Vista Sound Problems?

Brice Manuel · Post by **Brice Manuel** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 11:50 pm

I don't have Vista, but I have seen on other forums where people are having problems with the sound under Vista.

Can anybody with Vista confirm that the sound commands in PB work properly and can anybody with Vista and a Creative sound card confirm the same?

Dreglor · Post by **Dreglor** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 12:31 am

I have general Sound problems not just with PB Sound commands

it seams to be a fault with the drivers or sound management in the kernel of vista

my sound seams to die when pausing or stopping sounds (it seams to be ok if less then 30 seconds) I confirmed this with audio 2 cards, internal soundMAX and Sound Blaster Live! the only way for me to fix it is to go and change the output of the card and start over...

SFSxOI · Post by **SFSxOI** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 1:04 am

I'm not using a Creative card, however, I know for a fact that there were a bunch of problems with Creative sound cards during the beta. I also know that since the RTM there have been a lot of people posting problems around the net with Creative cards, seems to be some sort of driver issue. So thats not a PureBasic issue per say.

For PureBasic there also seems to be a slight problem with using DirectX 7 sound in Vista at times.

Brice Manuel · Post by **Brice Manuel** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 12:21 am

I am guessing the problem with PB is that is uses DirectSound which is no longer hardware accelerated on Vista.

EBASIC seems to work, but it strictly uses MCI, which isn't supposed to be supported on Vista anymore.

Blitz Plus seems to work on Vista, but it uses FMOD which appears to have a fallback if DX isn't supported.

There doesn't seem to be a real solution to sound issues on Vista, as even non Creative cards are having problems with older games.

Barney · Post by **Barney** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 12:32 pm

The sound system in Vista has been completely rewritten and now it looks like it should have been looking ages ago. Long latency, which has been an ongoing problem in previous Windows versions is gone now, but it is a less known fact that a lot of sound drivers actually counted on that latency to hide their own problems. So, lo and behold, all of a sudden, their inadequacy has been exposed and looks like one of the worst culprits is Creative Labs. Hopefully this situation will change quickly as more and more companies adjust or rewrite their drivers. This time it was not Vista's fault...

Barney

Brice Manuel · Post by **Brice Manuel** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 3:16 am

This time it was not Vista's fault...

An operating system that was just released does not work on existing hardware. That would be Vista's fault, as the drivers Vista ships with do not work properly. It is not just a Creative incompatibility, Vista has issues with every major brand of sound card, (especially the pro grade cards) and MOBO sound chips.

The sound system in Vista has been completely rewritten and now it looks like it should have been looking ages ago.

Getting rid of hardware acceleration for sound is the worst thing Microsoft has ever done. Your sound cards are now useless as they will no longer handle the encoding/decoding/streaming/processing of sound. All of that is now put onto your CPU and Windows. It really reminds me of the garbage known as "win Modems" several years back, or the cheapo sound cards years ago that were only "software" capable :roll:

Progress is a good thing. Jumping back 10 years in technology is not a good thing.

Its not a matter of rewriting drivers, its a matter of Vista no longer being able to work with the way the sound card hardware was designed to work, as Vista does not support hardware accelerated sound. Vista cannot natively use any of the features of most sound cards.

What Creative and other companies are in the process of doing is NOT writing Vista compatible drivers, they are writing new drivers that will intercept Vista's API calls and completely bypass Vista's sound functions and use proper hardware capable drivers to communicate with the sound card's hardware.

Barney · Post by **Barney** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 11:06 am

An operating system that was just released does not work on existing hardware.

Apparently it works on my hardware (Terratec and Intel-Sigmatel).

Getting rid of hardware acceleration for sound is the worst thing Microsoft has ever done. Your sound cards are now useless as they will no longer handle the encoding/decoding/streaming/processing of sound.
...
What Creative and other companies are in the process of doing is NOT writing Vista compatible drivers, they are writing new drivers that will intercept Vista's API calls and completely bypass Vista's sound functions and use proper hardware capable drivers to communicate with the sound card's hardware.

Who said MS got rid of sound hardware acceleration? And by the rest of your comments you are obviously talking about things you don't know much about.

Barney

Brice Manuel · Post by **Brice Manuel** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 3:39 pm

Apparently it works on my hardware (Terratec and Intel-Sigmatel).

A POS MOBO chip that is only capable of software mode. Isn't that what I said? Hardware accelerated sound in not supported in Vista

Barney wrote: Who said MS got rid of sound hardware acceleration?

um, Microsoft :roll:

And by the rest of your comments you are obviously talking about things you don't know much about.

Have you even read MS's whitepaper on Universal Audio Architecture (UAA)? Taking away hardware acceleration was the entire point of the new audio stack :roll: This is why game developers and sound card manufacturers are now pushing for OpenAL as the sound API of choice instead of DirectSound. This is also what ALchemy (ALchemy is a directX audio to openAL wrapper, not an updated driver) is about, unfortunately, this is a Creative only solution. Other manufacturers are still going to be stuck with software mode unless they come up with a similar solution.

You really should read up on a topic before you try and claim people don't know what they are talking about. You are the one not in the "know" on this topic. For non-programmers, this article does a decent job of putting it in laymans terms:
http://pc.ign.com/articles/759/759538p1.html

Barney · Post by **Barney** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 5:59 pm

A POS MOBO chip that is only capable of software mode. Isn't that what I said? Hardware accelerated sound in not supported in Vista

Terratec never made mobo chips as far as I know...

Anyways.. I am not going to be drawn into a lengthy discussion of what Vista can or cannot do. I am already earning money with it and that is what matters.

Barney

Brice Manuel · Post by **Brice Manuel** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 6:30 pm

Barney wrote:Terratec never made mobo chips as far as I know...

Apologies, since you mentioned an Intel chip, I was unaware that Intel made stand-alone sound cards. Regardless, Vista can't use hardware accelerated sound no matter what sound card you have.

Barney wrote:Anyways.. I am not going to be drawn into a lengthy discussion of what Vista can or cannot do.

Still can't say you were wrong, huh?

For the average home user, the lack of hardware accelerated sound isn't a major issue. It will only affect die-hard gamers, game developers and people using Windows based home recording studios or other high-end audio/video use.

I don't plan on officially supporting Vista with my games, so I am not overly worried about it. And I don't plan to upgrade any of my systems to Vista.