Hardware sound acceleration to return in 2.3
by David Bowers 
Oct 28th 2007 at 3:33PM
There's yet more Patch 2.3 news, this time for people who have been having problems with sound ever since the sound upgrades in 2.2. As Cicero noted from his experience on the test realms, "all my sound problems were gone. I can hear myself cast again, no more clipped sounds..."Those of you who have been suffering unduly may wish to go to the test realms and try it out. I haven't been able to do so myself due to some computer limitations, but I wonder if our readers who have visited the test realms can comment on any differences they can hear.
Are things really as good as Cicero says?
Filed under: Patches, Odds and ends
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Swarfy Oct 28th 2007 4:19PM
I've been on PTR and while the sound changes are nice, the new sound engine has made my FPS go down the toilet. Before 2.2 came out i could hit 20-30 FPS in BEM doing the daily's. Now I'm lucky if i can hit 10.
As someone who runs on-board sound (Yeah yeah, Looking for a sound card.) the sound engine puts way too much stress on my CPU...
I can't tell you how many times i did Moroes going 'Please god let this go through' While shackling an add that needs to be locked down for the duration of the fight, and I'm the only priest in the run.
Kaljin Oct 28th 2007 5:50PM
Yea, you will get extra FPS with that. You need a sound card. Also, you're on the PTR, you're not gonna have the best FPS.
(Also, I can't figure out how people do the @1 thing, is it auto or you just manually type it? sorry, noob)
Arturis Oct 28th 2007 5:59PM
@Kaljin
You manually type it. ^_^ And I prefer to use the name, because often comment numbers get shuffled around. For instance, someone may have posted a comment in between 1 and 2, but has yet to click the confirmation link in the email they were sent. Once they do confirm, their comment becomes 2, 2 gets pushed to 3, and now you are responding to someone completely different then intended.
Krick Oct 28th 2007 6:47PM
@1 Modern motherboards with built in sound are not like onboard sound in the old days. Today, onboard sound is quite good and uses very little CPU power. In addition, CPUs have gotten SO much faster that onboard audio uses CPU power in the single digit percentages. I wouldn't put too much faith in a new sound card being a magic speed bullet. A faster video card and/or more memory would likely provide a more noticeable performance boost.
Andelorn Oct 28th 2007 10:19PM
I haven't had any of the sound problems with 2.3 that I've seen in 2.2, so that's all I care about.
Slayblaze Oct 28th 2007 10:57PM
There is also still the option to bypass the Hardware sound acceleration and keep it all in software, similar to how it is now. While it might be within the realm of possibilty that performance issues could exist with the new (newER?) 2.3 sound engine, I really doubt if it would affect any but the slowest/oldest PC's out there. Might be time for an upgrade, and I dont mean just slapping a new soundcard in.
Sean Oct 29th 2007 3:16AM
Although not convinced it would save me a lot of FPS, the sound on the PTR is *dramatically* better than 2.2. On my Creative X-Fi Elite I get really immersive 3D sound in 7.1 surround ... on 2.2, Fmod sounds like crap.
Verit Oct 29th 2007 6:03AM
I was actually getting hard-locks (where the system freezes, with no bluescreen) with sound acceleration on. I suspect thats why they turned it off.