Soundblaster Live 5.1/Windows XP/Grand Prix Legends

[Aysedasi]

Can someone help me out, please?

I recently bought a new pc - very nice spec in all respects apart from having onboard sound. So when I was offered a Soundblaster Live 5.1 at a bargain price, I thought, yep, I'll have one of those.

The card is now installed and seems to be working fine. I come to play Grand Prix Legends and the sound is dire - much, much worse than the onboard sound. I've checked out a couple of my favourite gaming forums and generally the view seems to be that the SB Live is a hopeless card for GPL and XP. Oh dear.

Funny thing is, however, that sitting there at Paddock Hill Bend with my foot flat to the floor in neutral in frustration, suddenly the murk of the sound disappeared, and was replaced with a nice crisp version - just like the one I had before. So I close down GPL, and restart it, go to drive, get the same crappy sound again. I park up, floor the throttle for 10 seconds, and back comes the decent sound! Now all I have to do is work out how to get the decent sound without thrashing the engine!

Any ideas anyone?

[Tony_Simpson]

I am running a sound blaster card, XP and GPl and I had the same problem to begin with. Utter rubbish as the sound.

I think I solved it by downloading the updated drivers from the soundblaster web site, but it has been so long since I did the XP install that I can not remember properly, Hopefully this should help you sort this problem out.

[Aysedasi]

I downloeaded the new drivers straight away, Tony - all 24 meg of them! I installed them and found I had no sound at all. So I reverted to the originals. I think I'll give them another go and see what happens.

[Aysedasi]

But your sound is now OK, is it? If so, I will persevere - what I was reading elsewhere made me think I might as well take the card out and revert to the onboard sound.

[Tony_Simpson]

Yes I downloaded the Soundblaster Xp driver update file and the game and sound work fine. It is around an 8.8mb sized file btw.

[Aysedasi]

Right, you've thrown me now, Tony - the driver file I downloaded was 24 meg!

When I re-installed the new drivers, all seemed fine. I drove half a dozen laps at the Glen with no problem at all - great sound. I then changed to the Lotus and went straight back to the awful sound.

The fact that, at times, the sound is near perfect and at others, quite dreadful, is worrying. I need to find out what to do to get the former and not the latter!

[Tony_Simpson]

try downloading the file I am using from here: http://www.goldweb.com.au/downloads/...creative/live/

[Aysedasi]

Thanks Tony, I'll do that.

Having said that, I've tried some advice from racesimscentral's forum about reducing acceleration and volume and fiddling with the app.ini and that seems to be working OK at the moment. So I've got my fingers crossed!

[Tony_Simpson]

I have just remembered something else now. when in game you have the choice of max number of sounds. If you are still getting problems then set this between 3 and 5, and turn the in game volume down.

Other then that enjoy GPL with its full set of sounds

[Tristan]

I run Dolby 5.1, Win XP and GPL very well. 36fps easily.

[Aysedasi]

Tony - fingers and toes are currently very tightly crossed! I downloaded the Win2000/XP SB Live drivers from the URL you gave me and, at this moment in time - all is working very well! I just played for about 45 mins, changed circuits, changed cars, crashed a few times (intentionally of course , as the sound seemed to corrupt after crashing - and everything stayed consistently good. Even turned the game off and back on again, and still OK.

Frankly I'm amazed. But very grateful to you if this really is the solution as the gaming fora are absolutely chock-a-block with people who have sound problems with their GPL/SBLive/XP combination.

It's interesting you mention turning the number of sounds down. On advice from one of the boards, I'm running the max 16 sounds, game volume at 50-60% and Windows at about 70%. I'm also still running with acceleration down one notch, as that was another piece of advice I picked up somewhere. I might shove that back up to max tomorrow and see what happens, although I'm a bit worried about tempting fate!

[Tony_Simpson]

Glad to be of help

[AllonFS]

Only just spotted this thread. I thought it was just my dodgy little speakers that were causing the problems. When I get a chance I will download the driver and hopefully solve the problem. Thanks Ayse and Tony.