[problem] No sound when striking the cueball

[Agassi]

Hello to all. I've got such a problem.
I can't hear the sound when striking the cueball with a cue, but other sounds are ok. (i can hear sound when ball are touching other balls or rails etc.).
VP3311, OS WinXP SP3. I reinstalled my vp3 about 4 times, result is zero.
Help me please. Thanks!

p.s. I forgot to say that i can hear this sound only once when i launch the game, all other times there is no sound when striking the cueball.
I must close and open game again to hear this sound only once again :D

[AlinVille]

I had this problem on my old cheap soundcard. Go to Control Panel - Sounds and Audio Devices - Speaker settings Advanced - Performance, and set Hardware Acceleration to Basic instead of Full. I don't recommend that, as there will be a few differences concerning sound quality in EAX-based games but it will fix the VP3 issue. Just set it to Basic when playing VP3.

[Agassi]

Thanks, Alin! That helped. How did you find the problem was exactly in this? Can audio drivers reinstall solve the problem? Do i lose something when audio hardware acceleration is basic, but not full?

[AlinVille]

You probably have a SoundBlaster Live soundcard? I had the 24-bit one a long time ago and the only way to fix this was to lower the audio acceleration. There are a few other games in which you may get this problem with certain cards (usually cheap ones), missing certain sounds... it can be caused by a number of things, incompatibility with the motherboard etc. Reinstalling drivers or updating them to the latest version most likely won't work. By changing audio acceleration you basically change how DirectX processes sounds. Full hardware acceleration means the soundcard does all the audio processing; by lowering the acceleration DirectX will no longer allow the soundcard to use its hardware buffers to process sounds and it will use its own software buffers, so the processing will be done exclusively by the CPU (which theoretically means the system performance should be slightly affected but practically it won't make a difference). The only noticeable difference after lowering the audio acceleration might be losing certain environmental effects in a few EAX-based games, since proper 3D spatialization and advanced audio processing techniques will be disabled. But it won't affect most applications. The best way would be to set it at Basic when playing VP3 and go back to Full when doing everything else.

[Agassi]

Oh, thanks for explaining. By the way i've got not the cheap sound card, i've upgrated my PC month ago, and now i've got a powerfull one.
Heh, there must be some other way to enable sound when striking the cueball. Maybe i should write to subforum "Communicate with Celeris"?

[AlinVille]

Heh, there must be some other way to enable sound when striking the cueball. Maybe i should write to subforum "Communicate with Celeris"?

No, chances of Celeris' replying to your post are the same (low) either you post it here or there. Like I said there was no other way for me to fix it without lowering the acceleration. I've had that soundcard for about an year and I know I did at least one Windows reinstall during that period... and even that made no changes; same with drivers. If you upgraded PC without separately choosing the parts then it probably came with one of those common cheap soundcards, or onboard bs. So then... what soundcard do you have exactly?

[Agassi]

I have onboard sound card Realtek HD Audio, don't know it's model, but my motherboad's model is MB ASUS AMD 780G M3A78 PRO ATX.
By the way mate, i have USB headphones 4Tech HD-800 Dolby Stereo, and the problem is the same on them, though they are connected through USB, but not through audio input in my motherboard's soundcard. Maybe problem is not in soundcard?

[AlinVille]

Erm Realtek HD is not a powerful card, it's one of those cheap onboard cards I mentioned. I had that one too... well about everyone has had it. I just know when I bought the new Audiotrak Prodigy HD2 Gold soundcard the problem was fixed; and it's the only thing I changed at that moment, so it's definitely the soundcard. Your issue is pretty common actually and it doesn't only happen in VP3, you can google it... the solution is always this: either to buy a new soundcard either turn down acceleration to Basic. That's strange but it does happen with USB headphones too. Anyway just try updating all the drivers and especially DirectX to the latest version... it probably won't work but you should try that for starters. If it doesn't solve it, then Basic Acceleration it is... I used that for a long time and it was fine in most games and applications.

[Agassi]

Hi again. 2 years have passed, i've moved to Windows 7 SP1 x64.

Now i have a similar problem with hitting cueball sound. I can hear that sound, but sometimes it sounds weird.

After hitting the cueball hardly - sound is ok. But if the next shot is with little pace - hitting softly - my sound is strange. Maybe i'll record a video so you can hear it.
This problem is present each time after the hard shot. The other soft shots sound is ok. Only after the hard shot sound is changed.

There is not hardware sound acceleration in Win7 as it was in WinXP.
Does anyone know how to solve this problem?

[Bagpuss]

Here's how I understand it...

Microsoft ditched DirectSound3D from DirectX 10 onwards, which caused a little grief with some elderly games.

Creative's software/drivers make an effort to emulated DirectSound3D commands but some cards/chipsets don't.

Whether this is the issue or not, I'd recommend trying this DirectX update first:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/d ... laylang=en

If that fails to solve the issue, grab a copy of at least DirectX 8.1 online or, better still, DirectX 9.0c and install that (assuming VP3 didn't). Different versions of DirectX can co-exist and offer the best compatibility option for older games.

Hope this helps,

Bagpuss

[Agassi]

Thanks for reply. I have DirectX 11 installed, but my videocard supports DirextX 10.
Sure it's the problem of the old game, VP4 will not have such a problem, i'm sure.
In DirectX 9 this problem was solved by reducing audio hardware acceleration, WinVista and Win7 don't use it anymore.

Does anyone who have Realtek HD audio card and Win7 SP1 x64 installed have similar sound problem?

[Bagpuss]

Yep, Realtek HD, Windows 7 (Home Premium) 64-bit SP1 here and all is well sound-wise in VP3 (for my ears, at least!).

As I implied in my previous reply, DirectSound3D (ditched for DirectX 10) offered the audio hardware acceleration hence why DirectX10/11 OS's (Vista & 7) don't have it. You will cause no issues installing DirectX 8.1/9.0c so, as many others have done, give that a go if you want VP3's audio to behave itself.

Here's a link to 9.0c if you or anyone else wants to try it:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS- ... able.shtml

Bagpuss