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Posted on
April 02, 2002 by Thomas
McGuire
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select the Audio tab.
Driver.
This option is used to select the Audio API to be used in
the Game. Miles Fast 2D Positional Audio will provide
basic stereo (2D) audio output, which will yield fastest
Game performance, though is only recommended if you have a
very old/incapable Soundcard or poor on-board Audio. Aureal
A3D Interactive (TM) (Note, this is A3D 1, not A3D 2/3)
& DirectSound3D Hardware Support will both
provide basic 3D audio positioning support in the Game,
which will greatly enhance the Game & make it easier to
hear where other Models are also, e.g. behind you. Most
modern Soundcards only support A3D via conversion
DirectSound3D so you shouldn’t really select this unless
you have an Aureal Vortex Soundcard, most remotely modern
Soundcards should be able to use DirectSound3D without
issue. Creative Labs EAX (TM) & Creative Labs
EAX 2 (TM) will both provide the same 3D positioning as DirectSound3D
though also enables additional support for EAX effects, like
Reverb. This can further improve audio realism, though
performance may be slightly slower compared to
DirectSound3D. The Soundcard you have installed should be
worth considering if you are intending to use EAX, e.g.
Soundcards which use the Sensaura reverb engine such as the
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz have fairly weak Reverb effects in
EAX (Not so in EAX 2 though).
Sound
Effects.
Untick this option to disable in-game Audio from
being played for best performance. You shouldn’t want to
do this though for normal game playing of course, so leave
it Ticked unless you’re benchmarking frame rate
with Fraps for example.
Move this slider to the right to increase the volume level
of effects, e.g. Weapon fire & vice versa.
Music.
Untick this option to disable in-game Music from
being played for best performance, though faster systems
should be able to playback Music with little performance
issues. Move this slider to the right to increase the volume
level of Music, & vice versa.
Dialog.
Untick this option to disable in-game dialog from
being played in the Game, this isn’t recommended as
you’ll miss out on important event updates & such as a
result. Move this slider to the right to increase the volume
level of any dialog, & vice versa.
Cinematic.
Untick this option to disable audio from played
during the cut-scenes (That aren’t rendered using the
in-game engine). Not much reason to do this unless the voice
acting or, umm, “humour” gets to you that badly. Move
this slider to the right to increase the volume level during
cut-scenes, & vice versa.
Quality.
Similar to the Playback Rate option covered next you
shouldn’t need to set this to 8 bit unless you have
an extremely old ISA Soundcard or a very poor onboard Audio
solution. 16 bit will improved quality audio playback
over 8 bit & shouldn’t have any real noticeable
effect on performance.
Playback
Rate.
This option determines the sampling rate to be used for
audio playback in the game, with 44 kHz providing
best audio quality. This would be the best option to select
if you have a relatively new Soundcard, e.g. SoundBlaster
Live! or Santa Cruz. With older generation Soundcards (Or
more likely onboard Audio) you should find 22 kHz to
give acceptable playback quality without affecting
performance too noticeably. Those with an ISA Soundcard
would perhaps be about the only ones I’d recommend setting
this to 11 kHz.
Speaker
Setup.
From the drop-menu here select the appropriate type of
Speakers which your Soundcard is connected to e.g. 4
Speaker. It is worth noting that most Soundcards will
ignore this option & rather only use the one specified
in it’s own Mixer.
Stereo.
Tick this option to enable playback of Stereo encoded
audio in that format (2 Channel), rather than in Mono (1
Channel). You shouldn’t need to Untick this at all.
You
can learn how to further improve your Audio experience in
C&C: Renegade by taking a look at the Soundcard/Speaker
Tweak guide. This’ll take you through positioning your
Speakers & configuring Soundcard specific tips for other
popular Soundcards such as the SoundBlaster Audigy, Philips
PSC70x & Turtle Beach Santa Cruz.
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