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#238544 07/08/12 04:57 AM
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Default system beep works fine, however, when changing beep sound to the internal one, it doesn't always play when it should(even when pressing the play button to test it). Then, when it plays, it is usually cut off, a very short glitchy click. This is strange, because it was working fine for me yesterday(if i remember correctly), and now it doesn't work, even though I tested it on a clean portable install.

Does anyone have/had this problem? I don't always want to use the win7 beep, because it sounds like an error message. So it would be great if the internal beep worked again. If noone has this problem, I'll make a recording of it to show you how buggy it is now.

Last edited by rohagymeg; 07/08/12 05:03 AM.
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Hoopy frood
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The internal beep is system dependent, I think? This has come up before-- my beep sounds like something tapping on a glass. It's not cut off, it's just very short (0.1sec or possibly even less). If that's the sound you are hearing, it's normal.

FWIW, if you don't want to listen to the standard windows beep, you can either:

1. Change the windows beep in your WINDOWS SETTINGS. Go into Control Panel -> Sound and set the beep wave. There are plenty of sounds to choose from, and you can grab more. Presumably if you don't like the win7 beep, you can change it to something you do system-wide.

2. Alternatively, you can change the beep only in mIRC. Just pick any wav file. No need to limit your choices to Win7's beep or the internal beep... you can use any audio you like.

By the way, you can type /beep N to test the beep sound. /beep 1 will beep once. /beep 10 will beep 10 times. This will help you check to see if it's really getting cut off, or if it's something else that's causing it to be cut off.


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I did that test with /beep 10, with the "Use internal beep" unchecked and checked. Win7 default beep works fine. Checked the option, and did the same test multiple times. Here are the results:
1 - I heard 2 clicks.
2 - I heard 1 click only.
3 - I heard 2 clicks again, but with the first one being much shorter than the second one.
4 - No sound now at all
5 - 3 clicks, the first is much shorter than the next 2

I could go on, but it's the same effect I experience when mirc is minimized. That internal mirc sound is completely unreliable for me.

I am really curious as to what causes this strange behaviour.

[EDIT] I did nothing special, and I haven't touched mirc, and now that built in sound plays perfectly! I did the /beep 10 test again, and it plays that metallic click sound 10 times. If anyone has this problem, tell me.
I wanna know what possibly caused it. All I did was opened vlc, and opened dreamweaver. So really nothing special. I think it has to do with my system, not mirc.

[EDIT2] Very strange. When I close vlc, the glitch happens again. The only way to make it work is by opening a video in vlc(pause is ok). So it has to do with the audio driver. What can be the relation between vlc's sound and mirc's sound? That mirc is dependent on vlc to be able to play correctly the internal sound of mirc?

So that's why it's working when playing with a game.

Last edited by rohagymeg; 07/08/12 08:50 AM.
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I'm pretty sure all of mIRC's audio events use MME, and there are known bugs in some audio drivers regarding MME support (e.g. DirectSound works fine (used in games, etc.), but MME-related audio doesn't always work right). I imagine "internal beep" also uses MME.

Windows Vista and 7 adds extra complexity to the mix, since I believe MME on Vista/7 is "emulated" through one of the many audio subsystems, thus actually uses DirectSound in some odd way. Not sure about this though, just speculation on my part.

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What is your delay setting in the Event Beep section of the sounds dialog? If you increase it, does it resolve the issue?

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I was going to suggest audio driver myself. VLC could very well be doing something in that realm. My guess is, if you update your audio drivers, or install the correct ones for your card, the issue might be resolved-- or perhaps the latest audio drivers themselves are bugged and you may need to use another version.


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Thanks for the suggestions. I found the core of the problem. The audio engine, whatever it is, finds it hard to start. And by the time it's started, the audio is ended. It has nothing to do with the delay setting. If I "testplay" the sound, nothing can be heard. If I have any sound engine open, even from a flash application, the click works.

If noone else has this problem, just ignore me, because probably it's my sound card's driver(xonar dg).

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I also have an Asus Xonar DG, however I do not run Windows 7, I run Windows XP 32-bit.

If I "testplay" the sound (mIRC Options -> Sounds -> toggle through the audio options to have "Beep" selected -> check the "Use internal beep" checkbox -> push play), I have no problem hearing the beep repeated 5 times with a delay of 100 (stock defaults).

However, I will point out that if this does use MME, this wouldn't be the first time I've heard of problems with Asus's drivers and MME support.

For the issue I experienced above, I believe the problem may have been -- but not 100% sure -- that I had disabled the Cmaudio8788 (RunDll32 cmicnfgp.cpl,CMICtrlWnd) and Cmaudio8788GX (C:\WINDOWS\system\HsMgr.exe Envoke) startup tasks in the registry associated with the Xonar DG drivers (I'm OCD over unnecessary things needing to be run on log in). So if you too have done that, re-enabling them might be a wise choice to see if things improve.

My aforementioned experience, combined with this thread, leads me to believe that the Internet's claim of the Asus Xonar series having "awesome drivers" is utter nonsense -- which is what I've come to expect from hardware review sites the days.

However, I will happily state that the DirectSound support in the XG drivers is quite good (I've yet to find any problems with those), so possibly mIRC making the move to DirectSound -- especially given that Windows 9x support was officially removed from mIRC long ago -- would be a better overall choice here.

I'm not saying "hey Khaled, go do a bunch of work due to Asus' wonky drivers!", but the reality is that vendors tend to focus on DirectSound these days, and most of us try very hard to avoid companies like Creative Labs (horrible quality) or Realtek (other driver wonkiness or missing features we want). There are probably some simple, and license-free audio playback libraries that use DirectSound which could be dropped in for MME replacement as well.

My $0.02.

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Funny you mention Realtek; almost all the audio chipsets I've ever had were all Realtek-- never once did I have any quality or reliability issues with the drivers. In fact, the Realtek drivers I've used (including ethernet) have all been the most reliable of all drivers I've ever installed. And this includes pro audio drivers (like M-Audio, etc).

Regarding MME/DirectSound-- you might be surprised to learn that both MME and DirectSound are emulated by software in Vista and 7. In other words, DS is already deprecated in favour of WASAPI, so moving to DirectSound wouldn't be a big step up. But this is actually kind of irrelevant either way-- because since both are emulated by Windows, not the drivers (at least, they shouldn't be emulated by your drivers), they are going to work until Windows officially says "MME is no longer shipped"-- so there's at least a few more years of life in the architecture. I wouldn't be surprised if some Windows code uses MME, too.

The fact that the Xonar DG has trouble with MME specifically seems like a very isolated case. Your link is also Xonar DG drivers... I've never seen MME specific audio playback issues with drivers from any other chipset. It might be fair to say "Khaled fix the audio stack so that vendor compatibility will be improved"-- but the reality is, it's really just this one card/chipset that's causing an issue. The card itself is faulty (or some driver, or some configuration of the drivers).


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My experience with Realtek drivers (audio (Azalia ALC889) and NIC (8111E) specifically), and M-Audio drivers (specifically the Revolution 5.1 and 7.1 cards) has been disappointing. If you want me to list off all of the bugs I've found over the years (and in some cases still experience + can reproduce very easily), I'll be happy to. But that's kinda outside the scope of the thread I think. :-)

All I know about the Asus Xonar DG series is that, as indicated by my blog post + Youtube video showing the problem, MME support in those drivers is of questionable quality, but DirectSound works reliably no matter what I do to it. None of this is Khaled's fault of course, but it might be time to consider deprecating use of a technology (MME) which is from the days of Windows 3.1 and instead going with DirectSound. It would increase compatibility with cards which do have wonky MME support. mIRC has already thrown out support for Windows 9x, so I wouldn't think going from MME->DS would be that detrimental of a thing (to users/customers).


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