Sound problems in WoW

[Fargash]

I got myself a new soundcard (Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio). It kicks *** while listening to music, watching movies and so on.

BUT, when I play WoW there are a lot of disturbing noises, as if the sound is "lagging", and something that I can best describe as an "electrical noise" in the background. This occurs even if I have the WoW sounds turned off and have Winamp or any other media player running in the background.

In the WoW readme file, Blizz recomend that I uninstall my codecs. Wtf? Am I supposed to install/uninstall my codecs every day?


Is anyone having/had a similar problem?

[Ltonkrack]

I remember the X-Fi having some extreme issues when it was first released and even some 10 odd months later. Try googling the issue.

The only thing I can recommend is change the PC slot(weired but it might work) and make sure you have disabled the on-board sound if any

[thunderdog]

Fargash,

I had the same problem that you were having with electrical noises
and/or bad sound and contacted tech. support which helped me solve
the sound problem over the phone.

This is also what the sent me by email as a follow up, you may want
to give this a try. Hope that helps a little.


Hello,

Thank you again for contacting Blizzard Entertainment Technical Support. This email is being sent to you as a follow-up to your phone call to us.

What you called about:
popping sound in game
Steps taken over the phone to troubleshoot the issue:

SET SoundOutputSystem "1"

Below is additional information that may assist you in resolving your issue:

In many cases we have seen that reinstallation of sound hardware drivers has resolved this issue and improved stability for users having sound-related problems. Your sound card manufacturer should be able to walk you through reinstallation or potentially updating your sound card drivers, and you can find more information about driver updates here:
http://www.blizzard.com/support/wow/?id=agi0371p

If you are certain you have reinstalled the latest working drivers, try testing with different sound acceleration levels:
- Click the Start button in Windows.
- Select Run.
- In the text area type "dxdiag" (without the quotes) and press OK.
- After the DirectX Diagnostic Tool has finished loading click on the Sound tab located at the top.
- Set the "Hardware Sound Acceleration Level" to "Standard Acceleration" by moving the slider bar.
- Test the game this way, and also try lowering the Acceleration to "Basic" or "None."

We have had reports that heat issues can cause sound distortions. If your sound card is seated next to your video card you may want to move them farther apart. You also may want to consider adding a fan to your system to help distribute heat in the case.

You can also try manually changing the sound output system. Please see the steps below:

- Open the World of Warcraft folder on your hard drive (Default Folder: C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft).
- Open the WTF folder.
- Open the Config.wtf file using a text editor, like WordPad.

Add the following line to the list if it doesn’t exist:

SET SoundOutputSystem "x"

Change the x in the line above to each of the following numbers in turn to see if it helps, please make sure to restart the game each time after changing this line.

1 = Windows Multimedia (the one you should try first)
2 = Direct Sound
3 = Aureal3D
4 = Open Sound System
-1 = Auto select (the default)


If these steps do not allow you to solve the problem, we would like to get some more information about your computer per the instructions below. Please attach your dxdiag.txt, msinfo.txt, and your World of Warcraft error and log files to your reply for further diagnosis.