Anyone use an add in sound card?

[BugFreak]

I'll start off by saying I am in no way a sound aficionado and gaming is pretty much the only purpose of this pc. For years I've been using the onboard sound from whatever motherboard I have and it seemed to work fine but in some recent WOW raids my sound cut out on and off. Just for a split second and only at big attacks with a ton going on. It was almost like it ran out of sound resources if that's a thing. I tend to buy what I consider pretty good motherboards like the Z490 Strix-E I have right now and normally have no problems until this. My question is does anyone use add in sound cards like from Creative for their sound and would it fix this kind of problem? I don't go out to an amp and I currently use Sennheiser Game One headphones if that matters.

 

[bmwbaxter]

I had issues with an asus laptop doing the same thing and had to reinstall the audio drivers and it went away.

 

[Janus67]

I used an Asus Xonar DX. It worked mostly well, but would have issues of sound stopping working after waking up from sleep and a rare but occasional bsod. I think they supposedly have mediocre support for win10 drivers. That included using updated drivers from fan-made ones that are supposed to work better.

I also have a micca origin dac/amp that mostly worked well, but similar issues happened with newer versions of win10 where driver signing became an issue

 

[EarthDog]

I would try updating/reinstalling the audio drivers before I go looking for something else. We don't know if the sound card is crapping out, the game/OS or what the issue is. It could be anything.

I haven't used an external sound card, ever, so I can't help on that front.

 

[BugFreak]

I would try updating/reinstalling the audio drivers before I go looking for something else. We don't know if the sound card is crapping out, the game/OS or what the issue is. It could be anything.

I haven't used an external sound card, ever, so I can't help on that front.

I'll give the driver reinstall a shot but I'm not leaning towards hardware or driver failure though. Mainly because it is only happening in the largest of raids in that game when there are a ton of noises going on all at once. I haven't ran into it in any other situation or game. So it is either not enough resources or WOW itself. Considering that raids are pretty big piece of that game I would think a problem like that would be very well known and addressed already.

On a side note, I was doing some reading on the Creative cards. They have a neat thing called "Scout mode" that ups the level of certain sounds like foot steps. That seems very interesting to me since I mainly play FPS where hearing a footstep would be very beneficial. While it could be a gimmick it might be enough for me to try one anyways. Worse case it does nothing and I sell it.

 

[Janus67]

Basically all it does is up the treble and lower (or entirely remove) the bass

 

[EarthDog]

Considering that raids are pretty big piece of that game I would think a problem like that would be very well known and addressed already.

Hence why I said to reinstall drivers. I don't think it's hardware either, which leaves the drivers/your system or the game. Since more people seemingly aren't having this issue, I'd focus on the reflection in the mirror (your system) before throwing money/sound cards at it.

But if you want to try a new card for giggles... why not?! it may solve the problem.

 

[Ben333]

Well, if he tries a different sound card then he will be using a different driver... Win - win? lol

I think it is likely driver related. That said, yeah, a different card would probably fix it.

 

[wagex]

seems to be a common issue with that game there are a number of fixes but this one seems like it would probably be in your area being as it only happens in large raids, probably a ton of data for the sound card to handle...

Some people cannot hear specific sound effects, (or sound choppy, cutting off) especially from DBM or BigWigs, inside raids. I fixed it doing the following.

[1]. In System Sound Options, set Sound Channels to -Medium- or -Low-.
(so that a relevant line appears in Config.wtf file that we have to edit)
If this setting is -High-, the command line wont appear in Config.wtf file.

[2]. Edit the Config.wtf file, which is inside the WTF folder
.. / .. / World of Warcraft / WTF / Config.wtf
using an editor like Notepad++

[3]. Find SET Sound_NumChannels
and set the number of channels to 128.
SET Sound_NumChannels "128"

[4]. SAVE the Config.wtf file.

That did the trick for me. ;-)

- https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/solved-sound-effects-missing-or-choppy-after-7-3-5/3191

 

[BugFreak]

Wow, I appreciate that info! Not sure how I missed that.