[Error] Sound Card Not being used/Terrible Performance

[herrhav0k]

This audio problem is very obviously a cause of lots of the stuttering during heavy gameplay. I've also noticed that in periods with lots of sounds, there is massive stuttering.

Trying to fire an MG34 with the recon plane/arty going is like a slideshow. TWI needs to look into this before they release this game.

 

[K@n@y]

Didn't had enough time to test for sound locations problem, but since last patch the game seems to use correctly the 128 channels for cards supporting it, before even with setting the max channels to 128 only 64 were used at maximum , despites 128 sticking in Roengine.ini file never more than 64 used, today i saw many times the counter hit 128 sound sources, rarely saw that in UE3 games, amazing guys

Thx a lot Dev's, I played just a bit for now but there is a real difference between before and now, passing from 64 to 128 make the game more way intense sound side, much more sounds in the battlefield, i really love it.

Now need to see if the localisation of sounds is correct and if artillery makes the FPS drop too, for the few i tested the performances remained correct with 50 players and 2 tanks on the server i try, no arty but no fps drops when many people shoot around me or many sounds around.

Will report later for the rest. Keep up the good work guys

 

[Zrix]

Where is that screenshots from? Some external app?

 

[K@n@y]

Open console ( f3) and type :
Stat Audio
Same thing to remove it

Edit : for now i see less problems with FPS dropping when arty strike, but in some maps like Pavlov's it still sutter a bit, way less than before but the screen freeze for a very short time sometimes before hearing the explosions sound, not each explosions like before, before it was freezing many times almsot before each explosions sound during all arty strike, server wasn't full and not many audio sources rendering at this time ( 50 more or less ).

Sparkanova with 64 players arty was not a problem at all, game remained smooth and no fps drop at all.

Still not tested the location of sounds...

 

[u-s-e-r]

Ok, still stuck to 32 and now the ALAudio section in the ini is 32 as well

And its still using XAudio2.

 

[u-s-e-r]

Alright, managed to get it stick to 128 after fiddling a little bit, didnt want to work in the beginning.

But still no love for OpenAL/hardware acceleration/3d audio

 

[u-s-e-r]

Had a more or less funny accident today:

I was in a room and heard a german from the other side of a wall and threw a grenade in there to kill him and, boom, team kill. The german was upstairs in another floor

I want 3D audio

 

[SunKing]

Is this the same issue in this scenario.

You get the jump on a guy, try to fire and your client stutters for a split second and you die when you clearly had the 1st shot?

 

[Tarkin]

Is this the same issue in this scenario.

You get the jump on a guy, try to fire and your client stutters for a split second and you die when you clearly had the 1st shot?

I find myself, very often with my ironsights on an enemys head, click to fire, and find out I am dead, did not get the kill, did not see my ironsights move AWAY from my target, and my gun DID fire.

it's the best.

 

[u-s-e-r]

Is this the same issue in this scenario.

You get the jump on a guy, try to fire and your client stutters for a split second and you die when you clearly had the 1st shot?

If youre referring to my previous post, no. The problem in my previous post was that the game has only 2D audio present currently, i.e. there is no Y axis, only Z and X which results in that I couldnt hear whether the sound comes from next to me or the floor above me.

 

[melipone]

This might be a placebo effect, but I have changed SoundQuality=0 (default) to SoundQuality=5 in ROengine.ini and I think that has made the game use 5 sound sources rather than the default 2 (kinda guessing tho). I use xfi with cmss3d on (xfi set to headphones, windows set to 5.1) and think it has better sound now.

Anyone fancy experimenting with it?

 

[Ftmch]

I have the same problem with audio, while playing just now it crashed (stuttered for a while then went silent) and the performance increased a lot. I have a Creative X-Fi Fatality Pro-card aswell.

 

[Filo90]

camon TWI put 3d audio in

 

[Duiveltje]

not sure if this will work. But you guys are filling in an audio device that might carry a whole different name.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1291607

I simply removed the part behind device name (generic software) and left it blank.
Now I am not sure if it is already active in the ini or disabled (since it states as followed)

//DeviceName=

Do the // indicate that the device name has been disabled? Did a quick test and it felt smoother bur could just be the famous placebo.

Extra Edot:

No effects can be measured using the above

EDIT:

"In fact setting Hardware OpenAL to off changes the DeviceName setting to = Generic.Software, which indicates this setting is not the same. It appears to have no impact on audio quality or performance if set to False, so is best left at its default.'

Indicates to me that if OpenAl=off, then devicename= generic.software

Source: http://www.tweakguides.com/UT3_7.html

Any comments on this?

 

[K@n@y]

Hello,

Unless you changed AudioDeviceClass=XAudio2.XAudio2Device to AudioDeviceClass=ALAudio.ALAudioDevice , setting or removing a device in the [ALAudio.ALAudioDevice] section will have no effect , and yes the // needs to be removed to take this settings in consideration, that's how it works usually ( i might be wrong here so don't hesitate to correct me )

You can even set the game like this and still keep the XAudio sound in game as those seems used for voip or not used as the OpenAL, the game Binaries folder don't even include OpeanAl dll's as it should be for any UE3 based game having OpenAl support :

[ALAudio.ALAudioDevice]
[B]MaxChannels=0[/B]
CommonAudioPoolSize=0
MinCompressedDurationGame=5
MinCompressedDurationEditor=4
LowPassFilterResonance=0.9
[B]DeviceName=
[/B]
[Engine.AudioDevice]
SoundFXVolume=0.500000
[B]VoiceChatTransmitVolume=0.000000
VoiceChatReceiveVolume=0.000000[/B]
SoundQuality=0
[B]MaxChannels=0[/B]

if you have this part correctly set the previous doesn't seems to interact with the game ( or maybe for VOIP but i disabled it ) :

[XAudio2.XAudio2Device]
MaxChannels=128
CommonAudioPoolSize=0
MinCompressedDurationGame=5.000000
MinCompressedDurationEditor=4.000000
LowPassFilterResonance=0.900000
ChirpInSoundNodeWaveName=
ChirpOutSoundNodeWaveName=

This is what you get with "AudioDeviceClass=ALAudio.ALAudioDevice" and "DeviceName=" from logs :

[0010.92] Warning: Warning, Failed to load 'Class ALAudio.ALAudioDevice': Failed to find object 'Class ALAudio.ALAudioDevice'
[0010.92] Error: Error, LoadConfig (WinDrv.Default__WindowsClient): import failed for AudioDeviceClass in: ALAudio.ALAudioDevice

Maybe i miss something or i am wrong but try to check on your log if at the end you see this line, if so well :
Exit: XAudio2 Device shut down.

 

[TAdams]

Bookmarked and interesting thread.

 

[DEATHxxHIPPIE]

I get crashes when setting it to alaudio, but it sounds a lot better.