No sound?

[Dougmeister]

Ok. I got everything working with Xim's Star Wars mod except the sound.

How can I fix this?

I'm on an AMD 64-bit Windows 10 box. On-board sound card.

Error is:

I_InitSound: Initializing OpenAL
Opened device OpenAL Soft on Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)
Failed to setup context: Invalid Device
Sound init failed. Using nosound.

I tried the 32-bit version with the same result.

I found at least one thread that suggested that the 64-bit version of GZDoom has (had?) problems with MIDI?

[Graf Zahl]

This has nothing to do with MIDI. For some reason OpenAL detects your on board sound chip, but when opening it for playback receives an error from the system. Are you running any other software that might block it?

[Dougmeister]

Thanks for explaining OpenAL to me.

I'm not running any other software (that I know of) that might block it. Any ideas what might block it or how to find them?

Other instances of GZDoom that I've installed have worked, but they were older and would not support the mod (Xim's Star Wars) that I'm trying to get working. Everything else except the sound seems to be working fine...

[Chris]

Getting a trace log from OpenAL Soft would help show what's failing with the device. If you open a command window in the GZDoom folder, then run:

Code: Select all

...> set ALSOFT_LOGLEVEL=3
...> set ALSOFT_LOGFILE=openal-log.txt
...> gzdoom.exe

It should produce an openal-log.txt file in the folder with what it did and what went wrong.

Really wish Windows (and Linux) had some kind of global logging mechanism that shared libs/dlls could just write to and the user could access afterward, without relying on the app hooking into the lib's output to echo to its own log (and create the risk of it trying to sniff at internal information its not supposed to know or care about), or using environment variables to enable writing to a file like this. Android has such a logging system, but Windows and Linux's seem to be more for lower level system components and require special privileges.

[Dougmeister]

Here's the output. See attachment.

A few lines that look bad to me:

Code: Select all

AL lib: (II) ReadALConfig: Loading config D:\Try4\alsoft.ini...
AL lib: (II) GetConfigValue: Key disable-cpu-exts not found
.
.
.
AL lib: (II) GetConfigValue: Key rt-prio not found
AL lib: (II) GetConfigValue: Key resampler not found
AL lib: (II) GetConfigValue: Key trap-al-error not found
AL lib: (II) GetConfigValue: Key trap-alc-error not found
AL lib: (II) GetConfigValue: Key reverb/boost not found
AL lib: (II) GetConfigValue: Key drivers not found
.
.
.
AL lib: (II) GetConfigValue: Key excludefx not found
AL lib: (II) GetConfigValue: Key default-reverb not found
AL lib: (II) GetConfigValue: Key channels not found
AL lib: (II) GetConfigValue: Key sample-type not found
AL lib: (II) GetConfigValue: Key frequency not found
AL lib: (II) GetConfigValue: Key periods not found
AL lib: (II) GetConfigValue: Key period_size not found
AL lib: (II) GetConfigValue: Key sources not found
AL lib: (II) GetConfigValue: Key slots not found
AL lib: (II) GetConfigValue: Key sends not found
.
.
.
AL lib: (II) GetConfigValue: Key frequency not found
AL lib: (II) GetConfigValue: Key sources not found
AL lib: (II) GetConfigValue: Key sends not found
AL lib: (II) GetConfigValue: Key hrtf not found
.
.
.
AL lib: (EE) ALCwasapiPlayback_resetProxy: Unhandled channel config: 4 -- 0x00000107
AL lib: (EE) ALCwasapiPlayback_resetProxy: Unhandled extensible channels: 4 -- 0x00000107
AL lib: (EE) ALCwasapiPlayback_resetProxy: Failed to initialize audio client: 0x80070057
AL lib: (WW) alcSetError: Error generated on device 04AC52A0, code 0xa001

[Chris]

The GetConfigValue lines are fine, it just means there's no user-specified value for the setting and will use the default. Those unhandled channel lines, though, show the problem. It appears you have a rather unusual speaker configuration (front-left, front-right, front-center, back-center), which OpenAL Soft doesn't know how to create a mix for and WASAPI won't attempt to remap a plain stereo stream for it. That's the one restriction WASAPI has that makes no sense to me, that a client must provide a stream configuration that matches exactly the device configuration, whatever it is. Even though the device configuration includes front-left and front-right speakers, WASAPI will refuse to accept a stream that only has front-left and front-right channels if the device has anything more than that. Each app has to deal with any device configuration the system can possibly throw at it.

For the time being, you can either configure OpenAL Soft to use dsound or winmm (which do still remap channels, though may have higher latency), or reconfigure the device in Windows to be stereo or quadraphonic (front-left, front-right, back-left, back-right). I'll see if I can make a more robust workaround in OpenAL Soft for its next release, to try harder with ensuring at least stereo output works. To configure OpenAL Soft in the mean time, either use the alsoft-config utility if available, or create a text file in the GZDoom folder, name it 'alsoft.ini', and add the line:

Code: Select all

drivers = dsound, # or winmm

[Dougmeister]

I tried creating the alsoft.ini file with the line you suggested and it didn't do the trick. Pretty sure I did it right (made sure it was a .ini, not a .txt, etc.)

Not sure how to reconfigure the device in Windows 10 or where to get the alsoft-config utility. Any tips there?

[Chris]

I tried creating the alsoft.ini file with the line you suggested and it didn't do the trick. Pretty sure I did it right (made sure it was a .ini, not a .txt, etc.)

Double-check that file extensions are set to show (Windows hides them by default, or at least used to). If they're hidden, it'll show 'alsoft.ini' but actually be 'alsoft.ini.txt', which won't work.