CrossOver Support - Community Forums

Since upgrading to the new crossover games 9.2, the DirectSound Hardware Acceleration option in winecfg keeps reseting back to "Full", generally once I re-open steam.

I must use the "Emulation" option because wine seems to use a very bad (or not at all) sample rate re-sampler in "Full" mode. My rate is locked at 96khz in Dmix, but once wine tries to output lower frequency sound (which is generally 44khz), there is a noticeable sound degradation.

This all is "expected" behavior, because it happens in every version of wine. But now, the workaround seems to get reset for no apparent reason.

So... why is it reseting back? Is that a bug or a feature?

Hi,

The registry key that controls this setting(HKCU/Software/Wine/Alsa Driver/UseDirectHW) is not
specifically set anywhere in the Steam bottle registry, which infers the default situation of
HKCU/Software/Wine/Alsa Driver/UseDirectHW = yes -- so not a bug nor a feature, it's the default
behavior. You can change this...

Start cxsetup (Manage Bottles), select the Steam bottle in the left pane -> Control Panel -> launch
the Wine Configuration item. When the winecfg GUI appears, you will see first the 'Applications' tab.
Look through the apps listed there -- steam.exe will be one of them. Highlight the steam.exe entry,
then click on the Audio tab -> set your audio preferences here then click on Apply -> OK.

If you need the setting to apply for the whole bottle (not just steam.exe), in the Applications tab,
select 'Default Settings' and do the same as above then click Apply -> OK. In this way, all the apps
installed into the Steam bottle will inherit the audio settings...

Cheers!

Thanks! Manually adding this registry key and denying it fixes the problem!

But the GUI explanation is almost what I was trying to do before, except for the custom profiles. Because no profile, except the main one, modifies the DirectSound attribute, it's kinda useless to mess with it.

But anyway, thanks a lot!

Guess what... it didn't really worked.
I don't know what triggers it, but it reset itself back again to Full

Hi again,

That would be anomalous behavior...unless of course you're not just
talking about Steam...ie; if you start Steam, and then start one of your
Steam hoisted games, the situation may differ...hmmm...perhaps the defaults
are 'floating' as well, specifically the winecfg -> Audio tab setting.
Make sure, when you launch Wine Configuration from the Control Panel and
click on the Audio tab, there's no pop-up proclaiming that 'no default sound
device has been set'...if you see that, then manually select the device (or
rather, keep the default setting as so concluded by winecfg) and click on
Apply -> OK to set this param. Quit the Wine Configuration program, and then
do this again -- this time when you start Wine Configuration, you should not
see the pop-up warning (if you do, something's awry)...

...if you would, let me know if it's just the Steam UI doing this, or whether
you're actually playing a game as well when this happens -- if you could, try
explaining any steps that can be done to recreate the behavior ; if there is
a steamapp involved, which one?

Cheers!

winecfg audio tab does not give any errors/warning.

But still, i've made a cool experience.

I set it to Emulation with winecfg. Closed everything (allways making sure that every wine process ends). Started regedit and browsed to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\DirectSound

HardwareAcceleration was still set to Emulation.

Once starting Steam, the HardwareAcceleration Value/key simply vanishes, as if I had deleted it. As you said earlier, Full is the default behaviour, so, that kicks in. Sound now is bad in every game I start.

I can fix this at anytime, and once I set Emulation mode, Sound is good. I can start any game in steam, and they won't change anything.

Once I restart Steam... the problem is back. I really think crossover is reseting it... or i'm going crazy... or... Gabe Newell is eating that key! :)

I also want to remind that crossover 9.1 and vanilla wine does not exhibit this problem.

Thanks for the support!

Gabe luvs us, you know that 8)

What's happening here I believe, is you've set the key for the default position, but because
steam.exe is included in application defaults, when you start Steam it overrides the default situation...

You probably need to add the registry key;

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\AppDefaults\steam.exe\DirectSound

Then add the new string/value to set the emulation mode for audio, Apply -> Ok...

Let me know how that goes....

Cheers!

The good news is that it won't reset each profile settings, in this case steam.exe and hl*.exe

The bad news is that it still resets the default profile! Gabe must be hungry!

Well, in the end I could just add this string to each profile... but thats kinda tedious =/

No, Gabe cannot be hungry...surely... :)

Understand, steam.exe or hl2.exe can't change the registry values here
at all as such -- although I have 'real' soundcard hardware and don't
need this audio switch/dmix/pulseaudio silliness, I just tried to recreate
your problem here -- I cannot. If I switch on audio hardware emulation as
the Default Settings in winecfg (not touching any application settings),
I can start Steam, play any game I like, quit Steam...setting holds without
issue...so something else is afoot here...what OS/distro are you using?

..if you want, have a look in your Steam bottle, you will see 3 .reg files
(system|user|userdef) -- gzip these files an upload them here -- use the
password 4Fp76586fP to login & upload the files and I'll have a look to see
if the registries are correct/corrupted or not. Perhaps something like FAM
is resetting stuff behind your back, but best see if the registry files are
correct first...

Cheers!

Sorry for the hiatus!

Answering your questions, i'm using ArchLinux with 2.6.35 kernel and nvidia 260.19.12 drivers.

I've done some very crazy things with my alsa stack, because I found that the Sound Blaster X-fi Hardware mixer was unreliable at times, and wanted to pour some real-time sound processing.

But anyway, i'm confident that this isn't the problem!

I've uploaded the registry files as you requested, hope this helps.

Hi again,

Thanks for the uploads.../me wonders if this is working correctly,
perhaps it is, I'll check it some later....according to your registry
file 'user.reg' the directsound=emulation tweak is set for the 3 .exe
files, but it is not set for the bottle defaults. To set that, you
would start Wine Configurator -> select Default Settings in the
Application tab, then set the audio mode in the Audio tab, Apply,
Ok...try again...does that fix it?

Cheers!

Believe me, it was set! But something ate it :)

Uploaded another set, this time with the value set. Once I start steam/crossover, it vanishes.

The one you just uploaded (2) does have that key set - if after
running Steam that changes (the file), then something is wrong.
The actual key phrase is...;

[Software\Wine\DirectSound] 1288230820
"DefaultSampleRate"="44100"
"HardwareAcceleration"="Emulation"

I would try -only- that key (remove the others similarly assigned
to hl.exe hl2.exe and steam.exe). The only thing to exclude the case
of system software changing the file (FAM or such), would be to set
the key in winecfg, check it's correct, and -before- starting Steam
set the immutable flag on the file itself (or make it read-only)...

..curious problem...

Cheers!

"I would try -only- that key (remove the others similarly assigned
to hl.exe hl2.exe and steam.exe)."

That's how it was before...

"The only thing to exclude the case
of system software changing the file (FAM or such), would be to set
the key in winecfg, check it's correct, and -before- starting Steam
set the immutable flag on the file itself (or make it read-only)... "

There is a possibility about this, but remember that crossover 9.1 and dev wine do not have this problem... So, I can't stop thinking that cx 9.2 is to blame.

I will try some more things and report if anything happens!

Adriano

Believe me, I don't doubt there's a problem here, I just can't recreate the
issue on my machines .... what OS/{version} etc are you using?

Cheers!