Guild Wars 2

I tried browsing some thread complaining about sounds and couldn’t find anything related in the search… closest I could find was people talking about a loud siren like noise that made them restart the client.

I’ve given it time as I’m not sure how I would go about reporting this as a bug. I’ve played 5 different classes since headstart and it’s not related to any of them in particular and it’s persisted to this day.

I’ll be going along doing whatever (DE, running through town, standing at the PvP locker browsing articles of clothing, pretty much everything and this has happened) and I’ll get excessively loud pops, I would say it sounds like an in game cannon should be going off but it reminds me more of a cap gun.

It constantly goes off at full volume no matter what I put the master volume slider bar at – even 0. The only way I’ve gotten it to stop is to actually move every single slider to the 0 position. I haven’t gone through and tested to see if there are any and/or multiple I can keep at a higher level of volume because until today I’ve just listened to outside sources of music and left it all off. I kept checking it from time to time over the course of the last 3 months now… is anyone else having this issue and if so can you direct me to further discussion and/or the resolution for the matter?

Thanks for your time.

I’m pretty sure bumping a thread’s looked down upon…

But as the thread was moved from audio to the bugs subforum the date at which it was posted placed it on the 3rd page of topics, where it is very likely to be overlooked.

So apologies if I’m breaking the rules, just hoping someone might notice this and be able to provide feedback.

Bumping is not allowed, ( )but I might have a suggestion: If you have sound quality on max, try lowering it one tad. Some people reported that solved it. I have nothing to back it up though.

Treeline.3865:

Bumping is not allowed, ( )but I might have a suggestion: If you have sound quality on max, try lowering it one tad. Some people reported that solved it. I have nothing to back it up though.

That has to do with the Siren like sound people have been experiencing, I’ve read those threads… and I tried it to see if my problem was similar but it’s not the case.

As I stated in my original post I get this sound even when the master volume for the game is set to 0… I guess I have to try playing the game with all the bars at 0 moving them up one at a time until I start hearing the noise again. Then I can actually submit a report on something they can look into =S

One last note: I have only experienced this once, but a popping sound like the one you described occured to me while running VLC media player while also playing the game. Stopped when i closed VLC.
Sounds like some nasty debugging you are doing there q:

Treeline.3865:

One last note: I have only experienced this once, but a popping sound like the one you described occured to me while running VLC media player while also playing the game. Stopped when i closed VLC.
Sounds like some nasty debugging you are doing there q:

The only thing I run in the background is my browser (Chrome) for checking on Dragon Spawn timers… aside from the things that are active and never really present (iTunesHelper, DivXUpdate… things of that nature).

What exactly is VOIP ‘ducking’? It seems when I have this at default and not all the way to 0 I get the popping sounds… Would that even have an effect when no software (like Teamspeak) is running?

Hello. I was searching on google for someone else who was experiencing this, and I’m disappointed that this is all I could really find.

I have experienced this on a brand new gateway, an older emachine, and a HP laptop a couple years old.

I’d really love this to get some attention, seeing as I play with headphones and when this comes up it really hurts. The fact that I do closed captioning and like to chat on GW2 while working makes this especially annoying (I can’t do both unless I want to blow out my eardrums).

This happens when I have nothing but the bare essential processes running, no matter which of my 3 computers I use, so I can’t imagine that this is something on my end.

I can’t send a ticket in either because customer service is not allowed to help someone without some sort of fancy $800 cyberpower pc, at the minimum, and told me I shouldn’t have even purchased GW2 to begin with.

I’d really like anet to prove to me that they’re better than blizzard (not a hard feat) like I thought they were while anticipating this game for years.

A released game should not have errors like this, especially one that has physically hurt the player.

I spent the past few days troubleshooting for an in game work around, and am sure that it does not matter what combination of sound settings is being used, the sound may suddenly begin and persist. Messing with this I was able to get a larger range of pitches that this obnoxiously loud sound made, but I am still unable to make it stop.

I expect to receive some sort of work around, or to hear that arena net is working on this problem that is on their end.

I’ve experienced the occasional loud “metal book falling on a stone floor in a large, silent library” sound since the game came out. It scares the total crap out of me almost every time, and sometimes it happens several times a minute, especially in Divinity’s Reach. I’m actually very fearful that one of these times it is going to blow out my headset and am surprised that it hasn’t already with how horrible and sharp a sound it is.

I’ve asked others in map-chat at the time it has happened in the world and in a ‘town’ such as Divinity’s Reach, and others have confirmed that they heard it at the exact same time I heard it, even with us being in totally different areas of the zone. So it isn’t really something local, but being sent to all clients within a zone. I don’t know if it is then tied to the music track glitching, as some have noted the issue of music cutting out or background chatter suddenly ceasing and then restarting a second later, but I can’t really think of another sound that is being sent to all clients in a zone at the same time. I may even be way off on thinking it is tied to the soundtrack.

I think it has something to do with a sound buffer issue, where it keeps trying to play a sound and fails, so when it finally does play the sound, since there is now a massive stack of this sound waiting to play, that it all plays at once and tries to kill us or our speakers.

edit – continued thoughts
Thinking about it a little bit more, now, I think it is probably related to opening up the trading post. Opening the TP while ‘in the field’ is something everyone does, and upon opening the TP, or changing tabs in the TP, we are presented with a click-like sound, though I have noticed before that I do not get that ‘click’ sound when changing tabs every single time or changing tabs quickly.

Could the awesomium_process.exe be stacking this missed sound up in the sound buffer and then something allows them to finally play? How could this then be experienced by many players in a zone if it is a local client issue?

I’m struggling with finding a logical cause for the ‘death-click’, but I think I’m getting closer to figuring it out.

I saw that awesomium_process the other day when I was looking to see if there was something conflicting on my end, like Treeline suggested. I had no clue and assumed it was some sort of spyware. Anet should be more watchful of things like that x.o

Some of your reason does make since, but nobody in my guild at least has experienced that same issue, and I couldn’t get any bites on the subject in LA earlier today.

I’ll have to ask around more often.

I have this issue as well, on both my laptop and my desktop, using different brands of headsets on each, both with different sound cards, and obviously different setups from each other. I play almost exclusively with another person, and he never hears the noise.
But yes, like the others, it scares me, and it hurts me, and it makes me fearful for the life of my headset.
I notice it is almost completely random. Up until I saw this post, I actually thought it was something on my end.
Funny thing, that. I have no idea why I would think that. It wouldn’t even be a ‘connection issue’ as my desktop and laptop connect to the game from different zip codes- There’s no possible way anyone can tell me it’s my ISP or my hardware or my router or my modem or my anything. This is not on my end. But this does happen. It’s happened the entire time I have played this game (admittedly not long) since about Feb 2013. That’s a long time to have audio issues not addressed.
I understand that bumping is ‘bad’ and I apologize for adding my voice to the choir of ‘this is still an issue’.
I am done.

I have had this issue since headstart. Two different computers. I lowered my sound performance way back when it was first suggested, no difference. It happens anywhere and anytime. Even just standing and looking in the bank. In town, or farthest from civilization. With headphones (I will never wear them again), or using speakers. With sound on, or put on zero. I wish they would fix it, because it startles me terribly whenever it happens.

I have big issues with this and always have. It’s pretty much lead me to have to mute guild wars entirely. I get his problem even if I turn the volumes down in game.

PLEASE FIX THIS. It’s been six months.

I have had this issue for a very long time. I had no idea so many other people had the same issue. It sounds like a loud popping sound. Like someone loudly hitting a small drum in a large echoing hall. I play on an MSI laptop btw.

I have had it happen in towns and outposts, but also in dungeons and explorables I think. I have no idea what causes it. It doesn’t seem to be part of the normal skill rotation I use. Maybe some kind of music issue?

Same here, didnt know about this post otherwise i would have posted here but its the same issue, towns, outposts, dungeons, you name it, ive had it happen in there.

As an update, the loud, piercing bang sound did end up blowing my headset speakers a few weeks ago. I now play with little earbud headphones instead of my expensive subwoofer headset until I can afford to buy a new set.

I know this sounds odd, but now I get the odd sound phenomena even when I’m not playing Guild Wars 2. Not often, but it is the exact same weird, startling noise/sound. I guess something in the game code does something to the codex or whatever controls the sound card. Very odd, and very irritating.