Guild Wars 2

Been starting to notice after playing the game for about 30min to an hour a persistant whining noise (sounds like a helicopter) stays on no matter where you go.

I tried changing the sound quality to higher it removes the weird noise but for some reason the sound of dialogues and effects becomes very quiet. Also tried windowed mode and fullscreen mode..but have the sound issue described.

I’ve updated the Creative X-fi drivers to the latest one. so not sure how to go from there. Any help appreciated.

This problem is NOT a GW2 problem but a hardware problem. I’m having the same issue (with my SB X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion) and it’s cause by magnetic interference from other devices/cards in your PC. If you ‘listen carefully’ to this noise, you’ll hear difference when you have more HDD and/or GPU usage.

My system has an ASUS M4N72 mainboarad which has 2 PCIe slots. One is directly next to the GPU slot, the other on the far side of the board right next to the 2nd GPU slot. When I bought my SB, I’ve placed it next to the GPU and had that ‘whining chopper noise’. When I moved it to the far PCIe slot, the noise was gone.
Recently I’ve gone SLI on my system, and I can’t use that far PCIe slot anymore, so I have to use the one next to the GPU again and the ‘whining chopper noise’ is there again.

Luckily, the SB X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion is plated, so when I use speakers, I do not hear the noise. When I use headphones on the front-jack, the noise is there. I have been able to minimize the noise by messing around with the cables.

I tried listening to the computer case when it’s happening. I’m 100% sure it’s not actually the sound coming out from the computer itself

When this happens my ingame music completely stopped. This seems to happen in the Queensdale swamp area alot..not sure if it’s the Creative sound drivers conflicting with something in game or not.

Had something similar happen to me a few days back, but the sound was more like an alarm that went on an off in 1-2 seconds intervals. Suddenly all sound from the game was gone and replaced by that sound. Checked the windows sound panel and saw it was the GW2 application that was making the sound, so i just muted that and turned on some music instead. And the next time i restarted the game client the sound was back to normal, haven’t happened again, at least not yet.

So i guess probably some sort of weird bug with the sound programming in the game maybe? Or some sort of conflict between the game and creative drivers/cards? As i got a Creative X-FI Titanium HD.

did it sound like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne9IjmM4DXw&feature=plcp
happened to me in headstart, hasnt happened since. Pretty sure this has to be some quirk in the sound engine for GW2 as this has never happened in any other game.

Although as Nitrius said, this could also be some sort of driver conflict.

(X-Fi Xtreme Gamer sound card)

I have the issue as well. Although its very rare (only happened 3 times since headstart) and only seems to happen when there are lots of players and npcs on the screen at once all fighting while I’m running around. Last incident was while fighting Jormag in Frostgorge Sound about three days ago.

NATASk.1942:

did it sound like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne9IjmM4DXw&feature=plcp
happened to me in headstart, hasnt happened since. Pretty sure this has to be some quirk in the sound engine for GW2 as this has never happened in any other game.

Although as Nitrius said, this could also be some sort of driver conflict.

(X-Fi Xtreme Gamer sound card)

I also am getting this. Had it happen twice, once when fighting The Shatterer and once in wvwvw while taking a keep. Both times, lots of people. Crashed soon after on the shatterer but in wvw i just killed gw as it’s very loud and annoying :p

Sound Card: Asus Xonar D2X

NATASk.1942:

did it sound like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne9IjmM4DXw&feature=plcp
happened to me in headstart, hasnt happened since. Pretty sure this has to be some quirk in the sound engine for GW2 as this has never happened in any other game.

Although as Nitrius said, this could also be some sort of driver conflict.

(X-Fi Xtreme Gamer sound card)

Had this happen while in WvW and fighting the dragon in Sparkfly Fen. This only started happening yesterday.

DemiGoth.6192:

This problem is NOT a GW2 problem but a hardware problem. I’m having the same issue (with my SB X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion) and it’s cause by magnetic interference from other devices/cards in your PC. If you ‘listen carefully’ to this noise, you’ll hear difference when you have more HDD and/or GPU usage.

WRONG. This is NOT what he describes.

What we are experiencing is a sound cut-out, with a simple tone with an amplitude LFO of about 2 seconds cycle time. Others have reported it with onboard sound cards, as well as dedicated cards (and not just ones made by Creative)

I had that sound cut-out with the whoop-whoop repeating sound a few times during swamp boss a few weeks ago, but since one of the updates I’ve had no issues at all on my X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro w/ sound quality maxed and lowest latency.

Also i think some people are talking about EMI interference, that is a separate issue that can bleed interference into the analog wires. people using digital spdif, or well shielded cards won’t see this.

Creative sound cards have, as long as I can remember, had shoddy drivers. No amount of updating them will fix bad programming by bad programmers.

Realtek sound might not be fancy and feature rich, but it always works.

I have just experienced the same problem and I don’t think that this is a hardware problem at all, as I switched through several output devices and they all had the same sound.
Devices in use were Asus Xonar DX (tested with Headphones as well as 5.1) and nvidia geforce 480 hdmi output to my stereo.
Unfortunately I did not test to change sound quality to see if the problem would go away, I had it set to the highest quality though.

The error occured during a WvW siege on Dreaming Bay.

NATASk.1942:

did it sound like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne9IjmM4DXw&feature=plcp
happened to me in headstart, hasnt happened since. Pretty sure this has to be some quirk in the sound engine for GW2 as this has never happened in any other game.

Although as Nitrius said, this could also be some sort of driver conflict.

(X-Fi Xtreme Gamer sound card)

Yup, had this happen to me several times since headstart. I’ve been fiddling around with the audio sliders (so far tested all the “low latency to most stable” settings) and I still happens. I’ve starting testing the audio quality slider and thus far both the highest quality and one notch below still have issues. As mentioned by others, this usually happens during events with large numbers of players. It’s not the only problem too, underwater audio frequently causes loud water noises/swishing from time to time (and not even with many people around). Likewise, adjusting any audio slider does make the sound significantly softer until the client is restarted. Overall, my guess is the software audio engine just can’t handle whatever they want it to do.

Using a X-fi Xtrememusic.

I don’t think this is related to just creative cards or drivers. I am using just onboard sound and realtek drivers and the sound glitch occurred.

Been getting this problem at least once daily now, using an onboard Realtek soundcard + Plantronics Gamecom 780 headset.

omg
happened to me like 5 times today
every time in wvwvw
its crazy because u have to relog and then travel back to wvwvw and start from spawn point
please fix it

This is known and we should have a fix soon. Asking for them to fix it over and over won’t make it happen any faster

Yep, same thing happens to me (X Fi Titanium). Happens when i’m in WvW. Hopefully we can get a fix soon.

I just got this issue again during the level 43’ish centaur boss with 20+ people on screen (last time I had this was during the swamp boss in head start). Repeating sine wave.

I’m using an X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional with in-game sound set to Highest Quality and Lowest Latency

Edit: Sorry, good to see they’re working on a fix soon, but has anyone had luck changing sound quality or latency as a temporary fix?

draeath.8536:

DemiGoth.6192:

This problem is NOT a GW2 problem but a hardware problem. I’m having the same issue (with my SB X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion) and it’s cause by magnetic interference from other devices/cards in your PC. If you ‘listen carefully’ to this noise, you’ll hear difference when you have more HDD and/or GPU usage.

WRONG. This is NOT what he describes.

What we are experiencing is a sound cut-out, with a simple tone with an amplitude LFO of about 2 seconds cycle time. Others have reported it with onboard sound cards, as well as dedicated cards (and not just ones made by Creative)

I have had this horrible sound issue also and I use an Audigy. It’s not the driver or the card, NONE of my other games have sound problems and I have hundreds. There is some sort of issue with the sound engine in GW2.

with xi-fi pro gamer fatality I’ve never had strange voices

Seems to happen very rarely and only during huge boss fights with tons of people on the screen, like the sound engine gets overloaded or something. It’s not a hardware issue because if you alt-tab to windows, every other sound works fine, just gw2 sound is broken. Plus, people reported this issue even on their onboard realtek sound. Exiting the game is the only way to make the sound stop.

Edit: we should probably follow this thread instead: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Annoying-Sound-Bug/first

Also happens with me during wvwvw.

bowers and wilkins mm-1

NATASk.1942:

did it sound like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne9IjmM4DXw&feature=plcp
happened to me in headstart, hasnt happened since. Pretty sure this has to be some quirk in the sound engine for GW2 as this has never happened in any other game.

Although as Nitrius said, this could also be some sort of driver conflict.

(X-Fi Xtreme Gamer sound card)

Indeed, happens in large fights sometimes. Will eventually seize the game if I allow it to continue during the fight. Basically I have to exit the game to clear it, which sucks as I lose whatever Dynamic Event contribution I have put into it up to that point.

Motherboard uses this audio chipset: Realtek ALC887

Also to add I experience no dramatic FPS changes during these fights, I run at full settings and while I may lose a good chunk of FPS everything seems to be quite fluid, so it isn’t happening due to a system overload or something, it seems to be a programming/bug issue.

Nitrius.3798:

Had something similar happen to me a few days back, but the sound was more like an alarm that went on an off in 1-2 seconds intervals. Suddenly all sound from the game was gone and replaced by that sound. Checked the windows sound panel and saw it was the GW2 application that was making the sound, so i just muted that and turned on some music instead. And the next time i restarted the game client the sound was back to normal, haven’t happened again, at least not yet.

So i guess probably some sort of weird bug with the sound programming in the game maybe? Or some sort of conflict between the game and creative drivers/cards? As i got a Creative X-FI Titanium HD.

I also had this happening,only once though,and when wearing headphones…this seriously hurts your ears when it pops in.

2nd time today this has happened. It happened while I was zerging through Claw of Jormag. (ASUS Maximus V Formula Mobo (which has Creative sound on it)).

I’m using SupremeFX X-Fi.

This never happened to me for the first 10-14 days of playing. When I first noticed it, it was only happening once every 2-3 days; now (and for the past 2-3 days) it’s been occuring anywhere from 6-10 times a day. Once or twice was tolerable, but this is beyond a joke… It’s making the game almost unplayable for me. =/

1. Log in.
2. Sit in town for 20-40 minutes, waiting for WvW queue to pop.
3. get 5-10 minutes of gameplay (an hour if i’m -really- lucky) before sound/game crashes.

Rinse, repeat.

It doesn’t seem like something hardware related, it’s only the GW2 client that screws up. (Media Player works fine in the background somewhere amongst the incessant ringing sound.)

This is still happening as of today. Got it in WvW.

Getting it in some random PvE is bareable… but in WvW where to fix it we need to restart client and loose queue…

taste it: http://youtu.be/xlBOArhHk_I

ANet, please, fix it. it happens to me few times each day!

Have the exact same problem. Even today.

Sounds exactly like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=p-zHl4_DEqU

Doesn’t happen to my other games like The Witcher 2 and Diablo 3.

Tried 2 X-Fi cards, XtremeGamer and Titanium.

Any official info on any fixes yet?