Sound delay in various games

Pantastic · Mar 22, 2004, 02:39 AM

Hello, I am having an annoying little problem with the kX drivers. They work fine for midi playback, as well as movies and mp3s and the like, but I'm am having a problem with 3d games. The sounds all play normally, but they are out of sync with the rest of the game. Specifically, the sounds play approximately half a second after the action that triggered the sound has occurred. This has happened in Call of Duty, as well as Quake III, and I haven't tried any other games yet. The odd thing about it is, when I first install quake III, the sound works fine, no delays. However, after installing the latest QIII point release to be able to play online, the delay problem happens. This is extremely annoying, making games basically unplayable. Does anyone have any thoughts on why this might be happening or any potential solutions? My system specs are the following:
P4 2.0 Ghz
Asus P4S333-M Motherboard
256MB pc2700 RAM
SoundBlaster Live! (4760)
MSI GeForce4400Ti
Windows 98 SE

Also, what exactly does the Windows 98 Quick Fix do? I have not run that yet, because I don't know what it does. Thanks for any help!

**Eugene Gavrilov** · Mar 23, 2004, 01:05 AM

anyone to confirm that?

[are you sure you have configured the speakers properly? 'Speaker Set-up' / 'Surrounder' applet]

/E

Pantastic · Mar 23, 2004, 01:36 AM

Thanks for the reply. Yes, my speakers are properly set up, in that I get sound from all four and the subwoofer, as expected. I also have my multimedia properties set up as described in the help files. The thing is, I'm not sure this had anything to do with the sound drivers themselves, as there have been some very strange things happening over the past 2 days regarding my soundcard's performance. I'll try to explain what has happened: I had been using the 4/5 device to output sound from synths and things like that in Fruity Loops, but since yesterday, for some reason using any one other than the primary sound device (0/1?) I would get buffer underruns with any playback buffer setting of less than like 130ms (buffer in Fruity Loops, not kX mixer buffer setup), and when playing along with prerecorded midi notes, the notes I would play would not all come through (occasional dropped notes). So I figured that I would just use my secondary hard drive as a drive for midi recording, with kX drivers (by just changing boot settings in BIOS whenever I wanted to use it), and then uninstall kX on my main drive and use Creative's drivers. The bizarre thing about it is that after uninstalling kX and then installing Creative's drivers, I somehow managed to get excellent performance from them with midi. I can set the latency down to like 13ms with no buffer underruns or crackling sound during playback. When I had originally tried this with Creative drivers, the lowest I could go to was like 150ms, which is what prompted me to want to try the kX drivers in the first place. I don't have the slighest idea how this worked out so well this time, but I really don't care, since my problems have been solved, it seems. Thanks for your help though!

Mar 22, 2004, 02:39 AM	#1
Pantastic DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 2 Rep Power: 0	Sound delay in various games Hello, I am having an annoying little problem with the kX drivers. They work fine for midi playback, as well as movies and mp3s and the like, but I'm am having a problem with 3d games. The sounds all play normally, but they are out of sync with the rest of the game. Specifically, the sounds play approximately half a second after the action that triggered the sound has occurred. This has happened in Call of Duty, as well as Quake III, and I haven't tried any other games yet. The odd thing about it is, when I first install quake III, the sound works fine, no delays. However, after installing the latest QIII point release to be able to play online, the delay problem happens. This is extremely annoying, making games basically unplayable. Does anyone have any thoughts on why this might be happening or any potential solutions? My system specs are the following: P4 2.0 Ghz Asus P4S333-M Motherboard 256MB pc2700 RAM SoundBlaster Live! (4760) MSI GeForce4400Ti Windows 98 SE Also, what exactly does the Windows 98 Quick Fix do? I have not run that yet, because I don't know what it does. Thanks for any help!

Mar 23, 2004, 01:05 AM	#2
Eugene Gavrilov kX Project Lead Programmer and Coordinator Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 3,119 Rep Power: 75	anyone to confirm that? [are you sure you have configured the speakers properly? 'Speaker Set-up' / 'Surrounder' applet] /E

Mar 23, 2004, 01:36 AM	Thread Starter #3
Pantastic DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 2 Rep Power: 0	Thanks for the reply. Yes, my speakers are properly set up, in that I get sound from all four and the subwoofer, as expected. I also have my multimedia properties set up as described in the help files. The thing is, I'm not sure this had anything to do with the sound drivers themselves, as there have been some very strange things happening over the past 2 days regarding my soundcard's performance. I'll try to explain what has happened: I had been using the 4/5 device to output sound from synths and things like that in Fruity Loops, but since yesterday, for some reason using any one other than the primary sound device (0/1?) I would get buffer underruns with any playback buffer setting of less than like 130ms (buffer in Fruity Loops, not kX mixer buffer setup), and when playing along with prerecorded midi notes, the notes I would play would not all come through (occasional dropped notes). So I figured that I would just use my secondary hard drive as a drive for midi recording, with kX drivers (by just changing boot settings in BIOS whenever I wanted to use it), and then uninstall kX on my main drive and use Creative's drivers. The bizarre thing about it is that after uninstalling kX and then installing Creative's drivers, I somehow managed to get excellent performance from them with midi. I can set the latency down to like 13ms with no buffer underruns or crackling sound during playback. When I had originally tried this with Creative drivers, the lowest I could go to was like 150ms, which is what prompted me to want to try the kX drivers in the first place. I don't have the slighest idea how this worked out so well this time, but I really don't care, since my problems have been solved, it seems. Thanks for your help though!