ValveSoftware
Reverb Simulation is Broken UE5.5.4 (Steam Audio 4.6.1)
- Steam Audio version: 4.6.1
- (If applicable) Unreal Engine version: 5.5.4
- Operating System and version: Windows 11
Real-time or baked reverb is broken, does not work at all, and results in an annoying, distorted sound.
Steps to reproduce the behavior:
- Try simulating reverb, both realtime or baked.
Crash Dump
@ViniCortez I've responded to your post on #405 and am marking this as a duplicate. Let me know if this is in fact a different issue.
@ViniCortez I've responded to your post on #405 and am marking this as a duplicate. Let me know if this is in fact a different issue.
@lakulish
I'm quite sure that the "annoying reverb" part is not a duplicate and is an effect of some freak interaction between sound card and OS in terms of spatial sound API. Same affected cards seem to display behaviour of resetting previously selected spatial sound system to off after each reboot.
I do not know exact cause but i can confirm it occurs on Creative Soundblaster cards (AE5 and AE9). Basically after each reboot spatial sound system in windows resets itself to off, however that causes some freak interaction with Steam Audio, where manually setting spatial sound to any other option than off (and optionally back to off) does fix the problem until next reboot: https://youtu.be/suDXHOnSu64 Audio capture in the video cuts off after changing the spatial sound system, so you'll have to take my word that this does resolve the issue.
I imagine it's a multi layered problem where possibly microsoft and manufacturers of affected cards need to solve their part of the issue but Steam Audio should also probably handle it on its own end as it clearly only affects reverbs and only within Steam Audio, no other sound in system or other games is affected by this issue.
Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-audio/issues/420#issuecomment-2870063873
This is the same exact issue I'm having!
@SkacikPL Steam Audio does not use or query any information from the Windows Spatial Sound system, so it's a little odd that changing the spatial sound setting changes the behavior of the Steam Audio reverb.
I did note that based on the video, this issue and #405 (with information provided by @ViniCortez ) both seem to involve Steam Audio receiving incorrect sampling rates. I wonder if the issue is that the Steam Audio Unreal integration is unable to correctly query the sampling rate under some conditions, but once the spatial sound setting is changed, it is able to re-initialize with the correct sampling rate. Can you try one of the following:
- In your Steam Audio project settings, can you check Enable Validation, and see if any warning messages appear in your output log?
- If you encounter a crash while the reverb sounds distorted, can you share the crash dump file?
- If there is a hardware/driver version/OS version/spatial sound setting for which you able to get a 100% repro for this bug, can you provide that information? We can try to reproduce the issue on an identical setup.
@lakulish
Enabling validation does not produce any warnings, errors or log entries of any kind. At Unreal level, its native audio mixer does recognize sampling rate as 48KHz and sounds (beside reverb) do play correctly.
As far as crashing goes, i don't think i've had crashes related to this particular problem.
Whilst i cannot make any objective guarantees i'd personally wager with 95% certainty that Creative sound cards with their audio driver are affected, especially AE series (AE5/AE7/AE9)
My exact setup is: Windows 11 build 26100.4061 Creative Sound Blaster AE 9 with driver version (According to device manager) 10.0.26100.1
On my end reproduction is simple and has 100% success rate, just enable spatial audio and reboot, after the reboot the selected spatial audio in OS is set back to Off and everything despite this bug works correctly - beside the reverbs in Steam Audio. The fix is to swap spatial audio system to any other.