TGEA 1.7.0 Beta 2 Bug - Sound popping in 3rd person
by David Wyand · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 03/31/2008 (9:51 pm) · 12 replies
Greetings!
While playing the T3D Demo or Stronghold in 3rd person, I'm getting a strong popping sound with nearly each footstep. I can hear the footstep sounds just fine, as well as the other game sounds.
It sounds like a sharp, full volume pop. It happens too fast to determine if it is occurring at the beginning or end of the footsteps. And it only happens in 3rd person regardless of the DTS player model. Of course I've never had a sound problem before, Torque or otherwise.
This is on my Dell Inspiron 9300. DxDiag
Thanks.
- LightWave Dave
While playing the T3D Demo or Stronghold in 3rd person, I'm getting a strong popping sound with nearly each footstep. I can hear the footstep sounds just fine, as well as the other game sounds.
It sounds like a sharp, full volume pop. It happens too fast to determine if it is occurring at the beginning or end of the footsteps. And it only happens in 3rd person regardless of the DTS player model. Of course I've never had a sound problem before, Torque or otherwise.
This is on my Dell Inspiron 9300. DxDiag
Thanks.
- LightWave Dave
About the author
A long time Associate of the GarageGames' community and author of the Torque 3D Game Development Cookbook. Buy it today from Packt Publishing!
#2
My sound card is the Sigmatel onboard audio and I'm running Vista. I am also listening through headphones. Does it only do this through the built in speakers? Is it possibly trying to push too much bass signal or something?
I'm not sure what would cause that yet :/
04/01/2008 (11:59 am)
Hey David. So far, I haven't been able to reproduce this effect on my laptop (Dell XPS 1530)My sound card is the Sigmatel onboard audio and I'm running Vista. I am also listening through headphones. Does it only do this through the built in speakers? Is it possibly trying to push too much bass signal or something?
I'm not sure what would cause that yet :/
#3
I am running WindowsXP Pro, AMD Athlon 64-bit 3000+, 1GB RAM, GeForce 6600 256MB VM, Avance AC97 Audio(onboard). I'm figuring my soundcard is just crappy.. the current drivers I am using date back to 2002, yet MSI Update says I have newest version of drivers. Motherboard is a couple years old, but not 6. I'll look into manually downloading some AC97 audio drivers and see if I can't find a newer version. I'll update with my results.
p.s. Did not have this issue with any version of Torque before TGEA 1.7 & SFX. Although I did have some issues with OpenAL wanting to play the wrong audio file.
04/01/2008 (12:32 pm)
I have this exact same problem, except mine is on a desktop and not a laptop(really shouldn't make a difference, but I could be wrong).I am running WindowsXP Pro, AMD Athlon 64-bit 3000+, 1GB RAM, GeForce 6600 256MB VM, Avance AC97 Audio(onboard). I'm figuring my soundcard is just crappy.. the current drivers I am using date back to 2002, yet MSI Update says I have newest version of drivers. Motherboard is a couple years old, but not 6. I'll look into manually downloading some AC97 audio drivers and see if I can't find a newer version. I'll update with my results.
p.s. Did not have this issue with any version of Torque before TGEA 1.7 & SFX. Although I did have some issues with OpenAL wanting to play the wrong audio file.
#4
Edit: Just realized I have to get used to the new structure of the SFX system. Will take a look at this later if it's not resolved. I can reproduce it on my system, SBFX card nonlaptop.
04/01/2008 (12:39 pm)
We had this same problem with our FMOD wrapper, where we would start playing a sound before the new update has happened, and if the change in position from the last update is too large and you're not updating as often as you should - you'll get a pop. Sounds like it's updating the listener either twice or too late/at a too low rate.Edit: Just realized I have to get used to the new structure of the SFX system. Will take a look at this later if it's not resolved. I can reproduce it on my system, SBFX card nonlaptop.
#5
The sure fire solution is do not use a hardware sound device as this is the primary culprit (i've never heard a click or pop in software mode). I'm still of the mind that this is a bug in SFX... i'll look at the suggestion about listener updates (although i have checked this before).
Also make sure all your sounds are of the same format and ideally the same format as the primary sound buffer. When the system has to resample your sound it costs performance and can introduce artifacts.
And honestly hardware sound devices in suck for various reasons... read the FMod docs for a good primer. With the push for multicore lately i think that you'll see 3D sound acceleration via hardware die and everyone move to pure software synthesis.
04/01/2008 (12:54 pm)
I struggled with this bug in SFX before.The sure fire solution is do not use a hardware sound device as this is the primary culprit (i've never heard a click or pop in software mode). I'm still of the mind that this is a bug in SFX... i'll look at the suggestion about listener updates (although i have checked this before).
Also make sure all your sounds are of the same format and ideally the same format as the primary sound buffer. When the system has to resample your sound it costs performance and can introduce artifacts.
And honestly hardware sound devices in suck for various reasons... read the FMod docs for a good primer. With the push for multicore lately i think that you'll see 3D sound acceleration via hardware die and everyone move to pure software synthesis.
#6
I'm running WinXP Media Center Edition SP2 on my laptop. I'm also going through the internal SigmaTel C-Major audio hardware. I've just tried this through my headphones and am getting the same popping. Although this time it's worse as the popping is going directly into my brain! :o)
I've also found another sound issue -- don't know if it is related or not:
1. Launch the Stronghold demo
2. Click on the Start Mission button and select the Stronghold mission
3. Click on the Launch Mission button
4. Just before I hear the background 'wind' audio, I hear one or more (usually two in succession) GUI control beeps. Of course I've not moved my mouse.
Interestingly if I then quit the mission and then go straight back in, I don't hear the GUI beeps. It only happens the first time I launch the demo. Perhaps the wind sound buffer is being played before the wind sample is loaded and the last thing in memory there were the beeps?
My thought here was that perhaps the footstep sound was being played from a buffer that wasn't fully populated, and thus the pops. Just like the wind sound above. I haven't looked into the SFX code yet to see what its doing -- I was saving that for my own FMOD integration.
@Others:
Thanks. At least I know I'm not alone. :o)
- LightWave Dave
04/01/2008 (12:55 pm)
@Ken:I'm running WinXP Media Center Edition SP2 on my laptop. I'm also going through the internal SigmaTel C-Major audio hardware. I've just tried this through my headphones and am getting the same popping. Although this time it's worse as the popping is going directly into my brain! :o)
I've also found another sound issue -- don't know if it is related or not:
1. Launch the Stronghold demo
2. Click on the Start Mission button and select the Stronghold mission
3. Click on the Launch Mission button
4. Just before I hear the background 'wind' audio, I hear one or more (usually two in succession) GUI control beeps. Of course I've not moved my mouse.
Interestingly if I then quit the mission and then go straight back in, I don't hear the GUI beeps. It only happens the first time I launch the demo. Perhaps the wind sound buffer is being played before the wind sample is loaded and the last thing in memory there were the beeps?
My thought here was that perhaps the footstep sound was being played from a buffer that wasn't fully populated, and thus the pops. Just like the wind sound above. I haven't looked into the SFX code yet to see what its doing -- I was saving that for my own FMOD integration.
@Others:
Thanks. At least I know I'm not alone. :o)
- LightWave Dave
#7
FMod is causing me to refactor how buffers work in SFX (this is a good thing). I've split the concept into an SFXBuffer and an SFXVoice. The buffer being the data and the voice being the playback. This makes SFX work better with systems like FMod which can share the same sound buffer with multiple playing sounds.
As part of this change i've added support for provider specific sound formats and streaming.
I've got the first pass at Fmod working and i'm porting the other providers over now.
04/01/2008 (1:01 pm)
A note on FMod integration.FMod is causing me to refactor how buffers work in SFX (this is a good thing). I've split the concept into an SFXBuffer and an SFXVoice. The buffer being the data and the voice being the playback. This makes SFX work better with systems like FMod which can share the same sound buffer with multiple playing sounds.
As part of this change i've added support for provider specific sound formats and streaming.
I've got the first pass at Fmod working and i'm porting the other providers over now.
#8
I was reading recently that Microsoft switched to all software audio with Windows Vista. That is probably why I haven't ever heard this "popping".
If we can't get the bug resolved for the hardware audio, I would be inclined to switch to a purely software system. Any thoughts?
04/01/2008 (1:09 pm)
As soon as Tom has his FMOD implementation (an extension of the work the GG Studios team did) ready to go, we will roll it into TGEA 1.7. We have permission from the FMOD guys to include the headers/libs/integration code so you *should* just have to drop the fmodex.dll into your game folder once you have the proper license for it (I hear they have good personal and indie pricing).I was reading recently that Microsoft switched to all software audio with Windows Vista. That is probably why I haven't ever heard this "popping".
If we can't get the bug resolved for the hardware audio, I would be inclined to switch to a purely software system. Any thoughts?
#9
Should it be enough to have the Use Hardware option under the Audio tab unchecked? I've tried it either way and unfortunately am still hearing the popping.
I've also played with the Hardware Acceleration performance slider for my audio hardware. On any setting except 'emulation' I still hear the popping. Under its 'emulation' mode the wind sound for the Stronghold mission plays incorrectly -- sounds like it is looping really fast. This could be a driver issue though so I'll check around for that.
@Matt and Tom:
Cool news. Having FMOD integration built in will save me a whole bunch of time getting the basics done, and let me move onto the cool stuff. :o)
- LightWave Dave
04/01/2008 (1:20 pm)
@Tom:Should it be enough to have the Use Hardware option under the Audio tab unchecked? I've tried it either way and unfortunately am still hearing the popping.
I've also played with the Hardware Acceleration performance slider for my audio hardware. On any setting except 'emulation' I still hear the popping. Under its 'emulation' mode the wind sound for the Stronghold mission plays incorrectly -- sounds like it is looping really fast. This could be a driver issue though so I'll check around for that.
@Matt and Tom:
Cool news. Having FMOD integration built in will save me a whole bunch of time getting the basics done, and let me move onto the cool stuff. :o)
- LightWave Dave
#10
I haven't found this bug before as I'm usually working with sounds disabled - music playing all the time and "sounds" in our project are covered by another team member.
And I'm with Matt here on the "software"-side over "hardware". As CPUs are powerful enough now to handle almost everything (in case you are not going to build application for sound editing or multi-track sound mixing software with lots of real-time effect) and usually the games are GPU-bounded, but a good balance is a key as always.
04/01/2008 (1:28 pm)
My motherboard (MSI P35 Neo) have onboard chip Realtek ALC888 and I experience this "bug" too. Latest drivers (manually downloaded from realtek website).I haven't found this bug before as I'm usually working with sounds disabled - music playing all the time and "sounds" in our project are covered by another team member.
And I'm with Matt here on the "software"-side over "hardware". As CPUs are powerful enough now to handle almost everything (in case you are not going to build application for sound editing or multi-track sound mixing software with lots of real-time effect) and usually the games are GPU-bounded, but a good balance is a key as always.
#11
@Matt - The FMod guys make a strong case for using software audio processing, but they have a extremely nice software audio engine they're trying to sell. ;)
The biggest issue with hardware audio is consistency. No two cards have the same sound when it comes to 3D... especially if you use any of the effects. This is something GPUs have done well... the output of most cards are almost indistinguishable. Software sounds the same on all cards and platforms and its much less hassle than dealing with sound drivers. This is my main argument for software.
Still SFX shouldn't need to make that concession as there is nothing in the API that makes it hardware specific. My point was that trying to use PC sound hardware in a game should be avoided.
04/01/2008 (2:17 pm)
@David - That check should be all you need... it was working correctly last i checked. Still look at the console spew it should say what device it just allocated.@Matt - The FMod guys make a strong case for using software audio processing, but they have a extremely nice software audio engine they're trying to sell. ;)
The biggest issue with hardware audio is consistency. No two cards have the same sound when it comes to 3D... especially if you use any of the effects. This is something GPUs have done well... the output of most cards are almost indistinguishable. Software sounds the same on all cards and platforms and its much less hassle than dealing with sound drivers. This is my main argument for software.
Still SFX shouldn't need to make that concession as there is nothing in the API that makes it hardware specific. My point was that trying to use PC sound hardware in a game should be avoided.
#12
I thought I should close this bug off by saying all appears to be well with the 1.7 Release version. I've not heard any popping so far. As I didn't change a thing at my end (didn't get to checking out new drivers) I'm going to assume it was Tom's work that fixed it. Go Tom go! :o)
- LightWave Dave
04/24/2008 (8:14 pm)
Greetings!I thought I should close this bug off by saying all appears to be well with the 1.7 Release version. I've not heard any popping so far. As I didn't change a thing at my end (didn't get to checking out new drivers) I'm going to assume it was Tom's work that fixed it. Go Tom go! :o)
- LightWave Dave
Associate David Wyand
Gnometech Inc.
I can sometimes cause the popping to happen while firing the rocket launcher in 3rd person and rotating the player during the hit explosion. So it doesn't appear to be limited to footsteps, but may have something to do with the camera/listener being moved.