Sound issues in Raine 0.92.6 and later versions

[mer-curious]

Hello Tux! It seems that sound output is broken after version 0.92.4. Apparently all versions after this are outputting sound in a lower quality.

I've noticed that in version 0.92.6 and later Raine introduced the option to change the sound driver and the default sample rate is not the standard for CD audio, which is 44100 I think, take a look:

 

In version 0.92.4 (the last good one) we had this:

How come have I only noticed this issue now after over a year of new releases?

I don't know exactly the answer. Recently I tested version 0.95 with my PS4 DS4 controller connected the first time I configured my Raine installation here and the program selected the DS4 sound as the first sound output. I noticed this because I was having no sound at all from the program and everything else in the system was working fine. Then I finally changed the sound driver option again to my default Realtek Audio speakers and realized the sound wasn't as good as before.

But why only now the sound became poor? That's something I'm still trying to figure out. The fact is that I didn't see any driver updates from Windows and my Realtek Audio driver is from December 2019.

Anyway, perhaps we could fix this by removing the "Sound driver" option in Raine? This would avoid it defaulting to unexpected audio output sources such as the DS4 controller or other modern controllers which also support audio output. We can easily select this audio source in the Windows taskbar if we want it, no?

Also, we need to make sure 44100 is the default sample rate otherwise the sound will be degraded.

Hopefully you will be able to reproduce this or help me understand what might have happened here.

Thank you so much again for your attention.

 

PS: the old versions page was really helpful in this case in which I had to go back and test old versions. I downloaded and tested every version released before the most recent one until I found the one working fine here. I could not only test version 0.93.4 because it complained about some missing files.

[Tux]

No the sound driver won't go away, there are cases where it can be useful.

The reason why the frequency can change is that when the driver is changed raine asks if the driver has a preferred audio sample rate, and if there is one, it chooses it. It just means your ds4 prefers 11 KHz ! By the way 11kHz is not so bad if you stay on digital sounds, that is sound where devices use wav like sounds. It gets worse if generating sounds, for most "midi" music it becomes generated sound.

Anyway it's quite rare to have a sound driver with a preferred frequency, even more when this frequency is < 44100. For me here I have only one which has a preferred frequency, and it's 48 Khz !

You should just have paid more attention, but as I said the sound is not so bad in 11 KHz if you stay in some specific games, and by chance the kof games are in this category.

It's funny to see how people get attached to 44.1 Khz as a kind of grail these days. I learnt not too long ago that the "chromium tapes" we had been using in my childhood and which were considered top quality at the time, rendered sound at around 33 Khz only if I remember correctly, and we would never have guessed that at the time... !

Edited February 26 by Tux