White Noise (Music) - Fixed by uninstalling CCCP codec pack.

Railgun! · Post by **Railgun!** » Sat, 30. Mar 13, 10:14

Hi there, I recently reinstalled X3:TC (on steam) after a long break, and quickly noticed a major problem. All music in the game is accompanied by white noise. I worked out that music was the culprit, as the noise fades in and out with the music when changing music volume.

I am currently running Windows 8, and my audio drivers are definitely up to date, so I'm not sure what the issue is.

Obviously I can play without music, but I'm a big advocate of music enhancing and in some cases carrying an experience, so that would be very disappointing.

Thanks for your time!

EDIT: Extra details;
Game version is Steam X3TC 3.2c English (or so I'm lead to believe by the changelog on steam).
Completely vanilla.
DxDiag can be viewed here.

If it matters, it happens on all audio devices, the audio out jacks as well as my USB heafdphones.[/url]

Post by **CBJ** » Sat, 30. Mar 13, 12:23

Sorry, but without the information requested in the very first thread in this forum, we have approximately zero chance of being able to help you.

Railgun! · Post by **Railgun!** » Sat, 30. Mar 13, 15:45

My apologies, I was short on time when I made the post.
I've edited to include what information I could.

I can make a short video showing the problem if that would help.

Post by **Terre** » Sat, 30. Mar 13, 16:02

Realtek ALC892 High Definition Audio Codecs

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Sat, 30. Mar 13, 17:13

If that does not help then try the game with your audio USB devices unplugged and any unnecessary peripheral power supplies and transformers turned off.

Going by the DxDiag list of varying AppCrashes, you seem to be having some system stability issues at the moment. Just as a wild chance, check your mains power supply to your PC is not itself carrying noise. If you can, try a portable mains radio (not DAB) plugged in to a common supply next to your system and see if the radio output is noisy too.

One other faint hope. If you have more than one volume control system in use, make sure that one (earlier) stage is not set very low for the music channel and a later stage very high. Using 2 or more controls like that amplifies noise at the expense of the music. Ideally early stages should be high but not distorted, with the final output volume controlled by the final stage only.

Railgun! · Post by **Railgun!** » Sun, 31. Mar 13, 03:38

Terre, that link seems to send me in a loop. After hitting the checkbox and next, It sends me to a basic html page saying 'object moved to here', which links back to the page I was just on.

More than happy to install if you think it will help, but I'm under the impression the codec is for eight channel systems?

Alan Phipps, removing my USB headset doesn't make a difference.
As I understand it, if my mains was carrying noise the static would be evident in other sounds? I produce music quite frequently and haven't noticed any issues with any other music/games other than X3TC.

As for the last point, my two stages of volume control are simply windows mixer and the volume knob/buttons on the speakers/headset.

Thank you both for your time!

Emerson d'Anite · Post by **Emerson d'Anite** » Sun, 31. Mar 13, 08:06

Railgun! wrote:Terre, that link seems to send me in a loop. After hitting the checkbox and next, It sends me to a basic html page saying 'object moved to here', which links back to the page I was just on.

Just like for me with Firefox, but it works with IE.

Have a good flight, pilot !

Post by **Terre** » Sun, 31. Mar 13, 10:39

I'm using Firefox (22.0a1 (2013-03-30)), and the requester sent me on the loop, but to the bottom right of the page are the quick links, they work, once you have been around the loop once.

These drivers are for the codec handling chip affixed to your motherboard, ALC892.

Try:
High Definition Audio Codecs

Railgun! · Post by **Railgun!** » Thu, 4. Apr 13, 09:09

Thanks for the new link Terre, that one worked perfectly.

Drivers were installed, no difference made in game.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Thu, 4. Apr 13, 10:50

This sort of thing is usually down to codec issues when a user has an additional codec pack installed (such as k-lite, CCCP, etc) but you don't have the usual suspects in the DxDiag. Here is a past thread you could review as a possible line of further investigation.

Sound Hardware Acceleration.

One other thing you could try is this to 'reboot' WMP but I'm not 100% sure how it works in Win8.

Railgun! · Post by **Railgun!** » Sat, 13. Apr 13, 13:11

I do indeed have CCCP installed... and uninstalling it fixed the problem.

This does pose a further issue, though perhaps one not suited for this forum; Which part of CCCP is the problem?

I watch a lot of anime and CCCP is a bit of a 'one size fits all' in being able to view all the releases.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Sat, 13. Apr 13, 17:47

Good to hear you have a resolution at least. If you ever decide to experiment to find out exactly what codecs in CCCP cause the issues then please let us know. The known suspects are mentioned in this Sticky under codecs.

Railgun! · Post by **Railgun!** » Sat, 13. Apr 13, 21:51

Aye, thank you to everyone that lended a hand in resolving this!

Was great to be able to play again.

salking · Post by **salking** » Wed, 1. May 13, 17:20

Decided to take a look at what could be the cause, since i too like anime and the x series.

After some poking around i found that to fix the music static all i had to do was untick mp3 under formats in the LAV audio settings (this is with the 13-04-20 version of cccp).

Guess the game didn't like the fact that an external program was trying to decode the music mp3s while it was playing them.

Bear in mind that i haven't given this more testing than checking that the title music plays as it should.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Wed, 1. May 13, 20:57

@ salking: That could be slightly premature advice then as the more common music issue reports are along the lines of 'Title music plays OK but then problems with in-game music.' Please let us know if you test this further as it could be useful background info for us to be aware of. Thanks.

rlcool · Post by **rlcool** » Mon, 3. Jun 13, 23:48

I would like to add for a possible fix as I was having the noise issue as well in regards to the music in game. Note: I have the latest cccp installed as of June 03, 2013; the latest game update from steam for both TC and AP; as well as the most updated sound driver from realtek. I have tried this fix on AP, but not on TC.

What I did to fix this issue was simply convert all the mp3 files to wma files in the soundtrack directory in the TC steam folder. I not only tested the menu music, but played in game as well for a couple hours and had no problems.

I use cccp quite often so I didn't really want to uninstall it just so I could play this game. This fix seemed the easiest out of some others I've tried (messed with the filter settings in cccp but still didn't help).

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Tue, 4. Jun 13, 11:37

@ rlcool: Thanks, we have indeed advised the mp3-wma conversion successfully in the past as a last resort. The thing is that it should be unnecessary but it is sometimes required when bad-mannered codecs from some codec packs and media players pretend to be and replace the real WMP wma codecs even when not using the application(s) that actually need the pretenders. It stems from cynically poor design by media player programmers who cannot be bothered to include codec detection and management routines in their applications.

SySGoDX · Post by **SySGoDX** » Sat, 8. Jun 13, 08:55

unchecking both mp2 and mp3 boxes in CCCP Settings, LAV Audio Settings button, under the Format Tab fixed the issue for me.

jayman1000 · Post by **jayman1000** » Wed, 29. Jul 15, 23:07

I know this is a very old thread, but the issue is still very relevant and there is a simple, and somewhat tedious, solution not mentioned: renaming the file extension of all mp3-files to wma. That way you wont have to fiddle around with codecs, which is especially troublesome if you as me don´t have CCCP but some other kind of codec where it´s not possible to find the suggested settings to change. Renaming to wma I did not register any perfomance degrade, it simply seems to fix the issue. The downside is that there is about 151 mp3 files to rename...

Post by **X2-Illuminatus** » Thu, 30. Jul 15, 10:31

If it works, then that's really an easy solution to the codec problem. Thanks for sharing.

As for renaming multiple file extensions at once, there is an easy way to do it:

Hold the Shift key and right-click on the soundtrack folder.
In the context menu click on the "Open Command Window Here" option.
A command window with the current directory should be opened.
In the command window type in the following:
Code: Select all
```
ren *.mp3 *.wma
```
Hit 'Enter'.

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White Noise (Music) - Fixed by uninstalling CCCP codec pack.

White Noise (Music) - Fixed by uninstalling CCCP codec pack.