Quake 4 Sound issues

**farslayer** · 10-24-2005

So I purchased Quake 4 downloaded the linux installer and got it up and running on my machine.

Debian unstable 2.6.12 nVidia GeForce 4

Game runs great (for my specs anyway.. ) but the sound is all distorted. I don't have a clue where to begin to troubleshoot this.

I have several other games installed and working properly and experience no sound problems with them. ( bzflag, ut2004, savage, etc.. )

Quake 4 on the other hand, well. it's sorta hard to describe.

there is audio, but everything sounds like the reverb it turned the whole way up and the speech was done with an old software synthesizer, that is being put through a harmonizer. so it's basically completely un-intelligable. weapon sounds and background music all suffer from this distortion.

I'm not even sure how to determine if I'm using alsa or oss, there are packages installed for both.

I tried apt-get install libsdl1.2debain-alsa but was informed that libsdl1.2debian-oss was already installed. so maybe that's a clue. I checked for SDL because it is a requirement for the game.

I went ahead and had it remove the oss versionand install the alsa version which had no effect on quake4, but screwed up the sound for the other games. so I put it back the way it was..

So here i sit with an awesome game on my linux box that I can't enjoy due to a sound issue.

Thanks for any help or suggestions. or even a pointer to a good forum that has community support of this specific game ( UT2004 had a nice Linux forum on the publishers site.. can't find a comparable forum for Q4 though )

**techieMoe** · 10-24-2005

A lot of folks (myself included) had this same kind of issue with Doom 3. For me, I switched distros, but there's a possible other solution on the id Doom 3 FAQ here:

Long URL

**farslayer** · 10-25-2005

Thanks techieMoe that did the trick..

set s_alsa_pcm plughw:0
set NumberOfSpeakers 2

all it's all good now !!

SOLVED

**chiisu** · 10-26-2005

Originally Posted by farslayer

set s_alsa_pcm plughw:0
set NumberOfSpeakers 2

Wait, so would I add these in the terminal after "quake4" or in quake4's console after i've already started it?

**techieMoe** · 10-27-2005

Originally Posted by chiisu

Wait, so would I add these in the terminal after "quake4" or in quake4's console after i've already started it?

Read the link provided a few posts up.

**Anonymous1c4** · 10-28-2005

I've tried that and alot of other things and nothing. My sound in quake4 is indescribably torturing. I get all this when running quake.

Code:

Async thread started
idUsercmdGenLocal&#58;&#58;MouseMove&#58; Ignoring ridiculous mouse delta.
snd_pcm_writei short write&#58; 3450 out of 4096
snd_pcm_writei short write&#58; 1380 out of 2048
idAudioHardwareALSA&#58;&#58;Write&#58; 4096 frames overflowed and dropped
snd_pcm_writei short write&#58; 1380 out of 2048
snd_pcm_writei short write&#58; 690 out of 1024
snd_pcm_writei short write&#58; 690 out of 1024
snd_pcm_writei short write&#58; 690 out of 1024
guid set to m5p8RAdpRJ8
snd_pcm_writei short write&#58; 690 out of 1024

And the whole, 4096 frame overflow stuff, goes on through the whole game.

And yes my sound works in everything else except Quake4

EDIT: Scratch that...my sound DOESN'T work in everything...now i'm getting this in UT2004

Code:

open /dev/&#91;sound/&#93;dsp&#58; No such file or directory

*sigh*...Am i a magnet for problems or something?

**techieMoe** · 10-28-2005

Originally Posted by Anonymous1c4

Code:

open /dev/&#91;sound/&#93;dsp&#58; No such file or directory

I don't have the foggiest idea what's causing your other errors, but this one might be caused by some program or daemon blocking access to your sound card. KDE sometimes does this with its artsd daemon.

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