WoW sounds like a game from 1994 now. The official forums suggest some "fixes" for issues with missing sounds etc. Although those worked for me, I really can't play with such horrible sound quality. In raids it's especially bad. I really can't believe the developers haven't noticed this themselves and I also find it very hard to believe this hasn't been noticed on the PTR. I don't really understand the move to software sound processing when doing it though hardware is so clearly superior. For now I just start the game with the -nosound option, hoping this will be fixed sooner rather than later, but knowing Blizzard it probably won't and we'll just have to live with it.

There was most likely very few attempts on raiding in the PTR for whatever reasons, although im sure there was alot of PvP.

If they want things to be tested from raiding POV then they really need to find a way to make it more accessable so it doesn't absorb a whole night of fruitless labour.

I have to say that raiding in BT has resulted in me turning sounds off all together :|

One of our rogues is having an interesting problem with his sound - ever since the patch, the "Enable Sound" option in WoW is disabled for him and he hasn't been able to figure out how to get it back. Anyone else see an issue like this or should I just tell him to keep submitting bug reports and pray for an answer?

That doesn't sound too interesting, it just sounds bad.

Cranking the sound channels up (to 128, according to my config.wtf) seemed to fix the sound clipping issues.

Bosses grunting on every hit, however, is damned annoying.

Does he actually have a sound card listed in the drop down? It may not be detecting his sound hardware properly. He should probably check his SEsound.log file.

I still have the sound clipping issues even with sound channels set to max. Whatever they changed, it was awful. Several of us noticed the same extremely annoying constant "popping" sound at p2 Reliquary last night, good incentive to DPS faster to get it over with.

It's probably that it didn't get any raid testing or testing in environments where you have a lot going on, far more than a typical 5 man. My sound is fine soloing, and in small groups. It just goes to hell in BGs or raiding if I'm by a lot of action.

http://www.wowinterface.com/download...-FishBite.html

Sounds are one of the things we are allowed to change.

Eh... I'm not sure if I understand your post or if it's just inaccurate. If you recreate a path to the sound file, you can replace that sound effect with something else. The example you give is the one thing I have that does this -- Ollie Williams from the Blaccuweather forecast shouting "I SAW A FISH!" when there's a bobber splash.

Granted, it's not restricted to the Interface\ directory structure as an add-on, but just pointing out that it is possible to replace sound effects.

I don't know what the hell is going on, but it's annoying more then anything else, like ever. My sounds cracks, skips and is complete rubbish. Next to that, I have some retarded lagspikes every 30 seconds or so, skipping 10 seconds of gameplay, then playing everything back in hyper speed. I'm positive it's related to sound, since I'm on a constant 50 ms.

What's the number of channels from your config.wtf? Mine's 128. Someone earlier in the thread reported that it kept getting reset despite multiple login-set-to-max-logout cycles. Or perhaps WoW is detecting you have less available channels than your hardware can support.

I am having the same problem, it makes it really hard and annoying to raid. Nothing else but WoW lags.

I have an oldish Audigy 2ZS, and since the patch my sound has improved greatly over what it was pre-patch.

Pre-patch my sound channel settings didn't work, and sounds were generally flat, as well I would miss a lot of sounds (For instance, half the time I couldn't hear Kael'thas' voice when phase 1 of his encounter started, and could only hear random advisors)

The only semi-annoyance is that since all of my sounds are playing correctly, when I'm in melee range, since I hear all the attacks additively, it starts to get fairly loud, which sounds really cool, but drowns out vent.

My sound channel settings, hardware settings (and now reverb) are functional now, whereas before they would reset themselves.

I'm wondering if my card is one of the ones they specifically tested internally.

What card are you using? I'm on a SB Audigy.

Flat out bizarre. Maybe I just got used to it in a day or had my sound turned down low enough that it didn't bother me last night. But, the clipping was VERY noticeable on Tuesday night and I didn't hear anything wrong last night.

The voice chat system reserving sound channels does sound (ba-dum-ching) like a likely culprit for issues, though.

What's even more bizarre to me is that I'm using shittastic onboard sound - I can't even remember if it had a name brand or not.

SoundMax Intergrated Digital HD Audio.

The problem comes and goes depending on your location due to background noises eating up additional channels. Some areas have way more background noises than others, which will result in clipping and sounds being cut out when there aren't enough channels available.

The way the new sound system (FMod Ex) works, is this: You choose a certain number of 'virtual channels' and a certain number of 'real channels'. When you play a sound, it gets assigned to a virtual channel. Actual audio only comes out of real channels, and the sound system picks the most 'important' virtual channels to assign to real channels at any given time. Importance is based on a combination of the sound's distance from the listener, and a manually set 'priority' value. You may have noticed more positional audio effects since the patch; this is why.

For some reason, Blizzard has set stupid things like background noises as important, causing things like skill and combat sounds to get cut off. Adding to the problem is the fact that sounds from other players' attacks, etc. now play, consuming even more channels. My guess is they assumed the virtual channel system would take care of the problem, even though they're using it incorrectly.

If we could crank the number of channels up past 128 it would most likely fix the problem. I've tried that, though, and the game manually limits it to 128. Hopefully at some point in the future they'll tune the system to handle these cases correctly, but I wish they had actually tested it in real combat situations. Not hearing effects from my skills makes it much harder for me to tell whether my attacks and finishers have worked or not.

Edit: I'm guessing it might be possible to patch the WoW executable to remove the 128 channel limit... but I'd also imagine that Warden would notice that and I'd get banned. Any ideas there, anyone? Is it possible that limit is handled by lua?

I found it particularly irritating in phase 2 RoS with every single hit and spell landing triggering the "feedback damage" sound.

Yeah I pretty much have to play with game sounds off now due to these changes.

With sound channels at minimum I still get the sound spam which is just too much. Boss grunting continuously, a ton of melee attack sounds, totem aura refresh sounds (some make sounds don't they?), and a ton of spell casting sounds. It's sound overload.

only sound problem I noticed is turning off ambiance doesn't actually turn it off at all. Very annoying...

Okay, so I've been browsing whine and complaint threads for about 4 hours now and I've concluded that Sound Blaster Audigy and realtek sound cards are the blame for the sudden lagspikes. Apparantlly, a lot of people have found that different things altered the lag situation a little.

a) Turning off hardware acceleration and putting it on Basic. Start - > run -> dxdiag and then on your sound tab
b) Editting the WoW shortcut, disabling all sound by adding -nosound to the Runpath.
c) Apparantly the issue is caused by the latest drivers by Creative and going back to the drivers that came with the card seem to fix it too.
d) Disabling your soundcard completely. Device Manager, this doesn't seem like a viable solution to me due to the need of 1) mp3 (yeah, i like to listen to music while i raid ) 2) i need to be able to listen to ventrilo.

The first didn't do anything. I'm trying out the second now, but I don't think I can play without sound - I'm in the AV queue now to see it helped. I don't know about others, but I only get the lagspikes if a lot of action is going on. The third is something I will have to try tomorrow, since I'm an idiot and I have no idea where the CD is that came with the card. 4th is something I'll probably not do, unless I can fix some crazy stuff and start up a second computer for Ventrilo and such :S.

Edit: Sigh, 2nd didnt do anything either. Jesus, and this patch was tested for over 2 months? :S

Doing the nosound thing works for me. Audigy 2ZS. I can do normal stuff without lagging, it's just raids with all the windfury. I did the dxdiag basic thing too.

The only problem is all my sound is really quiet when I play outside of raids.