Guild Wars 2

For the longest time since I’ve had the game, I’ve had a bug to where I don’t hear my own character’s sounds. But in a recent patch, (I think it was the Queen’s Jubilee one) it seemed like it finally just fixed it self.

It might sound lame but I was pretty excited just to hear my Warrior shout “FOR GREAT JUSTICE!”.

EDIT: To clarify , this bug applies anything that has voice acting, not just shouts. I still hear sounds like the clunkiness of my heavy armor when I jump up and down. I still hear the sound of my weapon smacking against things, explosions, and the like. I also can still hear the voices of OTHER people’s characters. It’s strictly my own character’s voice acting that encounters this problem.

In today’s patch though (Super Adventure Box: Back to School), it seemed to work for the first half of the day or so, then by the evening I was in silence mode all over again.

I’ve tried deleting Local.dat. I’ve tried running GW2 with the -repair command. I’ve tried updating my sound card on my computer. Nothing seems to work. It seems to just be random chance when it will work or not. Please share any insight you have to either fix this, or if you’ve had a similar problem.

Bump for visibility.

And some more bumps.

Yes, I confirm this missing audio problem still exists. In fact, for the first time today, I even heard a line of audio being CUT. A character saying something like “nothing can bring me down”, being cut mid-sentence. At first I doubted my brand new sound card, since this problem wasn’t so obvious in the past. Then I tried my old PC and the new one with another sound card, and the problem is always there: missing sounds, whether combat effects or voiceovers, conversations between npc’s… ALL sounds are affected. The worst and most noticeable defect is when you can’t hear your own combat sounds, or hear parts of an npc conversation, or see a huge effect for which there is no sound.

Please stop the sound culling !!

These sound problems need to be fixed as many players (all) consider sound as a very important part of the game.

Cody Crichton.7516:

Also, for the record, the sound card hasn’t got much to do with how sounds are cached and processed. Actually, that’s what the system memory and processor are for! The sound card merely facilitates playback to your listening device (speakers/headphones), and what receives input from a non-USB microphone if you’re using voice chat.

So… if i understand that correctly: Even if i use a X-Fi Chip with XRAM (Auzentech X-Fi Forte 7.1 for example) that processing power is (in case of audio playback) only used for some sort of audio post-processing?

LordPhantom.1678:

Cody Crichton.7516:

Also, for the record, the sound card hasn’t got much to do with how sounds are cached and processed. Actually, that’s what the system memory and processor are for! The sound card merely facilitates playback to your listening device (speakers/headphones), and what receives input from a non-USB microphone if you’re using voice chat.

So… if i understand that correctly: Even if i use a X-Fi Chip with XRAM (Auzentech X-Fi Forte 7.1 for example) that processing power is (in case of audio playback) only used for some sort of audio post-processing?

Correct. Back when CPU’s were power limited audio cards were a big thing because they enhanced the sound more than CPU could because it had other priorities. Todays Processing units are so strong that a separate audio card is no longer needed, raw sound data from CPU is so good that doing post processing on it has next to no effect.

Cody Crichton.7516:

Thank you for the reports.

Worry not, I assure you that we’re still in the process of making further optimizations to the audio engine.

Also, for the record, the sound card hasn’t got much to do with how sounds are cached and processed. Actually, that’s what the system memory and processor are for! The sound card merely facilitates playback to your listening device (speakers/headphones), and what receives input from a non-USB microphone if you’re using voice chat. Unless something is seriously wrong with your sound card, upgrading it isn’t going to help, and it definitely isn’t going to allow for more sounds to play or improve the results of how the audio engine handles individual sound files. That’s just not what sound cards do.

EDIT:

I appreciate that you looked for results on multiple machines, Alad QB. This not only helps you troubleshoot the problem, determining that your hardware isn’t to blame, but also helps lend credence to the fact that there are indeed still more optimizations to be made with our engine.

Thanks for acknowledging the problem. I really hope you can fix this very soon.

I also noticed many times a sound “fade-in” effect: you abruptly arrive at a battleground (perhaps via a portal, or logging into a character who happens to be at the site of a battle) and sounds only gradually appear. Or you approach the battle while running, and the sounds only phase in after you’ve been in the middle of it for some time, not at all proportional to your distance from the sound sources. It’s quite obvious the fade-in is artificial, or simply too long. Why is that necessary? Fade in occurs naturally via the 3D effect processing, doesn’t it? Is it possible that this artificial fade in is cutting out some sounds for a lot longer (minutes) than necessary?

Is “sound culling” being used in the game (other than the expected distance-related volume adjustment)? (whether locally or from the server)

Also, could you please explain what the sound settings in the game actually do? Perhaps there is a setting that can alleviate these problems for some of us.
- Are the volume sliders just that, or do they also serve to filter out (cut out) some sounds?
- What does the Sound Quality slider do?
- Can the buffer size affect sounds being cut?

Thank you.