Silent Hunter III Sound Distortion

[Phil2]

Hello,

I have two systems. On one I have Grey Wolf Gold. On the second and older system (Athlon 3500, Nvidia 7800GT), I have a stock version of Silent Hunter III. Both the stock and STEAM versions are setup

As soon as I enter the control room in either the CD stock version or the STEAM version, I receive a progressively louder BUZZ sound.

What is the origin of this distortion, or brown noise, or BUZZ?

How do I get rid of it?

Please advise

[JU_88]

Hello,

I have two systems. On one I have Grey Wolf Gold. On the second and older system (Athlon 3500, Nvidia 7800GT), I have a stock version of Silent Hunter III. Both the stock and STEAM versions are setup

As soon as I enter the control room in either the CD stock version or the STEAM version, I receive a progressively louder BUZZ sound.

What is the origin of this distortion, or brown noise, or BUZZ?

How do I get rid of it?

Please advise

Do you mean EVERY time you enter the control room? or just each time you load up a patrol (where you start in the boats control room)?

If its the latter, it sounds like you are describing the ol' subnet collision sound bug, its been around since stock and is considered slightly annoying - but very minor as it usually doesnt occur more than once per load game and it only lasts a couple of seconds.
So im not sure, are you saying the noise you hear is constant?

BTW this is the Sh5 forum, so dont be suprised if this thread gets moved tot he SH3 forum by a moderator.

[Phil2]

Hello,

The brown noise becomes progressively louder. It occurs whether I am on Patrol or in Training. I happens with the STEAM as well as the UBI Soft CD version, patched up to 1.4b.
Yet it DOES NOT occur on another system I own which is newer (Intel dual core 3.2Ghz, GTX285) where I can run Grey Wolf Gold and STEAM SHIII without distortion.
It happens on an older system (Athlon 3500-2.3Ghz, Nvidia7800). The common denominator is a RealTek AC97 sound driver or codec. No other application on this system demonstrates the same sound distortion. It is application specific and does not evaporate over time.
Sorry the the SH5 thread. I am new in the harbor and get confused easily. Since those who went through SHIII, I might want to believe unintentionally that they have migrated to SH5 and may have had this SH3.....Very frustrating and lacks any consistency to make sense toward repair.

[danlisa]

This problem was around at the very first release of SH3. IIRC it was to do with Sound Acceleration settings when using on MOBO sound devices. It occurs when low end systems compete for processing priority for the various devices.

If you pull up DXDIAG (run command) you should be able to reduce the acceleration for testing. I think that will fix it.

Alternatively, uninstall the sound drivers and fresh reinstall or get a dedicated sound card.

[Phil2]

Having not been able to find a reliable download source for new RealTek sound drivers other than those posing as "fuzzbusters" and selling snake oil cures for whatever ails a system, I relented on my older system.

I did find that replacing the standard SHIII with Grey Wolf does eliminate the sound distortion or brown noise phenomenon. However, Grey Wolf is not built for a 2.3Ghz system. It is very slow in loading.

On the newer system with a Intel dual core 3.2Ghz, as well as the Realtek AC97 driver, I obtain NO distortion either on the stock SHIII in STEAM or the much MODed Grey Wolf setup.

I agree that the noise is probably application specific. Yet I would like to update my drivers at a reliable RealTek site. I could find none.

[K-61]

I had to buy a sound card for my gaming desktop after I experienced a hideous drop in frame rates whenever I sank a ship. The CPU had too much work to do; once I installed a Sound Blaster card the problem went away. From years of gaming experience I have become a firm believer in dedicated cards for certain functions.