Er, OK. I "solved" my problem by disabling the on-board CMI8738 and installing an old Diamond MX300 sound card I had lying around. Then I applied the standard audio fix (see main thread in this forum) and here are the amazing results:

1. The gameplay is at least twice as smooth. There were jittery spots before that are gone now (e.g., exiting a jump hole) and spaceflight is ever-so-much smoother.

2. The sounds are AWESOME. How could that on-board chip be so crappy?

UPDATE: Alright, the wierdness never ends. I played for 4 hours last night with great sound, but today when I tried to play that audio sucks and is all poppy and scratchy. Wha?? I disabled 3D sound and that helped but it still was poppy now and then. This bites.

I went back to the on-board C-Media setup and the original problem persists. I can't stop Freelancer from messing with my audio mixer settings. Why is it doing that?




Edited by - wylfing on 13-09-2003 17:30:33

OK, I'll weigh in with my similar problem and how I fixed the friggin' thing.

I used to have a SoundBlaster Awe card. I did all the channels for my speaker setup, 5.1. Started having some scratchyness and pops and weezes so I went to Creative. Basically they said rearrange cables and I did and that reduced the noise but didn't eliminate it so I continued on gamely. Then one day it just died. Yes, the sound card just died. After the shock wore off I decided that sound cards are mature enough and I didn't need to spend $50+ for an OEM SoundBlaster so I too got one of those CMI sound cards that did 6.1 sound for under $20. Funny thing is the noise is still there but not anywhere as bad (much less prevelent) as with the SoundBlaster, so I can live with that.

What I couldn't live with the new sound card is for no ryhme, reason or logic, the speaker output would change from 6.1 to two (2) speakers. The sound difference was QUITE evident because the woofer would go away. Also this card had an enhanced 6.1 mode but it didn't matter which mode I was in, it would change seemingly at random back to a two speaker setup. Only once did I play FL for a session and the sound didn't change. I got frustrated and asked the guy at the local computer store from whom I had bought the CMI card. He said "it's the SoundBlaster drivers, they're notorious for not completely uninstalling". I wasn't convinced but searched the web for an answer and found similar accusations against Creative's drivers. I started hacking the registry more and more and *poof* one day I couldn't log on to WinXPPro any more! Well after a reinstall of WinXPPro my sound card (with it's little bit of noise) works like a charm with the speaker setup I want.

The OS reinstall is a drastic fix but I could not find what was changing the speaker setup in the registry! Yes, something continuously changed the registry key for the speaker setup at random even though I purged files and keys even remotely related to Creative products! It was trying to write-protect the speaker setup keys in the registry when WinXPPro wouldn't restart and never came back. Good riddence to Creative!

So in answer to your question there are two places in the registry called speaker setup (search for speaker). They both need to be changed. I found the key values by changing the speaker setup and checking the registry immediately afterwards. But it did no good for me and if something external is changing your speaker setup, won't do any good for you.

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Earendil
SysAdmin of Boston Freelancer server