Crackling speakers until they completely go out!?

Hi Anthony,

I made a post concerning crackling sounds several days ago, but no one replied. My situation sounds different from yours... but I get the impression that sound problems are not common.

I get crackles and pops with both music and all other sound, both speakers and headphones. Sounds exactly like the old DOS days when something wasn't quite right, if you were around for those days. I have a SB Audigy 2 ZS and Logitech 5.1 speakers; both are 2-3 years old. I've never had this kind of problem with any other game (in recent history). This does not change over the course of the game (it will crackle and pop the same for however long I play), so my problem sounds very different from yours. FWIW I have simply turned off the music and am playing away ... it's tolerable when limited to sound f/x.

WinXP and Athlon 64 X2 Dual 5600+, if it matters.

I looked at the sound files to see if they'd play ok outside the game, but my system doesn't recognize the .OGG format in

NoSpamMan,

I don't have Sins installed on this PC, but if the sound files are in fact .ogg, you can download a free player that supports .ogg, like Winamp, and see if they play ok. I suspect so, however, and there's probably something else going on.

-HM

wierd... Your right it seems that sound problems are not that common. One intresting fact, however, i am also running the logitech 5.1 speakers. The crackling does in fact happen with sounds other then music as well, it is unfortunately not torerable...

I guess we wait and see if someone has a solution, thanks for the responses.

I, too, have a SB Audigy 2 ZS (PCMCIA) and have crackling issues with the audio.

Hi folks,

Sorry to hear that you're having problems with the audio. The fact that a couple of you are using the SB Audigy 2 ZS is pretty suspicious.

The usual list of things to try with crackly audio is:

1) Make sure you have the latest drivers for your sound card
2) Make sure you don't have something strange running in the background (youtube always causes problems for me).
3) Turn bloom off if you have it on. Try turning down your graphics settings.
4) Open your user settings and set SoundUseHardware to TRUE.

Hopefully one of those will give you some relief.

Edit: Problems with the speakers but not headphones pretty much have to be hardware-related... do the speakers have drivers/ie are they usb? If so I'd try getting the latest drivers for the speakers.

Further edit for ikconik:

There are a few ideas here for fixing stuttery problems with X-Fi that you may want to try (Disclaimer: I have no idea if these will work)

http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-13726.html

Wow that did the trick for me, psugar ... I vaguely recalled I had turned Sound Hardware Acceleration totally Off when trying to troubleshoot something for another game. (It didn't involve sound, and turning it Off didn't help ... but I forgot to turn it back on.)

As soon as I turned Hardware to Full, the crackle and pop is totally gone. From both music and f/x. (It happened instantly, but I waited a until tonight's game session to make sure it "stuck".)

Great! Thanks! Wow that was easy.

BTW where do I tell this Forum software to notify me by email if one of my topics gets a reply? I can't seem to find the setting.

note, that sometimes you have to turn down hardware acceleration a notch or two in rare cases also.

I got AC97 stuff on board, it only started a couple of days ago to stutter(the game), finally i realised is related to sound. I fiddled around with the setting SoundUseHardware FALSE/TRUE it doesn't make a difference, also with hardware settings in sounds and audio devices, same story. Anyone know how to fix this or at least stop sound?

EDIT: The sound stuttering also freezes the game.

maybe a stupid question i got audigy too got the same problem how do you
got to user settings and set to soundhardware too true/false
thx

creative drivers are beyond atroicious. They are calling themselves creative LABS for a reason... they make excellent hardware, they just don't make good PRODUCTS, because they can't be bothered to make drivers for that hardware.

i got it yeah it works
bad craig i had these problem weeks ago and you did not mention this
well il let it go this time  

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\

one of the dirs there contains a settings file

Nothing i did made a difference game kept freezing, very peculiar.

Had this problem with the hardware mentioned above. Updated drivers and it is now fixed.

I have the same problem with crackling sound. On the title screen when the planet comes into view my speakers sound like pure static. I went through most of the suggestions by psugar with no success. The only one I couldn't find was #4 Open your user settings and set SoundUseHardware to TRUE.

For the life of me I can't find "user settings" from the main menu.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Installed another set of sound drivers(although as much as 1 month newer but old since 2002 ) and it seems to work fine now(AvanceAC97.zip - 10/4/2002 - 5.10.0.4030 - not digitally signed - looks like default windows drivers cause troubles the most).. can't tell if that was the reason or something else.. been out of it a couple of days.



If you just can't fix it pretend is white noise from space radiation Realism FTW

Hi,

I had this crackling sound, too. It seems that this problem isn't so uncommon after all. But setting SoundUseHardware to TRUE solved the problem for me.

Swansea:

The user.settings file is in the Settings directory where the game is actually installed, it's not in-game.

Vista:
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\

XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\

As for me and my sound settings, I was talking about hardware acceleration for my whole PC. I didn' even look at the game setting for it... but like I said, it was a mistake that I had turned it off for my whole PC, anyway.

To get to it in WinXP (I don't know about Vista):
1) Settings / Control Panel / Sounds
2) Volume tab / Speaker Settings' Advanced button / Performance tab.

There's your hardware acceleration slider. At least it is, for me - it may be that the Creative Labs software messed with Control Panel / Sounds popup, so my route may be different from yours, especially if you have a different sound card.

ikconik, did you ever get your sound fixed?

I'm having a similar problem, and frankly I'm confused.

When I first started using Sins again, I had the crackling instantly. Obviously that's unacceptable, so I went and looked for soloutions. My audio is set to full hardware acceleration in DXDIAG, I changed the user.settings file, and then I went and found and update for my sound drivers.

I'm using an SB Audigo B800,and when I updated my drivers version, the problem fixed itself. I come back today, and Sins works just fine for ten, fifteen minutes, then all of a sudden it starts crackling again! >_<

Restarting Sins didn't fix it. I don't know what's up, but this is driving me spare. I know it's not the .ogg format of the sound, because I can listen to other .ogg files without any trouble. Indeed, I can listen to the music from Sins of a Solar Empire just fine - in WinAmp.

This is getting ridiculous, and makes the game unplayable. Can anyone help? I'm going to try looking for more drivers, since the one I found was from '04, but I just don't know if I can.

If your problem is like mine, a temporary fix is to turn the game music off (volume far left). If it only crackles on the sound f/x, it's tolerable. Still not good - but tolerable.

Adding me to the list of users with an SB Audigy 2 ZS where changing the SoundUseHardware value to TRUE fixed the constant crackling I was hearing.

I recommend adding this to the FAQ, as I bet there are a lot of Audigy 2 users still out there.

I have figured out a (sort-of) workaround, but it's a pure pain in the ass.

Whenever I install the updated sound driver, it works - for awhile. Then it stops working, and when I check dxdiag, it says the driver didn't update. So I reinstall it again, and it works normally - for awhile.

So, it's a pain in the ass to be playing, cruising along, kicking bottom and taking name, and then the sound starts crackling. But at least I can temporarily fix it.

Scratch that, crackling is still there. It seemed to be gone when I tested in single player, but in multiplayer last night it was back. Still looking for a "cure".

Admiral, have you checked that hardware is set on for your *PC*, not just for the game? (See my post above.)

I get the same thing but slightly different.

Sometimes there will be sound corruption after I finish a game or even halfway through and then I'll have to exit then restart the game to stop the speaker from making that crackling sound...

This doesn't happen to me in any other games I own like Company of Heroes CivIV,etc.

I think it's just a sound corruption problem that will eventually be patched I'm sure...

I have Creative SB Audigy 2