Possible fix for sound crackle during dialogue if the Creative ALchemy fix did NOT help (YMMV)

[doctorcdcs]

Hi all,

I’m writing this in case you’re like me and you tried the suggestions listed in the Steam & GoG forums, yet were unable to resolve the crackling sound that occurs when your team members communicate, even after installing Creative ALchemy. I think I figured out an alternative to get dialogue working, but its not a 100% fix, and is very YMMV. This might have been posted elsewhere as a fix, but I haven’t come across it myself.

Does it completely resolve the crackling noise? No, not entirely. I do still hear occasional “artifact noises” when dialogue is being spoken in the game, however, it’s about 98% better, and I can at least play the game without having to mute dialogue and enable subtitles.

Looking at the “Definitive Sound Fix” thread, I did pretty much everything that thread stated to do, with one exception: I did NOT use Creative ALchemy. I had to disable FSW’s association with it in order for the “fix” to work on my PC. Personally, I’d rather miss out on EAX audio as opposed to the crackling audio dialogue.

So, what do you do?

It’s actually pretty simple (if you’re comfortable with renaming file extensions).

1.) Go to the directory where Full Spectrum Warrior has been installed.
2.) Go to the Audio directory and enter it.
3.) You’ll see the audio files with .xwb or .xsb file extensions.
4.) Create a backup directory and copy the original files into it, just in case this does nothing for you, so you can revert back.
5.) Rename all the *.xwb & *.xsb files in the Audio directory to *.snd (AU Format Sound).
6.) Run the game to see if the audio has improved (make sure EAX is disabled, and that FSW has been disassociated with ALchemy).

Like I said, its not a 100% fix, but I went from having to mute the dialog because of the noise crackles to being able to play through the game without any major issues. Just to note, I played through all of the tutorial and some of the first level. I don’t know if the fix holds for any of the other missions in the game.

So, why rename the audio files to .snd format?

Long story short: because .snd is the audio format the files in the Full Spectrum Warrior DEMO for PC use.

When I saw it, I figured what the harm could be in renaming the extensions to that, and what do you know? Not only did file change-over work when used on the Steam version, but my long-standing audio issues with the dialogue were resolved for the most part.

I hope that this might help someone who might have been wanting to play this game for a while, and they come across this.

Also, even though I wasn’t able to get ALchemy to work with this, if someone is able to use this fix and tweak the settings in ALchemy accordingly, let me know!

Happy gaming!

[(.)(.)]

This didnt work for me unfortunantly. Thanks anyway.

On a side note, heres a video of this being played on Xbox 1X backwards compatibility. The reason i mention this, is because i want to know how they can not only run it at 4k without squashing the image at a 16:9 aspect ratio, but they seem to have also found a solution for anti aliasing.

[doctorcdcs]

Aw man, that's a shame. I figured that since the audio on my end wasn't 100% fixed that the chances of it working for everyone might be not an absolute certainty.

Just so I can compare, did you try the other fixes suggested previously by others? Such as using Creative ALchemy?

[Bag of crabs]

Thank you so much, man. Nothing else was working for me, I was about to give up because all that cacophonous crackling and screeching made the game basically unplayable.

[doctorcdcs]

Originally posted by Bag of crabs:

Thank you so much, man. Nothing else was working for me, I was about to give up because all that cacophonous crackling and screeching made the game basically unplayable.

It worked for you?

Oh man, I honestly didn't know if it was going to help anyone else, but I figured it was worth posting. I'm so glad at least someone has an improved experience!

I ended up playing & completing the game on my old Pentium 4 (I have the retail CDs; I miss steam compatibility for Windows XP), since I had the hardware already and figured "why not?" Hopefully the fix I provided helps you throughout the game, so fingers crossed!

It's a shame the game has this problem in the first place. It was a lot of fun to play through and complete.

Funny side note: As soon as I finished the game, the HDD on my P4 started making very loud noises, so I had to turn off the PC. It hasn't worked since haha

[KASE94™]

Did not work :/ Damn i miss this game. But the crackling sound makes it unplayable.

EAX did help. But got worse over time during gameplay.