Fallout 3 And Fallout New Vegas Sound Issues

[Guest carywinton]

It is an unusual event when I need to reach out for assistance, especially in regards to hardware. I have been servicing and repairing computers for over 25 years and this is one situation that has me stumped. When I start either Fallout 3 or Fallout New Vegas there is no main menu music at all. Both Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas are new downloaded versions from Steam, totally clean vanilla installs. Sound card is an on board Realtek Azalia, with fully updated drivers, I even tried installing a Creative Labs X-Fi Extreme PCI-E card with the same results.

I believe even with the game files being newly downloaded or with the "cache" being validated Steam misses one vital step in the reinstallation or verification process, DirectX and C++ Runtime, which may be relevant to the problem so many seem to have with sound and video issues, game crashes, instant CTD at game loading screen, etc.

I have tried changing the sound speaker preferences from 5.1 to stereo, no change or effect, I have tried changing the default sampling settings to 16bits/9600Hz, again no change. It has been my experience when there is no main menu music sound that other sound streams within the game will be missing as well.

Any assistance or ideas on this would be greatly appreciated and if I am currently supposed to be testing or assisting anyone with a Fallout 3 or Fallout New Vegas Mod or development, please excuse me I will hopefully be back up and running with these games soon.

[BruceWayne]

I used to have problems with the radio music in Fallout 3. The reason was the K-Lite Codec pack I've had installed at the time. It somehow interfered with the audio processing of Fallout. IIRC I could disable Fallout in some settings menu of the pack and the music played normally after that. Maybe you have this or a similar set of codecs installed which interfere with your audio?

[Guest carywinton]

Thanks for the reply BruceWayne, I have read in several places about using K-Lite Codecs Pack and some say that you need it some say you don't, so I tried it and installed it, no change, still the same. So for me there was no difference either way, I have also read the same about ffdshow. At present there are no add on codec packs or players and I have set the default player to Windows Media Player, for proper file extension and their associations, this was also suggested on several forums I have read in regards to this most difficult sound issue.

That was a good idea and suggestion, I will make sure there are still no possible ill effects left over from K-Lite.

[nyaalich]

I'm fuzzy on how everything works together, but I use Fallout Fullscreen (as opposed to whatever follow-up program that same modder made), and I know that it launches FFDSHOW.  Don't know if that helps.  : \

[Guest carywinton]

Thanks for the reply nyaallich, this is odd, when you launch Fallout in Full Screen it runs ffdshow, this is the first time I have seen this, I usually see where ffdshow causes issues with running Fallout 3 or Fallout NV. I suppose it could also be worth a try. I am beginning to think this problem is simply a Windows 7 issue and perhaps the 64 bit version in particular. I have decided to look into building a Windows XP box, yes actually try downgrading to a slower hardware system and running it on Windows XP. I just have to figure out if Steam will allow me to have Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas authorized on separate systems. This would certainly solve allot of problems, run older games on the XP machine and newer games on Windows 7 machine.

[nyaalich]

I'm running Win 7 x 64.  Sorry, but I can't remember if I was seeing ffdshow with XP.  : \

[nyaalich]

You can only be logged into your Steam account on one computer (device?  I forget if it also applies to the phone app), but yes, you can have it authorized on another machine.

 

I definitely know 0% about working on SFW mods at work. 

[Guest carywinton]

Thanks nyaallich, I still have a few friends left over at Valve, at least I did last week, things change there quite quickly and we had an outage here for over 24hrs, no Internet for the servers,so I may have missed "memo's". I do have two copies of Fallout 3, but will probably have to buck up for second copy of Fallout NV.

[nyaalich]

I only have one copy of both games.  Like I said, so long as the game is installed on both machines and you log in w/ the same credentials, you're good to go.

 

You have friends at Valve?  That's cool.  : )

[Guest carywinton]

Thanks again nyaallich, I am currently working directly with Zenimax Media on this issue, it seems to be a fairly widespread problem. I will report any findings that we come across.

[prideslayer]

Without thinking about this in more detail, I can only say with any confidence that it's not "just a Win7 x64 issue." That's what I use here, with an X-Fi (Audigy X-Fi Fatal1ty), and menu music has always worked fine. With ffdshow popping up, it's possible it's replaced whatever builtin codec is being used for the intro music -- which might be a different format from everywhere else in the game, and not affecting it.

 

I'd ditch all the codec packs, ffdshow, all of that. See if it helps. Check their log files as well as the windows event log.

[Guest carywinton]

Thanks for the reply Pride and all good idea, advice, I actually bit the bullet and setup my entire system from scratch, new Windows 7 install the works, no small task and I am still digging out from under it. The issue is still present with any sound card I have installed, I tried two of them now and the on board sound card, all exhibit the same problem, now I get popping sounds if I turn up the "music" slider in game, so this leads me to believe there is a problem with *.ogg not being properly registered by Windows 7. This file extension does exist when checking to see if Windows Media Player is set as the default playback device, but it looks like it was added in by a pre-school tech, very poorly done. I am still working with BethSoft (Zenimax Media) on this, but their tech support group must be flooded and quite small in size, response is very slow, days for any answers.

[prideslayer]

Sound popping when moving the windows volume slider usually points to a driver issue. Might go away if/once you have the drivers and/or DirectX fully updated. Could also be that the newest drivers require a newer firmware than you have, did you check that?

[Guest carywinton]

Sound popping when moving the windows volume slider usually points to a driver issue. Might go away if/once you have the drivers and/or DirectX fully updated. Could also be that the newest drivers require a newer firmware than you have, did you check that?

 

Hi Pride,

The popping sounds only come from one channel in game, the "music" channel, <Enter No Surprise Here>, This is also the problem with the main menu music. If I turn down this slider, the game plays fine. I have installed the exact "*.ogg" codec used by BethSoft for their perverted, er.. I mean converted *.MP3, I have also installed the latest sound card drivers for the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Extreme sound card which is now installed. When Microsoft in it's infinite stupidity removed "HAL" 9000, from the OS starting with Vista, this was the beginning of the end for PC video games. Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas are not DirectSound or EAX enabled games as far as my research and information I am able to find states, therefore the use of Audigy is not needed. I actually tired it before I found this out and all it did was make Fallout 3 run like an old time speak easy silent film, stuttering, hardly moving fps, etc.

I will look into the possibility of any "firmware" upgrades available, this is yet another good suggestion.

Kind Regards and thank you for your suggestions thus far,

CaryWinton

 

[Guest carywinton]

For the benefit of those folks who may be struggling with similar Windows Vista or Windows 7 sound issues, this is what I did and it fixed it.

First install the codec from Xiph.org, more specifically Vorbis.com: http://www.vorbis.com/setup then choose your particular OS or platform. This will register *.ogg file types with your system.

Second: Depending on your type of sound card, for this example I have installed a Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme PCI-e. Open up the Creative Audio Control Panel and place a check mark in the boxes for X-Fi CMSS-3D and X-Fi Crystalizer, my speakers are currently still set at 5.1 but you will only hear sound through the front left, right and middle.

 

I am not certain if this had anything more to do with fixing the problem, but I thought it may be worth mentioning, I also installed Quicktime Player, ITunes, ffdshow, Tag Support for Windows Media Player and *.flv codec and registered it in the Windows 7 Registry with a registry file merge.