Hardware Settings under XP:

Control Panel / Sounds and Audio Devices / Audio / then "Advanced" under Sound Playback / Performance

There should be a slider there. if you can't find it, I can post some screenies later. :)

The problem with sounds is related to the new setting:

"Sound travel is realistic"

If you disable this it seems to solve the looping sound problem. Sucks though because the feature is REALLY cool when it works. You shoot a shell.... the explosion happens and hits you a few seconds later.... really cool but loops :)

There is not hardware acceleration for sound in Vista. Its all done in software.

Ahh! I see! I disabled it and restarted the game to make sure, And it worked..... for a while, about mid patrol I started to get the looping sounds again, voices etc, I played for a whole half hour in perfect audio conditions, It got my hopes up! :damn:

At least I didn't have to start the patrol with that annoying looping, but as soon as I engaged a japanese boat it started to flare up again... 2 ..5 ..6 ... 3 over and over.

Many experienced this problem in SH3 (I never did), so I guess it could travel over in SH4, being the same engine and all.

The only sound issue I had with SH3 was that the outside sounds came inside if I Alt+Tab`ed out of the game, and went back. Not very funny when a storm is raging.:D

Try ->Run->DxDiag->Sound->Set Sound Acceleration to none(zero).

That should do the trick.

That is of course if Windows Vista has external support for DirectX and it is not embeded into the Operating System,in which case I don't know how to access DirectX since I don't have Windows Vista :)

Can't do it in Vista it seems, reading other people saying there's no hardware acceleration in Vista anyway, considering also I don't have a sound card to do that hardware acceleration it shouldn't make a difference.

Anybody had the crew voices sound like they sucked a balloon full of hellium yet?

I have occasionaly, I figured this is because (I think) the game has a few voice sets and just varies the pitch to mimic different crew, Like in SH3 it was usually off key and you'd have a 10 year old in your crew.

Can you dual-boot into XP and create an install of Sh4 there? Might be an option to consider.

Personally, we don't even support Vista at my company yet due to the...hmm...'immature' nature of much of it. OS is fine, really, but the drivers are...less so. Realtek support IS pretty good, but...for my money? I'll just as soon stick with a SoundBlaster X-Fi and hardware acceleration in the 'tried and true' XP. (If for no other reason than - it's what the game was designed for!)

Not that I don't plan on upgrading as soon as possible, at any rate - Vista packs a LOT of cool features. It's just that...so much breaks with it right now, it seems more prudent to wait.