XP Sound Problems - Try this out

[RecruitMonty]

Now when I start the game it trys to connect to the internet as well. I am going to pretty much uninstall everything now in terms of sound etc and start again.

[RecruitMonty]

I have narrowed the problem down to two possible culprits in my audio codecs department; the first is this:
Fraunhofer IIS MPEG Layer-3 Codec (Pro)
and the second is this:
AC3 ACM Decompressor

I got shut a lot of the codecs down and the game sounds ran fine but they had to play from start to fininsh before I could move or fire or do anything else again. I then switched one codec after the other back on until I reached these two. the AC3 appears to be totally screwed i.e it has virtually dissapeared altogether so I removed it from the list of codecs for the time being, the Fraunhoffer seems to be the problem but I cannot just switch it off because otherwise the whole game slows down as I have just described earlier in this particular post.


The following message I will post up is what the menu looks like for the Fraunhofer codec.

[RecruitMonty]

warning

These settings affect the quality of encoding.

Make yourself familiar with their meaning before you change them.

Stereo modes

320kbps: Stereo
256kbps: Stereo
224kbps: Stereo
192kbps: Joint Stereo: MS
160kbps: Joint Stereo: MS
128kbps: Joint Stereo: MS
112kbps: Joint Stereo: MS
96kbps: Joint Stereo: MS


These are the settings I have at the moment in the Fraunhofer IIS MPEG Layer-3 Codec.

These are the options for each of the above:

Stereo
Joint Stereo: MS
Joint Stereo: IS
Joint Stereo: MS/IS

[RecruitMonty]

Any and all help with this editing will be appreciated since I think that this is cause of the problem.

[Mobhack]

RecruitMonty said:
I have narrowed the problem down to two possible culprits in my audio codecs department; the first is this:
Fraunhofer IIS MPEG Layer-3 Codec (Pro)
and the second is this:
AC3 ACM Decompressor

I got shut a lot of the codecs down and the game sounds ran fine but they had to play from start to fininsh before I could move or fire or do anything else again. I then switched one codec after the other back on until I reached these two. the AC3 appears to be totally screwed i.e it has virtually dissapeared altogether so I removed it from the list of codecs for the time being, the Fraunhoffer seems to be the problem but I cannot just switch it off because otherwise the whole game slows down as I have just described earlier in this particular post.


The following message I will post up is what the menu looks like for the Fraunhofer codec.

The Fraunehofer is the default one supplied by Microsoft - however inmy XP system it is not the "pro" version, just the plain one I suppose?. There are no options as you list later - just "use this codec" and its priority (10). (this is in device manager nd video and game controllers - audio codecs properties - you may be coming in through another route ?)

PCM converter on my XP system is the Microsoft PCM converter - not an AC3.

My Windows media player is version 9. It insists on trying to connect to the internet when run, so I have it on the "blocked" list in ZoneAlarm (I run the free version of zone alarm as a firewall, the PCS all go through a hardware router, but that only deals with incoming packets - so I use ZA to screen anything trying to "phone home that I do not want to But that is probably your "the game tries to conect to the internet" problem - my bet is it is windows media player trying to update a codec, as the game itself has no internet stuff in it (bar the master control panel which uses your browser to launch the HTML help files, or to connect to external links via an embedded URL ).

Have you tried running any of the sound files outside the game? - go to game data/sounds and double click on any MP3 file - then see if media player tries to "phone home" - and what results it gives (it may want a codec).

If that all fails - Have you tried the suggested method of converting the sounds from MP3 to WAV using say GoldWave and editing the sounds.ini file, as mentioned (I think) somewhere else in this thread?. That method seems to work for low-end sound cards which cannot handle several MP3 streams simultaneously (but as yours did so before the "upgrade" of media player, it was OK with multiple streams then, weird ).

cheers
Andy

NB - the conversion to WAV is in the WAV sub-folder under sounds folder, if you have the CD edition, and will be in the patch for everyone else when we get that out the door. I have zipped up the 2 files that live there - it is a how-to in TXT and a new sounds.ini for the converted WAV files once done.

[DRG]

Here is the write up that was included with the CD version and will be included with the patch as well . The file is named SOUND_PROBLEMS.txt and is found ( in the CD version and patch ) in the \Game Data\Sounds\WAV folder ( which does not exist in the DL version ) If you do convert your sound files to WAV you then need to change your Sounds.ini file to look for .Wav rather than .Mp3. ( I have attached a "wav" verson to this posting

Don

================================================== =================

Some machines with integrated sound cards do not play multiple MP3's well

If you are having sound problems please follow this procedure

Download a sound program like Goldwave that allows you to batch convert sound files

www.goldwave.com

After starting up Goldwave find the Sound folder. If you installed the default location for the game look
in C:\Program Files\Shrapnel Games\The Camo Workshop\WinSPMBT\Game Data\Sounds.

When Goldwave is loaded click on the "File" tab and look for 'Batch Processing'. A new screen will
appear. Click on the 'Add files' button then add all the MP3 files in the Game Data\Sounds folder to Goldwave

Once you have done that you want to choose the "Save as Type" to .WAV and the 'Attributes' to
PCM signed 24 bit stereo on the "Convert" tab after checking off the "convert files to this format" box

Next. click on the Folder tab and check the " Store all files in their original folder" box

Then press the "begin" button and Goldwave will convert all the MP3 sound files and make copies as .WAV

Once this has been done copy the "sounds.ini" found in the WAV folder to the Game Data\Sounds folder and
overwrite the one in there now

This converts your game to run WAV sound files instead of MP3's and we have found the few people who have
reported sound problems have had success using this conversion method

We have not included WAV files with the DL or CD versions simply because the WAV format, with comparable
recording qualities as the MP3's, adds approx 144 megabytes to the files. It's much easier on everyone to convert
if necessary

[DRG]

WBWilder said:
I don't know what the problem is exactly but my sounds are erratic. I fire an 84mm RR and sometimes it sounds like a crash, and the next time like a soft fart.

Strange...WB

Well I finally got down to the "soft fart" notation on my to-do list and after scratching my head awhile I remembered this post. I loaded up a game with 84 mm RR teams and sent them hunting and all the sounds seemed fine to me. Are you still hearing this on your machine?

Don

[Fabfire]

Hi,

There is a WinRAR compressed file with all the WAV files and the Sounds.ini file included, posted at the Armorsite's WinSPMBT page, so it's only a matter of enduring the download (43 MB) and "unrar" it to your C:\Program Files\Shrapnel Games\The Camo Workshop\WinSPMBT\Game Data\Sounds folder, and you're in business...

I posted this big file so that those who are suffering from the sound problem with the MP3 files can find an easy solution to their problem. But I ask that if you are part of the majority that doesn't have this problem, *PLEASE* don't download it, and let those who really need it to get it, because I can't garantee it will remain there for any longer if I run into bandwidth usage problems. Many downloads of a 43 MB file make up for a lot of bandwidth usage...

I hope this helps anyone who is suffering from this problem, which is caused, so it seems, by on board sound cards which doesn't deal well with playing multiple MP3 files at the same time.

Fab

[DRG]

The reason I provided the simple instructions to convert the existing MP3 files with Goldwave is that Goldwave is only a 1.76MB DL and it then takes about three minutes to convert all the existing MP3's to WAV's unless the person is totally inept. A 1.76MB DL then three minutes of easy work seemed a much simpler solution than posting huge files for people to download which really chews into your bandwidth allowance.

Don

[Mobhack]

Also - the goldwave route would be much better for someone on dial-up, 1.8 MB dial up is a lot less painful than 43Mb, especially if the dial-up user is paying by the minute.

Cheers
Andy