Sounds Problems

LessThanSte · **Posted:** Tue Sep 29, 2009 11:09 am

Right, heres a cryptic one.

This PC this morning has been on for about half an hour when, half way through about the 5th song the sound suddenly died. It now wont play anything through foobar (my media player). Whats more, the rest of the sound has all stopped, so Youtube has no sound, as do games and everything.

However, if i restart the pc, which im about to do, as Windows is closing i do hear the exit jingle.

This has happened a few times now, both before and after the recent rebuild. Does anyone have any clues?

ajayy77 · **Posted:** Tue Sep 29, 2009 1:22 pm

My sound will crash when I am racing sometimes, just goes from the normal sounds to super annoying high pitched whines and beeps, except for at really low revs where I can hear the engine. The sound behaves this way until the system is restarted, I don't hear the windows shutdown properly.

My soundcard is a Soundblaster Audigy 64 gold 2, or something like that and I downloaded a PCI latency fix which seemed to cure it for a while, but it now happens again.

Ian-S · **Joined:** Thu Dec 13, 2007 8:51 pm **Posts:** 10697

check the audio cables, I was convinced my sound chip had finally given up the ghost a couple weeks ago and it turned out to be the headphones (only found out after I'd bought a new soundcard).

Strangely on this machine though, sound is non-existent in Windows XP (can't even see the device) but works if booting into Vista on another HDD the reason i say check the cables is cos that was what was hapenning to me, no music or sound in games, but windows shutdown chime worked - it was the plug on my headphones cable that went.

SteveS · **Posted:** Tue Sep 29, 2009 3:33 pm

I lost the sound on my right speaker this week and a fiddle with the speaker cable in the back of the PC sorted it.

LessThanSte · **Posted:** Tue Sep 29, 2009 11:23 pm

Well this is the thing, it will begin working fine (as it is now) but suddenly, sometimes even modway through a song, it will all cut off. If i then reboot without touching anything i will hear the windows chime and then when rebooted it will work again. The only thing i guess it could be would be overheating but i dont think that is the case.

For reference its an AVANCE AC97, i think (might be wrong) that its an onboard soundcard, whether that makes a difference i dont know!

Ian-S · **Joined:** Thu Dec 13, 2007 8:51 pm **Posts:** 10697

just by touching the power button or walking around the room you're making things move through vibration, so if it's a loose or bust connection somewhere rebooting will do that, even the slightest vibration from the fans stopping and restarting will do it.

simple test, plugin headphones, if they work fine it's your speaker cable/plug.
if it does it with the headphones too, it's the mobo dying or the socket on the mobo.

LessThanSte · **Posted:** Wed Sep 30, 2009 1:15 pm

So why, as Windows shutsdown, do i hear the chime play?

In other words, i suspect its more software related, if anything!

Ian-S · **Joined:** Thu Dec 13, 2007 8:51 pm **Posts:** 10697

music is stereo, windows chimes are mono, most stereo cables have a shared earth, and if the stereo part fouls up you'll still hear mono stuff clear as a bell but the stereo stuff either won't work or you'll only hear part of it (high frequency stuff etc).

LessThanSte · **Posted:** Wed Sep 30, 2009 4:50 pm

Hmmmm

So...

...It is possible to change the windows chimes, i think. Can they be changed to a stereo soundclip? Alternatively, if your above reasoning works i should be able to hear mono sound without any problems? I will try next time it goes south!

Ian-S · **Joined:** Thu Dec 13, 2007 8:51 pm **Posts:** 10697

talk about dithering, just plug a set of dam headphones in and see if that cures it.

LessThanSte · **Posted:** Wed Sep 30, 2009 5:10 pm

I will, though i need to wait for it to stop working again first! :roll:

Marc van Brakel · **Posted:** Wed Sep 30, 2009 5:51 pm

LessThanSte wrote:

...It is possible to change the windows chimes, i think. Can they be changed to a stereo soundclip? Alternatively, if your above reasoning works i should be able to hear mono sound without any problems? I will try next time it goes south!

http://www.online-tech-tips.com/compute ... ws-sounds/

LessThanSte · **Posted:** Thu Oct 01, 2009 11:37 am

Right, so here is some more info.

Midway through a song the sound has just cut out. Ive tried headphones in the headphone socket with no luck, but when i put a USB headset in it worked fine. Whats noticeable is that there is nothing even playing, in other words it is not effectively muted, simply there is no sound being produced whatsoever. I therefore assume its something related to the soundcard and/or drivers for it. I tried reinstalling them but that did nothing!

As for last night, well that appears to be a different kettle of fish. Theres no in-game sound, but sound from everything else, even other games, works fine (and even at the same time). I could listen to music whilst i was driving but there were no menu sounds, engine sounds, spotter sounds etc. I reinstalled the game to get back to the standard sound.dat and spcc.dat files thinking one might be corrupt but still nothing. It is almost as if some setting somewhere has the sound turned off, though i cant find it. I did wonder if it was something to do with .dat files, is it possible that the computer has lost its ability to extract data from a .dat file? Is there a way to test this?

P.S. Headset had absolutely no effect on NR2003 problem, grrr!

Ian-S · **Joined:** Thu Dec 13, 2007 8:51 pm **Posts:** 10697

When my headphones jackplug went fubar I could get music playing, the opening title sequence of NR wouldn't play, the pops and clicks when you pushed buttons in NR would work and you could hear the backfire noise & wheelspin, but no other audio like engine or spotter.

Do you have an extension cable that you plug the speakers and headphones in? If so can you bypass the extension cable to test it?

If not, then I think it's safe to assume one of three things has happened, the speaker socket on the mobo is dirty or damaged, the soundchip has burntout, or the mobo is dying.

It's not going to be something exotic like the game unable to read .dat files because when you fire the game up they get extracted into virtual memory and played from there, and the game would crash long before you got to the track if that were the issue, you're chasing you're tail by looking there for the problem, this is a hardware issue because it is an inconsistent problem - if it was consistent like no sound at all then maybe it would be drivers, but it's inconsistent so hardware related - especially considering you plugged a set of usb headphones in and everything was fine....

LessThanSte · **Posted:** Tue Oct 06, 2009 9:21 pm

The good news is, the game sound problem appears to be fixed, i read something suggesting that the sound acceleration needs to be up on full, which i thought it was on but maybe i changed it at some point. Odd though because i didnt change it immediately prior to it stopping working!

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