Sound problem, very low quality sound - Resolved, 3rd party STALKER mod messing with OpenAL.

[Skeeter]

Why, well as i said, realtek site says latest driver is 2017, asus says 2019 i think or 2020, windows update probs has a basic driver that works who knows, not usually the best.

So thats why i said if it was probs windows update putting the realtek driver on, try removing it, putting the asus site realtek driver one on, he might get more options from it if its different from what he had on before even tho dxdiag and the asus site driver versions match, yeah i know weird but still. U never know if the driver was maybe corrupted.

Yes mb website drivers are often out of date, but u go to realtek site, ull see they list a win 10 one from way back 2017..

Also er alan u saying im weird saying remove realtek when u said the same thing about reinstalling a clean version of the realtek driver above mine.
viewtopic.php?p=5020890#p5020890

[FrozenDefender]

well, now I got somewhere atleast, now the game cuts the sounds midgame completely. and the intro is still garbage.

[Alan Phipps]

Talk me through how you deleted the sound device and reinstalled the driver please. The more usual way is to let Realtek uninstall the old driver, reboot, then let Realtek install the new/same driver. I cannot recall if another restart is then needed to integrate the driver, but it may be likely.

[Skeeter]

Few diff ways, the installer might detect the driver and say do u wana remove or repair or reinstall, so theres that.

Or go to device manager, go to sound section right click on the realtek one and pick uninstall.

Or u can go to programs and features and remove that way.

Or ddu can even remove realtek audio drivers.

Anyhow ive tried to help, some suggestions etc, sorry they havent helped much, i do wish you the best of luck on getting the audio working.

[FrozenDefender]

I went to device manager and yeeted the device, search'd for new changes to hardware, then windows installs the "generic" driver made by microsoft, restart, install new driver, restart and here we are. results are as follows: Intro is lowbitrate, really low bitrate, menu music and effects are fine, loading into a game cuts all sound from the game, other sounds work ok, same for head set and optical output

[Skeeter]

Wonder what the realtek control panel settings are like, and yeah u dont want a ms generic driver.

[FrozenDefender]

Wonder what the realtek control panel settings are like

rather basic, some basic bitrate settings and optional effects for the audio, nothing that I wou/couldn't change from windows device settings directly. might delete those programs because they're practically useless. most of the effects don't work on optical anyway.

[Alan Phipps]

There's the thing though, I don't see a clean driver uninstall and folder clearance in any of that, just a temporary device disabling. That might be important if there were corrupt or incorrect sound driver assets in the folder that were not removed or replaced in the reinstall - or maybe not.

Anyway, you are getting lots of advice here and I'll let you work your way through it all. Good luck.

[FrozenDefender]

There's the thing though, I don't see a clean driver uninstall and folder clearance in any of that, just a temporary device disabling. That might be important if there were corrupt or incorrect sound driver assets in the folder that were not removed or replaced in the reinstall - or maybe not.

Anyway, you are getting lots of advice here and I'll let you work your way through it all. Good luck.

yea I missed the folder cleaning, usually windows tends to remove all related drivers when removing device, I'll look into it a bit closer tho, thank you for your time

[FrozenDefender]

So far, no luck at all, tried clean install again, using DDU to remove everything I could, removed device from device manager and everything related to it, problem persists.

So far I've found out that 44.1khz yields the best results on both devices, but sub optimal non the less, everything in the menu is fine with these but intro and environment and entity sounds such as non player ship engines produce low bitrate jet engine noises, alot of them. turning individual volumes down or infact all of them cause the schreeching to be even more deafening, as in does not help. On the headset side, switching USB ports did not help.

ze start up commands, zey do nothing!, referring to the -nocputhrottle and the other.

Why I doubt its NOT hardware related is because A) literally everything else works fine, even when paired with X4, like music from spotify playing on the background is fine when X4 is schreeching away and the effect is similar on both my audio devices. and the headset is practically a standalone device with it's own drivers and all.

what next? I'm removing X4, re installing it on to another drive cleanly and looking into it a bit more. This is one of the more bizarre problems I've had with PC's in my time and haven't found anybody with similar problems when scouring the internets for information.

I might have a lead that's related to open AL and some tweaks made to it when modding STALKER games.. but that's a long shot.

Edit: I don't think the open AL is to blame here, the changes seem to be local and would need to be inserted into the game folder to make an actual difference.
Could be something codec related...

Edit2: the generic microsoft provided HD driver did not work either.

[Skeeter]

I really dont recommend this but its a thing so user discretion and all.

Klite codec pack has this thing as when you install it, it has options to fix problems with codecs. Up to you but id try other stuff first.

Is there any windows updates thats available hen you go to windows update and click on check now? Presuming on latest win 10 build too.

[FrozenDefender]

I've had problems with codecs before... not in a long time tho... like since win10 was a thing.. But it's an option, need to look into it so I won't make things worse atleast.

Not really anything useful, some optional Xeon PCI-e drivers and something related to intel hd graphics that I don't need. everything else is more or less up to date.

As I side note, X4 is the only game that is having this issue, how ever I remember stalker anomaly mod having similar issues related to the sound "engine" or what ever it's called, open AL fixed that tho, i think it had something to do with direct sound or something... modders fixed that quickly tho so can't remember details.

[Alan Phipps]

You mean this?

X4 is not really prone to codec issues, as were the XP/DirectShow era X games.

[FrozenDefender]

Alan, my man you might be genious.

[Skeeter]

You know when u switched to 44hz, try some of the other options like 32hz fm radio, as saw a utube vid saying somit about fixing low quality sounds on logitech headsets.

There was another thing about turn the vol control on the wire all the way up.

Also read about ghub might be using a game profile which might be doing something.

Probs not helpful but its few things i read just now.

Oh yea i remember that stalker topic, i was going to mention that if i could find the topic but was gona leave that for tomorrow.

[FrozenDefender]

You mean this?

That was it. You did it, you madlad.


Anyway.

Problem solved

Root cause: Open AL modifications, related to STALKER Anomaly mod named Grok's better sound. Doesn't seem to affect any other game.

Symptoms: Compressed / low quality / low bitrate / messed up / audio, altering between effect channel and other channels depending on sample rate of active and selected speakers. Most noticeable for me during intro movie, and in the second case in main menu. In some cases sound cut off completely from X4 when loaded in to game.

Solution: Create backup of openal32.dll in the X4 directory, Copy soft_oal.dll from Stalker anomaly directory to X4 directory, rename soft_oal.dll to openal32.dll.
Alternate solution: Revert changes with the openALconfig tool, or find settings that work for you.

After thoughts, open al config indeed does alter global settings regarding open AL and setting it up for maximum quality seems to cause audio instability for X4, mostlikely altering bitrates for audio enough that X4 cannot handle them.

Edit: Forgot to say thank you to each of you who helped me trouble shoot this thing, would have been a nightmare alone!

[ZaldronTheSage]

Hello. I just ran into this issue but was informed by eMYNOCK on the stream forums about this thread. I too play stalker anomaly mod and installed Groks Sounds mod which modifies the openal.dll file. Copying this file over to the x4 game directory has fixed my issues completely.

[Loyalty[YK]]

You mean this?

That was it. You did it, you madlad.


Anyway.

Problem solved

Root cause: Open AL modifications, related to STALKER Anomaly mod named Grok's better sound. Doesn't seem to affect any other game.

Symptoms: Compressed / low quality / low bitrate / messed up / audio, altering between effect channel and other channels depending on sample rate of active and selected speakers. Most noticeable for me during intro movie, and in the second case in main menu. In some cases sound cut off completely from X4 when loaded in to game.

Solution: Create backup of openal32.dll in the X4 directory, Copy soft_oal.dll from Stalker anomaly directory to X4 directory, rename soft_oal.dll to openal32.dll.
Alternate solution: Revert changes with the openALconfig tool, or find settings that work for you.

After thoughts, open al config indeed does alter global settings regarding open AL and setting it up for maximum quality seems to cause audio instability for X4, mostlikely altering bitrates for audio enough that X4 cannot handle them.

Edit: Forgot to say thank you to each of you who helped me trouble shoot this thing, would have been a nightmare alone!

I have the same exact issue I'm pretty sure. problem is it doesn't work for me. infact all sound is non-existant even at game start. How can I access the openALconfic tool? is it in the X4 directory or the Grok better sound mod directory?

[Alan Phipps]

@ Loyalty[YK]: Almost by definition you can't have the same issue if the fix in this thread doesn't work for you or if you haven't used that Stalker mod. Please start your own thread and give all the system information requested in the first Sticky thread on this forum (the 'Read before posting' one).