The BIG BMAX Sound Test (98/Me/2000/XP/Vista)

Hi all, now that the DirectSound and OpenAL Drivers appear to be good, I would like to enlist your help in testing them in a variety of OSes so we can work out the best driver to use for each OS.

I've got a "realistic" test app here which a demo game I have made: http://www.greyaliengames.com/aotmg/aotmg045c.zip (5.43Mb)

When you run it, it will prompt you to pick one of 3 Sound Drivers:

1) FreeAudio
2) DirectSound
3) OpenAL

Note: the OpenAL driver chosen is the Generic Software one.

Then the game will run. It has ogg files for the music and plays different music on different screens and the buttons and in-game objects have sound effects.

Please give the sound a good test and look for LAG, STUTTERING/REPEATING, BREAK UP, POPS&CRACKLES and anything else bad (crashes etc) and report back here.

Here's what we know about the sound drivers so far:

- Freeaudio has a bad lag on Vista. It also has a bad lag on 98/Me as far as I can tell and a teeny lag on XP.
- DirectSound should be OK on all (seems a bit "noisy" though, and I've heard it crackle a but before)
- OpenAL should be OK on all but I've heard reports of it not working properly in Vista but I'd like to verify this myself.

The end result should be that we can either a) choose a single sound driver that works best on all OSes or b) detect the OS and change to the best sound driver for the OS.

Many thanks in advance for all your help! :-)

I found that, with Freeaudio (and Vista), I get a lag with everything, every couple of seconds or so.

With DirectSound, there is an initial lag - probably due to the swap file being dealt with, but once that has past, all is fine.

OpenAL is fine.

All drivers worked fine here, OpenAL had a slighty lower volume though.

im on Windows XP Pro SP2, with some unknown onboard sound (C-Media High Def Audio)

This must be the best test program ive ever seen ;) good one!

Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit here, same result as MrTAToad :)

Got an onboard Realtek AC'97 SFX card.

I'm using Vista Home Premium and here are the results.

FreeAudio caused alag with menu sounds and all music etc.

DirectSound was louder than FreeAudio. But, when I got to level 4 with DirectSound all sfx wouldn't play. I couldn't hear menu clicks, shots or explosions. I shut down the game and tested it again and I was getting no sound from the intro Grey ALien Tune, no menu click sounds etc and no shooting sounds or explosion sounds.

I haven't tested OpenAL because the sound doesn't appear to be working for any of the modes now except for background music.

Thanks all, great tests so far!

Amon, you probably pressed a debug key and swiched off sounds by pressing the S key. It's a toggle so press it again to turn sounds back on (press D fr debug stats and check it says ON). Failing that, redownload. Then you can test OpenAL! :-)

Those built-in Realtek AC'97 chipsets don't work properly with OpenAL, according to an OpenAL employee I talked to. I think the spatial positioning gets messed up when you add an effects slot.

Dyslexia for cure found. :)

All seems to work fine now. OpenAL has no issues.

:)

All worked ok here, no obvious lag. To my ears, FreeAudio music was marginally louder than the others, OpenAL sound effects were marginally louder than the others.

win98SE.

FreeAudio - fails to run with error message "Cannot give shared data folder full access"

Direct Sound - works OK but the music is a bit hissy.

OpenAL - seems to work fine.

[edit]FreeAudio works on second try - the SFX are laggy, though.

Vista

FreeAudio - Lag (as expected)

Direct Sound/OpenAL - OK

Amon. thx, good to know.

Mark Tiffany: thanks for testig

Big10p: oops, that is not supposed to happen. I need to detect 98 and not call that function! Thanks for letting me know!

Matt Smith: Great thanks!

Big10p: Any chance you can download a new version (from the top) and test again please? Unzip it to a completely new folder and run it and you shouldn't get that error message, thanks!

Yeah - no error message with the new version. ;)

You are the man! I'll be REALLY gutted when you upgrade your OS :-)

XP

FA lags
DS ok
OAL ok

Hmm, interesting. I thought I'd seen FreeAudio lag on XP. This means that I may not have it as the default even in XP! Have to decide on OpenAL or DirectSound. I think OpenAL sounds nicer...

Windows XP SP2, with Sound Blaster 16 (7 year old card)

FA seems OK
DS seems OK
OAL seems OK

I didn't notice any significant lag even this sound card is veeeeery old, however the Dsound one works best if I have to choose a most woking driver.

wow OK thanks for that!

Anyone else get lag with FreeAudio on XP? If so I should probably never use it and decide on OpenAL or DirectX once and for all...

Do you mean XP? ;o)

Edited thx.