Effects Audio Super Low

[Rexy]

Essentially the title says it all. Music and dialog is super loud, but all effects are very quiet, almost muted. The volume sliders are all equal. If I'm driving, there's basically no car sound, guns are very quiet, and impacts/punches/etc are super quiet as well.

Very tough to play without hearing any of the awesome sound effects!

[Not Root]

As an experiment I set my soundcard to real 5.1 and listened to each channel to see what's going on. LF/LR/RF/RR are fine, but center and sub are 100% dead, no audio at all, ever. So somewhere between the game core and the WASAPI layer, the audio feed is getting truncated to 4 channels.

[W3ST3RN INFID3L]

roothorick <FVPVan> lähetti viestin:

As an experiment I set my soundcard to real 5.1 and listened to each channel to see what's going on. LF/LR/RF/RR are fine, but center and sub are 100% dead, no audio at all, ever. So somewhere between the game core and the WASAPI layer, the audio feed is getting truncated to 4 channels.

I find it switches the sounds around. You cant hear the car engine at all, all you can hear is the people in the street talking and shots being fired etc... but you can hear the skid of your vehicle going round a corner.. Then the engine sound comes on temporarily, and some other sounds disappear. In game music is even more random, its a 90% no show, but when it does make an appearance (at the cost of other sounds disappearing) its like its being played on some speakers in the house next door its so low. Nothing at all has worked for me or my missus, so we are not bothering with it anymore Its just unplayable. Piss poor.

[[SSAFA]CUDGEdaveUK]

Yeah,I have uninstalled it,and to be honest for me it wasn't a good game,I much prefer Saints Row 3.

[Metal Massacre]

I'm having a similar issue with all the sound effects being super quiet while everything else is extremely loud. Kinda breaks the experience of the game :/

[knobby]

I wish I could bring you guys happy news, but the crux of the matter is that I am unable to make this happen and as such I can't submit something to Audio Kinetic for a fix. They have tried over and over and the only way they can make it happen is with improper surround sound settings. We got some of the sound cards from this thread and internally have some of the motherboards in question and we are not seeing the issue with those either.

I'm not trying to claim that you guys are not having an issue and I'm not trying to downplay the severity, but the honest truth is that unless I can make it happen in some way I can't fix it. Hardware information is useful, but I'm looking more for driver info and what the soundcard is feeding(specific headphones, receiver, speaker system, etc). I know you guys have lost faith, but I'm working on a patch for modding support and I would absolutely love to get this fix in as well.

[Robtide]

Hi knobby, honestly I'd given up on getting a fix and it's great news that you're still looking into it. I'm re-installing at the moment to see if the problem still occurs and will list my specs etc afterwards. Is there any specific driver info that would help?

[knobby]

Anything audio related. There has to be some reason why you guys see this and I don't. A specific version of a driver, a specific way to connect like optical cable or something.

[Robtide]

Updated PC specs since last post (#50)

- CPU: i7 4770k 4.2GHz
- Motherboard: Asus Z87 PRO
- Amount and type of RAM: 16GB Corsair Vengeance 1600
- Graphics card: GeForce GTX 780
- Graphics driver version: 337.88
- Windows Version: Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
- Monitor set up and connection to display (HDMI, DVI, VGA): BenQ G2420HDBL (DVI)
- Audio card or onboard audio chipset: Asus Xonar DSX
- Speaker brand and model: Logitech X-230 stereo speakers, Sennheiser PC 363D headset
- In the Playback devices dialog of Windows Vista/7/8 (accessed through Control Panel >> Sound ), which device is set as default for playback? Speakers
- Select it and press the Configure button. What is the speaker set up? Does it correspond to the actual speakers in your room? How are they connected to your soundcard?: Stereo, yes, connected via standard 3.5mm jack.
- If you press the Test button, do you hear sound coming out of all speakers, at the appropriate time during the test?: Yes.
- Go back to the Playback devices list, and press the Properties button. In the Enhancements tab, is there anything turned on (i.e. checked) in the list of Sound Effects?: No enhancements applied.
- Anything else you might think is relevant, even if it doesn't make sense (SSD RAID archive setup, a GTX Titan in a PCIe 1x slot, etc.): Problem occurs with stereo speakers and headset (in headset's stereo, 5.1 and 7.1 modes). Tried beta nvidia drivers and problem persists. Did not have this problem in SR3. Realtek HD Audio drivers were installed with motherboard but have since been uninstalled and disabled. Audio channel in soundcard software is set to 2 channels and analogue out is set to 2 speakers.

Sound Drivers installed:
- 'ASUS Xonar DSX Audio Device' version 7.12.8.1800
- 'High Definition Audio Device' version 6.1.7601.17514
- 'NVIDIA High Definition Audio' version 1.3.30.1
- 'NVIDIA Virtual Audio Device (Wave Extensible) (WDM)' version 1.2.23.0
- 'Sennheiser 3D G4ME1' version 7.12.8.214

[MIKSTER]

I do not have my main tower in front of me, will post specific audio details when i get home. But something i did notice was that i did not have this issue when i was playing saints Row 3. However i was running windows 7 at the time with the exact same hardware. Now running windows 8 and i get the issue in both of these games. The specific drivers for my MoBo did not update to win 8 as the manufacturer didnt want to bother posting the updated ones if they even exsist. Even though it was only year old. Now i only have the drivers that windows saw fit to install, but the system runs amazingly in all normal aspects, High framerate on games where you expect it, Crysis 2, Anno 2070, Borderlands 2, etc.... but most importantly no sound issues what so ever, of course theres the occational game glitch with games that everyone experiences, no sound from a single gunshot in a sequence of hundreds for example, understandable stuff. But nothing so major as consistant loss of critical sound. I completely understand that this weird occurence and extremely rare. If there is any more information i can give you apart from the audio drivers, which i will post later please let me know. There has got to be a common denominator somewhere. Just let us know anything we can do to help if this issue is still being investigated. and if not, I for one understand that you guys cant spend a year of your lives searching for the cause of one annoying bug.

[Not Root]

Reinstalling now to make sure it's still happening on my setup, as I went back to win7...

It's definitely still happening.

Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Intel Core i5-3570k
ASRock Z77 Pro3
8GB RAM
eVGA GeForce 660Ti SC

Output soundcard:
SB X-Fi XtremeAudio (PCI\VEN_1102&DEV_0007&SUBSYS_10121102&REV_00)
Driver version 5.12.1.2018 (8/3/2009)

Other sound devices:
"NVIDIA High Defition Audio" (HDMI output from videocard) (HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10DE&DEV_0040&SUBSYS_38424069&REV_1001) Driver version 1.3.30.1
"High Definition Audio Device" (Realtek onboard) (HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0892&SUBSYS_18497892&REV_1003) Driver version 6.1.7601.17514
"High Definition Audio Device" (HDMI output from onboard) (HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_8086&DEV_2806&SUBSYS_80860101&REV_1000) Driver version 6.1.7601.17514
"AVerMedia C127 Extreme PCIe HD Capture Device" (PCI\VEN_1A0A&DEV_6202&SUBSYS_620C1461&REV_01) Driver version 1.54.64.2

I tried to figure out which DirectX / Windows DLLs are relevant from Dependency Walker but quickly figured out WASAPI does things in a way that make it invisible to that. Let me know which DLLs I should post versions of.

[knobby]

raken lähetti viestin:

Except you guys have reproduced it, in this very thread:

I'm pretty sure we have a thread about a common issue, but different actual issues here. I know I see Xonar passed around and I have heard "bad things" about their drivers. I know there is a community driver for it that might help there. Then there is an issue with actual 5.1 setups and we have reproduced a single instance of that, but for so many people to be having trouble with this, I feel like there is more to this bug than that one setup which is pretty much a manual forcing of the wrong surround settings. It was hard for Ellix and I(mostly him) to get that to happen so I just don't believe it is the issue yet.

Robtide lähetti viestin:

Updated PC specs since last post (#50)
- Audio card or onboard audio chipset: Asus Xonar DSX
- Speaker brand and model: Logitech X-230 stereo speakers, Sennheiser PC 363D headset
- In the Playback devices dialog of Windows Vista/7/8 (accessed through Control Panel >> Sound ), which device is set as default for playback? Speakers
- Select it and press the Configure button. What is the speaker set up? Does it correspond to the actual speakers in your room? How are they connected to your soundcard?: Stereo, yes, connected via standard 3.5mm jack.

Sound Drivers installed:
- 'ASUS Xonar DSX Audio Device' version 7.12.8.1800

Can you give the drivers here[maxedtech.com] a try and report back?

MIKSTER lähetti viestin:

I do not have my main tower in front of me, will post specific audio details when i get home.

The most intersting thing to me I think right now is what sound card, drivers and setup there. Headphones, stereo, 5.1, 7.1, etc. Tell me how your sound works, what is connected to what and if there is anything that might be odd about it.

roothorick <FVPVan> lähetti viestin:

Output soundcard:
SB X-Fi XtremeAudio (PCI\VEN_1102&DEV_0007&SUBSYS_10121102&REV_00)
Driver version 5.12.1.2018 (8/3/2009)

I tried to figure out which DirectX / Windows DLLs are relevant from Dependency Walker but quickly figured out WASAPI does things in a way that make it invisible to that. Let me know which DLLs I should post versions of.

How do you listen? What is connected to the back of your PC? Do you go through an astro mixamp or your stereo or just your fancy headphones? Is there 5.1 or 7.1 involved here on anything?

[Not Root]

knobby lähetti viestin:

How do you listen? What is connected to the back of your PC? Do you go through an astro mixamp or your stereo or just your fancy headphones? Is there 5.1 or 7.1 involved here on anything?

I switch between two different setups, but for this particular test I have the soundcard set to stereo with all postprocessing disabled, and connected to the analog (stereo) input on a Harmon Kardon AVR110 in "3-Stereo" mode. (All it really does is upmix the stereo to a "joint stereo" where common sounds are sent to the center speaker -- everything should be there... and it's fine in literally every other game.)

For headphones, I'll use the "CMSS-3D" surround virtualization, in which the card presents a virtual 7.1 setup to the application and downmixes it to stereo for the headphones through some proprietary whatsit that's actually convincing. I had the same problem in both configurations before; I'll try this latter one again tonight for the sake of argument.

[MIKSTER]

Ok here goes

MoBo - GiGABYTE UD3H-Z77.. pretty sure cant find the box and im to lazy to open up my tower right now.

Speakers- Bose Compainion 2 Desktop Speakers, Conencted to sound out on Motherboard. 3.5mm jack. No additional soundcard. Set for Stereo

Drivers- No additional Drivers installed Apart from what windows uses, set to 16 bit, 44100 Hz

Driver Files: Microsoft- High Definition Audio Device - Version: 6.2.9200.16433 (win8_gdr.121012-1704)

\dmk.sys
\HdAudio.sys
\ksthunk.sys
\portcls.sys
\SysFxUI.dll
\WMALFXGFXDSP.dll



3.5mm speaker jack set to default.

Alternatives:
- Logitech USB headset, issue occurs as well.
- Case 3.5mm headphone jack on front panel -issue also occurs.

Complete Specs:

CPU: i7-2600k 3.4 GHZ
RAM: 16GB Corsair DDR3
GPU: Nvidia GTX 670 2GB
MoBo - GiGABYTE UD3H-Z77
PS: OCZ 800W
SSD 120GB - Boot Drive
1 TB HDD- Storage/game drive
Case- Corsair 500R
OS- Windows 8 64 bit

Short of what model keyboard i am using that is everthing about my system. Let me know if you need anything else.

[Robtide]

Tried again with the drivers you suggested, sadly they didn't make a difference to the sound issues in-game.

(They did fix the Xonar driver auto-volume bug though so thanks for the suggestion!)

[Not Root]

Checked the virtual-7.1-headphone settings, it's still happening there as well.