[Goober5000]

Always in WiH intro when sanctus is entering the area at the beginning, no subspace sound.

I wonder if this has anything to do with 3D sound.  Can you play a hacked copy of the mission where the sanctus warps in closer to you?

[Iss Mneur]

Always in WiH intro when sanctus is entering the area at the beginning, no subspace sound.

I wonder if this has anything to do with 3D sound.  Can you play a hacked copy of the mission where the sanctus warps in closer to you?

Or try it with -no_3d_sound.  It will turn off the better OpenAL 3D sound environment and instead use the retail FS 3D sound environment.

[Kobrar44]

Sexp related as it appears. Event 'music' sets effects volume to 0. And I don't really know if its still possible, but when I used to use Generic Hardware instead of Software I had missing sounds too, so maybe that's the cause for Cyborg's bug.

[Cyborg17]

I've started testing mine.  I've clarified the issue to two possibly unrelated things.

1) At random times Command Breifing voice files will not play.  They will play on 3.6.12 every time, but it breaks on RC6, or for certain, after revision 6720. It does not seem to occur on 6712 but does seem to occur on 6720.  I still have to test 6714. (assuming that I'm remembering the revisions correctly, 6712 and 6714 should be bugfixes for sound issues)

This happens on retail and modded campaigns.

2) Sometimes voice sounds do not play during mission.  This may be my integrated sound system being overwhelmed by the number of sounds in the game, or it could be a bug, but it didn't seem to happen in 3.6.12 or 6712.

Ask me if you'd like more info.  I'm on lunch, so I can't mantis it right now, but I can probably do it tomorrow.

[Goober5000]

Which retail mission(s) do(es) it happen on?  Can anyone fire up FSO, load a certain mission, and reliably see the error?

[Iss Mneur]

I've started testing mine.  I've clarified the issue to two possibly unrelated things.

1) At random times Command Breifing voice files will not play.  They will play on 3.6.12 every time, but it breaks on RC6, or for certain, after revision 6720. It does not seem to occur on 6712 but does seem to occur on 6720.  I still have to test 6714. (assuming that I'm remembering the revisions correctly, 6712 and 6714 should be bugfixes for sound issues)

This happens on retail and modded campaigns.

2) Sometimes voice sounds do not play during mission.  This may be my integrated sound system being overwhelmed by the number of sounds in the game, or it could be a bug, but it didn't seem to happen in 3.6.12 or 6712.

Ask me if you'd like more info.  I'm on lunch, so I can't matis it right now, but I can probably do it tomorrow.

Please try with OpenALSoft to rule out if it is actually a crappy sound card or if it is something else.  Also try using the -no_3d_sound command line flag.  Both of these can help mitigate a too low channel count sound card.

[Cyborg17]

Which retail mission(s) do(es) it happen on?  Can anyone fire up FSO, load a certain mission, and reliably see the error?

Nope.  It's almost random.  I think, though, you have to play through a mission first and then get to the next briefing for a chance at the briefing voice bug.

I'll definitely try those two things though and see if anything changes. And I'll try to make a dummy campaign to make it easier to test this.

[Iss Mneur]

Which retail mission(s) do(es) it happen on?  Can anyone fire up FSO, load a certain mission, and reliably see the error?

Nope.  It's almost random.  I think, though, you have to play through a mission first and then get to the next briefing for a chance at the briefing voice bug.

I'll definitely try those two things though and see if anything changes. And I'll try to make a dummy campaign to make it easier to test this.

Please check out mantis #2266 as what you describe sounds pretty similar.

[Cyborg17]

Using Open AL soft fixed both problems.   Using the no_3D sounds flag did not help anything.  Looks like my integrated card is just as much a POC as I suspected. 

[Kolgena]

How do you use OAL soft?

In other news, do my ears suck, or does music volume not respond to the options menu changes in-game? (Seems to work fine for briefings)
Edit: No, setting bar is just buggy. You have to set it to 1 dot (turn off music), go to game, go back to options, then turn it back on to desired volume to get it to change. Changing from one volume to another without "reseting" the current track does nothing.

[Cyborg17]

I'm pretty sure you go to the launcher, go to the audio/joystick tab.  Then in the audio section, there should be a list of the different sound devices you can use.  The one that has soft in the name should be it.

[Kolgena]

I have "Generic Software", and "Generic Software on Speaker/HP (Realtek High Defin..."

(I also have a checkbox with 44100 beside it. Not sure what that's for. I remember that EAX used to be this checkbox, but I don't know why it's instead listing the last set sample rate)

[Cyborg17]

Are those the only two that you have?  Try both.  Maybe it'll work. *shrugs*

[Kolgena]

Only options. At least there don't seem to be major bugs for me in terms of sound, aside from random stuttering and popping I get from most briefing voice files. But those have existed since years back.

[Iss Mneur]

To install OpenALSoft, go to the OpenAL Soft page.  It is a reference implementation of OpenAL in software.

There are two ways of installing it, globally or for a specific application.  Detailed instructions are in the readme.txt included in the win32 binary download on the OpenAL soft page (it will also work on 64 bit windows).  Linux users should have OpenAL Soft already installed or available in your package manager.  OS X users, I have no idea, however the source package should build and work on OS X.

Please run openal-info.exe before and after you install (if you do the local install don't worry about the after) and paste both here to the forums because at this point, it seems very likely that the problems people are having with sound is because of the hardware.

Studdering and popping are normally unrelated to the sound card and (at least when it happens to me) because something in the background is using the hard drive (usually a virus scanner) and FSO is unable to stream the audio data quickly enough.

For comparison, here are mine.

Code: (Before) [Select]

Available playback devices:
    Generic Software on Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)
    Generic Software on Headphones (High Definition Audio Device)
    Generic Software on Digital Audio (S/PDIF) (High Definition Audio Device)
Available capture devices:
    Microphone (High Definition Aud
    Line In (High Definition Audio
Default playback device: Generic Software on Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)
Default capture device: Microphone (High Definition Aud
ALC version: 1959890133.2686916

** Info for device "Generic Software on Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)" **
ALC version: 1.1
ALC extensions:
    ALC_ENUMERATE_ALL_EXT, ALC_ENUMERATION_EXT, ALC_EXT_CAPTURE, ALC_EXT_EFX
OpenAL vendor string: Creative Labs Inc.
OpenAL renderer string: Software
OpenAL version string: 1.1
OpenAL extensions:
    EAX, EAX2.0, EAX3.0, EAX4.0, EAX5.0, EAX3.0EMULATED, EAX4.0EMULATED,
    AL_EXT_OFFSET, AL_EXT_LINEAR_DISTANCE, AL_EXT_EXPONENT_DISTANCE
EFX version: 1.0
Max auxiliary sends: 1
Supported filters:
    !!! none !!!
Supported effects:
    !!! none !!!


Code: (After) [Select]

Available playback devices:
    Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)
    Headphones (High Definition Audio Device)
    Digital Audio (S/PDIF) (High Definition Audio Device)
    Generic Software on Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)
    Generic Software on Headphones (High Definition Audio Device)
    Generic Software on Digital Audio (S/PDIF) (High Definition Audio Device)
Available capture devices:
    Microphone (High Definition Audio Device)
    Microphone (High Definition Audio Device) #2
    Line In (High Definition Audio Device)
    Microphone (High Definition Aud
    Line In (High Definition Audio
Default playback device: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)
Default capture device: Microphone (High Definition Audio Device)
ALC version: 1959890133.2686916

** Info for device "Generic Software on Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)" **
ALC version: 1.1
ALC extensions:
    ALC_ENUMERATE_ALL_EXT, ALC_ENUMERATION_EXT, ALC_EXT_CAPTURE, ALC_EXT_EFX
OpenAL vendor string: Creative Labs Inc.
OpenAL renderer string: Software
OpenAL version string: 1.1
OpenAL extensions:
    EAX, EAX2.0, EAX3.0, EAX4.0, EAX5.0, EAX3.0EMULATED, EAX4.0EMULATED,
    AL_EXT_OFFSET, AL_EXT_LINEAR_DISTANCE, AL_EXT_EXPONENT_DISTANCE
EFX version: 1.0
Max auxiliary sends: 1
Supported filters:
    !!! none !!!
Supported effects:
    !!! none !!!


[Cyborg17]

Sounds like I was really confused.  And I still am.  Isn't OpenAL required for FSO?

[Kolgena]

Copied over soft_oal.dll to SysWOW64 as per instructions. Didn't know what the .h files in \Included were for, or what libOpenAL32.dll.a did, so I didn't extract them.

I got 1 new audio device, simply known as "Speaker/HP (Realtek High Definition Audio)". Did I do everything correctly?

@ Cyborg17: OpenAL Soft is not the same as OpenAL. The former expands upon the latter, as far as I can tell.

[Iss Mneur]

Sounds like I was really confused.  And I still am.  Isn't OpenAL required for FSO?

Yes it is.  The problem is OpenAL is only an API. And that OpenAL thing that you need to install for FSO to work is a router that allows FSO to chose the soundcard implementation.  Originally Creative (the sound card manufacturer) developed it and released it with the intent that it was an API that interfaced with hardware (namely Creative's hardware like the Sound Blaster, or the higher end Audigy). However because most motherboards now come with onboard sound (quite often a Realtek something or other) and are not a high end card like Creative sells, the on board sound cards implement the OpenAL API at various levels of completeness.

OpenALSoft was originally released by Creative as a reference implementation that would run on the CPU so that everyone could experience the fidelity of a real Creative card even if they didn't have a Creative sound card.  If your CPU was too slow the idea was that you should go an buy a Creative card.  I don't know how that worked out for Creative, but since they no longer develop OpenALSoft it probably wasn't working as well as they had hoped, especially with the arrival of multicore CPUs there are few sound environments that can't be emulated on a CPU with sufficient speed to make the need of a hardware implementation necessary.

Copied over soft_oal.dll to SysWOW64 as per instructions. Didn't know what the .h files in \Included were for, or what libOpenAL32.dll.a did, so I didn't extract them.

I got 1 new audio device, simply known as "Speaker/HP (Realtek High Definition Audio)". Did I do everything correctly?

@ Cyborg17: OpenAL Soft is not the same as OpenAL. The former expands upon the latter, as far as I can tell.

Yep that looks about right.

As for which one is the one that is implemented by OpenAL Soft and which on is the original "Generic Software" one I have not had time to experiment.  I would assume that the one that you want is now called "Generic Software" and the original "Generic Software" from before is the new device.

[Kolgena]

A quick check: Can beams miss? Like, slash beams firing almost 90 degrees off from the single enemy target?

[Goober5000]

Slash beams can miss, but I haven't seen them miss by 90 degrees.