no sound, unless I have an application running in the background, that uses my sound device!!

[Col. Fishguts]

I don't think FSO is doing anything weird sound wise, so that's just strange.

I haven't come up with any ideas for you yet but I'll keep at it, along with some more google searches, and let you know if I find anything.

Thanks. I also believe this is not really a FSO issue, since the same installation with the same files worked fine 1 month ago.

I also tried updating the Realtek drivers to the latest version distributed by Asus for this mainboard, which seems to use a driver (RTKVHD64.sys) from 12/22/2020 (the previous one was from 2016).
This seemed to work fine with OpenAL-Soft (v1.23.1), sound worked reliably without the strange behavior of needing some other application use the sound device.
But updating that driver broke some other things in the system, namely all Chromium-based applications (Chrome, Steam, GOG launcher, Knossos?) being broken or needing 30 seconds to start, so I had to use a system restore to fix that. But it seems the issue can be solved by using latest Realtek drivers with latest OpenAL-Soft.

The Win10 installation I'm using here was upgraded from Win7, so has a lot of old cruft and has developed some other peculiarities. So I think it's ripe for a disk wipe and clean reinstall, which I suspect might fix this issue.
I can rule out any HW issues, since this machine is set up with dual-boot to Linux Mint, where a Knossos-based FSO installation works normally.

[Trivial Psychic]

So, I'm still having this issue, but I just have to load up Winamp and start a piece of music, then stop it, and start the game.  Works.  Gotta to it every time, though.

[Col. Fishguts]

Trip report: After a clean re-install of Windows10 (version 22H2) and also a fresh Knossos install, sound is working normally again.
I did not install any audio drivers manually, but just let Windows pull a suitable driver, which seems to be some standard Realtek driver from 2017.

I noticed that FSO 23.2 now comes with a 746kB version of OpenAL32.dll dated 14.10.23, so it was updated as well?