near-muted in-game sounds

[Ravemind]

Has anyone else had this problem? The cutscenes play fine, but in game things like footsteps and lightsaber vwings and blaster shots and generally most of the sound effects are barely audible.

[Sweetz]

Umm...did you try turning the volume up? :p

Seriously though, if you look in the game's option menu, everything is set at 50% by default when you first start the game. Cutscenes just go off your Windows volume so they will be loud in comparison to the in-game sounds unless you turn up sound effects in the options menu.

[Ravemind]

Yes, I did.

It feels more like it's mainly outputting those sounds in channels my headphones aren't receiving, even though they are supposed to be surround sound headphones (steelseries 5hv2)

Would probably be resolved if I could change it to stereo, but I can't find any options anywhere to choose between sound output modes.

[FRAGzero]

Well, that happened to me too. I think its because the game has been ported from console.

[Sweetz]

The game does also have known issues with 5.1 sound setups. Most notably music only plays from the front left speaker (which can be really annoying).

The game goes off your Window's speaker setting for sound setup. So you have to change your Windows setting to Stereo/2.1 to get stereo sound output from the game.

[GoldenShadow]

I have the Same problem. I played this on PS3 when it was first released in glorious 5.1 surround. The forcepowers Felt awesome with the sub woofer rattling the windows and just all around win. I got this for PC since it was so cheap and the first thing I notice is how dull the sound is. My PC has 7.1 surround. This game's sound has lost the oomph Its really low compared to the cutscenes. As far as I know, the sounds are working, but theres little to no bass or sub usage in gameplay. But the cutscenes all work fine and those are very loud and have powerful sub woofer effects

I tried forcing stereo and theres no change, sound is still lower in-game compared to cutscenes and no bass.

[Alienware Gamer]

Make sure you have downmixing set in your sound settings within Windows.(unless your sound card is capable of this). I have an Asus Xonar D2X with Dolby Digital LIVE and TFU1 sounds incredible with 2.1 5.1 or 7.1 so its not the game!

Go into the Control Panel\Sound menu. Then RMB under the listed devices & ensure that disabled Sound Devices are active as Windows is known to disable the downmixing to 2 channels feature in the menu when or if your gfx card also has built in sound Windows gets confused about which sound device to use!

[GoldenShadow]

Alienware Gamer, I have that exact same sound card. Tell me exactly what settings you are using and I will try to duplicate to see if I'm doing it wrong.

[Alienware Gamer]

Alienware Gamer, I have that exact same sound card. Tell me exactly what settings you are using and I will try to duplicate to see if I'm doing it wrong. I have my Xonar connected via Optical cable to a THX Certified high end Pioneer AV Receiver.

I disable all DSP modes on the Xonar & also use Dolby Digital Live only to connect.

Also ensure you disable the Dolby Pro-LogicII 5.1 downmixing in the Xonar Control Panel.

That's it no other special settings whatsoever using the latest Xonar official drivers on Vista 32bit. Let me know how you get on.

[GoldenShadow]

I tried exactly what you said and the results were about the same as my 7.1 analog connections to my receiver. I even tried the SPDIF with PCM stereo audio, and still the sound in-game is always more muted than the cutscenes, title, menus, etc. I played this on PS3, I know how its supposed to sound. This is not it. Doing a force push should rumble the hell out of the sub woofer. On the steam version I get little to nothing from the sub from this game. I'll check my driver version of my Xonar D2X

Also, even when I tried it your way the music only plays from the front left speakers.

[Alienware Gamer]

I tried exactly what you said and the results were about the same as my 7.1 analog connections to my receiver. I even tried the SPDIF with PCM stereo audio, and still the sound in-game is always more muted than the cutscenes, title, menus, etc. I played this on PS3, I know how its supposed to sound. This is not it. Doing a force push should rumble the hell out of the sub woofer. On the steam version I get little to nothing from the sub from this game. I'll check my driver version of my Xonar D2X

Also, even when I tried it your way the music only plays from the front left speakers.

I bought the retail EU DVD-Rom version when it came out in December09 & also patched it to 1.2 not that that should make any difference but not sure if Steam are selling the already patched version or not?

[GoldenShadow]

I was thinking about it and maybe some how the game is getting the channels mixed up so its playing sounds from the wrong speakers. That would explain the lack of LFE (subwoofer low freq effect) for me and why the music only comes from the front left.

[Alienware Gamer]

I was thinking about it and maybe some how the game is getting the channels mixed up so its playing sounds from the wrong speakers. That would explain the lack of LFE (subwoofer low freq effect) for me and why the music only comes from the front left. Yep sounds like its the way your Xonar is connected/configured I get the full monty everything & its so freakin loud I have to turn the volume down or play on headphones!

Just configure you Xonar to only use Dolby Digital Live + disable all other DSP modes especially GX as that's junk anyway pure DDL with no DSP is the ultimate in PC sound!

Then ensure its also set to the correct Windows settings in the control panel/sound menu.

[Alienware Gamer]

Try the latest driver as it contains these fixes:
http://www.asus.com/Product.aspx?P_ID=ZBWhAEnH6nDOB00E

"Xonar D2X driver for Windows Vista 32/64bit Version: 6.12.8.1773
Description：
1. Fix audio track's inaccuracy issue in RA3.
2. Fix some old game cannot run under Win95 mode of XP or Vista(EX: C&C).
3. Vocal FX can support Skype 4.1 and MSN 9.0
4. Fix WOW crash issue.
5. Fix When use Power DVD to play AC3, the film may have halt issue when disable SPDIF out.
6. Fix S/PDIF setting, Speaker center/Bass swap error won't come when you change
"PCM" and "Dolby Digital Live" mode.
7. Fix channel inaccuracy issue.
8. Under Hi-FI mode, Enviroment size default has been change to ROOM_SIZE_MEDIUM
from ROOM_SIZE_LARGE. "

[GoldenShadow]

my driver version is PCI-D2X-091126-7.12.8.1777(W73264-RC-01)
which I think is a beta version of the new driver. Let me try that one.

Well I am running on Windows 7 64 bit. That driver you use is for Vista

That driver version doesn't even show up for me on the website unless I explicitedly set it to show me drivers for Vista 32

I decided to test that driver you use and its not compatible. Strangely it works when I do the speaker test inside the Xonar control panel, but windows can not access the sound device. WMP gives an error when I try to play a song, all windows sounds are gone, like the startup sound. Going back to the version I had before.

I suppose this is probably a driver problem. Last report was a new driver version being released this October, keeping fingers crossed.

edit 2: Had to do a system restore. that driver screwed up my sound. It wasn't even fixed by reinstalling the correct one. Sound worked, but WMP still had errors. After system restore, all is working again.

[LeeTheAgent]

I'm getting the exact same problem with my Realtek onboard audio. The thing is, the game used to work perfectly fine... I'm not sure what changed. :\

[GoldenShadow]

Ok I got my sound system back to 100%. So I went in-game to star wars force unleashed and did a listen test. I have a 7.1 speaker setup. I put my ear next to each speaker and listened to what was produced.

Now bear in mind this is all kosher outside of the game, theres no misconfiguration on my part. Everything works beautifully outside of this one game.

Left Front Speaker: Has Music and maybe sound effects.
Right Front Speaker: NO music and Does have sound effects.
Center Speaker: Not 100% sure, but maybe some slighty muted sound effects
Sub woofer: little to no sound(closer to nothing)
Side left: Sound effects only
Side Right: Music and sound effects
Rear Left: sound effects only
Rear right: sound effects only.

So there is a definate problem with channels getting swapped around in this game. My Xonar control panel has an option to swap center/sub Lets me try that and report back.
When I do that during normal playback it just cuts the subwoofer, maybe in this game is till restore it?

Swapping the channels did nothing and the overall sound after that was quieter.

[GoldenShadow]

Tomorrow I will make a restore point and try an experiment. disable the Xonar and enable onboard sound 7.1 to see if it will work.

[LeeTheAgent]

I solved the main problem, which was the missing sound in the last two levels that were addressed in other threads here (though I think the last level might still be missing some sound?), so yeah, now I'm getting the sound channels problem too (music only in front left speaker). I don't recall the retail disc version having those problems, but it's been awhile since I played that version.