Sound Corruption in AOE2

[Woodie]

See machine: Bomber in my System rigs (link in sig).

Problem:
W2K Pro/SP2, running AOEII-Gold.
Start playing the game, music and sound effects working fine. At some point, the sound effects start just dumping LOUD static. I can still hear the music playing, but any words, alarm bells, etc..generate horrific static.

Fixes:
Reinstalled AOEII. No change.
Added the expansion pack. No change.
Reinstalled DirectX8.1 for W2K. No change.
Installed a no-CD version of AOE2 exe. No change.

Sound card drivers are included in W2K, no updates available from mfr.

Any ideas?

--Woodie

 

[FPSguy]

Microsoft has two Knowledge Base articles about this. You can get them here and here.

 

[Woodie]

A little embarrassed ...I should have checked there. The second link is N/A, but I'll try some of the stuff in the first one. The thing that's irritating is that it works fine at first, and then goes bad. If I restart the game, the behavior repeats itself.

--Woodie

 

[FPSguy]

The article in the second link has many more troubleshooting options. You might want to try the link again as it is working for me. If it still won't work for you go to the Knowlege Base and search for Q263047. It has lots of troubleshooting steps. Good luck.

 

[Woodie]

Sorry, had my comments reversed in my last post. The first link is Not Applicable--I don't have that soundcard/chipset. The second one is the one with all the stuff to try. Hopefully I can attack it tonight, but I may have to solve a different problem first.

--Woodie

 

[Woodie]

Sound problem solved...not sure which one solved it:

1. Turned DirectX sound acceleration down to low/none.
2. Created a "Game Compatible" audio device and routed to output to it. (The instructions referenced Win98, and I'm on W2K, so the results didn't match exactly, but the sound corruption went away.

Thanks FPSguy!

--Woodie

 

[FPSguy]

Glad I could help. Now if only I could solve my own sound problems! I am going to try removing DirectX this weekend and installing a version prior to 8.1. I have tried everything else other than changing sound cards and reinstalling Windows from scratch.