Larian Studios Forums Divine Divinity (English) Technical Problems Strange distorted sound...

I'm using an Audigy 2 ZS Value and a nvidia 7300gt card. My cpu is P4 3.2 ghz.

My version of Windows is Win XP Pro slipstreamed with sp2 and has Directx 9.0c.

I'd just installed Divine Divinity again and hoped to actually complete it this time. However, alas... the sound would get really distorted every now and then. It got so bad to the extent, I decided to reinstall the game manually.

However, the issue still exists and now, there're popping noises everytime my character walks. Also, there's a lot of noise now in the background.

I've attempted installing Kx Project audio drivers instead but the issue doesn't seem to go away. Also, tried tinkering with the hardware acceleration but man, the problem is still there.

Any ideas? I really wanted to complete this game but... the sound issues are getting so annoying, I just want to give up. Although, perhaps it's 'cos my card is somehow sharing the irq slot 17 with my onboard lan and some PCI Express Root port. Moving the card to another slot did nothing to allocate the card to another IRQ. Also, have tried allocating IRQ to the PCI slot in BIOS but that didn't work.

I guess my last shot would be to reinstall the o/s? Although, to be frank, I'm getting really tired. My hard disk died at least 3 times when I was playing this game, back in 2002 and 2003. Not to mention all the assortment of troubles I ran into while playing this game on yet another computer. Now, this. It does seem like I'm not destined to finish this game, ever. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/disagree.gif" alt="" />

Did you try disabling sound hardware acceleration completely?

Did you go through the sound tests in dxdiag's Sound tab?

A few people have had sound problems on multi-core systems, which in a couple cases could be fixed by setting the game to run on a single core. HyperThreading in a single core P4 CPU (if you have it enabled) probably isn't going to have the same effect, though.
see; Sound errors with static - maybe fix found!

I assume you are shutting down all non-essential programs (especially anti-virus) before starting the game?

If you set the sound effect and ambient volume levels to zero, does that get rid of (or reduce) the distortion and background noise?


If you do resort to reinstalling the OS, do you have a spare drive / partition you can use? If not, at least make a full backup of your current system. If the problem isn't something in the OS or a conflict with something else installed, it could be a pain to loose all the changes and tweaks made to your system without it even helping (not to mention wasted time re-installing everything else).


Are you familiar with Linux? I got the game going a couple years ago without having used Wine before, or Linux much, though with stability problems. IIRC Xanlosch also had stability issues at the time, though I think only occasionally. More recent versions of Wine may work better.
DD on linux / Xanlosch's guide


[color:"orange"]My hard disk died at least 3 times when I was playing this game, back in 2002 and 2003.[/color]

Ouch. The hard drive in my first PC died at the start of a long-overdue backup, and the replacement (which I had to pay to have cross-shipped, to try to get data recovered off the original) had more than 50% bad clusters (not that it mattered much, since there was physical damage to the original, and nothing could be recovered). The second replacement only lasted a few months, but the one after that lasted almost a year (there wasn't anything important on it either time, since I didn't trust it). The final replacement still works, AFAIK (it is in a system built from spare parts, which I don't think has even been turn on in quit awhile).

Yes, I did. However, when I'd disabled it completely, mein gott... the issue actually worsened. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" /> It was like the hymn of a million crickets.



Yes, and my computer passed all of them.



Yes, I saw that thread before but decided against trying the solution 'cos it could cause even more issues. Thanks for the link, though. :P I might try that out later. ^^


Well, all of them except for uTorrent, to dl some demos and well, indie games. And mmm... let's see: WinThrottle I use to reduce the cpu speed 'cos it gets kinda hot here.


Hmmm... nope.


Hmmm... nope 'cos this hard disk has Linux installed too. Yeah, well... it's not like this o/s has a lot of stuff installled, apart from Firefox and a few others.


Oops... now that you mentioned "Linux", I recall that it's on this pc but it's considered a "failed installation" because I accidentally corrupted it(the typical newbie Xorg error). =P I still haven't got around to reinstalling it. Plus, Windows has been on this pc for quite a few months and given that games often install protection like Starforce which mess around with your pc, I thought I'd reinstall it sooner or later. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />




Yeah, hard disks these days are quite fragile. They just don't last as they used to. I remember my old Maxtor hard disk which worked for almost 10 years. It was kinda slow but we even managed to install Photoshop CS on it and tortured the poor thing into oblivion. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/devil.gif" alt="" />

Sometime when you are not using uTorrent, try shutting it and WinThtottle down temporarily. I'd expect competition for hard drive access and/or CPU cycles to cause sound stuttering, rather than static / distortion, but the game could have a problem either program. The fact that the sound issues got worse with hardware sound acceleration disabled may have been due to the increased CPU demands.


[color:"orange"]Yeah, well... it's not like this o/s has a lot of stuff installled, apart from Firefox and a few others.[/color]

Well that makes it easier to re-install Windows, anyway.


[color:"orange"]Yeah, hard disks these days are quite fragile.[/color]

Actually, this was about 10 years ago that the (1GB) drive died. I replaced it with a Quantum 4GB SCSI drive, that is still going, as are a couple other Quantum drives added later (9 and 18GB). After Maxtor bought Quantum I got a huge 80GB Maxtor IDE drive, which is now considered small (but it works fine).

Yep, did all that. Hmmm... the problem didn't go away. However, when I set Ambient to 0, the annoying background noise went away. Though, I'm not sure about the distorted noises that occur from time to time.

*sighs* Maybe the ambient files are corrupted. Darn... I hope that the next game will have check to ensure that the files are okay, during installation. Anyways, given that I reinstalled the game at least twice, perhaps my cd is screwed. Oh well.


It definitely does.

1 GB?! That sure brings back memories! Ahh... in those days, there were a lot of text games and the sound effects were more like "beeps" from the internal speakers. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

It is more likely the game is having a problem playing the ambient sounds than the file being corrupt (with a corrupt file I'd expect the symptoms to be more consistent).
There is a way to check the installed files, though, described in a section of the topic below. If there is a problem with a CD, there may be a way to repair any files can not be read properly.

Troubleshooting Tips (& manual install procedure)



The last time I re-partitioned the drives, I thought I was being extravagant using 7GB of the 9GB drive for games (this was when 1GB for Diablo 2 was still a little large). Now that is at most enough for 2 or 3 newish games installed at a time. The other 2GB was lots of room for Windows 98 and a fair number of applications; Vista requires a minimum of 15GB. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />

Hmmm... I just decided to install another game to "test-see" and you know what? The same problem is in that game(Secret files: Tunguska), too. Furthermore, in yet another game(missing since January), things are starting to crash(plenty of kernel32.dll and Quicktime errors). And I'm getting Directx crashes in Culpa Innata. Even worse, the hissing problems are still in Divine Divinity and Secret Files, despite my having removed the sound card and enabled the onboard sound.

Well, I'm not sure what the exact problem is but I think the only way I'd eliminate it is by reinstalling the o/s. This is because previously, I'd played Still Life, Culpa Innata and a few other Directx games and the sound was fine.

I suspect the problems must've slowly but surely corrupted the system, especially when games and Directx are involved. So, I'm going to restart the entire slipstream process and burn the cd at a low speed.

Finally, I'll keep an eye on my sound card. It seemed to function extremely well on Linux which can be really picky with messed-up hardware but who knows? And thank you so much for your help. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />




Hmmm... I think I'll just borrow my friend's original dvd/cds. I'm tired of fixing these things all day. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />



LOL... oh yeah! Talk about it. Even some of the latest games with not-so recent graphics, also take up a lot of space too. For example: Secret Files Tunguska isn't full 3d but rather, made up of pre-rendered 3d backgrounds(pre-rendered somehow looks a bit better than some full 3d games, imo). Geez, the patch was about 200 mb huge. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" /> O

Okay, not as large as the patch for Scratches which was like 500 mb huge. And then, the save games for Divine Divinity? Everytime I save a few games, I transfer the older ones into another partition. My total save games for DD = at least 9 gb. I hope that the DD 2 will have better save games compression.

Now, compare all that to something like say, Fallout 1(haven't really finished it yet). The save games was like what? A few kb each? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

Well, at least with a non-hardware system problem, re-installing Windows is likely to fix it.

You can zip the DD save folders to save a lot of space (1GB of saved game folders will zip to under 200MB). I guess higher save sizes are the price for the game keeping track of every little object that can be moved, etc (which makes the game more immersive).

Yep, you're right! Still, I'm playing it safe and this time, I'm testing everything in Vbox before trying it out for real. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" /> Apart from some errors(caused by Vbox), everything seems fine and I'm currently using Autopatcher. ^^

Aha... so that's why the saved files were so huge. Ah well. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

But then again, such immersion is a reason why I couldn't get into some rpgs: I've been spoilt by DD, I guess. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" /> With the other games, true: they did have a bit of challenge in them but man, clicking non-stop on a bunch of enemies? Bleah.

With DD, I remember actually having to pause the game plenty of times during combat and actually luring the opponents past certain points, so I could gain certain cover. Furthermore, when it came to the Abbey, my level 14(?) or so mage actually managed to finish that place off by luring the enemies out before moving in to clear out the place. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" /> It was tough but after a while, I managed to clear the entire place!

What I enjoyed most about the combat was that with some cunning and skill, you could overcome the greater odds. It was very balanced: while the opponents could be deadly swift, you always had ways to slow them down, to get to them or at least run away to count your options.

Finally, I reformatted the pc. However, the sound issue still remains in a couple of games. Hmmm... I'm going to try and figure out what's causing the issue 'cos I'd already tried the onboard sound, swapped speakers and even used headphones.

I suspect something's interfering with the sound on the system but what? Oh well... I'd already re-arranged the wires. And I wonder if it's 'cos of the PCM Converter.

In the end, it turns out the cause was... my speakers(doh!). I just plugged in some old headphones and nothing's wrong with the sound in many various applications and games. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />