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Doom 3 sound issues.

I have found something that works on my system. In "creative speaker settings" under where it has "speaker/headphone selection" there is a check box for "synchronize with control panel'". If I uncheck this box I no longer have this problem in doom 3.
Click to expand...

...dude, the reason why Doom 3 did not work with your 4.1 setups is becuase, quite simply, it does not supoort 4.1. It's not am issue with the sound card because...

When you have the "sync with control panel" function switched on, it means that any speaker setting you choose in your creative control panel it will automatically change the Control Panel speaker setting to match. Which is why when you sslected 4.1 in creative setting, Doom 3 surround would not work, becuase your Control Panel setting were also changed to 4.1.

All you have done by un-synching the two is fool Doom 3 into thinking you are using a 5.1 setup (with it set to 5.1 in control panel) when in actual fact you are using 4.1 (as stated in the creative settings), which means unfortunately, it is sending sounds to your center speaker which you will never be able to hear.

once again, I am in touch with Activision and am currently helping them to resolve the issue... so far:

- It is NOT a creative dirver issue nor any other sound card driver issue for that matter.
- It tends to happen in both on board and expansion slot sound cards, ranging from soundstorn, to Audigy 1s and 2s.

they seems to be heavily focused on the issue of page file usage and the running of background programs, and o course, the option is disabling hardware acceleration. Which means, even though you might think it is the sound card's fault seeing as by diminishing it's capabilities it seems to work, it a bit of a cop out. think about it, if Doom 3 sound is havily CPU dependant, id SHOULD have been aware that over 60% of sound card out there contain some form of hardware acceleration, and they should have accounted for the fact that this might cause problems. This is why we will have to wait for Activision to finally diagnose this issue and come up with some kind of fix for it.

-Cub. =o)

P.S. I run Win XP Pro without any service packs on a VIA KT400 AMD chipset with disabled on-board AC'97 audio. Hmm, perhaps is is an issue with on-board audio processing conflicts via the CPU to OB-Audio bridge?
 
I'm quite aware that doom 3 does not support 4.1. Believe me. When I first got the game a week ago I tried everything to get surround to work. I finally was able to get it to work by choosing 5.1 in the windows control panel and 4.1 in creative speaker settings (this was like 5 days ago). It worked fine. I had surround and it seemed that I did not miss any sounds not having a center channel. The center sounds were played through the 2 front speakers. I ran the same sections of the game in stereo and surround to confirm that I infact was not missing sound (center channel) and I was not.

From Anandtech:
"For those out there with 4 speaker or 4.1 setups (or those who just want to hook two pairs of speakers up to their system to save a little on the cash flow, we tested audio with an old 4 channel system. We noticed that the center channel on our 5.1 system, in addition to playing noises that were directly in front of us, is used for radio communications, and audio played back via the PDA. But all is not lost for those without a center channel. Doom 3 seems to play all center channel data through the front left and right speakers as well. Not having a center channel doesn't impact our amazing surround sound gaming experience in any real way. Yes, the PDA, radio communication, and the like loose just a bit of distinction, but the real meat of the system is to be able to locate enemies via audio. This is just as amazing using 4 channel sound as it is with 6."
article here:http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=2155&p=3

Yesterday when I installed SP2 the synchronize got checked and that is when I ran into problems.

Could some people having the problem with Audigy cards (even if they do have 5.1)uncheck synchronize and see if this helps?
 
Yeah, it does not help... I have tried just about everything under the sun. At the moment though, I am playing it and hitting Q every time the sound cuts out. There is NO WAY i am going to take down my acceleration at the compromise of fidelity and the number of simultaneous sounds!

-Cub. =o)
 
BTW going to the chaingun is best when trying to access the menu..that way oyu dont shoot anyhting since the chaingun has to spin-up first.
 
Had a rocket launcher and wanted to enter the console to see my FPS...managed to rocket myself to no health before I even got out of the Delta Labs entrance
 
i just wanted to say that my sb live works very well with doom 3 and it sounds pretty good on my basic 2.1 setup.
 
Just fixed the problem, please see if you can confirm:

I had no sound until I changed this setting:
Start Menu > Settings > Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices > Audio TAB >
The Default devices should be set to your sound card.


By the way I have
Epox 8RDA+ nForce2
Voyetra Turtle Beach Santa Cruz

I unsuccessfully tried to solve the other problem of 60Hz refresh rate through
simultaneously pressing CTRL and ALT and ~
seta r_displayrefresh "75"

Interestingly, PowerStrip didn't work but a program called RefreshLock 2.02 successfully locked the refresh rate at 85 Hz which stayed on while Doom 3 came on.
Some monitors do 75 Hz better than 85Hz but either is so much better than the dreaded default 60Hz.

Of course people using LCDs don't have this problem....

So the game was designed to make us, force us upgrade our hardware...
I found the game playable enough with GeForce4 Ti 4200, so with the monitor and sound problem solved, I'll wait for the non-AGP cards and mobos before upgrading hardware. Good luck to others trying to solve these problems on their systems.
 
Yeah that does not solvethe problem seeing as most of us already only have one sound device to select from and it is defaulted anyway...

I am still in touch with Acitivion and was able to get it pinned down to a certain process that is running in the background that was causing this issue. I will tell you why:

Acitivision said that one of the things I should look out for is my page file usage. At the moment, I have quite a few rather small processes running in the background becuase this computer serves a home LAN, so I run things like Norton Internet Security, and a few other network processes, making my total page file usage around 250mb.

Activision says that page file usage should be at 100mb Max for optimal running efficiency. So I went into msconfig (by selecting Start > run > msconfig ...and in the 'startup' tab, I proceeded to un-tick all the processes not required to run the game (for a one off test)... and then rebooted whilst letting msconfig manage my processes for me. (Note: 'winlogon', 'crss', 'smss', 'system', 'system idle process' and 'services' are essential for maintaining windows stability and must be left ON)


When windows started up again, my page file was around 130mb... which was significantly smaler. Anyway, I ran the game and guess what... NO cutouts! however, many of us still rely on these exact programs which they want us to disable. these progs ranging from virus cherckers, network connections and even video card/motherboard performance utilities... and without them, our clock speeds and modifications/optimisations would of course return to default. So even though shutting down every process under the sun may get the sound running, it is hardly a solution, seeing as most other games do quite well with them open.

SO... going from my experience, I was able to pin down a few programs and processes that might be causing the problem and wanted to ask you all (the ones who share this problem) to state whether they have ANY of the following programs, in the hopes of pinning down the problem program...

Norton Internew Secutiry/Anti Virus (processes usually starting with 'n' like nnprotect or nscan, or beginning with 'cc')
Gigabyte Windows Utility Manager 'gwum.exe'
Easy Tune 4 'et4.exe'
Any SB Audigy software/utilities (processes usually starting with 'sb' of 'ct')
Microsoft Keyobard and Mouse (usually 'point32' of 'keyb32')
Stlye XP service (a windows visual theme program, usually called StyleXPservice.*)
Winfast Winfox Utilities (usually wf2k.*)
WDFMGR.exe
ALG.exe
MDM.exe

If any of you who HAVE THE SOUND PROBLEM have ANY of these processes running when you run the game, please say which ones, so that we can find a common one to pinpoint the problem upon. (note: none of these processes are spyware/adware)

Thanks,

-Cub. =o)
 
Hmm, okay, well i did a step by step ellimination of running BG progs and ran D3 after closing each one and found my problem program to be the Gigabyte Windows Utility Manager. (gwum.exe) After closing this, I did not experience any problems with the sound at all, even after re-enabling all the other processes.

Now I am assuming not everyone has the GWUM program, but I thought I would share a theory...

The GWUM program (like many other equivilants) of course optimises system perfromance by providing a Windows link with crucial system processes and areas such as BIOS and other mainboard driver utilities. What is also does it frequently update in the bacgkround to accomodate Easy Tune 4 (the overclocking utility)... now, I don't now how correct I am about all this but I am thinking tha perhaps seeins as D3's sound is heavily CPU reliant, and GWUM is constantly aacessing the CPU overclocking utility, it is causing problems for the game when attempting to render audio from the CPU. Leaving possible scenarios as follows:

GWUM is querying the CPU and Mainboard clock status during gameplay causing the audio to glitch.

OR

The overclocking utility itself is cuasing troubles for D3 seeing as it's Audio is specially designed to interweave slong side the came code in non-overclocked environments (given this is a very worse case scenario)...

Now I know most of you will probably not have GWUM, but am almost certain yo would have some form of Mainboard Utility Manager of some sort, and/or overcloking utility.

Try disabling/exiting these programs then running the game. If it does not work for you, then this problem is more temporamental than I first thought.

None the less, please do keep up with listing your processes so that we may further our knowledge.

-Cub. =o)
 
I found out that when i disable ATITool, which I use to overclock my 9600XT, the sound issue is no longer presant. This however is a pain in the butt because after I disable it my card is no longer overclocked meaning I can't play the game to the quality I want. So basically its a trade off... Graphics or sound...
 
c627627 said:
Just fixed the problem, please see if you can confirm:

I had no sound until I changed this setting:
Start Menu > Settings > Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices > Audio TAB >
The Default devices should be set to your sound card.

.
Click to expand...


omg.. thanks a lot.. why didnt i think of that? :D:D:D
 
omg I thought I was the only one with this problem. Thanks google. I have also noticed that this problem goes away when I turn off ATITool. I have an idea of what in ATITool is causing the problem (I know it can't be ATITool itself because I had it running before... but I did change a setting in it yesterday and thats when I got problems with sound cutting out in surround sound mode).
 
OK I FIXED MY PROBLEM!!! If you have problems with surround sound and you run ATITool and find that if you close it your sound cutting is gone, it is probably because you are using ATITool to monitor your temperature. When I had ATITool DISABLE the temperature readout in the system tray, my surround sound works in Doom 3. Don't ask me why this is but it fixed all my surround sound probs. After turning off the temperature monitoring my surround sound stopped cutting out and I could still run ATITool.
 
Well what did I tell you... did I not say it is your Mainboard/Vid Card utilities...

GWUM (or YOUR overclock/mainboard utility) is querying the CPU and Mainboard clock status during gameplay causing the audio to glitch.

OR

The overclocking utility itself is cuasing troubles for D3 seeing as it's Audio is specially designed to interweave slong side the came code in non-overclocked environments (given this is a very worse case scenario)...

Now I know most of you will probably not have GWUM, but am almost certain yo would have some form of Mainboard Utility Manager of some sort, and/or overcloking utility.

Try disabling/exiting these programs then running the game. If it does not work for you, then this problem is more temporamental than I first thought.

None the less, please do keep up with listing your processes so that we may further our knowledge.
Click to expand...

Works for me... glad it worked for all of you! I am so happy now!

-Cub. =o)
 
This definitely has something to do with background tools checking on the status of your computer (such as ATITool and temperature monitoring). I reactivated the temperature monitor for ATITool and went into Doom and just sat there at the options screen where the surroun sound option is. The second the sound cut out or distorted i went to stereo and went back to surround. The sound came back of course. I counted the amount of seconds until the sound cut back out. 10 seconds.

[X] Show card temperature in systray
Update every [ 10 ] seconds.

Looks like I found my problem. So now I play with the temp monitoring disabled in ATITool. If anyone else find that this fixes their problem it would be nice to know :)
 
I'm using nforce 2's spdif-out (soundstorm) to my logitech z-680's. I lose sound a lot and when I don't the audio crackles like crazy.
 
My un-popular view on this is to run your hardware either overclocked at the firmware/driver level or just leave it stock....but I am kind of an old fogey when it comes to things like this...I still wish Doom3 ran in DOS, just for old time's sake.

At the least, it would have made things easier to troubleshoot :p
 
Snowman is correct I was just on my way here to report this... Turning off heat monitoring in ATITool will correct the problem. So yeah good news for those of you using ATITool. perhaps trying this other Overclocking utils might also work? just a suggestion...
 
Doom 3 is still not working on my system. I have nothing fancy; just a Dell Dimension 4600. The sound card I'm having a problem with is apparently called an SB Live! Devastator 5.1. I don't know what the heck that means, nor can I find any mention of that particular product on Creative's website.

I'm having a serious problem here. I've gone through Activision's tech support and some others, and not even they can figure out what the heck is going on. Any ideas?
 
i wonder why my sound is working? all i did was reformat, install the latest sblive driver pack as of 11 months ago when i last reformatted, and it works fine. i am using headphones, if that makes a difference. what sucks is a i have a new computer parts on the way that i specifically bought for doom 3, hl2, stalker, etc... and one of the components is an audigy zs. if this isnt fixed or at least a statement released that it is going to be fixed soon, it will really frost my balls.
 
i3lacKnyte said:
i wonder why my sound is working? all i did was reformat, install the latest sblive driver pack as of 11 months ago when i last reformatted, and it works fine. i am using headphones, if that makes a difference. what sucks is a i have a new computer parts on the way that i specifically bought for doom 3, hl2, stalker, etc... and one of the components is an audigy zs. if this isnt fixed or at least a statement released that it is going to be fixed soon, it will really frost my balls.
Click to expand...
The problem is not caused by any Audigy 2 ZS, nor Creatives latest drivers. So you should have no worries there.



cubase said:
.............
Activision says that page file usage should be at 100mb Max for optimal running efficiency.
Click to expand...
Good and true advice from Activision.

So I went into msconfig (by selecting Start > run > msconfig ...and in the 'startup' tab, I proceeded to un-tick all the processes not required to run the game (for a one off test)... and then rebooted whilst letting msconfig manage my processes for me..........
Click to expand...
Everything, every checkbox in the 'startup' tab, in msconfig, can be turned off and it will not affect Windows, D3, or your network. It's sort of a commonly known major tweak in Windows, to turn off all (or as many as possible) of those startup applications to make Windows start up and run faster.

There is a difference between startup applications (which you can turn all off), and "services" (which some have to stay on). You can run "services.msc" and see the whole list of Windows services, of which quite a few can be disabled, for a healthy performance gain. I suggest you check out Black Viper's website, as he has the absolute best description / tututorial of tweaking these services. http://www.blackviper.com
Look for the "XP services configuration" on his site.
 
BlkViper needs to list known windows functions that depend on what service...I couldn't install MS updates after following his reccomended tweaks....turns out cryptographic services are required for installing MS updates.

He has some good advice, but you had better research every single service on your own to determine whether you really need it or not.
 
mustang_steve said:
BlkViper needs to list known windows functions that depend on what service...I couldn't install MS updates after following his reccomended tweaks....turns out cryptographic services are required for installing MS updates.

He has some good advice, but you had better research every single service on your own to determine whether you really need it or not.
Click to expand...

Those are the 2 services that have to be on, or are different from his listing, in order to do Windows updates after having SP2. No big deal really, they can be turned on and off as needed.

He's working on an edited version of his services tweaks since SP2.
 
there is nothing wrong with your audigy zs boards, or your creative drivers(well, there are things wrong with the creative drivers, lol, but this isn't a side effect).

My zs works fine, fyi.

You can't set it to 6.1 or 7.1, though, because then doom3 doesn't recognize it as 'surround'.

Here is a screen cap of my speaker settings, which yield surround in doom(even though I have 7.1 setup).

speak_set.jpg
 
I wasn't talking about SP2, his reccomendation on the crypto service was wrong before SP2. I just wish he had a more detailed list showing what windows components rely on what service, so folks could figure out for themselves whether it should be on or off....that little service left me angry and annoyed for a very long time.
 
Xtasy0 said:
doom3 doesnt use EAX or A3D, hence why there are no options for configuring such bullshit.
Click to expand...

Heh, what about you being jealous for not owning an Audigy 2? ;)
 
mustang_steve said:
I wasn't talking about SP2, his reccomendation on the crypto service was wrong before SP2. I just wish he had a more detailed list showing what windows components rely on what service, so folks could figure out for themselves whether it should be on or off....that little service left me angry and annoyed for a very long time.
Click to expand...

Hmm, I didn't have a problem with any crypto service since doing his recomendation over a year and a half ago. I'm not sure which layout of services setting you looked at, but the one I used had columns of "default" "safe" "internet gateway" "gaming" and "super tweak" (of which I used "safe") and each row that listed the service had the service name as a link that would show what it does and how much memory it uses. Looking at his chart again, I'm going to guess that you used "gaming" or "super tweak" as they show the crypto service as disabled, while for "safe" it is not. Sorry I didn't mention that earlier.

The only 2 services I had to turn back on temporarily to run SP2 were "auto updates" and "background intelligent transfer service".
 
Yeah, I used the gaming profile...

It's not his info or categories that are bad, I jsut wish he had covered that, even if it was in a footnote, or a link near it saying something like read this first.

Services are the most annoying part of windows since the registry....so it's very cool to have that extra bit of data on hand.
 
Well basicaly, like Badger said, you are able to get away with turning most of your open processes off when running the game, however, the best way to solve the problem is switch of each process one by one and then test the game... in this case, it turn out that the Gigabyte Windows Utility Manager was the problem program, most likely due to it's constant monitoring of Mainboard and CPU status, undoubtebly causing interruption during the games audio processing.

The same issue is also caused by the ATItool program... none the less, if either process in disabled for many user, it will provide a quick fix to the problem.

In regards to others that have issues, like I said, and like Badger also recommended, close as many of the processes as you can and then try the game. You will find that the issue is not hardware nor driver related, so there is no need to frat about this "Creative sucks, or, my drivers are bad" routine becuase the problem clearly lies in your open processes.

From testing, I managed to work out wich common processes DO NOT caus an issue and can be left open...

Notron Antivirus and Internet Security
All Sound Blaster Audigy programs, processes and enhancements
All networking protocols

Now, even though the4se processes will not cause issues when running the game, you may still have them closed to provide better efficiency with your page file usage, ultimately boosting game efficiency, but only my a minute percentage (probably not worth the effort as I have experienced).

After being in close contact with Activision, it seems that after I told them what the problem programs were, they were very quick to lodge my issues as 'solved' and basically it's case closed. So I took the matter further and e-mail id staff and developers in regards to their new patch coming out for Doom 3, and asked them to consider this issue, seeing as their path seems to be only focusing on multiplayer issues.

In regards to sound, as states a million time before... if you have a 6.1 or 7.1 or even 10.2 setup (basically, even if you have your own cinema set up).... doom 3 will NOT recognise anything EXCEPT FOR 5.1... which means, if you have 7.1, you will have to have Windows' speaker setting set to 5.1... and the only way you can get a decent 7.1 experience, is by using the 5.1 to 7.1 conversion and decoding features that come with the Audigy cards, which works much like the ProLogic system. Once again, unless Windows is set to 5.1, no matter what setup you have Doom 3 will not allow anythingher than 5.1 for it's surround. Perhaps this is the penaltly for not integrting proper hardware accelerated surround in the game, which in the end, provides better flexibility in regards to these issues.

None the less, for those of you who have not been able to fix this issue by reducing their page file usage, hopefully the sound issue will be a part of their patch, coming out withing the next few weeks or so.... most likely at the same time as the D3 demo.

-Cub. =o)
 
Maybe we are trouble shooting two different problems?

I'm running an Asus nForce2, with Audigy2 Platinum & Radeon 9700 Pro.
I don't think my problem is releated to running processes, I think its related to the syncronize feature.
I imagine that there was a conflict between the 2 settings being different when they were synchronized.
Click to expand...

Yeah, this seems to be the case. I bought a set of 5.1 speakers just to play Doom. The sounds had been fine with my 2.1 setup. When I hooked my new speakers up, my surround sounds worked great! Worked flawlessly for several days.

Then one day, I plugged my Sennheisers into the microphone jack on the front of my breakout box. The sound worked fine, but the the next time I ran Doom, my surround sound started cutting out as described above. You can restart the sound, but then it cuts right out again. I know that the Creative services actualy change the speaker settings when you plug headphones into the breakout box (so the hardware acceleration can optimize for headphones).

If you try to turn surround sound on Doom when you have the headphones plugged in, Doom will claim that you have no surround sound speakers attached. This isn't how the creative driver is suposed to work; the speakers are suposed to be invisible to the program, so that the audigy can do the suround mixing (or downmixing).

Maybe this is why disabling the audigy services worked for a few people, but not others?

How many of you are using the Audigy break out box?


Off to do some more tinkering. Thanks for the input guys.

-Dr.K
 
Matt Woller said:
Heh, what about you being jealous for not owning an Audigy 2? ;)
Click to expand...

That is quite possibly the funniest thing I have seen posted on this board.
 
If there was an issue with pagefile or ati, we would see this problem in at least one other game on the market. I followed this link on the frontpage of [H]ardOCP:

http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/7202

I personally think things are a bit more sinister than we thought.

P.S. I had posted that I was not having problems with my Audigy ZS and Doom3, but I checked my 5.1 surround in Doom3 options, and it was not set up for surround. I select 5.1 surround, and the sound cuts out just like everyone else.
 
Audigy 2ZS issues again. I get all the surround sound and bass thumping that i require from D3, it is just MY sound drops out whenever i pick up a PDA with a video file on it. Then the sound just cuts completely until i quit and re-enter.
Have all the latest drivers as well.
Cant wait for that patch, but i did expect more...
 
you shouldn't have to quit to regain your sound, just recheck surround sound in the audio options or do s_restart in console
 
I am sure it will be fixed in a patch....

The thing is, too many people are too quick to jump to conclusions about hardware, both their own and other peoples and it is frustrating to read.

A lot of people need to stop and think that is a particular problem happens with one game and not other, that perhaps it is the game!? You would be surprised how many people I have read say something like "Man, my sound card works fine with most other games, but for some reason it does not work with this game, which means it is a piece of crap and I am going to return it!" ...of course, this is an egghaduration, but it's what it is like.

Firstly, there is nothing wrong with Audigy or Audigy 2 cards. while I afree that it is a bit bold to call someone jealous for not having one, it is even bolder to to call something a piece of crap just because their setup works fine and it is Not an Audigy. Hey, I think Doom 3 rocks; does that mean Half Life 2 has to suck? This goes the same for most other cards too. People need to get of their high horse and perhaps provide some ASSISTANCE for other users regardless of what they use. This means first diagnosing the problem and then figuring out a solution using some problem solving skills, rather than bitching.

Secondly, this issues IS an issue with the game. After speaking with Acitivision, we have come to the conclusion that, like some other programs (and not many), have used a different method of generating sound, which tend to get interfered by exterior programs and processes. Also, it is fixable in a patch so there is not need for people to chuck a hissy fit about theirs of other peoples hardware.

Thirdly, there have been reports of a particular 'glitch' sound they hear when walking around. I have figured out a solution to tis problem, as it appears to be a problem with a particular footstep sound in the sound shader setup, which can be fixed. So if you are having this problem, speak up now and I will provide assistance.

I hope that everyone can come to realise that problems are meant to be solved and not bitched upon.

Thanks,

-Cub. =o)
 
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