SOUND PROBLEMS starting on Jan 31st - Punkbuster possible reason??????

[[FM]Master_Chief]

I have no idea what's going on. I've been playing for several months and this has never happened to me before. I join a server and after 30 secs of gameplay there's a little stutter and I loose all my sound in game. I have to restart the game to get it back but then again it's gone afer few secs of playing.

I have just created a new account but don't see how this could be the reason. I never change anything in sound setting on my original account and never had that problem.

Any ideas?

[[FM]Master_Chief]

Re: Loosing sound after 30 secs of gameplay

no takers?

[Pennybags]

Re: Loosing sound after 30 secs of gameplay

I doubt having a new account will help. Sounds like similar probs I am having. You wouldn't happen to have a soundblaster card would you?

[[FM]Master_Chief]

Re: Loosing sound after 30 secs of gameplay

Yeah, I do - Audigy2 ZS. But it worked with no problems for approx 3 months. It just started to go nuts today, after I created new account. It always gets screwed after few secs of play, there's a stutter (is that when punkbuster takes a ss???) and it goes all nuts. Sometimes I loose it completly, sometimes everything gets all screwy to the point that it's painful to listen to.

[imported_Wasp]

Re: Loosing sound after 30 secs of gameplay

Have you tried reinstalling you drivers? If you dl the driver called SBA2_PCDrvBeta_LB_2_08_0002.exe and unpack it with winrar you can then go into the folder \driver\support\i386 and click the file called ctzappxx. This program gives you the option to remove the old drivers prior to installing this one. This driver is beta but has full OpenAL support for Audigy2.

[[FM]Master_Chief]

Re: Loosing sound after 30 secs of gameplay

Yes I reinstalled my audio driver and it removed the old one (at least it said it did on the screen) and rebooted before installing the new one.

[marktheimmortal]

Re: Loosing sound after 30 secs of gameplay

this started happening to me last night. I had played bf2 for about an hour with no problems. Turned my computer off, grabbed some food, then loaded it up.

The sound was fine for the first 5 secs, would then go all distorted and stopped working. I haven't installed/uninstalled/changed anything between it working fine and not....

i have an audigy 1, so i'll try reinstalling drivers tonight.

[[FM]Master_Chief]

Re: Loosing sound after 30 secs of gameplay

come on guys, anyone has any ideas?

[dash]

Re: Loosing sound after 30 secs of gameplay

same thing happened to me last nite...was working fine for 2 months until last nite. It stutters, which sounds like a walkie talkie.

Specs are:
AMD 3500+ Venice
2GB Corsair XMS
XFX Geforce 7800GT
Creative Audigy 2 ZS

Anyone got an idea? sometimes it goes back to normal

[imported_Roman]

Re: Loosing sound after 30 secs of gameplay

Also a Sound Blaster Audigy owner here and alas, I have been struck by the same issue here. And after much exploration I was unable to fix it. My experiences lead me to believe it could be punkbuster related but I can’t say with any certainty (more on that later).

I'll describe my situation in detail so that perhaps others can also offer insight.

Quite recently (earlier yesterday) I've also begun to experience the same sound distortion. It was usually preceded by a single very high pitch distorted noise (squeak of some kind... feels like your ears are being stabbed), after that I can no longer hear the fire from my primary or secondary weapons. Most but not all of the other environmental sounds seem to be unaffected as I can still hear comms/explosions and such, although it is noticeable that some are missing. A few minutes into the round sounds will corrupt completely and play out of order/randomly and mostly in an ear breaking pitch.

Convinced that this was not a sound driver issue (since I haven’t updated them in a few months) I decided to do a complete removal of Battlefield 2 and Special Forces, removing any profile settings along with the uninstall.

After a reinstall of Battlefield 2, followed by Special Forces and then 1.12 patch I joined a server along with a friend and enjoyed around 10 minutes of normal sound (My settings are usually Hardware, High, EAX On). I was kicked by punkbuster for having the punkbuster files out of date with a message informing me to go to evenbalance.com to update them. So I did.

After updating the punkbuster files as instructed I joined the same server and again after 30 or so seconds as described I experienced the same issue. I restarted my rig and rejoined the server again to little effect, the issue was still present.

I updated my soundcard drivers to the latest release by downloading AX_WEBUP_LB_2_08_0004.exe from the Creative support page to no effect, the issue was still present.

I started browsing around the web and using Google to search for similar problems experienced by others and found that the issue is not uncommon.

There were similar reports from Audigy 1/2 users ever since the demo; however the proposed fixes all had no effect. These involved updating or changing the OpenAL sound wrappers (OpenAL32.dll and wrap_oal.dll, usually found in your Windows\System32 directory).

The fix itself was to rename a newly downloaded up to date version of "OpenAL32.dll" to "BF2OpenAL.dll" and place it in your Battlefield 2 directory. I have tried every conceivable version of OpenAL32,dll and wrap_oal.dll, from every iteration of drivers I had and from all the OpenAL package versions I could find online, renaming them all to BF2OpenAL.dll
None of them worked : (

I then proceeded to remove my soundcard from its PCI slot, uninstall the drivers, boot into safe mode and use Driver Cleaner Pro to remove any traces of any Creative drivers that I've had. I placed the soundcard into a different PCI slot, and proceeded to test every iteration of sound drivers I could find.
This included (In that order):

AUDDRVPACK_L11.exe
AUD_EAX4DRV_031031.exe
AUD_WEBUP_PCWDRV_1-84-40.exe
SBA2_PCDrvBeta_LB_2_08_0002.exe
AX_WEBUP_LB_2_08_0004.exe

And with every driver, the issue was still present.

The ONLY PARTIAL FIX I could find was setting the speakers to 2 (instead of my usual 5.1 ) and EAX to Off. With these settings I still experience the squeak of death shortly after joining the server but retain the ambient/environmental sounds.

The following speaker/eax/sound settings reproduce the issue:
(Speaker type (5.1/4.1/2.1/Headphones are set in windows, other settings are Battlefield 2 menu)

5.1, Hardware, High, Eax On = squeak of death, loss of sounds, eventual complete sound corruption)

5.1, Hardware, High, Eax Off = squeak of death, loss of sounds, eventual complete sound corruption

2.1/Headphones, Hardware, High, Eax On =squeak of death, loss of sounds, eventual complete sound corruption

2.1/Headphones, Hardware, High, Eax Off = partial fix, squeak of death, sounds remain

So yeah... its something EAX and/or 5.1 related.

I will also point out that I've tested my 5.1 EAX setup in a few other games (FEAR, Prince of Persia Two Thrones, Rainbow Six Lockdown Demo, Call of Duty 2) and it functions flawlessly in those games. So the soundcard is not at fault, it seems this is a software problem.

REASONS WHY I BELIEVE IT IS PUNKBUSTER RELATED:

1) This issue DOES NOT occur in LAN or Single player games.
I've tested this extensively. I could play a LAN game with a friend for an hour but as soon as we join a ranked server the issue is reproduced.

2) This issue DOES NOT occur on unranked servers with Punkbuster disabled.

3)As I've stated earlier, I enjoyed a 10minute game without any sound corruption with a friend using my usual 5.1/Hardware/High/EaxOn setup on a ranked server just after a re-install of Battlefield 2 but PRIOR to updating my punkbuster files.

My System Specs:
Amd64xp3500+
Asus A8N SLi Motherboard
2gig (2x 1gig) DDR400 Ram
6800Ultra PCI-E nVidia Reference (no brand) video card
Sound Blaster Audigy (standard OEM card model number SB0090)

Running a pretty standard Windows XP with SP2, every driver is latest; this includes video and nforce chipset drivers. My onboard sound was/still is disabled in bios since first boot.


I really hope this long looong read helps us somehow. It certainly took me a while to arrive at this report. I do hope it is something as simple as a punkbuster incompatibility and could be easily fixed.

I’m going to sleep, maybe take a short break from BF2.

[JoeBlack]

Re: Loosing sound after 30 secs of gameplay

Same thing here. Problems started this week. Not only sound probs. Look at this pic what happend when i joined the server( map is Strike at Karkand). FFS another EA flop.

[[FM]Master_Chief]

Re: Loosing sound after 30 secs of gameplay

Well, that's just great .

I'll try posting at official BF2 website and see what I can come up with.

EDIT:
Roman, I allowed myself to paste (and give you credit) your post in my thread at official BF2 forums. Here it is if anyone is interested. Let's hope someone finds a solution.

http://forums.ea.com/mboards/thread....349087&#349087

EDIT2:
I emailed Punkbuster. We'll see if I get a response.

[turkeybaggins]

Re: Loosing sound after 30 secs of gameplay

i had probably the same thing start tonight! on a server ive always played on since i started BF2, my sound was working fine for 6 hours yesterday! ive just checked punkbuster and it updated two files by the looks of things, im yet to go and check my sound in game. i use an Audigy Platinum, at first i thought it was my bluetooth headphones but now maybe its something else! thats a shame

[MOGBAD83]

Re: Loosing sound after 30 secs of gameplay

exactly the same problem as roman, just started happening after i installed special forces. never happened b4 and about 10 mins ago it just crashed to desktop, however i have something to add

i have a saitek eclipse keyboard with the mute and volume up and down buttons, i got ****ed off with the sounds it made, so instead of quittin out of bf2 i pressed mute instead and after i while i would unmute and it the sounds would have gone away.
the screeching came back again after bein unmuted

all drivers and windows up 2 date

my pc specs r

amd 3200+ @ 2300 (coolermaster watercooling)
tagan 420watt psu
abit an8
dane elec 1gig ram (1 module)
40gig ide hard drive and 120gig wd sata
msi 128mb 6600 gt pcie with aftermarket cooling (soon to be 7800gtx, when it arrives :) )

alot of people who have this problem seem to have an abit motherboard of the an8 series as well

[Omerta]

Re: Loosing sound after 30 secs of gameplay

Ok.

What the hell is going on here??

I too had this occur last night.I had entered a server and my sound went crazy and started cracking and popping then a loud screech.I immediately rebooted the system and rejoined the server and it was the same.
I figured it was the sound card so I uninstalled the drivers pulled the card out and ran driver cleaner in safe mode.
I figured I would just run off my onboard (AC97) sound till I was able to get a new card.Anyway after installing the latest drivers from Realtek and firing up BF2 again there was little difference.The sound is all choppy and Voice over(Commander and teamate statements) are all messed up.Some weapon sounds are missing and the game crashes to desktop.
Then I said frig it and done an entire reformat.Spent all night and part of the morning getting this thing back to normal.
To make a long story short the reformat did absolutely nothing.
So I've been hardware trouble shooting all day and reading but can't seem to figure this out.
I have run every possible CPU stress test,memory drive tests to see if I could crash this machine but no way.
I ran 3DMark 06 and out scored my previous best by 16 points.
We had a severe winter storm here and I was going to replace the motherboard but everything was closed.

I dunno guys?I wish we could get some help on this.

Specs.
My System Specs:
Amd64xp3800+Venice
Asus A8N SLi Motherboard
2gig (4x 512) PC3200DDR Ram
Leadtek 7800GT
Sound Blaster Audigy


I find it strange this happend to us and it is certainly confusing the hell out of me

[Valhalla]Omerta