Docking music

[jubbbird]

I run vista and a creative audigy card, so I've had to mess about with all kinds of settings, codecs and finally Alchemy to get it to run well. I get bluescreens once in a while which i'm sure is related to my sound screwing a little during intense combat etc.

But when the game IS working well, sound seems fine when it doesn't cut out completely, which I believe isn't just a sound issue.

There is one occasion when sound DOES still bother me though - there is a nice piece of classical sounding docking music I remember from X2 and X3. In TC, however, it sounds very much like it's been recorded from the radio :/

I've seen other people complaining about poor sound quality - in general my sound quality is fine, which makes me think that this particular track just has poor quality - any chance this might be replaced with a higher quality source?

[jubbbird]

Ok, i just did a google search and actually discovered the soundtrack folder, and the manual docking music is a file named 00014.mp3

Playing it in Media Player it sounds just fine :/

Odd.

[Atkara]

You might want to turn off Alchemy emulation, ingame EAX and finally, any CMSS processing on your Audigy control panel.

I think this should eliminate the problem for the time being.

[jubbbird]

I've turned off EAX in game, but unless I am mistaken Alchemy is the only way I can get incgame sounds to work at all. Without it, even with EAX disabled, sound jumps and cracks and no voices work at all. I also had awful performance/swapping but at the same time as disabling EAX and using Alchemy I also whacked in another 2gb of RAM...

I also have an external decoder so I believe CMSS should be disabled anyway but I'll look into it.

It might just be me, but the only music that seems to be affected is that one track. Perhaps just because its classical innature and thus more susceptible to degraded quality than the other tracks.

[Hob Anagerik]

I don't use EAX in game or use ALchemy and have no problems with any of the music although I have a Xi-Fi rather than an Audigy so that may not mean much.

[pjknibbs]

I have an Audigy 4 and don't even have Alchemy installed--sound works fine on my Vista 64 machine.

[jubbbird]

Well I tried disabling Alchemy, and when the game starts I have nothing but background sounds/music I think. It works for a moment, then stops, and until the game is rebooted not even the main menu sounds work.

Seems I need Alchemy even if I have EAX disabled, as I do, but Alchemy has issues and I assume this is why my I get BSODs fairly frequently. Though I have also observed audio distortion and BSOD only really when there are several enemy ships about and there are missile explosions occuring, or something like that.

[pjknibbs]

I think a DxDiag to show us what drivers and codecs you have installed would help figure out why you don't get sound with Alchemy disabled.

[jubbbird]

Here is my DxDiag output:

http://vidsmith.com/dxdiag.htm

I'm using an Audigy Plantinum (yes, original Audigy 1 I believe) and the drivers are a little worrying, but I'm fairly sure I installed the drivers released recently, after all the confusion over Creative lying to us about Vista problems.

I also know I have ffdshow installed, but I have followed the instructions to stop ffdshow controlling audio for X3:TC, so unless you can spot anything that suggests otherwise, ffdshow should no longer present issues.

Plus, as above, I only get sound WITH Alchemy, but I'm guessing it's Alchemy that is causing my BSODs - what are the alleged symptoms?

Cheers very much indeed for your assistance. It is very much appreciated.