TS2013 and EFX Audio Issues

[JustRight]

Hi All,

After finally getting TS2013 running one of the first 'issues' I have found is with the Audio.

Has anyone noticed that the source/location of sounds is no longer working? Previously I could always tell when another train was coming from 'behind' me. Or when driving in the head out of the window mode, as you panned the view around you could tell the loco engine noise was 'behind' or to the 'left' or 'right' of your view. With TS2013 this directional capability seems to have disappeared.

I have tried with EFX enabled and disabled. With it enabled, at least there is some occlusion effects in the cab and reverb under bridges etc, but the sound effects seem to come from directly 'ahead' of you regardless of which way your view is facing.

Anyone else notice this? I personally think this is a step backwards from the previous EAX based audio in TS2012.

Cheers.

[JustRight]

And...

The next issue I have noticed is that as a long train passes you the sound of the loco engine remains loud and overrides the sound of the wagons as they pass. The loco engine sound does not taper off until the entire train has passed by!!

Anyone else notice this behaviour?

Cheers.

[JustRight]

And...

The next issue I have noticed is that as a long train passes you the sound of the loco engine remains loud and overrides the sound of the wagons as they pass. The loco engine sound does not taper off until the entire train has passed by!!

OK, so I was able to fix this one by re-applying ALL of my Arrmstrong Sound Packs. Now the freight wagons sond like wagons as they pass by, and you only hear the loco engine as it passes by directly.

Still no success in trying to recover the 'directional' nature of the sounds either in-cab or outside.

[sundog]

Hmmmm that's interesting. I haven't noticed your particular problems, but II decided to re-install some AP soundpacks - basically the MKI/II coach pack, the CL142, and soundpacks for the EMUs, and after I'd done that I lost ALL sound completely. I'm not sure if it's one or all of the packs at the moment. I've just done a re-verify of the cache and 250-odd files were re-aquired. Just about to try and see if the vanilla version is ok now. It's especially interesting because your AP packs seemed to have worked ok for you.

[phat2003uk]

Just a quick tip. If any of the sound packs don't work, try clearing the blueprint cache to see if that changes anything.

[JustRight]

Just a quick tip. If any of the sound packs don't work, try clearing the blueprint cache to see if that changes anything.

Hi Richard,

I have not had any trouble with your Sound Packs. I was commenting on the 'vanilla' behaviour of TS2013 after the upgrade. Once I re-installed all of the Sound Packs things became much better. The MK3 Carriages and HHA Wagons etc etc sound AOK now. I have just had a quick blast in a Class43 MTU, and it all worked OK (your Sound Packs that is).

However I definitely don't like what RSC have done with the audio engine. The old EAX engine may have had its problems but the new one has lost all ability to determine direction. The loco engine sounds in the cab, although slightly occluded, sound as if they are directly ahead of you, regardless of which way you are facing. Same goes for the Head Out cab view, the loco engine sounds are just damned loud, and are exactly that same facing forwards as backwards. I personally would rather the old EAX based audio, despite its other issues.

Cheers, Trevor

[sundog]

Just a quick tip. If any of the sound packs don't work, try clearing the blueprint cache to see if that changes anything.

Hi Richard

That was the first thing I did after installing the packs. I've just checked and the vanilla version is back to normal, and the 142 pack works fine. I might try and install each pack individually and check to see if it works ok. I think I ought to make this a separate thread or PM your personally if you wouldn't mind though because it's not a problem the OP had.

Ken

[JustRight]

Hi All,

Well, after much research and trial and error I have been able to get the full range of EAX effects working. This includes occlusion, reverb and, most importantly, proper directional audio! With the directional audio now working I can tell where any noise is in the game, left, right, forward or behind. When driving from the Cab the occluded engine noise sounds like it is behind me, when driving in the Head Out view and panning around the location of the engine noise follows it's actual source on the loco. As other trains pass I can tell that they are passing on the right of left, and as they go by the sound is clearly receeding behind me. Much, much more realistic than the almost monophonic noise presented by the default OpenAL32 sound renderer.

To use this you will need a backup of your TS2012 directory, also unfortunately I suspect this will only work for those of you with Creative sound cards. I am using an X-Fi Titanium.

The following instructions will lead you through how to set this up.

1) Ensure that the EFX option in the Audio Game Settings is 'ON', and then exit TS2013
2) Open up the Creative Alchemy installation utility. This is usually located in: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Creative\ALchemy\ALchemy.exe"
3) You will now need to define an entry for TS2013 if you don't already have one
3a) Click on 'Add'
3b) Enter a Game Title. TS2013 would be good
3c) Click on the "Use Game Path" radio button
3d) Enter the path to where Railworks.exe lives. Often something like: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\railworks"
3e) Click on 'OK'
3f) You should now have an entry called TS2013 on the left hand side.
4) Highlight the new entry and click on the button with the double right arrows ">>"
5) Exit the ALchemy utility program
6) Now go to your TS2013 main directory and find the file called "OpenAL32.dll".
7) Rename "OpenAL32.dll" to something else. Eg: OpenAL32.dll.TS2013
8) Now, go to your backup of TS2012.
9) Find the "OpenAL32.dll" file in that directory. This is an earlier Creative dll.
10) Copy the TS2012 version of "OpenAL32.dll" to your TS2013 directory.
11) Check in your TS2013 directory as well that you have two files placed there by ALchemy. dsound.dll and dsound.ini

That's it, you are ready to go. TS2013 will now run using the EAX facilities provided by the older Creative OpenAL32.dll and the ALchemy dsound.dll.

Anyhow, with this set up my audio sounds MUCH better, particularly with regard to support for proper directional audio.

So, if you have a Creative sound card, give this a try.

Obviously your milage may vary. If it all goes pear shaped then just uninstall the dsound.dll and dsound.ini files, and delete the TS2012 version of OpenAL32.dll, finally renaming the TS2013 version back to OpenAL32.dll.

Cheers, hope this is of some use to you all.

[smartie38]

I find it curious why that would even work now considering alchemy is for intercepting directsound calls and the game now uses openal, even copying the openal dll from a 2012 install won't change that as the sound change is in the core code.

I also don't have problems with directional sound on my x-fi titanium card with this new version, what sound glitch I am getting though is a hissing when certain game sounds are playing, like the ping sound you hear when approaching a green signal, I get the hissing sound with the ap mtu pro soundpack, I did a little test last night and didn't have any hissing with the valenta or vp185 sounds.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

[smusso]

Hi All,

Well, after much research and trial and error I have been able to get the full range of EAX effects working. This includes occlusion, reverb and, most importantly, proper directional audio! With the directional audio now working I can tell where any noise is in the game, left, right, forward or behind. When driving from the Cab the occluded engine noise sounds like it is behind me, when driving in the Head Out view and panning around the location of the engine noise follows it's actual source on the loco. As other trains pass I can tell that they are passing on the right of left, and as they go by the sound is clearly receeding behind me. Much, much more realistic than the almost monophonic noise presented by the default OpenAL32 sound renderer.

To use this you will need a backup of your TS2012 directory, also unfortunately I suspect this will only work for those of you with Creative sound cards. I am using an X-Fi Titanium.

The following instructions will lead you through how to set this up.

1) Ensure that the EFX option in the Audio Game Settings is 'ON', and then exit TS2013
2) Open up the Creative Alchemy installation utility. This is usually located in: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Creative\ALchemy\ALchemy.exe"
3) You will now need to define an entry for TS2013 if you don't already have one
3a) Click on 'Add'
3b) Enter a Game Title. TS2013 would be good
3c) Click on the "Use Game Path" radio button
3d) Enter the path to where Railworks.exe lives. Often something like: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\railworks"
3e) Click on 'OK'
3f) You should now have an entry called TS2013 on the left hand side.
4) Highlight the new entry and click on the button with the double right arrows ">>"
5) Exit the ALchemy utility program
6) Now go to your TS2013 main directory and find the file called "OpenAL32.dll".
7) Rename "OpenAL32.dll" to something else. Eg: OpenAL32.dll.TS2013
Now, go to your backup of TS2012.
9) Find the "OpenAL32.dll" file in that directory. This is an earlier Creative dll.
10) Copy the TS2012 version of "OpenAL32.dll" to your TS2013 directory.
11) Check in your TS2013 directory as well that you have two files placed there by ALchemy. dsound.dll and dsound.ini

That's it, you are ready to go. TS2013 will now run using the EAX facilities provided by the older Creative OpenAL32.dll and the ALchemy dsound.dll.

Anyhow, with this set up my audio sounds MUCH better, particularly with regard to support for proper directional audio.

So, if you have a Creative sound card, give this a try.

Obviously your milage may vary. If it all goes pear shaped then just uninstall the dsound.dll and dsound.ini files, and delete the TS2012 version of OpenAL32.dll, finally renaming the TS2013 version back to OpenAL32.dll.

Cheers, hope this is of some use to you all.

Thanks for this tip JustRight it works a treat,sounds back to normal ts2013 running ok = Bliss.

Regards
smusso

[Trev123]

I actually think there is a spelling error in TS2013 sounds setup. I think it should read EAX not EFX on or off.

[JustRight]

I find it curious why that would even work now considering alchemy is for intercepting directsound calls and the game now uses openal, even copying the openal dll from a 2012 install won't change that as the sound change is in the core code.

I thought so to, but this actually works. The older OpenAL32 dll on its own is not enough, it seems to need the directsound dll as well??? Specifically, with the TS2012 OpenAL32.dll on it's own the directonal sound support comes back, but to get occlusion and reverb the dsound.dll file needs to be present.

I'm interested that your installation with an X-Fi worked correctly using the TS2013 version of OpenAL32, with directional sounds etc. I wonder just what the problem is that causes that to go away.

Anyway, there has been one other reply to this thread, so far, that indicates that I was not perhaps the only one to notice this issue, and my hack seems to have worked for that person too.

Cheers

[scefhwil]

Very curious. I have an X-fi PCIe Extreme Audio card and the default TS2013's OpenAL gives me 3d positioned sound, occlusion and reverd OK, no hacking required.

RS.com have used OpenAL Soft (see http://www.engine-driver.com/2012/09/tr ... 3-faq.html). This is confirmed by the Sound Debug Dialog. A google for OpenAL Soft gives alot of info; I presume the fact it does not attract a licence fee is the main attraction for RS.com? The dll RS.com provide also seems to be the most recent one available too.

It is actually EFX (no typo), but OpenAL enables EAX as well it seems.

But I can't help but wonder why it's called "Soft" - seems to imply it is software rendering not hardware accelarated? Which our X-fi cards should be able to do?

[JustRight]

Very curious. I have an X-fi PCIe Extreme Audio card and the default TS2013's OpenAL gives me 3d positioned sound, occlusion and reverd OK, no hacking required.

Hi mate,

It appears that the lack of positional audio on my system must be a setup or some other problem. Tell me, in the Creative Audio Control Panel, do you have "X-Fi CMSS-3D" enabled? Do you have "EAX Effects" enabled? Presumably you are running in "Game Mode" as well.

Also, what version of X-Fi Driver do you have installed. My system (Win7 64bit) reports: 6.0.1.1348 Dated: 7/07/2010

It's very strange, I have now set my system back to use the default TS2013 OpenAL32.dll and I'm trying to get positional audio by mucking about with the X-Fi settings.

It's frustrating!

[ttjph]

Good spot on the lack of directional audio, and thanks for the fix - worked for me.

Two other sound-related issues:

1) Before applying this fix, I had issues with TS losing sound completely (including the initial game loading sequence). This was despite having played it fine earlier in the same morning, no reboot or anything.

2) Has anyone else noticed issues with sound cutting out for a split second, at semi-regular intervals (15-35 seconds)? I've had it now with the 66 and with an HST, although I didn't notice it with a (sound-pack-applied) SD40-2.