[Helter Skelter]

My 0404 has never given me any significant issues in games. Even Savage, which likes to be picky about what kind of sound card you're using (my laptop's onboard sound is unusable with the game, for example), has had no issues with the EMU.

And I play a LOT of games. Maybe I'm lucky.

System setup:
Athlon XP-m 2400+ @ 2.3GHz
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe (nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset with Soundstorm)
eVGA 6800GT 256MB (overclocked to 400/1100 core/mem)
2GB Corsair XMS PC3200

 

[Gigabomber]

if you have played games, i'd appreciate it if you posted your chipset, ram and vidcard at the least so we can compile how demanding the card is or isn't depending on the games and whatnot: really narrow it down and clear this up for everyone

 

[ooheadsoo]

abit nf7 nforce2
amd 2400+
1gb ram
nvidia gf6800
and basically, nothing works.

 

[Sabbe]

Have you made sure that you don't have any resourcehogging background programs on when trying to play? I've noticed that torrents or virus-scanners etc in the background can cause stutter and stutter causes cutoff.

I played quite a bit of rome: total war today.. didn't cutoff too many times, but it did a few times. I can't eliminate stutter completely for that game.. for some reason. It runs stutter free most of the time but then a tiny stutter comes and instant cutoff. Annoying but not really a major problem. Funny thing is that it cuts off more often in the strategic map of the game than the battle map. Somehow stutter comes more easily there. I did manage to play like 20-30 minutes without cutoff at a time so it wasn't a major problem.

With ut2004 I eliminated the problem by lowering the quality settings slightly so that my 512MB memory can handle even the biggest games (32 players onslaught) and then cutoff's are mostly gone.

With older and lighter games I've had 0 or almost 0 cutoff.

But I see that you have a lot of memory etc, stutter due to game lagging is unlikely to be the problem but not impossible. Virtual memory settings are very important too and it doesn't hurt to optimize those (http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle....tno=143&pgno=0). Checking background programs is the next obvious step since those can and will cause stutter too. Good luck anyways!

What is in my opinion a bit interesting is the fact that some of these people claim that they've had no cutoff with any game, ever. That to me is like dreamland.

I've managed to make everything *mostly* work fine.. but I've experienced cutoff with almost every directsound app I've used, at least once.

I'd like these guys with "no problems" to try and make problems. You can try that by running something heavy in the background and then playing those games. See what happens. I think that no one is immune to this issue, some people just have smoother computers. But I'd like someone to try and prove me wrong so that we'd be able to get to the bottom of this faster.

 

[ooheadsoo]

I've tried running with minimal background programs running to no avail. My swap file is fine and definitely not the issue. It's been fixed and on at least a separate drive or multiple separate drives for years.

Now, when I say cutoff, I mean cutOFF. The sound does not come back once cut off, never ever. I get the feeling that some of you mean that it stutters.

 

[james__bean]

I just bought a new mouse (logitech 518) that has some background programs that allow on the fly dpi adjustment. My sound actually cut out when I used this feature on multiple occasions. Now I firmly believe that the cut off is mostly due to limited system resources of some sort. It makes sense since my system has become increasingly cluttered with programs and I often have torrents running in the background when I play games offline.

 

[maarek99]

I sold my A2 and got a 0404 a while ago. Now I bought the A2 back because the 0404 started suddenly giving me those famous cut-outs. Veeery annoying.

But Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory sounded very good with the A2. It doesn't even give sound if the card doesn't support atleast eax2. My onboard sound did but it was way worse than A2's. The reverb was off and some sounds just echoed all over the place.

But now I'm pretty much happy with the a2/0404 combo. Except the drivers were like hell to get working together.

 

[Cthulhu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ooheadsoo I've tried running with minimal background programs running to no avail. My swap file is fine and definitely not the issue. It's been fixed and on at least a separate drive or multiple separate drives for years. Now, when I say cutoff, I mean cutOFF. The sound does not come back once cut off, never ever. I get the feeling that some of you mean that it stutters.

E-mu dev on the production forums have said this is a weird combination of driver issues, hardware issues and drivers for other stuff you have.

I have the same issue. It;s very frustrating.

 

[Sabbe]

Quote:

Now, when I say cutoff, I mean cutOFF. The sound does not come back once cut off, never ever. I get the feeling that some of you mean that it stutters.

Yeah it does cut OFF, but it's usually possible to trigger it back by changing games sound settings in someway. In rome: total war I can only do the trigger-thing once though.. if it cuts again I have to restart the game to get sound.

I've had cutouts during media playback too (zoomplayer) but only when I've had heavy background programs on. But those cutouts are harmless, since the sound comes back on it's own. Just cuts for a second. But only with heavy bg programs.. otherwise no cutoff.

Have you done the basic stuff, changed the PCI latencies etc? That wasn't the issue with me for sure but it surely made everything slightly smoother to not have the gf6800 card hogging most of the pci bus. (http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=951) That tool will do fine.

Also checking that the windows sound acceleration settings are not at maximum for playback is a good thing to check.. I use standard which seems fine. I've tried lower accelerations but made no difference. Also the background/foreground program priority setting in windows might do something, so changing that is worth testing. Also changing program priorities themselves is worth testing too.. I have patchmix running at high priority and games running at above normal.

Although I do have to say that none of the windows tweaks/ pci latencies did much difference to the cutoff issue.. what did make a difference was how heavy the game is memory-wise and reducing that usage and the background programs of course. That made a huge, important difference.

I've also noticed that even if I don't have at the moment any background programs on or anything.. but I had something on a minute ago that used a lot of memory and temporarily made the system stutter a bit.. well then I will get cutoff for a while until the game can fetch the necessary resources easier.

Quote:

My sound actually cut out when I used this feature on multiple occasions. Now I firmly believe that the cut off is mostly due to limited system resources of some sort. It makes sense since my system has become increasingly cluttered with programs and I often have torrents running in the background when I play games offline.

Yeah.. all it needs is the smallest of stutter and it cuts off. It's possible to keep your game totally stutterfree if you don't have any hogging background programs and you have a smooth computer that can play any games without stutter. But not so many people have that. It's really a shame that the emu directsound driver can't take anything, cuts off instantly when something happens. And the funny things is.. as far as I've tested the ASIO is totally impossible to make cutout under any condition.

I've had heavy bg programs in the background.. asio winamp playing and I've played a heavy game at the same time. The game sounds cutoff very quickly due to the bg programs but asio keeps going until the end of time (tm)

 

[Mr.Radar]

There should be an "Other" option because while I use the EMU with games I don't use it directly for them. I use the digital output of my onboard audio to the digital input of the EMU. I've had absolutely no problems gaming with this setup (granted I don't game very often).

 

[BlackJackSkanz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Asterix Get an Audigy 2 and run a digital cable to your E-mu. Plays through the opamps of the E-mu but uses the Audigy 2, which is a lot faster for games anyway...

And there is no loss for EAX or other effects in games by doing this? Any downsides?

 

[Helter Skelter]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlackJackSkanz And there is no loss for EAX or other effects in games by doing this? Any downsides?

Nope. You might have to change the clock in patchmix to 48kHz, but you'll keep all your EAX stuff. It WILL be 2-channel stereo, though this shouldn't be an issue since you'll be using headphones anyway.

 

[ooheadsoo]

I'll try that guru3d tool for kicks. Thanks.

 

[mattpwill]

I use Soundstorm to EMU0404, so no problems any more. But.. before i reinstalled WinXP, I used my EMU0404 directly and the sound would randomly drop out. Not recommended for games

 

[Svperstar]

I tried using my 0404 for gaming just to see how it would work,using the latest drivers.

A few games had no audio at all, others would cut out after a few minutes, plus you lose EAX, not a big deal for some but most devs spend the time making games sound best with EAX so I want the experience they intended.

Running an Audigy 2 to the EMU 0404 is a much better, if not a perfect solution.

Since the Audigy output is 48 khz, unless you run the EMU at 48 you will always hear this faint distortion in the background no matter what you do.

If you set the emu to 48 khz, then you run into the problem of music being 44 khz, so then you can resample to 48.......but that uses CPU cycles.

So what I do is this, for games like Counter-Strike where I listen to music when I die, and don't really care about crystal clear audio I just leave it @ 44 khz. For games like Silent Hill or the Thief series which are very atmospheric and Audio is just as important as visuals I set the sample rate to the SPDIF.