Sound Question

I ahve looked over the forums and a few other places but cant seem to find the solution. When playing SL my sound quality can get really bad if I turn on the stream somewhere, listening to others voice or anything that has sound. It crackles a lot and just sounds awful. It does not happen off from SL my sound is good when I use my computer in other areas. Any ideas on how to fix this?

I hear crackling on voice sometimes from other speakers but I have not figured out if it's because their mic is of poor quality or what, such as it's too close to their mouth or too far away...?

Crackling on sound very rarely but deduced that was because the download was corrupted, and then the DJ confirmed so and ended the song.

Maybe others have better suggestions for u.

Sound on the motherboard by any chance, not a separate sound card? It may be that your sound quality is suffering as CPU usage flies upward, the SL client being a rather CPU-intensive application that presents a substantial burden on many computers.

See if it also happens if you are running SL and listen to sound on another program at the same time, music or a video or something.

Doesnt happen if I am running SL and listening to music on Winamp at the same time. It just always seems to happen on SL in general.. no other games or programs

When I had problems with the quality of streaming music, I updated my audio drivers, and tweaked a hardware acceleration setting (can't remember if it was turn it on, or turn it off). Anyway, those are two things you might try.

i have the same problem as you tink. i found out it was bandwidth. if there's someone in your house downloading anything or sometimes even on sl at the same time you are, it can make for a truly god awful sound experience.

I'm having exactly the same problem - sometimes, sound on SL is like it's being played underwater.

I'm the only person in the house, and have a fast connection (20Mb nominally, and I'm getting around 17-18Mb). I also have a new computer - and the sound is great outside SL (even if I'm playing SL at the time) - it's only on SL where it sounds terrible.

Last time, I rebooted my PC and this cured the problem - but I've just rebooted now, and it hasn't cured the problem. Sound is pretty much unusable now.

On my poorly spec-ed old PC everything was fine sound-wise - even when I had a slower connection of around 6Mb.

The PC is brand new and the sound is fantastic everywhere except SL - any other suggestions?

OK, bit of an update here. I installed the latest sound drivers for my PC (which is brand new). It worked fine for a while - but now I'm having the same problem again.

It's intermittent, too. During a single SL session, the "burbly" sound will come and go - sometimes it's absolutely fine, then 5 minutes later it's back to crackles and bubbles again.

It's a shame, because I like to go to parties in SL, but listening to music is pretty much out of the question at the moment, and hosting parties where I'm streaming music is just going to be unfeasible. I never had this problem on my older, far less SL-friendly PC.

Has anyone else had anything similar to this? Are there any settings in SL anyone can suggest that might help get over this?

I had a similar problem once, which I solved by turning on Audio Hardware Acceleration.

In Windows XL, it's in: Control Panel -> Sounds And Audio Devices -> Audio.

There is a "Sound Playback" box at the top with an "Advanced" button. Click on: Advanced -> Performance. Then you will see a slider for Hardware Acceleration. Turn it up to full.

Do you have Voice enabled and on at the same time this occurs when you are listening to the music feed or a video feed?

Thanks for the replies - I think I've sorted it, although I broke the cardinal rule of narrowing things down by changing THREE things - I reinstalled SL, moved my cache to a different location (I was storing it on a dedicated hard drive)...

BUT the thing that I think was significant is I found was I have an Acer PC, and it has something called "Empowering Technology", and one of the options in there is called "Acoustic Management". You can choose between "quiet mode" which is for low power apps, and "professional" for graphics, games etc.

It was set to quiet. I think that was the problem!

Oh nooo, this is SOOOO depressing

It was fine last night - but today - exactly the same problem.

I've reinstalled sound drivers, reinstalled SL, cleared my cache, rebooted my PC, bypassed my router, reset my cable modem, set acoustic settings to professional.

Time for a JIRA, methinks.

Only file a jira issue if you have a clear discription of how other people can reproduce the problem.

Otherwise file a support ticket.

I've filed a support ticket, although it hasn't been responded to. The SL people on live chat suggested I raise a JIRA. They just keep saying it's my router (which it isn't cos I've by passed it), or a faulty sound card. Problem is, if I take it back to the shop, and they can show that it works perfectly in every app except SL (which it does), they're hardly likely to believe it's a faulty card.

Ah well, LL have just told me "tough", there's nothing more they can suggest.

So sadly, my expensive new computer that I bought specifically to improve my SL experience can do everything except run SL. I very much doubt the shop will give me a refund as sound is working perfectly in every other application

If anyone has *any* other suggestions that I can try I'd be really grateful. I don't mind getting a new sound card for it if that's what it takes, but I find it hard to believe it's a hardware fault as sound is working so well outside SL.

Ahaha, I've been having exactly the same problem and this answers it for me. At any one time there's likely to be up to three other people on the same network, playing SL or WoW, or streaming video (or even all three at once).

I find streaming music in SL is usually fine but trying to use voice is hopeless - I get so much distortion I can't make out what anyone's saying, and if I turn the volume up I just get the same garbage, but louder.

I suggest not buying a new sound card. I have a Creative SB "gamer" card that I was using in the old computer where it was working perfectly. It is now in the new computer, and I have the same problem. I also am not running thru a router.

OK, yet more updates. First, I found an interesting article here:

http://dwellonit.taterunino.net/2009/04/23/what-the-heck-is-up-with-sound-cards-these-days/

and I've gleaned a few more things that may or may not help:

From my own personal experience:

1. Invoking SL with the -multiple switch (EVEN IF I actually ONLY have one av online) almost always gives me this symptom. Invoking it without reduces the occurrence. Curiously enough, once I get on with sound working OK, I can invoke subsequent sessions of SL (which, of course, *do* need the -multiple switch) and none of my avs have the problem.

2. Moving my PC away from other power sources seems to help. I reduced the instance from about 80% to about 40% of the time by doing this - initially my PC was next to a block that had my printer plugged into it.

3. When it goes wrong, it goes wrong. It doesn't matter if I use a very basic av who is very low on avatar rendering costs, has a tiny inventory and so on.

4. It's absolutely not to do with bandwidth, my router or my speakers. I'm up with a friend this weekend, and I brought my PC up with me to try it here. I'm connected directly to his broadband (which is slower than mine) and using his speakers. I'm getting the same issue. His bandwidth is 2Mb, mine is 20Mb. Neither of us have any other users doing stuff when the problem appears.

5. It's not to do with the connection on the back of the soundcard - I get the issue whether the speakers are plugged into the jack on the back, or the jack on the front of the PC.

6. I get occasional stuttering when I do things like load up GIMP while SL is running and open lots of stuff. This isn't surprising - I'm pushing the PC to its limit. However, I also get it immediately after a reboot with ONLY SL running and nothing else.

7. I'm having this problem on a PC that is only a few weeks old, and very well spec-ed. I tried System Restore to a very early point, *and* ensured I downloaded the latest RealTek drivers. It's not a driver issue.

8. Other sound plays fine - even while it's crackling in SL (when it's crackling in SL, stop the sound there and play an MP3 - it works fine).

9. It's not just streaming music in SL - it's any sound, including the "beep" you get when you quit and it asks for confirmation that you want to quit.

10. It's not a viewer issue. I get the same problem with the new RC viewer, *and* on k-grid.

11. I'm running XP, incidentally.

From anecdotal evidence I've seen on other forums:

1. The cause may be interference - so moving away from other power supplies helps.

2. The cause may be because I have a super-duper graphics card that's eating up all the capacity on the PCI bus, so the on-board audio doesn't have a chance. However, I still get the symptoms if I set my graphics settings down from "Ultra" to "Medium", so I'm not sure.

3. Creative sound cards have big problems with point 2 above. I've no idea if this is true or not.

4. An external card will probably fix it. Let's hope so, but the article I linked to at the top suggests it won't (especially if it's a Creative one).

So my next step will probably be to get an external sound card and see if that cures the problem.


Finally, these steps *may* help - it often works for me *eventually*:

1. Create an icon for SL that doesn't have the -multiple switch set.
2. After getting the problem, go into SL (using this icon) and clear cache without logging in.
3. Log out of SL.
4. Reboot your PC - I mean reboot, not just restart SL.
5. Go into SL using this icon (that doesn't have the -multiple switch).

So much for putting a JIRA in - it looks like this issue is already reported and has been active for over a year.

Vote on it here: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-5985

Some more updates - I decided to splash out and buy an external USB card. I didn't go for Creative, since a lot of people reporting the same problem as me had Creative, so I went for a Trust card.

Connected it up - and everything worked fine for about six hours. However, later that evening - same problem.

So I've now exhausted all channels - I've tried a different sound card, new drivers, release candidates, bypassing my router, physically taking my PC to a different city and using a friend's connection (so different ISP), different speakers, trying headphones all to no avail. The JIRA is still "high" priority, but as it's been open for a year I don't hold out too much hope. I'm finding more and more people with this problem, and it's rather made me regret spending $1000 on "upgrading" my SL experience only to discover that it's been a downgrade.

If there are any soundcard experts here (I'm using XP, not Vista - most of the people reporting this problem are running Vista, but that seems to be a red herring) who live in the southern UK, I'd be prepared to pay for something that would fix this!

Just a random thought--I have no evidence to suggest this will work--but I'd try the --cooperative parameter* to see if it makes things better or worse. No clue what number to try as the argument. (I know: it sounds completely desperate.)

*From http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Client_parameters

Thanks, Qie - desperate times call for desperate measures I'll give that a try!