Rick Posted June 14, 2000 Share Posted June 14, 2000 Say folks, I have a little problem with the sound in CM and I think it's because of my dumb sound card, but I want a second opinion on this. When playing CM sometimes a sound will get chopped up and repeat a segment of the sound several times, while this is happening the game freezes. I think this is because the company that made my card got bought out and the driver hasn't been updated since 9/98 and as such is not fully DirectX compatible. Does everybody agree with this assesment? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikester Posted June 14, 2000 Share Posted June 14, 2000 I'd be interested in this as well. I don't have any problems w/ the sound when I play the game. But before I start the game, the intro music is all choppy and sounds like a record skipping and repeating. I have a Sound Blaster Live Value sound card in the Dell system I just got last Nov. Havn't updated any of the drivers for it yet. So I should probably do that first. Also, I'm still running DX6 since it's been working w/ the game graphically and didn't want to mess w/ DX7 since sometimes updating that kind of stuff causes more problems than helping matters. But, does DirectX also control the sound? If so, maybe I should update? Thanks, Mikester Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted June 14, 2000 Share Posted June 14, 2000 Mikester - DirectX DOES control the sound (if the game is using DirectX as its API - which CM is doing). The lastest major rev. of the Live drivers is Liveware 3.0. I would highly suggest upgrading to this (you may have it already, but quite likely you may have rev. 2.0 or 2.1). I personally had problems with sound in CM Beta Demo until I upgraded to v. 3.0. I don't know if there's any compatibility problems w/ DirectX 7 NOT being present on the system, but I believe it should work with your current version. Rick - it appears that your sound driver is having a problem with some of the .wav files that CM is playing (yeah, that's obvious at this point). It may very well be the drivers. Since your sound card company has been bought out you may need to do some digging around to find anything newer (if it exists). DirectX will usually identify the chipset on your soundcard (it won't recognize/update a lot of soundcards however) and ask if you want to update it (if it fits the numbering/version scheme of DirectX). If you have a PCI soundcard then you will most likely be limited to drivers supplied by the manufacturer since there is a bit of software emulation going on w/ PCI soundcards. If you can provide more info on your card then we may be able to point you to some possibilities for updating your drivers. If the card is an Ensoniq then Creative has purchased them and there may be a compatible driver available from them (though it is usually an UPGRADE driver and not a full install). You may want to tinker around with the settings for sound to see if it helps or not. Some people have mentioned that they had problems with the CM Beta Demo and changed a control panel setting to correct the problem. In Windows 98 go to Control Panel > Multimedia control panel > Audio tab > Advanced Properties button > Performance tab and adjust the Hardware Acceleration slider to the left (towards "none"). You may want to start all the way to the left and reboot. Start up CM and see if this helps or not. Some other settings related to sound can also be changed from your DirectX DXDIAG or SETUP apps (which can be found in C:/PROGRAM FILES/DIRECTX/ and either the SETUP directory or if may just be SETUP.EXE (depends on the version of DirectX you're running). [This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 06-14-2000).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Posted June 14, 2000 Author Share Posted June 14, 2000 I'm running an Ensoniq Audio PCI. Thus far I haven't found a newer driver. Probably need to do a more extensive search. I'm going to mess with some of those settings right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aka kingtiger Posted June 14, 2000 Share Posted June 14, 2000 Mikester, Does the choppy music happen suring the initial load of Windows? If so, you likely have an IRQ conflict with another squirrely PCI device. If your machine is like most machines, you have several devices sharing IRQ's. Although Windows supports this and devices are supposed to support this, choppy sound is often caused by Windows forcing a shared IRQ between the audio card and another device like a NIC or Video Card. In my system, Create live PCI 128 and the TNT2 card share IRQ #10 and I get choppy sound now and again. Just life with Windows I guess. But it's better than life with UNIX or OS400. Richard Kalajian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikester Posted June 14, 2000 Share Posted June 14, 2000 Thanks guys. I'll get the new drivers tonight. Richard, I don't think the "music" played when windows 98 starts is choppy, but I could be wrong. I'll have to check my interupt settings when I get home tonight and see what is set on what. I thought the SB card was on IRQ 5, and all by itself, but I could be wrong. Mikester Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted June 14, 2000 Share Posted June 14, 2000 Rick - here are the latest drivers from Creative: http://www.creative.com/support/files/download.asp?reg=0&OS=Win98∏=sb_ensq&select=Get+Files Be aware though that the number on the chip (ES1371) has to match. There are other versions such as ES1370 and ES1373. This driver doesn't have any wavesets (primarily used for MIDI) and it apparently needs a specific previous version to upgrade from. Here is the Ensoniq site driver: http://www.ensoniq.com/audiopci.html Again you may have to be careful about the chip version (though Ensoniq doesn't list it here). Apparently the Ensoniq AudioPCI is equivalent to the SB PCI 64, but I'm not sure of this. Other large manufacturer websites (Gateway, Dell, etc.) may also offer the drivers (some of them will have the full install versions with wavesets, but at 8 - 16Mb in size for the full download). The problems here though are that you may have to identify the card by the MFG's part no. rather than by the SB designation. These drivers are also not the latest most of the time. Mikester - as Kingtiger said: choppy sound can often be attributed to shared/conflicting IRQ's. Some shorter sounds may play fine, but longer ones may experience choppiness if there is an IRQ problem. Sometimes the startup sound isn't a good judge of a sound problem because of the various files that load up at the same time as the audio may be attempting to play. Play the "Microsoft Sound" in your Sound control panel and see if it plays w/o problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Posted June 14, 2000 Author Share Posted June 14, 2000 Gateway had that driver from way back in 9/98, I recently discovered that that is not the most recent one. Anyhow, my video card is also kind of wimpy for CM. Now I need to decide if I want to upgrade these things or just wait until I can get a new computer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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