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Feb 3, 2004, 4:00pm

Recently I thought my sound card was dying. The music I play would slow and
speed up and have a warbling sound. The bot (which howls like a wolf) was
also warbling badly. I checked my whole system, but could not find the
problem.
Last night a friend asked me to check a web page with music. I noticed that
when I was clicked onto the browser of the music it played fine, but as soon
as I clicked onto the aw browser to tell him it was good, the sound messed
up. This surprised me as is exterior browser I use. I tried a few times and
same reaction. Then I noticed that when I was clicked onto the bot screen,
she howled properly until I clicked onto aw to type.
Thinking back I remembered putting the feature in options T+L for faster
loading. Removing that, all sounds became normal. The music played fine even
clicked onto aw, and the bot finally howls like a worf and not warbling like
a drunken bird.
No idea if anyone else has experienced this, and not knowing what it is also
thinks their sound card is dying (because that is really what it sounds like
LOL) but I thought I would pass this on and maybe save someone some grief
and a few bucks
sweets

Feb 3, 2004, 4:49pm

Qa'pla!

[View Quote]

Feb 4, 2004, 6:14pm

I'm not sure I'm following this thread but here are my thought about sound
regarding AW and outside AW.
First off I have a dual CPU motherboard. I have (2) Pentium III 650Mhz
cpu's on my motherboard which is a Supermicro P6DGU. Multiple CPU's are
more performance for application that are written to support SMP
(Symmetrical Multiprocessing) with Windows 2000 and Windows XP OS's what
support SMP. Windows ME and 98 do not support SMP and thus multiple CPU's.
But when it comes to sound the problem is that Sound card manufacturers like
Creative Labs and most all the rest have not and are not writing sound card
drivers that support SMP motherboards and so sound cards tend to have
problems on Windows 2000 and XP systems that have multiple CPU's.
On top of that sound support in AW and gotten terrible since all versions
after AW 3.0, at least for me. Sound in AW used to work fine in AW 2.2 and
3.0 And I think even in 3.1. But from 3.2 and above sound as been terrible
and the wav and mp3 and even Midi file break up. Especially if you are
doing something outside of AW. And I believe it stems from them switching
to use the Direct 3D Sound interface. I'm not saying the problem is Direct
3D sound because the DXDiag sound test all pass on my system. But just
like bugs in the rest of AW browser I don't think they have a handle on
the sound programming either.
Also, Microsoft's Windows Media Player is really lousy on Windows 2000 and
XP systems and I have the same problems with sounds breaking up because they
are apparently not devoting enough CPU thread overhead to the processes.
That's why I use Real Player One because it plays mp3's much more reliably
on my system. I don't like Real's policies about cookies and their
background tracking programs but I have a firewall running and I have
blocked access to their spyware files so they can't access the internet and
send any unwanted information yet the Real Player still functions and all I
get is one cookie which I can delete with AdSubtract Pro periodically. And
I believe Windows Media Player puts a cookie in also.
So as far as AW sounds I just leave them turned off. But I'm 52 now and
don't care much for the sounds anyway. Guess I'm getting old.
BTW updating to the newest sound card drivers does not help. I've tried that
so many times (and actually made things worse) that I've totally given up on
Creative Labs developing reliable drivers for Win 2k and XP. In fact I now
count Creative Labs like ATI and Matrox. They are 3 companies whose
products I won't buy any more for any systems that are going to run AW.

Paul

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Feb 4, 2004, 11:27pm

It was not the aw sound....that is usually off. The T+L option messed up the
QuickTime player, Windows Media and also the bot sound (which is another
program) when I clicked on the aw browser to type or read. With aw browser
open but not clicked on the music worked fine. It did also mess up the dog
bark I have for telegram sound. Not realizing that T+L in the aw browser
could ruin the sound of the other programs when actively using the aw
browser with other programs, I was sure my sound card was dying LOL but with
T+L unchecked the sound is perfect.
sweets

Feb 5, 2004, 3:27am

You should not uncheck T&L though. It will cause your frame rate to drop
substantially and cause you a lot of lag in AW.

Paul

[View Quote]

Feb 5, 2004, 2:14pm

[View Quote] My SoundBlaster Live worked fine with Windows 98 and MediaPlayer 6.4,
but when I installed Windows XP with MediaPlayer 9 on the same machine,
I could no longer play mpegs when AW was running: the songs kept crackling etc.
Well the card was 5 years old, I bought SoundBlaster Audigy and it works great.
Could it be more DirectX compatible?? And I play my mpegs with Winamp 5 now.
ATI have gotten better also, with Radeon video cards, so don't write them off just yet ;)

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

Feb 7, 2004, 10:44pm

Aw create a lot of load on the processor when running with higher graphics
options and a large 3d window... sometimes shrinking the 3d window in a
lagger world fixes this temperlary. Since i think it was 3.1 AW stopped
using Direct sound and just shuved all sounds though Windows Media Player.
Explaination possibley?

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