No sound in TS2014 att all, sometimes

[Fodda]

Whilst playing TS2013 I'd fire up the game and about one in ten times there would be no sounds at all in game. This means button press sounds in the menus, no background clanking and bonging in the menu screens and no sounds in the scenarios at all. A quick (if it can be called quick) restart would fix it and it'd be alright for another good few starts.

However, TS2014 seems to have gone the other way. Much more often than not I'm getting no sounds in game (menu, music and game sounds). Yesterday I had to restart five times before the sounds would work, and today they've not worked yet in six restarts.

One in about ten as I had with TS2013 I can cope with but this is just plain daft.

Anyone else seeing or rather hearing this problem?

I'm running an ASUS Xonar DGX soundcard using the supplied software and drivers.

No other game or app has this problem.

[markpullinger]

Hi, have you checked whether you are using hardware acceleration in player profiles bin, & if so, have you renamed/removed openAL32.dll from the railworks directory?
EDIT - just done a check with this & if the program hasn't got that file installed, you get a SBBH error as soon as you try to change anything in quick drive or run a scenario. Looks like that door has been closed as well - I am getting some EFX effects with hardware acceleration - just not as good as 2013 - this is with a z series sound blaster though.

[Fodda]

Thanks Mark. I'll have a look in the playerprofiles.bin file and see what's there. A quick tinker (with a backup natch) never did any harm.

[markpullinger]

Hi, we seem to have lost all of the hardware acceleration abilities - big step backwards!

[Fodda]

Mark

I've gone through a few old threads here I've run a few tests and configurations. Here's what I found:

I turned on ShowSoundDeviceSelector in the command line parameters and all I could select was software with no detection of any sound hardware. SO next:

I disabled the softwaremixing option my playerprefs.bin file (set it to 0 instead of default 1) and renamed the openAL32.dll file in the Railworks folder as you mentioned.

On restarting TS2014 I now have the option to select Generic Hardware, Generic Software and my Xonar DGX soundcard.

Selecting my DXG soundcard makes the sounds in game SO much better! All these years and I've not used this little tweak to take advantage of my PC's hardware. I now have proper stereo, and my AP Class 40 Pro sounds make the 40 sound fantastic. I hadn't realised just how much I was losing not being able to use my dedicated soundcard in TS2012, 13 and now 14. I've even got a slight fps increase too.

Unfortunately, the game wants to default to using the Generic Hardware setting which isn't as good, but still better than the old Software mixing I was using.

All we need now is a way for TS2014 to auto-detect the best soundcard and use it. Or maybe a way of permanently setting it in-game.

Cheers for steering me in the right direction. I'll be applying it to my offline TS2013 install as well to get decent sounds in that along with being able to use TrackIR.

[markpullinger]

Hi, you can set the Xonar to be the default device in windows sound settings - it should then use it by default - I say should....

Edit - Tried the show device selector with mine & works fine till I try to select anything scenario, then I get railworks.exe has encountered a problem & needs to close - works ok with the dll back in, even with hardware selected, but in mono, so not sure what's causing it.

Edit - adding -VC in launch options as well as renaming the openAL32.dll file & disabling software mixing in playerprofile.bin has got everything back to normal. Happy bunny!

[scefhwil]

Hi, you can set the Xonar to be the default device in windows sound settings - it should then use it by default - I say should....

Edit - Tried the show device selector with mine & works fine till I try to select anything scenario, then I get railworks.exe has encountered a problem & needs to close - works ok with the dll back in, even with hardware selected, but in mono, so not sure what's causing it.

Edit - adding -VC in launch options as well as renaming the openAL32.dll file & disabling software mixing in playerprofile.bin has got everything back to normal. Happy bunny!

Mark,

I spotted late last night that I was getting SBHH when trying to enable hardware sound as per TS2013, but not had time today to try and investigate and solve. Seems you beat me to it, so thanks for posting. Where did you get the -VC command line switch from?

Cheers

Stuart

[markpullinger]

Hi, I got it from http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic. ... 5#p1662846 thought what the heck & tried it!

[scefhwil]

Bit bizarre! But hey if it works...... Wonder what VC stands for?

[markpullinger]

Guessing at visual C but why - no idea. At least it works!

[asfinmja]

I also have Xonar-card (D2X) and sound is missing quite often in TS2014, as was with TS 2013 too. I've noticed that if you click sound icon in bottom right corner and then volume bar slider causing computer play that bling-sound, sounds are restored for next TS2014 start.