Logitech G35 headset causing sound distortion/crackling.

[Highway_Star]

Recently my in-game sound started to become distorted and crackly. I also hear sounds comming through too loud or not at all. Other times, I'll hear things happening even when I'm on the other side of the map (ie. I'll hear a firefight in Chernogorsk when I'm up in Krasnostav).

It becomes unbearable when helicopters and jets are involved, I'll often get insanely loud afterburner roar comming through my headset at random times - forcing me to remove the headset from my head to avoid being deafened.

I've reinstalled the sound drivers for the headset and they are up to date. I've also reinstalled Arma 2, yet the problem remains.

Using my standard stereo speakers for the audio output solves the problem, but I don't get surround sound then.

Other than getting a new headset, is there a way to fix this? I'm very confused because I've changed nothing, what could causethis bug?

P.S. I'm using vanilla Arma2 v1.05. No mods.

[Bulldogs]

It's likely that the headset has an upmix effect to simulate surround sound. Those effects cause problems with arma (the sound engine doesn't support them)

check under your driver settings for your headphones (or soundcard) and disable any extra effects. Also make sure your speaker setup is set to headphones under windows sound settings, and if you still have crackling after that, turn up your headphone volume and/or windows speaker volume and turn down your ingame volume.

[Highway_Star]

What's confusing is that I've had this headset for months without a problem. Then is issue pops up and I've no idea why.

[Bulldogs]

May have been in a driver update. The issue occurs in several different software based sound systems and usually has to do with a confusion of channels or audio data. A similar problem came up on release of red faction guerilla in that most 5.1 setups would get the same thing with audio sounding like it is next to you when it's ar away.

There's certain mix effects like creative soundblaster/x-fi cmss which is used to simulate force audio into surround even if the audio engine doesn't support it. Things like getting 2.1 to go through 5.1, and 5.1 to go through 7.1. Many audio engines don't effectively support it, like arma audio engine.

With a driver update on your headphones or sound card they could have included such an effect.

[Polecat.uk]

My sound card f up and i was hearing sounds jump from speaker to speaker but hearing sounds from all over the map sounds more software than hardware
but i'm no pro at this stuff.

[Highway_Star]

Sadly, the G35 software has a very simple interface. You can't adjust any settings other than adding voice morphing to the microphone and the volumes.

[Bulldogs]

Two things to try.

1) Try changing your speaker setup under windows sound settings to 7.1, or 5.1.

2) Try adjusting the buttons on your headphones. I'm not sure what the options are but from what I read it seems like you can alter the surround sound settings on the headphones via the buttons on the side of the headphones.

[mrbinkels]

I think that if you make sure your desktop speakers are disabled the crackling will go away. It will normally disable them when you plug the headset in but on occasions it doesn't.

Right click on the speaker icon in the systems tray and click on playback devices>>right click the device you want to disable..click disable.

That should do it, it fixed my problem i was having with my G35 headset.

There's a setting that is suppose to disable the "other" playback device when you connect the G35, it should be in your sounds settings I believe. Mine stopped and started working again on it's own, go figure.

[Highway_Star]

Thank you MrBinkels. You were right, Windows decided to enable speakers without me telling it to. Once I disabled it again, my audio was perfect again. A puzzling problem with a simple solution.

Thanks again

[mrbinkels]

cools beans, your welcome