Chunks Of Speech Missing On Assassin's Creed (For PC)

[Vanchatron]

I have just recently installed Assassin's Creed on my PC with the following stats:

OS - Windows XP (Media Centre)
CPU - Intel Pentium D 820 2.8Ghz (Outdated I know )
RAM - 2gb DDR II
Video Card - 640mb Nvidia Geforce 8800GTS
PSU - Thermaltake Toughpower 750w
Sound Card - 5.1 CMI8738 (http://www.cmedia.com.tw/?q=en/PCI/CMI8738)


After playing for a while I noticed that on cutscenes, a lot of the time the voices would be cut out. E.g. a character would say something like "for this mission we need you to _______________ ok?" which can be a real pain. Sometimes I just won't hear any speech whatsoever during a cutscene.

I had a look on the Internet & found a link to the following site, which gives tips to what I could do to sort the problem out (scroll down to AUDIO) - http://www.tweakguides.com/AC_6.html. I also looked on this page - http://www.tweakguides.com/AC_9.html

It says:

1. Make absolutely certain you have the latest audio drivers for your sound device, and they are cleanly installed - see the Driver Installation chapter of the TweakGuides Tweaking Companion for links and details.

2. Make sure to disable any additional EAX or CMSS effects in your sound card's control panel.

3. If running Windows XP go to the Windows Control Panel> Sounds and Audio Devices> Audio> Advanced> Performance tab and move the 'Hardware Acceleration' slider to the first notch from the far left (i.e. Basic Acceleration).

4. Edit your DARE.ini file to reduce or increase the value of the NB_AUDIBLE_VOICES variable; also try setting DISABLE_OPTIMISATION to =TRUE - see the Advanced Tweaking section for more details of these.

5. Go to your \Program Files\Ubisoft\Assassin's Creed directory and backup the eax.dll file there, then replace it with this one: eax.dll.

And...

[Sound Manager Options]

NB_AUDIBLE_VOICES=48

This .ini variable determines the maximum number of voices, or channels, which the game will use. Different sound cards have different capabilities when it comes to the maximum number of audio channels they can support, and some older or lower-end sound devices can only support 32 channels, while most standalone sound cards from the past few years can support at least 64 channels (e.g. Audigy 2 and above), and even 128 channels (e.g. X-Fi series). If you find you are missing some sound effects or voices during gameplay, you can experiment with this variable, either raising it from its default of 48 to 64 for example, or lowering it to something like 32, to see if this fixes your audio issues. Note that altering the number of audio channels may also help with some stuttering problems, again depending on your audio device.

I did every single one of these except number 2 as I couldn't find my Sound Card's Control Panel (I don't think it's installed). The thing I messed around with the most was changing the value of the NB_AUDIBLE_VOICES variable. The change that gave me the best results was changing it from NB_AUDIBLE_VOICES=48 to NB_AUDIBLE_VOICES=128 but I am still experiencing a LOAD of missing sound chunks from speech in cutscenes.


Do you guys have any other tips or is it safe to say I just need a new sound card?

Thanks a lot in advance.

[Vanchatron]

Nevermind, I took out my soundcard & switched to onboard audio instead & now it's working fine.