I can haz sound card fix pl0x

[HomestarR]

I have a "Sound Blaster Live 24 bit" card plugged in. When I play some games, especially ones with a lot of different sounds, I will sometimes lose half of my sound after awhile. Sometimes I lose all sound except for maybe two (Example, in GTA 3 my guns will stop making noise, no ambient noise or car tire squealing sounds, but the radio stations will play and some voices will play). This isn't the only game it happens in. Most of the time the sound won't return all the way. (Example, after a cutscene I will have all my sound back except for the guns firing sound.) Is there a device setting I can change that will fix this? I remember back in the day I could fix some problems with sliding the hardware acceleration setting down. (With older computers and different sound cards) No, I haven't tried that yet with this one. My drivers are updated. Is there third party sound drivers for this card that cater to gaming that would work? I know I can't be the only one here with this particular card.

 

[Sabre]

I don't have my computer available to direct you accurately, but if you open the advanced volume control, hit the first pulldown option and go to the same place with hardware acceleration...If you are where I think you are, you should see a checkbox that says "Digital Output Only."

Try reversing the option, and see what happens. It might be that your card is playing the digital files (.mp3s) but not the analogs (.wavs). Good luck, I know I h8 sound cards crapping out.
(Running an Audigy SE 7.1, btw)

 

[Blasto121]

I don't have your issue, so my guess is you have the game set to play to many sounds at once. Short of uninstalling all your sound drivers and reinstalling them I can't think of much you can do with stuff like that. Stuff like that come down to hardware limitations

Digital output has no affect with what he is doing, Fact digital output is used for digital speakers.

 

[HomestarR]

I had this problem when I used to play WoW, and it did fix when I set the amount of sound channels lower. unfortunately in a lot of games this isn't an available action. Is there a third party program that will force that limitation? (Or something similar to that)

 

[Blasto121]

as far as I know you can't do things like that, again try reinstall of all your sound drivers. Clean out all the drivers and start fresh.

Beyond that inside the game itself cut down on the number of things that make noise, if you have a choice disable EAX or any other extra sound goodies. Turn off anything that might be trying to use the sound card, like steam turn that off. Any form of audio recording software, or voice chat programs can cause this kind of thing.

Again your limited by the hardware itself, and short of disabling sound you will have these issues. Though you did try the slider right? the slider for acceleration?

I guess you can also try leveling out your sound bar levels, in your volume control level out all of sliders to half way. Maybe just maybe it will work.

 

[Thothie]

I'd suggest running Driver Cleaner Pro and cleaning out your drivers (preferably in safe mode) - then hit the creativelabs website to get the latest drivers (if you are currently running the latest, I'd try to find your OEM drivers and use them instead).

The only third party creativelab sound drivers I'm aware of are optimized for recording rather than games, and focus more on bypassing certain limitations and flaws in sampling rates, digital input, and such.

 

[HomestarR]

I don't have time now, but I will try the acceleration slider when I can. If that fails I will try to start fresh with my drivers again. It is about time for an overhaul of all my parts anyways, as my parts range from 4 years (GPU) old to about 6 years old (everything else)

Write to congress and tell them to give me a pay raise.

 

[HomestarR]

I moved the hardware acceleration slider down. It worked. No more sound loss.