FSX Sound not quite right :-/

[DaveB]

Hi Gordon

It's a b1oody shame when you get a bug like this. My FSX isn't footloose and fancy free.. I get trees shooting skyward every now and again and often, I get an error message after I've closed the sim down telling me that something was unable to address memory blah blah blah at blah blah blah. A clean install on a new pc on it's own HD I keep it handy for a change of scenery but have never been so moved to ditch FS9 and on a scale of 1 to a million.. I use FS9 999,999.99 of the time and FSX, the errant .01 Not worth getting into a shouting match over as that's been done to death too many times already. Some blokes like fat birds.. others like skinny birds

Hope you find a workable solution anyway mate

ATB

DaveB

[gordon-in-aberdeen]

Me again, quick update on the FSX sound problem I'm having...

Now tried all sorts of jiggery-pokery with the sound card settings on the computermabob, no luck Then last night I went and downloaded GaryJ's twin Merlin Sound Pack from the pond to try on the FS2004 version of the Justflight Mossie. I Don't like the sounds it came with anyway. It worked great, as expected being FS2004, with the sounds much better than before, and I was pleased with meeself.

Then I noted that he says in his readme file that they havent been tested in FSX, so I thought what-the-hell, I'll give it a go, can't be any worse than the sound FSX makes with FSX version of the JF Mossie anyway , so I pops the new sound file folder in instead of the deafult sound folder that came with the kite and fires her up for a spin.

Low and behold, she sounds like a mossie and behaves herself when I flip through the views - GaryJ, Absolutely fan-didily-astic.. I ow you a pint GaryJ and all that ....

Anyone else having the same problem, specifically with the JustFlight Mossie in FSX, this at least works in my system, so give it a try. Its starting to point to a combined problem, namely FSX not happy with Windows 7 (DirectX10 / 11 in there someplace I think) & multi core processors and some sort of settings issue in the sound config files. I'm now going to try to see if I can play around with the sounds of the other aircraft that have this problem.

I'm getting someplace, I can now actually start to fly the aircraft I want to fly in FSX now. Wooo Hoo.

On a side note, the PC does struggle to regen the textures of the Mossie when you change views in FSX.
I think I remember someplace in here a tip to help speed up the display of textures etc on a PC with some limitations in graphics, can anyone remember what it was?
I've hunted high and low for it in the forum but damed if I can find it now that I need it.

Cheers all...

[speedbird591]

Thanks for the update, Gordon. My laptop is a dual-core with W7 as an upgrade from Vista and currently running FSX only. The sound is fine on all my FSX native aircraft - the only a/c sound which isn't too good is DM's FS9 1-11.

But I'm not getting too involved in a solution at the moment as I'm keeping everything simple pending a possible move to a new FS specific desktop.

But please let us know if you manage to pin down the little rascal that's causing the problem!

Ian

[ianhind]

Since you are all discussing a sound problem, it might be useful to say which sound card or motherboard sound chip is being used in the respective systems. That might show if there is any correlation.

And this talk by DaveB about mediocre systems is upsetting my even lesser PC Maybe I'll have to acquire the i5-760 system I just built for my wife.

Ian

[gordon-in-aberdeen]

Sorry Ian, but having trolled the web looking for solutions to this and finding many others on various forums with similar problems, I had come to the conclusion it was probably not hardware related but a clash or bug in FSX, manifested by the OS / DirectX version having issues with the way FSX handles sound, possibly related to milti core processors as well. As a result I'd neglected to post the sound card specs etc.

The sound solution I have is a Realtech onboard sound chip on the motherboard. I don't have the exact specs on me, I'll see if I can get them when I get home tonight and have the PC in front of me. The PC is a small HP Pavilion with an intel dual core 2.2Ghz processor, 2Gb DDR2 RAM, Windows 7 32bit and an ATI graphics card. Its not a vastly powerful PC, but more than enough specs to match what FSX was designed to run on when it came out, so should be OK. Since my first post above I've upgraded the graphics card from a 256Mb ATI card to a 1Gb ATI card, which has greatly helped FSX regards display performance on the box.

I'm slowly starting to get FSX to behave enough now (especial with the new graphics card) to the point where I can start to enjoy it. The sound issue and some fine tuning to get the best performance of the graphics in FSX is what I'm trying now. Up till now I have stuck with FS2004 which works a treat on the PC, but really have to get FSX running as well if I can.

I suspect the onboard sound will have some small bearing on the problem, but Its not the only culprit here from what I've found so far. I'll get detailed specs as soon as I can. Thanks for your interest, any help greatly appreciated

[gordon-in-aberdeen]

Ian,

My PC Specs. are: -
HP Pavilion s3340
with Intel core 2 duo e4500 2.2ghz processor
2gb DDR2 ram
HD is a wdc wd5000aaks-65yga0 ata drive (488 Gb)
Graphics card is ati radeon hd5450 with 1gb ddr3
Sound is an on-board Realtek High definition Audio, cant find any way of getting the specific chip so far.
OS is Windows 7 32bit.

Not a scraming games box, but solid little machine never the less

Thanks
Gordon

[gordon-in-aberdeen]

The continuing saga of the sound that's gone to the dawgs
...
Or... not any more, Woooo Hoooo
I've got it workin now. Windows 7, FSX sound doing as it should

Solution: -
1. Disable onboard Realtek sound chip
2. Uninstall as much of the realtek stuff as I could find
3. Buy a Creative X-Fi GO usb sound card thingie (plugs into a free USB slot, very neat)
4. Install the software and let it update itself from the web as much as It wants / needs to
5. Install and configure the latest version of Creative Alchemy software as well, so it knows where FSX is.
6. Reboot etc etc.
7. Plug in the speakers to the USB thingie instead.
8. Fire up FSX and check the sounds on the airframe thats causing the problem, i.e. JustFlight Mosquito
Low and behold - Robert's your Dad's brother - she's running like a pair of juicy Merlins should, even on the iffy sounds that came with her.

If your wondering why I didn't get a proper internal sound card, the problem with the HP box is its a silly compact narrow form factor box, it needs a narrow width card fitting and the local shop didn't have anything sound wise that had a set-up that allowed it to fit in the PC, so they suggested I try the USB thingie instead and that I could take it back if it made no difference..... Top guys.

Regards allowing it to update from the web, I got the latest beta drivers as well in case I needed them, because I found a tip on the web that said it might need them, but it worked with what it found on Creative's web site on its own. Great stuff..

The EAX stuff even works on Railworks 2 as well now. I know Railworks has problems with some Creative sound cards. It was also not doing things quite right sound wise, but being even more resource hungry than FSX I wasn't worried about that, the sounds it was making were OK, just not top quality. Now I can hear the windows on the Class 101 DMU rattling as it gets faster, which means its doing more than the onboard card ever hinted it could do.

Happy as a bunny in a field of buttercups....
Just need to tune my visual settings now. Anyone got any tips?

[speedbird591]

Well done that man! Excellent bit of detective work and a satisfactory solution. I imagine you'll be out at lunchtime treating yourself to the pint of Cairngorm Wildcat that was the prize!

I'm sure that will be the solution to my sound discrepancy as well. Although I'm running a laptop (Core2Duo 2.13) it also has a Realtek on-board sound card which would appear to be the culprit. Like you I'm running FSX on W7 - the only a/c affected are DM's jets, so I thought it might be a FS9 a/c issue. I'm not sure yet that I'll buy one of those pretty little USB things as disabling the soundcard on a laptop would mean always having it plugged in and having to carry external speakers. I'll live with the issue for now but may get a new desktop in the new year which should fix it well and good.

As to your visual settings - I can't remember what your original problem was. I have a nVidia 9600 card as opposed to your ATi, but you might be interested in my recent breakthrough. I used nHancer default FSX setting which sets AA to Application controlled but I was still getting slight shimmering and some repaints were too sharp with jaggy cheatlines. So using nHancer I overrode just one AA setting (as in the screenie below) and the problem was solved at the cost of a handful of fps. I know you can't use nHancer but there may be a way of getting to that setting for ATi cards. On the other hand it may well be a different problem altogether!

Thanks anyway for the sound solution.

Ian

[gordon-in-aberdeen]

Cheers Ian,

I suppose the advantage of the USB thingie is you could actually try it on the laptop, coz its not normally possible to change a sound card on a laptop anyway I'd give you a shot of it if I was near you.

From what I've found out so far, there is a clear issue someplace in Windows 7/Vista, because MS removed some settings in DirectX re sound post XP. The Alchemy software is supposed to help the Creative chip drivers get round that as far as I can tell and it was only after training it to find FSX that the problem went away. Realtek have a beta driver that's supposed to help as well, but it appears to depend on exactly what chip you have as to whether you get any mileage with it. Mines didnt respond at all, hence I tried Plan B, buy a new card thingie.

Graphics wise, no specific problem, I just need to find the best settings for what I have to play with now. Since I posted the first message here, I upgraded the ATI card to a better one, ATI Radion HD 5450 card with 1Gb RAM. I can remember someone here posting a suggested set of starting settings re FSX. I'm now trawling through the forums trying to find it again..

Oh, re the ale, I settled for a pint of Hooky Gold from the Hook Norton brewery, "very nice indeed" as the late Great Fred Dibnah used to say.

[speedbird591]

Just an update on this, Gordon. Since you narrowed the problem down to the on-board Realtek, I thought I'd have a look on the Acer site to see if there were any newer drivers for it. It's always better to update laptop drivers from the manufacturer's site as the devices are often modified. Well, there was a newer one and it did improve the sound quality but didn't cure it. While I was in the mood I deleted the Realtek drivers entirely and allowed Windows to load the generic W7 driver to see what happened and amazingly that was better again!

As I was on a winning streak, I found the beta of the Realtek 3D SoundBack that you mentioned (that lets legacy games run older sound under Vista and W7), installed that and re-installed the newer Realtek driver. I've only had a brief run in the VC10 so far but I think it might have cured the problem. I'll have a longer test tomorrow and let you know.

**EDIT** (Monday)

No. Not cured, but improved.

The underlying problem, as Gordon has discovered, is that Windows Vista, and subsequently W7, changed the way that the OS handles 3D sound. I don't know any of the technical terms, I'm afraid. The outcome is that the OS/sound card may not reproduce the 3D sound correctly for games written for older OSs. As FSX was written for Win XP some of the 3D sounds are not handled correctly on later OSs (Vista and W7). This should also be the case for FS9 and many other popular games.

Creative have created their 'Alchemy' software which patches the problem for their sound cards and Realtek have similarly produced 3D SoundBack, so far only in Beta - but with limited success.

So it's a global problem and the best solution is to do what Gordon has done and use a Creative soundcard with Alchemy software. Something to bear in mind if you're upgrading from XP to a later OS. Alternatively stick with Win XP until 'Flight' is released

Ian