"Unable to locate 3d audio"

[ibbles]

What do I need to do to get surround (5.1) sound working? When I click on "STEREO" in the audio settings I get the following message

 

UNABLE TO LOCATE 3D AUDIO

Surround speakers not found.

Make sure the speaker settings are configure properly in the Windows Control Panel.

 

I believe I have configured my speaker settings properly in the Windows Control Panel. I have attached a screen capture of the error message and the relevant control panel windows. I'm running a Swedish Windows Installation, but I think the images will speak for themselves.

 

 

The following is printed to the console when I try to change the speaker layout in TDM, and the complete console output is available in the attachments.

 

Shutting down sound hardware

sound: hardware reported unable to use multisound, defaulted to stereo

sound: STEREO

 

condump_soundFail.txt

 

As can be seen in the console output, I have tried to fiddle around with the s_numSpeakers variable, but I will have to do some more reading and testing before I can say anything conclusive about that. Is this a direction that is worthwhile to explore further?

 

In other threads about audio problems, e.g., http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/15121-headset-not-recognized-can-only-play-in-stereo/page__hl__surround__fromsearch__1, there is talk about OpenAL and third-party software installation. Is this required for 5.1 speaker systems? I would prefer to not install anything that would risk breaking other things.

 

I have a 5.1 surround sound setup where audio is passed through the HDMI port of a graphics card to a Onkyo home theater receiver. I get proper 5.1 sound both while playing Skyrim and playing videos with Windows Media Player.

 

System:

Windows 7, 64bit

NVIDIA GTX 580, driver version 314.07

Onkyo TX-NR609-1

 

Please ask if you need additional details.

 

 

// Martin

[ibbles]

Tried updating the NVIDIA drivers to 327.23 and TDM still can't find any surround speakers.

Tried to set s_numspeakers to 6 before loading a missing. Querying the variable while playing returns 6, but my rear speakers are still silent.

[7upMan]

Seems this is a bug. I hope the team will be annoyed enough of it to fix it sometimes.

[Springheel]

My 5.1 works and I didn't install anything special.

[SeriousToni]

My 5.1 works and I didn't install anything special.

 

Win7?

[Springheel]

Now, but it worked under XP too.

[SeriousToni]

Hm maybe the error is that he has more than one sound devices listet in windows (see images) and Darkmod picks the wrong one?

[Xarg]

Mine seems to be fine, using win7

[SeriousToni]

Ibbles, did you setup your 5.1 device as standard device?

[7upMan]

My setup is Win7/x64, Asus Xonar DX 7.1 (speakers), Realtek onboard audio (mike). Since the mike on the Xonar and the speakers on the Realtek are disabled in Windows, there shouldn't be any interference.

[ibbles]

Ibbles, did you setup your 5.1 device as standard device?

 

Yes, as indicated by the green icon next to the selected device.

 

Hm maybe the error is that he has more than one sound devices listet in windows (see images) and Darkmod picks the wrong one?

 

This is interesting. Is there a way to query Darkmod for information about the used sound device? Get its name and such? I can try and further disable the first entry in the device list, the tT eSPORTS one that I don't use. Perhaps Darkmod selects the first device instead of the default one. I guess this is done from some device manager somewhere.... I'll be back.

[ibbles]

Progress!

 

I tried three things, and the third made a difference.

 

1) Disable the other devices from the audio hardware list. No change.

2) Disable the other devices from the main device manager. This removed them from the audio hardware list, making the HDMI out the only device. Still only stereo.

3) Switch the 5.1 mode from using side speakers to rear speakers

 

 

This allowed me to, in the Darkmod audio settings, move from STEREO to 5.1. Clicking the newly appeared 5.1 gave the error message I showed in the first post about unable to locate 3D audio and brought be back to STEREO again. Clicking again switched to 5.1 and I left it at that. Typing "s_numberofspeakers" in the console responded with 6 and doing a spin near the loud machine in the lock picking training room did let me hear audio from the rear speakers.

 

However, the channels were wildly miscalibrated and I did not get the sense of a sound source rotating around me. It was more like it was moving left-to-right in from of me as I turned, then lost volume and appeared to come from some indeterminable position between the front right and rear right speakers. I could no longer hear the source "move" as I turned. Eventually it reappeared behind or "inside my head" as the rear right and rear left speakers emitted equal volume, only to quickly fade into some indeterminable point to the left until the front left speaker took over and I could position the sound source again right before it came into view on screen.

 

Perhaps changing the Windows setting from side to rear (my rear speakers are physically placed as side speakers) messed up some calibration somewhere. The only calibrations I've ever done were on the receiver itself and unrelated to any input source so I can't see how I'm supposed to fix it without messing up the other devices I have connected to the receiver.

 

Will try another game and see if that has become just as messed up.

[ibbles]

Have done some more testing and perhaps the machine in the lock picking training room isn't the most representative of sound sources. The guards in the stealth training room provided much better positional audio and I consider the side-to-rear switch to be a viable work-around until we can figure out why the work-around is required at all. Perhaps the audio experience will be even better if Windows can be configure according to my actual speaker setup, I don't know enough about the audio stack to answer that.

 

Is there any more information I can provide to help with this? I don't know how to take this any further from here.

Edited October 14, 2013 by ibbles

[SeriousToni]

Me neither but still I hope this can be solved

[ibbles]

Did a bit more reading on this.

 

The audio hardware capability test is done in win_snd.cpp, idAudioHardwareWIN32::SetPrimaryBufferFormat, which uses a LPDIRECTSOUND object to talk to the hardware. The object provides the GetSpeakerConfig method, which returns the current speaker configuration as seen by DirectSound. I assume that this is exactly the configuration I have chosen in the Windows Control Panel. The only documentation I can find for GetSpeakerConfig is http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/microsoft.directx_sdk.idirectsound8.idirectsound8.getspeakerconfig%28v=vs.85%29.aspx, which describe the DirectSound8 API. I'm going to continue this discussion assuming that this document accurately describes the effect of the call made by TDM's SetPrimaryBufferFormat. There are two things I notice. A macro should be used to extract the speakers configuration, and there is a long list of possible configurations. SetPrimaryBufferFormat only looks for DSSPEAKER_5POINT1 and DSSPEAKER_SURROUND. Perhaps my setup returns DSSPEAKER_5POINT1_SURROUND or possibly DSSPEAKER_5POINT1_BACK or maybe something else entirely. I'm affraid that I'm unable to test this myself.

[SeriousToni]

Maybe Serpentine knows what to do with this..?

[Serpentine]

Maybe Serpentine knows what to do with this..?

I'm throwing all of this stuff away in my current work, soooo it shouldnt be a problem in the future.

Sound will be /fairly/ different, but a lot more standardized/

 

Just a matter of spending another 3-4 days sitting merging and fixing things. It's pretty shit work no lies, but it's not something that can be done with teamwork sadly.

 

I really wish we had held off the gpl version merge, so much extra work to revert.

[SeriousToni]