Distorted sounds - 1.51

[Deceiver]

Hey IXEG team,

Despite this issue, I have been flying the pants off the newly updated aircraft and am really enjoying it.

The issue I am facing is that in 1.50 and 1.51 my sounds are distorted - there's a horrible static over the ambient sounds (such as engine sounds, most notably in exterior view), and things like altitude alerts, dings (switching to ground power, APU power), alt horn, etc are either played at ~1.5x speed or a combination of this while also being very low volume.

I troubleshooted whether it was the IXEG/Gizmo or X-Plane by:

1) Muting X-Plane from the settings - this did not change the issue because the IXEG sounds continued to play

2) checking other non-Gizmo aircraft - these all function as expected

So it seems like this might be related to Gizmo, or something specific to the 737?

If my description is not clear enough, I'm happy to record a video for you to demonstrate.
Log attached, though from a quick skim I don't see any issues relating to sounds.

Log.txt

Edited October 2, 2023 by Deceiver

[Litjan]

Hi there,

happy that you fly our plane a lot!

We play our own sounds using OpenAL, and historically this sometimes clashes with other sound sources, especially if the sound hardware is somewhat limited in capacity. Usually this shows when certain sounds don´t play, but distortion could also be possible.

To troubleshoot this I would first see if the sound drivers in your operating system are up to date.

The second step would be to (temporarily) remove all your add-ons, especially those that also create sounds, like your third-party ATC, fly with lua, terrain radar, etc.

I hope this points you in the right direction, Jan

[Deceiver]

Hey Jan,

Thanks for your reply.

I did disable things like World Traffic and xPilot, which did not make a difference, but I didn't try terrain radar or Fly With Lua because I didn't expect that they'd have any sound involvement. I have very little in the way of Lua scripts, so that thought didn't even cross my mind.

I'll disable everything and see if that makes a difference. If I find a culprit, I'll report back.

[Pils]

A video might be a good idea regardless.

[Deceiver]

23 hours ago, Litjan said:

Hi there,

happy that you fly our plane a lot!

We play our own sounds using OpenAL, and historically this sometimes clashes with other sound sources, especially if the sound hardware is somewhat limited in capacity. Usually this shows when certain sounds don´t play, but distortion could also be possible.

To troubleshoot this I would first see if the sound drivers in your operating system are up to date.

The second step would be to (temporarily) remove all your add-ons, especially those that also create sounds, like your third-party ATC, fly with lua, terrain radar, etc.

I hope this points you in the right direction, Jan

Hi again Jan,

I went through all the steps of disabling all plugins (except Gizmo and the X-A validator), as well as updating my drivers. This yielded no difference.

Interestingly though, I happen to Remote Desktop to my PC from my work laptop and fire up X-Plane to check something today. The 737 was the last aircraft I flew, so I just hit new flight with everything as-is and loaded in. When I loaded in via RDP, the sound is perfect!
This seems to suggest it's some kind of compatibility with OpenAL and my sound card (given that under RDP all physical audio devices are disabled), would you agree?

7 hours ago, Pils said:

A video might be a good idea regardless.

After going through the above, I recorded a video as suggested. See below. The video is still processing at the time of upload.

 

[Litjan]

1 hour ago, Deceiver said:

This seems to suggest it's some kind of compatibility with OpenAL and my sound card

That sounds (haha) very plausible. I am not much of a hardware (or software) guru, so I can only guess as to what might be the core of the problem here .

Maybe someone reading here with a more profound understanding of the issue can chime in here.

Sorry that I could not provide a ready solution, I hope that you will find one!

Cheers, Jan

[mjrhealth]

@Deceiver try turning off hardware acceleration off on your sound card. What card isvit anyway.

[Deceiver]

14 hours ago, mjrhealth said:

@Deceiver try turning off hardware acceleration off on your sound card. What card isvit anyway.

I had a brief look this morning for hardware acceleration options but couldn't see anything.

It's onboard Realtek audio on an ASRock X670E Pro RS board

[Deceiver]

Hi again @Litjan,

I did some homework into this, and it appears to be a pretty common problem with games and applications that use OpenAL.

I came upon OpenAL-Soft which can be used to configure OpenAL on a system, and following some solutions for other games I came up with this as my settings:

Unfortunately, this did not resolve the problem, and I continued to tinker with the Sample Rate and Resampler Quality settings. Adjusting these did make a difference as to just how distorted the sound was, but it did not solve the problem.

I also uninstalled my onboard sound driver and let it fall back to the Microsoft provided one. This did not yield any difference.

My final point of call was testing with other audio devices to rule out the hardware itself. To do this, I used a Rode USB DAC. Unfortunately, this also did not change anything.

So, I can safely say that this is an issue with OpenAL. I realise this is not IXEG's product, but it was your choice to use it and so there needs to be some level of support over this matter. To say "Sorry that I could not provide a ready solution, I hope that you will find one!" and send me on my way is pretty poor.
Is there a reason that OpenAL was chosen over FMOD, which has become very much the flight sim standard for audio?

[Litjan]

There are plans to move to FMOD in the future.

I realize that you are not happy with my answer and would have preferred a solution, but I honestly ask you: What do you think this solution should be?

Your problem is super isolated, I have not heard of anyone complaining about "distorted sounds" in 8 years of selling our product, feel free to search these forums for similar reports, I believe you will come up empty.

Once in a while a user for any software will come up with some hardware/software/OS combination that does not work, and there is nothing you can do.

So while I would like to offer you a reasonable solution, I honestly do not know how.

 

Edited October 4, 2023 by Litjan

[mjrhealth]

2 hours ago, Deceiver said:

Hi again @Litjan,

I did some homework into this, and it appears to be a pretty common problem with games and applications that use OpenAL.

I came upon OpenAL-Soft which can be used to configure OpenAL on a system, and following some solutions for other games I came up with this as my settings:

Unfortunately, this did not resolve the problem, and I continued to tinker with the Sample Rate and Resampler Quality settings. Adjusting these did make a difference as to just how distorted the sound was, but it did not solve the problem.

I also uninstalled my onboard sound driver and let it fall back to the Microsoft provided one. This did not yield any difference.

My final point of call was testing with other audio devices to rule out the hardware itself. To do this, I used a Rode USB DAC. Unfortunately, this also did not change anything.

So, I can safely say that this is an issue with OpenAL. I realise this is not IXEG's product, but it was your choice to use it and so there needs to be some level of support over this matter. To say "Sorry that I could not provide a ready solution, I hope that you will find one!" and send me on my way is pretty poor.
Is there a reason that OpenAL was chosen over FMOD, which has become very much the flight sim standard for audio?

I have realtek too, no issues. Do you have sound effects enabled, do you have latest drivers, from your board manufacturer.

[Deceiver]

14 hours ago, Litjan said:

There are plans to move to FMOD in the future.

I realize that you are not happy with my answer and would have preferred a solution, but I honestly ask you: What do you think this solution should be?

Your problem is super isolated, I have not heard of anyone complaining about "distorted sounds" in 8 years of selling our product, feel free to search these forums for similar reports, I believe you will come up empty.

Once in a while a user for any software will come up with some hardware/software/OS combination that does not work, and there is nothing you can do.

So while I would like to offer you a reasonable solution, I honestly do not know how.

 

The problem might be super isolated, but it doesn't make it any less valid.

I'm a SaaS developer, and if I choose to use a dependency in my software, and that dependency causes a problem as significant as this, I'm expected to investigate and resolve it. That expectation carries over into any other form of software too, including flight simulation addons.
At absolute minimum it should be logged as a bug and investigated so that, while it currently is super isolated (and therefore I don't expect it to be logged as a critical priority), doesn't come up again.

My combination of hardware/software and OS is not at all uncommon either - 
Windows 11 22H2
Ryzen 9 7950X
64GB DDR5
ASRock X670E Pro RS with the onboard audio
X-Plane 12.07
IXEG 737 1.5.1

I'm not asking for a solution, I'm asking for it to be acknowledged as an issue that needs to be looked into, rather than "I hope you find a solution".

12 hours ago, mjrhealth said:

I have realtek too, no issues. Do you have sound effects enabled, do you have latest drivers, from your board manufacturer.

Spatial sound effects, or whatever they're called, are disabled.
The drivers have been mentioned previously.

Edited October 4, 2023 by Deceiver

[Litjan]

Your bug has been logged and we are going to look into it.

[Deceiver]

12 minutes ago, Litjan said:

Your bug has been logged and we are going to look into it.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

[trisho0]

Try Change Sound Systems from Control Panel and select "Do Nothing" and leave unselected speaker's options, no enhancements, etc.

Pat

[Stephan737]

As a short feedback: I'm having the same issue.

Outer marker sounds weird: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCHIAGvIPIQ&ab_channel=Stephan

Middle marker is the same: https://youtu.be/7aHwjrNFZ9I?si=70xStIHsz8Q3I27K&t=115

Stick shaker and power switching ding just as with Deceiver mentioned above: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEF8OVnuxwg&ab_channel=Stephan Additionally when in external view I frequently get a crash of the "sound engine". Only ambient sounds remain (even though switched off in the sim's sound menu). No warning (e.g. fire warn test) or engine sounds are audible in internal and external view when this happens. I have to restart the sim to regain the sound. Attached a video example with time stamp. No replay or sim rate change used. Just switching between the views via Shift + 1, Shift + 2, etc.: https://youtu.be/HYrivwctN7o?si=8QqeY3MmKD2v7_gu&t=82

 

Since I'm having lots of sound issues with the inibuild A300 as well (which runs with an older FMOD engine than XP12 if I understood their corresponding support post correctly) I'm guessing this is a sim problem. Hopefully somebody finds the cause of this sooner than later as this is really annoying after having XP12 out of beta and on the market for more than a year now. Sound sets are so good but frequently crash in XP12.

 

Godspeed and happy landings!

Stephan

Edited October 20, 2023 by Stephan737

[Stephan737]

Just had the crash of the sound system again enroute from EKCH to ENAT in cruise followed by a CTD. Log file attached but I don't think it shows somehting new as the last thing is the ever updating weather which is not the cause.

Log.txt

Edited October 21, 2023 by Stephan737

[Litjan]

Yes, the ultimate line in the log.txt shows that X-Plane detected the crash, but no further hints at why that is.

I think that providing the crash report to Laminar Research in the form of a bug report could help, they should have the technical ability to diagnose the reason why X-Plane crashed.

[Deceiver]

On 10/21/2023 at 6:10 AM, Stephan737 said:

As a short feedback: I'm having the same issue.

Outer marker sounds weird: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCHIAGvIPIQ&ab_channel=Stephan

Middle marker is the same: https://youtu.be/7aHwjrNFZ9I?si=70xStIHsz8Q3I27K&t=115

Stick shaker and power switching ding just as with Deceiver mentioned above: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEF8OVnuxwg&ab_channel=Stephan Additionally when in external view I frequently get a crash of the "sound engine". Only ambient sounds remain (even though switched off in the sim's sound menu). No warning (e.g. fire warn test) or engine sounds are audible in internal and external view when this happens. I have to restart the sim to regain the sound. Attached a video example with time stamp. No replay or sim rate change used. Just switching between the views via Shift + 1, Shift + 2, etc.: https://youtu.be/HYrivwctN7o?si=8QqeY3MmKD2v7_gu&t=82

 

Since I'm having lots of sound issues with the inibuild A300 as well (which runs with an older FMOD engine than XP12 if I understood their corresponding support post correctly) I'm guessing this is a sim problem. Hopefully somebody finds the cause of this sooner than later as this is really annoying after having XP12 out of beta and on the market for more than a year now. Sound sets are so good but frequently crash in XP12.

 

Godspeed and happy landings!

Stephan

Glad to hear I'm not the only one (though, sorry that you're also experiencing this).

Interestingly, I don't have a problem with the A300 - that seems to work fine.

[yeetlord69]

I am having this issue, this is unplayable. https://streamable.com/ajxbie

[tkyler]

we've been discussing this internally and while I was planning to work on the FMS  / FMOD sounds concurrently.... I believe I'll just do a deep dive on the sounds first and convert to FMOD, which could take upwards of many many weeks...so probably best just to get this solved.  Our OpenAL is definitely one of the more 'legacy' technologies we need to move on from asap.

-tk

[yeetlord69]

5 hours ago, tkyler said:

we've been discussing this internally and while I was planning to work on the FMS  / FMOD sounds concurrently.... I believe I'll just do a deep dive on the sounds first and convert to FMOD, which could take upwards of many many weeks...so probably best just to get this solved.  Our OpenAL is definitely one of the more 'legacy' technologies we need to move on from asap.

-tk

many weeks a temporary solution i found was to install FTSIM+ soundpack mod for now. doesn't sound nearly as good but it'll do.

[mjrhealth]

1 hour ago, yeetlord69 said:

many weeks a temporary solution i found was to install FTSIM+ soundpack mod for now. doesn't sound nearly as good but it'll do.

Its getting done now, its seems to be prioritised, you should be happy. How long did you expect it to take, 5 min.

Edited November 6, 2023 by mjrhealth

[tkyler]

1 hour ago, yeetlord69 said:

a temporary solution i found was to install FTSIM+ soundpack mod for now. doesn't sound nearly as good but it'll do.

well certainly any patches are welcome if they work.   Considering we have over a hundred custom sounds...a custom sound engine and custom code to drive all of those...which we have to now excise all that code while not breaking anything in the process.....and then porting all that code into FMOD params....yea....many many weeks.  BUT...it should then be good for many many years.  A worthwhile tradeoff IMO.

-tk

Edited November 5, 2023 by tkyler

[yeetlord69]

On 11/5/2023 at 6:52 PM, tkyler said:

well certainly any patches are welcome if they work.   Considering we have over a hundred custom sounds...a custom sound engine and custom code to drive all of those...which we have to now excise all that code while not breaking anything in the process.....and then porting all that code into FMOD params....yea....many many weeks.  BUT...it should then be good for many many years.  A worthwhile tradeoff IMO.

-tk

Is there anything I could do to fix the bug?