Random sounds , Its driving me crazy!

Whenever i map to a town, while its loading, i get a very loud random sound, off the top of my head I recall its usually either a waterfall, a fire, what i can only discribe as a "angel" sound ( on alliance battle maps ) which also repeats in the map and fighting in the battle.
On top of this i get a very loud and very annoying hissing crackling sound randomly now and again whatever im doing, it is so so so annoying. I have no idea whether its computor or guild wars related or mabye a mix of the two. I am not great with computors but have just got some new 5.1 surround sound speakers for my PC the sounds are still there after that but they sound much better now ^^.
Does anyone else have this problem? Does anyone have an idea of the cause and/or a solution to it?

Any questions about it, or even better an answer and pls pls pls psot below.

Cheers.
~A Leprechaun~

This happened before you got the 5.1?
Did you get new drivers for your sound card? (ive had problems with downloading the latest ones, so I just used the ones with the installation cd)
What sound card are you using?

yes before the 5.1
no, no new drivers
on-board sound (i.e. not a separate sound card)

hope thats helps

~A Leprechaun~

Somethings to consider:

-Turn off EAX in the Guild Wars options for Trouble shooting purposes to see if problem goes away.

-Ensure you are running the most recent version of DirectX.

-Update your drivers by going to the manufacturer's website. (If it's built-in to your mobo, then it will be available from the mobo's maker and/or the sound card's chipset maker.)

-Ensure that you have connected the speakers up correctly to the sound card, run a test, most sound cards have a white noise sound test utility.

-All else fails: lower the DirectX hardware sound acceleration via dxdiag.exe application that can be ran from run command line.

These are generic things that I suggest without knowing any particulars on your system specs.

erm *screams and runs away* im pretty lame at PCs so most of that went over my head, i will try and figure out how to update the drivers, tyvm.

~A Leprechuan~

P.S. i only get the sounds in GW (pretty sure they are GW sounds) and its not the speakers as i had it before i got my new ones

Tell me what kind of motherboard you have...or if you are running a Dell/Gateway etc...this will determine where we need to go to download new drivers.

Also, speakers are probably fine, but sometimes in 5.1 systems they either need to be configured in the software properly and of course, hooked up correctly. My guess is you just need a software update from the hardware maker.

ok i can tell you the motherboard

ASUS A8N-VM-Nforce 410 PCI-Express Mainboard-Micro ATX

hope this also helps

~A Leprechaun~

Ok, great, I have an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe myself, few years old but running well, built myself.


================================================== ===
IMPORTANT NOTES:
> I am assuming you are running Windows XP...and NOT XP Media Center Edition.
> You have Windows XP FULLY Updated to at least Service Pack 1
================================================== ===
Alright here's some links for your motherboard:

The product page for your motherboard at ASUS. Good info and also here's the link to ASUS provided updates for your board. Check under applicable category (ie: sound)

Here are nVidia Drivers for the nForce 4 based 410 board <link>

To keep it simple, I'd recommend using ASUS updates, normally they should be identical to what nVidia has on their site but ASUS is specifically for your board.

However: if you continue having problems...switch out to nVidia's updates to see if problem is impacted.

I know that. Encountered the same problem when I upgraded to a 5.1 Speaker System. Every time I entered an outpost, there was a really noisy sound (fire, water, etc) coming out of my center and subwoofer. This sound did not occur when disabling 3d-Sound. Had no troubles with any other program, just guild wars made problems.
Tried everything, including reinstalling DirectX, installing the latest drivers, formatting my system partition and reinstalling WinXP, nothing did solve the problem.

Borrowed a SB 5.1 Live from a mate and replaced my Terratec 5.1 Sky. Had not much time for testing, but noticed the weird sounds when changing districts disappeared in 3D-mode.
Gave the card back to my mate and picked up a SB Audigy. Everything worked fine, but then I noticed in some maps that randomly a soundloop starts. In the Sunspear Sanctuary is was a really bad and loud bass, that, in most cases, vanished the same second when deactivating EAX. In some other places randomly a very nasty and very highfrequent beep was looped.
On a sidenote: the missing animations (first wandattacks) and missing sounds problem accured, too. But they were the same like always...and no, even if an update told otherwise, they obviously did NOT fix this issue completely.

Now I just reinstalled guild wars on my secondary harddrive on a formatted and empty partition. Went throught he whole trouble of a too large gw.dat, that is also described on this page (first attempt, waiting on the loginscreen, got aborted after the gw.dat broke the 35GB mark, second try just using the -image command got me a ~9GB gw.dat, the solution posted in that thread helped to get it to the supposed size of ~2.7GB). Now I'm too tired to run the game and go for an extended walk for some testing. I really need to get some sleep first.

Hi myrkwind, yes its exactly the same problem exept I had it even before getting my 5.1 speakers, I take it your problem has not been sorted (thats what i read, not sure if its right ^^), hhmmpph.
Um ok Ill try some suggestions and get back to you with the results, thanks a lot guys, keep the suggestions/revalations coming in ^^ .

~A Leprechuan~

I had a problem similair to this a while ago. It wasn't random sounds but a distinct drum sound or loud clicking. It got annoying after a while so i stopped playing. When i came on the day later there was a new build, downloaded it and the sounds stopped.

Dunno if this helps or not, but...

Im experiencing similar probs. Im using onboard sound, I have updated drivers. When the map is at loaded 100%, there is a loud screeching sound, describable as fire or water or something and then when I see the landscape and chars and stuff it stops. So if it takes longer to go from loadscreen to ingame the screeching sound takes longer. Im not using 5.1 but I connected my pc to amplifier which is connected to 2 regular speakers.
Ill try putting of 3D sound (EAX is off allready)

Grtz
~CavaH

I did the ASUS update but to no avail, the sounds are still there. Would you recomend I do the Nvidia one?

cheers

~A Leprechaun~

I put 3D-Sound off and now its gone for as far as I tested... Thx

oh also, was reading the thread through, I went in-agme and turned of the EAX - it was still there.

This may be irrelivent but i thought i might as well say.

~A Leprechaun~

Looping sounds "sounds" like a codec issue if everything else appears to working sound-wise.

You may want to find a forum on ASUS that discusses problems with your particular mobo. Often people that own the same board can share the same solutions.

Asus A8N-VM Forums <----here


Also, there should be a software utility used to map out channels, or at least test them over your speakers. Look for any Soundmax software, it may be part of their suite. And, nVidia has it as part of nMixer, if I recall.

EDIT:
If you have any other audio demanding games, are their any audio issues?

Have you ran the dxdiag.exe series of tests?

Have you tried to lower sound hardware acceleration as a troubleshooting measure to see if problem changes/goes away?

It's not that the sound stops and gets replaced by a loop. It's just one of the samples that guildwars uses, that gets looped and added to the usual and still working output. If this is a codec problem, it would not be limitted to guild wars, or gw brings it's own codec. And it also has nothing to do with a almost broken windows, as I have installed that new just for testing.

Well, I just finished testing today. Played roughly four hours and encountered no more soundloops. Seems like something in the gw.dat was corrupted. But I did not do the same things like the days before, so it might just have been luck.

But the issue with combatsounds, etc, sometimes not playing happens still. Easily to reproduce, you just have to stuff your team in a Junundu and pay attention after a fight, when all members activate junundu wail. Especially with those worms I encounter this problem extremely often, infact the sound plays just about 20% of the time. It's been this way since some patch last year. Not with the junundus maybe, but with the sounds. Since the patch that brought the sandclocks, if I remember it correct.

One additional problem I encounterred, when using surroundsound, is, that some samples do not get played correctly. It's rare, I encounterred it today just once when I was watching a match on observer before going to bed. The Dervish scytheattack sound was broken and half of the sample was replaced by some ugly noise. Ever put a gamecd in an old cd-player and pressed play? Sounds similiar, very nasty :/

Seems like something in gw's soundengine is broken. The problems I encounter are also reported by one guildie and the problem of the OP of this thread is known to me too. To both I know no solution but am interested in one, too.
As changing soundcards helped me with the OP's issues, I thought that it's a bug within gw's 3D-Sound/EAX-code, but he has the same problems in stereomode. Hopefully somebody from ANet reads this, as sound is in my opinion more important than any skillsbalance.

:S, Yes it is very annoying and my efforts to sort it have so far failed., Im pretty sure now that its a Guild wars problem, as it only happens on guild wars and plays guild wars sounds. But then again it could just be my computor not being able to run guild wras right ( or something like that ), although all other high spec games i run have no sound problems that i am aware of.

Thanks so far guys, lets hope Anet takes an interest and see if we can get this sorted out for everyone.

Cheers
~A Leprechaun~

*News*
ok I turned off the "3D audio sound" in the guild wars sounds options, and although it was making the noises bafore I got my surround sound, the noises have stopped, but this is not an end, as the only reason i really bought the surround was for GW so me having to turn it off is just a temporary solution.
Anyone have any more ideas to sort the problem? Or shall we throw the problem into Anets court?

Cheers
~A Leprechaun~

Still sounds to me like you should run a sound utility (should be already on your PC) to test/configure the surround system. The utilities are all very similar:they send to each speaker individually to verify correct signaling. This would be a good way to know you have a proper configuration.

Also, have you run other 3D surround programs? And, do they work properly?

Um, ok.
How do i run a sound utility? I had the sound before the surround sound speakers (just running off my monitor speakers), dont know if that relevant.
By 3D surround programs do you mean , like, other games that can play in 3D? If so I dont have many games on my PC, and how could i tell if they were 3D sound? I have only ever had the problem with guild wars so far, but havent played any other games since i got my surround sound.

Cheers
~A Leprechaun~

Big
Umbrellas
Make
People