Player gun sounds disappear

[Chiablo]

When I play, my gun sounds disappear after about 15 seconds of play.

I have a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS and a 7.1 speaker setup.

EAX is on, and sound quality is set to High. Medium also causes the problem to happen.

All of the player gun sounds come from the center channel, I know the center channel is still working because I can hear my gun's shells hit the ground.

I have already checked the sound options in the control panel and the sound blaster panel to verify that it is set to 7.1.

Has anyone else experienced this problem?

[NoSoup4You]

Its a problem with the hardware setting in BF2. Set it to software, and you'll be okay. I'm surprised you haven't locked up, that seems to be the most common issue with an Audigy2 ZS on high settings (I have that problem).

[Chiablo]

Setting it to software drops my FPS down by 10 (20 if I enable EAX.)

I'd rather have a silenced weapon than that large of a performance hit.

[Xirtronic]

All of the player gun sounds come from the center channel, I know the center channel is still working because I can hear my gun's shells hit the ground.

I know -exactly- what you're talking about. Open up your EAX Console (in Windows, the software that came with the card). Turn off CMSS and EAX (this does not disable EAX in-game). This should work. You'll need to re-enable it for mp3's and whatnot.

edit: and for the love of god, you just spent $100 on a soundcard, you're damn right you're going to run it in hardware mode. (besides, software mode tacks on extra cycles to your cpu, think of your Audigy as a second cpu, but dedicated to audio processing... which is exactly what it is). I have *NO* problems, same card as you, make sure you have the updated drivers (multiple).

[Chiablo]

I didn't even think about that. Thanks, I'll try it out and let you know.

There really needs to be a stickied FAQ on common hardware problems like this.

[Chiablo]

CMSS3D was already disabled. Enabling it also causes the problem.

I turned off EAX, and the problem also occurs.

Also, in the last game I played, the ironsite was replaced by a large black block. Other textures were also having issues (helecopter blades, bushes, etc.) This might or might not be related... I think I just need to reboot.

I have lowered my video settings in order to work around the punkbuster "emty win32 module" error. I also have 1GB of ram and my swap file locked at 3 gigs, so I'm not low on memory.

[Chiablo]

Update, it seems that for some reason, my machine is not hanging onto the game's cache. The gun sounds disappear, then soon after I get the blank textures, soon text is replaced with black squares, then finally a crash to desktop. I've had some other problems with other games, so I think I'll spend the rest of the night reformatting and see if that clenches it.

I just need to remember to hang onto my custom keymappings. XD

I'll let you know if that worked or not.

[nimski]

Exact same issue here! I've tried just about everything I can think of and it still occurs. Mine usually flashes the black sceen a few minutes after guns sounds drop out, after the flash the game runs perfectly until the next sound drop (20 minutes-ish?). 1/6 times the black flash crashs BF2 or leaves me with black helicopter blades and text.

[Chiablo]

Final Update:

I got the problem resolved finally. Pretty much, I reformatted the machine, loaded on the newest audigy drivers (including the beta OpenAL driver,) and did a clean install of Battlefield 2.

No more missing sounds. It's a bit extreme of a solution, but I can now play without problems, and the stupid Punkbuster "empty win32 module" error went away.

Thanks for all your help guys!

[NoSoup4You]

Just a note: Your page file should only be 2.5 times your physical memory (1024*2.5=2560)

[nimski]

Glad you got it fixed Chiablo. I ended up setting my textures to low (all others high w/ X850PE) and that fixed it for me. I will now have a quick black flicker/audio drop after I join a game but that'll be the end of it.

I'm going to wait for ATI's new drivers before I update.

[Boon59]

try using the beta drivers for the sound card that use openal, the link is in here somewhere (possibly in the audigy 2 zs 600% improvement thread)

[nimski]

try using the beta drivers for the sound card that use openal, the link is in here somewhere (possibly in the audigy 2 zs 600% improvement thread)

I've ran driver cleaner, reinstalled the Audigy 2, and updated it to use EAX as per that post. It doesn't fix the black screen/gun dropout issue for me.