Stuck Sound

[EliteMarksman]

Is anyone aware of a fix for the issue that causes sounds to "stick?" On probably about half of my loco's, the sustained part of the horn/whistle fails to play, bells do not turn off, engine sounds stop, and the slightest use of air brakes (or throttle adjustment, in the case of the HST), greets me with never ending hissing. I notice the issue most with the British HST, which is one of my favorite trains to drive, class 37 i think (the one that looks like a Deltic), Black 5, the German mainline deisel, V200, i think it is, and the American SD40-2.

Sometimes it takes 3-4 hours in game to start happening, sometimes it takes 15 minutes. With the HST, I am able to clear the hissing sound by using one of the views that looks out the cab window and pointing the camera straight at the ground while looking toward the rear of the train. However, this only works until I change the throttle or brakes. On all other trains the only solution I have found is to save the scenario and restart Railworks.

I found some posts that potentially linked this to the sound card running out of memory and not being able to keep up with the rest of the game. I forced the sound quality to minimum, and increased the maximum level of RAM that the sound card is able to address to 1GB, neither of which seemed to have any effect. RW itself never seems to use more than 1.1GB, with about 750MB being free while the game is running.

Specs:
C2Q Q6600 @2.4GHz
Foxconn GM033, most recent chipset drivers
Realtek integrated sound, most recent drivers
3.35GB RAM
ATI 4850 512MB, most recent drivers

[Hawk]

Games like RW generally don't work well with on-board sound chips. A sound card is the better option.

[EliteMarksman]

That would make this the first time I have ever had an issue with onboard sound, with the same machine playing Empire: Total War, EVE, FS2004, Starcraft 2, Dragon Age: Origins, and 2.

Anyone have a recommendation for a good, cheap sound card? Most of the sub $50 ones seem to be 2005 vintage models put in new boxes...

[arizonachris]

I have no problems with my Realtek onboard sound and Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit. 3 hours in game is pretty long, this could be happening due to heat. And some British routes are known to have sound issues. May just have to wait and see what RW3 brings to the table.

[EliteMarksman]

No temp sensor on the realtek's IC, but the CPU is <65C across all cores, GPU is <70C, and ambient is around 50C, so I doubt heat is an issue.

Ah well, hopefully the NEC doesn't have this issue, and if it does, the whole system is being replace in 6 months or so anyway. The processor is still capable, but LGA 775 is dead, and the machine was bought right before 64bit became mainstream, so the memory controller will only do 4GB and will only handle PC2-5300...

Waiting for Bulldozer and/or Ivy Bridge to hit the market. If they are decent prices, will go with whichever has better performance. Worst case, Ivy Bridge makes Intel drop the prices on the i5-2500k.

[Hawk]

I have a Realtec chip on my MB but I've never used it. I guess I wasted my money on a card.
I know on-board chips didn't fair well with MSTS when it was released.

[Andimax]

If your mainboard has a soundchip you don´t need a soundcard. Older mainboards used to have only virtual soundchips, so that the CPU only had to do the soundwork.Though this is the case today,too but it would provide only a little perfomance lost on todays mainboard (under 5%, even loss). The sound stops occur on my system as well , with an XFI Audio card, and without that card. Sound issues that are not "produced" by the game can be an issue of the audio codec, maybe it´s an older one and you need to install the latest version.

As long as you don´t produce music or want to add your high end Surround System via optical cable, there is no need for extra soundcards. Only reason could be the sound-quality and if you buy a new Sound Card than everything under an "XFI-Gamer "card is wasted money IMHO.

[Ilsimen]

As long as you don´t produce music or want to add your high end Surround System via optical cable, there is no need for extra soundcards. Only reason could be the sound-quality and if you buy a new Sound Card than everything under an "XFI-Gamer "card is wasted money IMHO.

I have my high end Surround System connected via optical cable to my onboard soundcard...

[EliteMarksman]

One reason to have a sound card even if your motherboard has an onboard IC, is that onboard ICs, especially ones made by Realtek, are OEM specific. OEMs tend to not release new drivers for their sound cards very often, so a dedicated sound card is much more likely to have support for the device.

That said, this is the first time I have ever had an issue with sound in games on this computer, it is quite possible that it's a driver issue, but there are only 2 versions of the driver released, I have tried both and there is no difference.

[Andimax]

Andimax wrote:
As long as you don´t produce music or want to add your high end Surround System via optical cable, there is no need for extra soundcards. Only reason could be the sound-quality and if you buy a new Sound Card than everything under an "XFI-Gamer "card is wasted money IMHO.

I have my high end Surround System connected via optical cable to my onboard soundcard...

That´s the point: There´s no really need for an extra sound card. For most users today´s onboard sound is definetely good enough. Although a good sound card could provide much better sound than most onboard sound modules (if your Surround System is good, and if the speakers are, and so on, and on, and on...)

One reason to have a sound card even if your motherboard has an onboard IC, is that onboard ICs, especially ones made by Realtek, are OEM specific. OEMs tend to not release new drivers for their sound cards very often, so a dedicated sound card is much more likely to have support for the device.

That´s not always the case: most soundcards are OEM, too, and support and updates are provided by the re-seller. So it depends on the vendor to release updates, and there it would make no difference between onboard sound and Soundcards. Most mainboard manufacturers release much more updates to their mainboard-drivers (and these include Sound drivers as well )than some soundcard manufacturers do. OEM is not an onboard problem.