IL2 1946 & SoW Sound Cards v Onboard Chipsets
 

Before going any further I'm only referring to a default installation of IL2 1946 no MODS

After some testing of various onboard sound chipsets ie :

ADI
Intel
C-Media CMI9739A
Realtek ALC655
AC97 Codec
Via

Its going to be obvious that these chipsets can never make IL2 sound as it was "intended" with the default sound engine.

I remember various comments from squad members and pilots that I've flown with on our TeamSpeak servers over the last 11 years that the aircraft engine sounds in IL2 were "All the same" and I would repeatedly tell them to install a pci slot sound card, at the time the Creative ones were the most common with Turtle Beach and Yamaha having features that were greatly improved over onboard sound chipsets.

The main thing that's surprised me after some more recent testing is that a lot of my customers just accept the fact that onboard sound is the be all and end all, and is "good enough" for their gaming needs, its only after pointing out their options for the PC build they want, that they have an option for a separate sound card, they then find out the benefits.

One demonstration I have is Call of Duty 5 set up with 2.1 surround sound with Realtek AC97 7.1, I let them play it with 2.1 & 5.1 desktop and then 5.1 headphones.
Then switch to a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music - 24-bit PCI - 7.1 Channel Sound Card doing the same listening test and they are amazed at the difference and level of immersion they are taken to.

The same applies to IL2 1946 v408m deafult installation, the sounds are totally different and the aircraft loose their "bland sounds" especially if EAX is enabled with CMSS/2.
Engine notes are totally different and superchargers can be clearly heard, engines with deep bass tones on fly by's and the guns have better sound differentials, also there's no sounds heard from miles across the map in the default sound engine.

Now there are many different sound cards out there that are extremely expensive and diverse, I chose a low cost Creative version as an example, It does the job extremely well for its price. Until motherboard manufacturers come up with a decent sound chipset ( Some Manufacturers are making their own already ) you should budget for a decent sound card to really improve your sounds In IL2.
As some of you will know most high end gaming motherboards don't come with onboard sound, but this is targeted at the middle market gamer looking to upgrade a half decent PC already.

I hope that the SoW sound engine is going to be secure from cheating :) and that those complaining of poor sounds have done the best to ensure it's not at their end that the problem lies, as happened in the past, remember the MOD sounds were mainly brought into IL2 for this reason (poor onboard sound) it was easier for some one to make new sounds than for you to improve your PC's and keep IL2 secure. :)
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I have a high end creative soundcard and highend headset and have done the settings so it sounds perfekt in all games and musik. The sound in IL2 1946 sound like crap! No matter what settings you do. Im sorry, I dont want to sound negative, but thats the way it is.

Hopefull DT will do something about it.

I know Ive set myself up for posts like yours so its the norm for some to post "Ive got the best and its still sounds crap".

Perhaps posting your sound settings from conf ini and your sound card and driver with operating system also would help here ?

Read above regarding waiting for others to change things, some careful tweaking could help and remember the sound engine will be different for SoW but how different and secure remains to be seen.

I suppose I'm just getting the new pilots that are around pre sound mod ready for some tweaking and "hardware aware"

Well, I use a SoundBlaster Live! MP3+ card myself and before that I used a Yamaha OPL-3Sax which I still own, just in case I decide to come up with another computer.

I feel like onboard sound is really ok when you're aiming just at listening to a movie or a song or something and you don't really care for the real quality of it.

I like sound quality both in game and music, and I don't have many complaints regarding IL-2's sound quality. As it turns out, this thread just reminded me to install the sound card onto the new computer :P

By the way, I've been away from the IL-2 (or general gaming) community for a while, and I feel kind of shocked when I read news about sound hacking/cheating and stuff. Could anyone bring me up on that via PM? I feel it's something of a no-no commenting about it in the open.

It was common knowledge the sound engine was hacked years ago hence an hefty update of it by 1c team.
The sound "radar" hack was used primarily by Russian squads this was also common knowledge back then :)
But there were also some other nasty things going on also that I wont mention here that were not common.

I'm hoping the new sound engine is secure this time around.

These are totally killing fun...:(

I've got to say, that I am puzzled again and again how much money people spend on monitors and graphics-card to get the perfect immersion from a game. Never ever would they consider tuning down graphics enough to run them via onboard graphics.

For some odd reason, the same bunch of people insist that running sound through cheap crappy onboard-chips and a 10$ headset provides the best sound available.

:confused:


I use an x-fi soundcard linked to an HiFi-Amplifier and a HiFi-Headset with a frequency range from 5Hz to 25kHz.
I honestly never understood why people were not shaken by the original sound of 50s or didn't notice any difference between different engine sounds. With a good setup you surely do.

I used to use soundcards, back in the day, but I don't any more because onboard sounds are so much better than those old cards.

I have 5.1 speakers running on the onboard sound in my motherboard, which is apparently Soundmax Blackhawk, whatever that may be. I don't have a problem with sound in Il*2 (Stalker SOC, yes, but doesn't everybody?).

Are you really saying that a £15 soundcard will be better than the soundsetup that comes on a £100 motherboard? Worse, are you saying that an old 32 bit soundcard will be better than a motherboard sound system that replaced a motherboard soundsystem that replaced a 512 bit motherboard sound system?

I have onboard sound that supports 5.1 & 7.1, I'm perfectly happy with it and have no qualms about IL2's sound.
(Realtek HD audio on an Asus board, the driver has lots of tweakability & compensation for speaker positions etc), I always build my computers to quite a high spec, but never bother with audio cards.
That said, I'm definitely no audiophile or sound aficionado

I build high end gaming rigs for a living its my own business and i build custom PC's to order. The main problem i find is simply fitting sound cards into PC's, most of my customers want either SLI, Tri SLI or Crossfire setups which leaves little to no space to squeeze a sound card in. I always try to include a X-Fi card into the build but most times its either not possible or I have to physically modify the card to get it to fit. Even then a sound card squeezed between two GPU's is not ideal considering the temps these cards run at.
For me there has been no comparison regarding sound quality, a good quality sound card has always been far better than any onboard option. How ever of late a lot of high end boards are now addressing this and including 7.1channel HD audio has standard.
It does appear that the major high level motherboard manufactures have written off the soundcard and give it little consideration when planning the layout of their boards, which i think is a shame. Obviously this is only an issue when fitting more than one GPU.

I know your pain, Tree. I have a MicroATX-board with an oversized graphics card, all squeezed into a tiny case. Still, I don't want to miss my x-fi for the world. And since there are many options for fitting such cards, I'd still find a solution. It doesn't need a PCIe2.0 x16 bus to benefit from a soundcard. Normal PCI or the MiniPCI does fine.
And if all goes wrong, I'd still prefer am X-FI-USB solution over the onboard chip. ;)

No

But I build and repair PC's, I have loads of old Creative sound cards that I throw away due to the simple fact they no longer work correctly under Vista & Win 7, I can get them to work but the hassle and cost involved in time isn't worth it especially if its shipped out and the customer does a re installation and is left high and dry finding out how to get their sound to work.

As a minimum spec sound card the one I mentioned in my OP is more than adequate.



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The onboard sound on my Asus Crosshair III combines the best of both worlds: a dedicated PCIe audio slot, with a Supreme FX X-Fi soundcard in it. I find the sound to be equal to, if not better than the X-Fi gamer I had in my previous rig.

B

Yep, that is a very good sound card Brando and it does not interfere with any graphics setup.

Hi B

Sold a few of those but be careful I've had some heavy handed customers snap the slot off when they have messed around inside the cases fitting "extras" , then expect it replaced under warranty :(



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Err, what, you're calling me heavy-handed now? Well, I dunno, offer the hand of friendship (the only hand I've got!) and this is what I get......

<wanders off, mumbling>

:D

To counterbalance the first-page naysayer, I'll say I've got a fairly expensive, top-of-the-line sound card (X-Fi Titanium Champion) and a very nice, expensive headset (Sennheisser pc350) and the resident sounds are quite good. They are superior to the mod sounds in their dynamic range and the feedback they provide when engine rpms fluctuate in extreme maneuvers...period.

Can they be better? Sure. Are they cr@p? not hardly.

Well not only the separate sound card as I have that makes the difference but it also frees up more CPU cycles and chip-set bandwidth..

Ive ordered a few of these for stock >> Asus Xonar D2X Sound Cards

Little bit too many led's for my taste but once I have one on demo I'll let you know how they compare to Creative Xfi Titanium pro and Champion series.

A lot of specification for the money, how they sound will be the real deal !!!

http://www.guru3d.com/article/asus-xonar-d2x-review/

If you already have one let us know how it performs :)

IL-2 is a old game... the sistem game sound was good in his time, today a higthend motherboard have a good on-board sound cards, be shure.
the true is the game sound engine IL-2 dont have a channel sound for turbo engine, "Fly by view sound" or "low pass sound", sound for games like IL-2 is very hard to do, there is a thing call "acustic", the game must be a "acustic" simulator and this is not easy, in the true, very hard, sometimes you need use a sound to result in game the sound you want, you can see this in low pass videos, is impossible to IL-2 engine sound get close because need more channels sounds.
But i have hope SOW will have a better and modern sounds sistem, sound is a important improvement! but much more hard than looks.

yep
 

I can notice the diff between my onboard sound card and my sound blaster audigy.

I'd go with the OP.

The original sounds are excellent but I can tell some of them are reused for certain planes, and if you youtube the warbirds at airshows (with the original engine) you can notice the difference of the warbirds vs in game.

THe only issue I got is sometimes IL-2 will play with my 7.1 surround sound set up, but then cut out to only the bass, and 4 speakers (two back, two front) work few seconds to 20 secs after starting. Sometimes I can fix it by ctrl F2 to an enemy plane (or panning to the side to change the sound) or F2 outside or do F3, then it goes back to 7.1, the alternative is to exit to main menu.


It sucks though for my next build, the mobo I choose, only has two PCIe slots. So I could either go single video and sound or dual SLI thing . . . weaksauce. And the 3 PCIe cards hover outside of my price range / or for quads (going for first dual core build).

I always get ATX medium or full tower b/c mini atx lack of space pisses me off like fielding corsairs on a jeep carrier, and med or full you could put 10 fans around to keep it cool like the Fonze.



I'm more of the old school motherboards where the mobo's would have 4 PCI slots. But alas . . . at least mobo builders are putting decent inboard sound