5 replies to this topic

[Malachi Krieg]

So... I am still getting the same old 2013 sound pops and crackles as noted in the title. It seems to be most dominant when mechs are running hot, be it mine or someone's next to me, and with AC shots. An easy place to see it right away is at the Academy grounds. Stand anywhere near the lava environment and pop, pop, crackle, crackle. I notice that there's even some fuzz to the interface "beeps" when mousing over slots or items.

Has ANYONE found a working solution to this? It's literally been plaguing me since 2013... and that'd be at least 4 laptops and 3 desktop builds all in that time having the same issue with various hardware configs.

[Tarl Cabot]

Can you record it? Go into the Testing Grounds on the maps where you are having the sound issues?

Are you using any personalized sound setup/window setup?

[Malachi Krieg]

Tarl Cabot, on 18 October 2017 - 02:36 PM, said:

Can you record it? Go into the Testing Grounds on the maps where you are having the sound issues?

Are you using any personalized sound setup/window setup?

Once the servers are back up and I am patched I will head to the Academy and record it. It's the same popping sound all over in-game that I get near the lava (I am assuming it's the hissing sound since it also comes up with overheating mechs). The only Windows sound change I make is "No Sounds" for the basic Windows sounds. No other changes than that.

EDIT: You can hear it here. Notice how there's no audio issue when moving or firing, just when I am near anything hot.

EDIT 2: Here's a quick clip mid-combat (Sorry for borrowing your cockpit Skytallica. It was easier than trying to capture while I was tooling around at 100kph)

Edited by Malachi Krieg, 18 October 2017 - 05:05 PM.

[Tarl Cabot]

I had to turn my volume up very high to hear the static like sound near the lava, both through my stereo system and the separate 5.1 Logitech speaker system. Basically what I heard from my in-game venture is not nearly as loud or obvious as what is recorded on those youtube vids.

Even though I had to turn mine up (forgot to turn it down when I went to play something else.. yikes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) to hear it, I will bet that it is likely something to do with the sound effect of the environment interaction. I would suggest sending in a ticket/email to PGI atm. It is possible someone may come up with a better answer or a workaround to remove that sound byte.

[NARC BAIT]

I'm pretty sure someone who isn't an audio expert abused the sound file, taking it right up to the point of distortion, and when it plays too often, constructive interference pushes it past the edge .... the environmental side of the sound system really doesn't like to be 'alternately configured' ... pgi intended it to be one way, and that's pretty much what they force on you, even if a blind squirrel was the person working on it ...

so, that being said, theres two things you 'might' want to try, they wont outrightly 'fix' the issue but may improve your experience, or may not, depending on your pc / soundcard / speaker setup / hearing ...

firstly, if your game 'overall' game settings are set to anything other lower than high, the game will set the maximum number of hardware channels in use to be 64 .... and those 64 sounds could be 'filled' by 4 or 5 mechs in combat ... especially if two have 6-8 mgs and they shoot at each other .... anyway, the key for that is

s_MaxChannels = 128

in theory, depending on hardware blah, you might be able to do 256, but most wont ...

next key is

s_MaxActiveSounds = 128

normally this is set at 100 ... and functions as a limiter of sorts, probably mostly based on assumptions on the average sound hardware in the market in 2013 ....

and then the last key, the one that might actualy help, but I haven't really tested it yet, and wont have time for a few more hours ....

s_HDR = 0

normally its set to 1, which is enabled, I actually hadn't thought about this being a factor in that, until reading over your comment, HDR stands for 'high dynamic range', for video stuff, it tends to accentuate the difference between bright and darkness .... but for sound, well, most audiophiles will disable it if your hooking up a bluray to a giant stereo, because it messes with stuff your trying to balance, if you can hear all ranges of sound, you generally wouldn't want most things pushed to one end of the EQ or the other ....

ill try to get back to this a bit later today ...

[Malachi Krieg]

Gave all the options a shot. I still get the heat crackle/pop sound, but not so much on everything else in combat. It SOUNDED like a channel issue to me, but for the life of me I couldn't initially find where to set number of channels. I'll still keep an eye on this and see if it's also a memory leak issue as it does seem to come about more 5-6 matches into a play session sometimes.