GZDoom audio conflict

[gemini09]

Hey.

I just installed an Asus Xonar Essence STX. All well so far with great audio and everything. Works with UT2003, and that's the only game I've tested. When I fired up GZDoom, it halted at audio loading and restarted the PC. I uninstalled the MB audio drivers and tried again without luck. Looked for updates but no joy. Any idea what the solution might be?

[Csonicgo]

Friends don't let friends use fmod.

It's not your computer. It's Fmod's( the sound library (G)Zdoom uses )colossal sucking finally showing through. Don't' worry, it's the FMOD team's fault.

And it's a shame it still can't play 5.1 audio without locking up nvidia motherboards. Unless it's been fixed, which I doubt, as the Fmod team love to play the blame game when it comes to their wonderful library being annoying, buggy, and making soundcards do things in weird ways.

fmod still does not work for crap in vista.

[Graf Zahl]

I rather blame the shitty driver your sound card uses.

[Csonicgo]

Graf Zahl said:

I rather blame the shitty driver your sound card uses.

Thousands of SB audigy users have shitty drivers and hardware?
Have you checked the WoW forums? just do a search on "fmod" and watch. Fmod has caused nothing but problems with World of Warcraft.


It seems to me that everything on an Nvidia-styled motherboard (realtek and sigmatel) seem to have nothing but problems with Fmod and fmod only. in fact, the devs know about this- and put the blame squarely on the cards. Of course what can one expect from Brett Paterson, who advocates unofficial drivers for soundcards (that are full of workarounds for his sound system)?

Brett Paterson said:

Remember this is not an fmod issue, it is a driver issue, and your soundcard driver is not keeping up with realtime mixing into a 5.1 buffer. The majority of people don't have this issue but those who do are of course very vocal.
People who compare against other games "that work on the same machine" do not know what they are talking about. They don't use advanced realtime mixing they simply wrap directsound hardware buffers and therefore are extremely limited in what they can achieve with audio.

Got that? Fmod is always right. If it works in Portaudio, OpenAL, or anything else, but not FMOD, it must be your soundcard or its drivers. There's no way FMOD could be fucking up, as it was programmed by gods on the highest of mountains.

Well, I have bad news.

If a particular sound system dosen't work on nvidia or sound blaster audigy cards because 'those cards and/or drivers are flawed' -- then I think the sound system is a fucking joke.

[Edward850]

Csonicgo said:

fmod still does not work for crap in vista.

How strange. For the days I had to use vista, gzdoom and the like worked fine. What's more strange is that I have never had any problems with fmod. Well, I did once, but that was when I accidentally downloaded the 64bit version on a 32bit system.

It even works on my old SB16, so I don't know what your problem is.

[Graf Zahl]

Csonicgo said:

Thousands of SB audigy users have shitty drivers and hardware?
Have you checked the WoW forums? just do a search on "fmod" and watch. Fmod has caused nothing but problems with World of Warcraft.

In a nutshell: yes. Quantity of sales does not equal quality and the overall reviews of these cards suggest they aren't really that good. But as long as some people continue to think that the cheapest soundcards are better than onboard soundchips these problems will persist.

It seems to me that everything on an Nvidia-styled motherboard (realtek and sigmatel) seem to have nothing but problems with Fmod and fmod only. in fact, the devs know about this- and put the blame squarely on the cards. Of course what can one expect from Brett Paterson, who advocates unofficial drivers for soundcards (that are full of workarounds for his sound system)?

Care to link to an article? Because I simply can't find any.
(On the other hand I had some really good laughs at the opinions of some audio-nuts trolling the internet. No wonder that these people have problems... :D)

Got that? Fmod is always right. If it works in Portaudio, OpenAL, or anything else, but not FMOD, it must be your soundcard or its drivers. There's no way FMOD could be fucking up, as it was programmed by gods on the highest of mountains.

That's just flawed logic by you. Not every application or programming interface uses things that trigger driver bugs. But of course people like you tend to believe any flawed logic because it's cool to believe in.

Brett Paterson said:

Remember this is not an fmod issue, it is a driver issue, and your soundcard driver is not keeping up with realtime mixing into a 5.1 buffer. The majority of people don't have this issue but those who do are of course very vocal.
People who compare against other games "that work on the same machine" do not know what they are talking about. They don't use advanced realtime mixing they simply wrap directsound hardware buffers and therefore are extremely limited in what they can achieve with audio.

So, he's just saying that the drivers of these cards can't keep up with the data FMOD is sending them. So in the end, no matter what you may think about FMOD, the driver is broken. End of story for me.

Well, I have bad news.

If a particular sound system dosen't work on nvidia or sound blaster audigy cards because 'those cards and/or drivers are flawed' -- then I think the sound system is a fucking joke.

All I can say is that without facts to verify I can't tell you anything more. I can't find the huge mass of problem reports you make out so I can't quantify the problem. But my general experience with badly working hardware could be attributed to the drivers in 90% of all cases so I choose to do the same here.


PS: Your foul language does not make your post any more valid, btw.

[ReFracture]

Csonicgo said:

Thousands of SB audigy users have shitty drivers and hardware?

Pretty much, yeah. I once made the mistake of buying a Creative card and trying to use it on Vista. Big regrets.

[DaniJ]

What is surprising though is just how well the Auzentech Prelude works under Vista64 (at least in my experience anyway) given that its using an XFi chip. It would seem to me that the Auzentech guys have either fixed CL's shoddy drivers or have implemented their own for the XFi chipset.

[Csonicgo]

Mike.Reiner said:

Pretty much, yeah. I once made the mistake of buying a Creative card and trying to use it on Vista. Big regrets.

Then something has to be done about this. Not only on a sound library side, but all across the board. thousands of people use these things every day.

I honestly think Creative does it to beat deadlines and hope no one notices. Remember the many revisions of the SB16 and how they'd all have some quirk to them? I think it's like that.

@graf: that was in a pretty heated thread back in 2007. a lot of threads on Fmod forums get mysteriously deleted when the flames get fanned so if there's anything useful in them, it's gone.

And I know I was pretty pissed off when I posted, since the new version that Zdoom is using should have fixed the PCI sharing issue, and it clearly didn't. I seriously think that's the last straw for me.

PEBKAC? maybe, maybe not, but I really have had enough of this library being super wonky on every computer I've played fmod games on. Popping, Skipping, 100% Cpu usage for sound mixing, it's a bizarre experience.

I can only hope Chris finishes his code for OpenAL.

[Graf Zahl]

Strangely enough I never had any problems with FMOD on any of the 4 computers I used it on over the last few years. Of course I don't use an add-on soundcard! :D

I can't speak for other games, of course, but there's always a fourth party aside from the 3 we already discussed (Hardware manufacturer, FMOD or end user) and that's the game developers.

FMOD is by no means foolproof (quite the contrary actually - it's a rather complex piece of software) and even ZDoom can be brought into an unstable state because its sound management has some flaws that need to be ironed out. So in the WoW case one can't count out a simple error in setting up or using FMOD.

[kristus]

I've never had issues with FMOD and my Audigy ZS2. What I HAVE had issues with though is onboard sound quitting in Doom3.

[Quasar]

FMOD may not be perfect, but it certainly can't have half the issues that SDL_mixer has. Just be thankful for that I guess.

[esselfortium]

Indeed...personally I haven't had any issues at all with FMOD, but I definitely had my fair share of SDL_mixer issues (as Quasar knows all too well, I'm sure :P ) before its multicore crash bug was discovered and the workaround was developed for it.

I love how FMOD sounds in ZDoom, and it's a bit of a shame that GPL ports can't make use of it due to licensing conflicts.

[Csonicgo]

Quasar said:

FMOD may not be perfect, but it certainly can't have half the issues that SDL_mixer has. Just be thankful for that I guess.

SDL_mixer can't make a CPU lock up.

[Graf Zahl]

Neither can FMOD. CPU lock ups are *always* caused by bad drivers.

On the other hand, SDL_Mixer can render 1/2 or 3/4 of your CPU inoperable because it requires the app to run on a single core.

[LexiMax]

Csonicgo said:

stuff

You did not just try and argue the merits of sound API's with someone who actually...ya know...uses them, did you?

*picard facepalm*