[Fixed] Surround sound still missing voices, sound effects, after patch.

[lowercase_donkey]

When surround sound is enabled, certain sounds are missing. A few I have notced:

Katz soul pickups.
All voices in dialogue.

Happy to add more as people notice, but we need a new thread since this is an issue since the patch.

[lowercase_donkey]

My setup:

Windows 10 64bit
Asus Sabertooth z170 S
Realtek HD Audio [Driver: 6.0.1.7848 (latest driver as of post)]
Logitech z906 (5.1) connected with toslink

HOWEVER!

When I switch to my Logitech G35 headphones (which are USB, and so ignore the integrated audio) I don't seem to have any problem on surround. These headphones are confusing since they have a "dolby surround sound mode" that can be switched off, but the game sounds seem to work fine even with surround enabled for headphones.

[Sceles]

Originally posted by Inwoods:

When I switch to my Logitech G35 headphones (which are USB, and so ignore the integrated audio) I don't seem to have any problem on surround. These headphones are confusing since they have a "dolby surround sound mode" that can be switched off, but the game sounds seem to work fine even with surround enabled for headphones.

That's weird. Have you set them to 7.1 mode from the windows sound settings? They might be in stereo mode by default.

[Evil Jerk]

A Logitech z906 would only support 5.1 via Dolby Digital and DTS as it lacks HDMI and it sounds like the game is outputting to PCM 5.1 which toslink drops to PCM 2.0 losing the center channel which much of voiced dialogue in video games comes in through when using surround sound.

I don't know if this game's audio settings can be adjusted to output in Dolby Digital or DTS, but I'm guessing not as it's very uncommon with PC games. A cursory search suggests you can possibly download unlicensed custom audio drivers with "Dolby Digital Live" or "DTS Connect" support to encode into those formats in real time to output to your receiver. Otherwise there are sound cards you can buy licensed to use those formats.

[lowercase_donkey]

Originally posted by Evil Jerk:

A Logitech z906 would only support 5.1 via Dolby Digital and DTS as it lacks HDMI and it sounds like the game is outputting to PCM 5.1 which toslink drops to PCM 2.0 losing the center channel which much of voiced dialogue in video games comes in through when using surround sound.

I don't know if this game's audio settings can be adjusted to output in Dolby Digital or DTS, but I'm guessing not as it's very uncommon with PC games. A cursory search suggests you can possibly download unlicensed custom audio drivers with "Dolby Digital Live" or "DTS Connect" support to encode into those formats in real time to output to your receiver. Otherwise there are sound cards you can buy licensed to use those formats.

That's fascinating. I still have a few Creative cards around, including a Recon3D (SB1350)

https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Sound-Blaster-Recon3D-SB1350/dp/B00654PUPA

The card features Dolby Digital Live, would that fix it?

[Evil Jerk]

I think it will work after adjusting its settings. I've only ever used a 5.1 PCM receiver with my PC so I have never been bothered by this and I'm only really learning about Dolby Digital Live and DTS Connect now.

My last receiver however had shoddy 5.1 PCM support that would often think it was instead receiving PCM 2.0. A Wii U which only does 5.1 through PCM would never work, but my PS4 would work until some instances a game were to go quiet for an extended period or if I opened the dashboard when using a dashboard theme with stereo audio then it thought it was PCM 2.0 again. I had to keep fiddling with audio settings to get it to revert back or just switch to Dolby Digital or DTS and never deal with dropping channels. That's the only situation I've been in similar to yours.

[lowercase_donkey]

Got it to work, and thank you so much Evil Jerk for the pointers.

For posterity, getting my Creative card out worked, but I complicated things a bit.

The first time I installed the software, I did not install "extras." Because of this, I didn't have the "cinematic" tab in the creative software that would enable DTS. Ugh. I removed the software, removed all registry entries, and did a FULL install of creative's software. The "cinematic" tab should be set to "Dolby Live" and pay attention to the warning that windows needs to be set to "speakers" NOT spdif. Weirdly.

Works fine after that.

[Kaldaien]

Install TBFix and click the Audio Volume tab, it will tell you exactly how many channels are being mixed. You're in stereo mode right now, and you've got Surround turned on, which means the center channel is being tossed out :-\

It really threw me for a loop at first, but the game allows you to select Surround even when the audio end-point is only 2 channels.

That's where the VU meter built-in to TBFix can help, if you're in this situation, it will point it out immeidatley - don't select "Surround" if you only see 2 graphs on the Audio Volume tab. Instead, start pokingaround with your audio hardware config until mixing is correctly being done in 5.1 or 7.1.

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I know you fixed the problem on your end, this is just general advice for other people with similar problems until (if) Bandai Namco fixes it so you cannot select "Surround" mode with only two audio mixing channels on the active hardware.