Changing Audio Output Requires Restart

coolitic

It is quite annoying that every time I want to switch between my speakers and my headset (which has it's own audio control unit) I have to restart the game. If it isn't too much work, can you guys improve this?

BeigeAlert

coolitic wrote: »

It is quite annoying that every time I want to switch between my speakers and my headset (which has it's own audio control unit) I have to restart the game. If it isn't too much work, can you guys improve this?

Really? I have a HyperX cloud2 headset, which connects via usb, so it is its own device in the sound device panel. I haven't had any problems switching between devices in ns2. I just leave output set to "default device", and use this switching utility to switch between them. https://github.com/dmwyatt/soundswitch/downloads It makes a little icon in the system tray that you click and it switches between two audio devices.

coolitic

Nah, it literally says "restart required" in red letters when I try to change the output device.

Frozen

This happened to me every time on my old Macbook 2012. With my new PC my motherboard has multiple sound cards and I can switch freely. Same thing with a bunch of graphics settings.

Can't confirm, but I want to say that it's hardware limited.

edit: Also, I believe if you start in the right one that it has difficulty switching too, then you should be able to switch freely, I dont recall for sure. This is one of the few games that have this feature, but I LOVEEEE when this is possible because I can still use my speakers for music, Mumble sounds etc (someone joins channel I hear it on speakers, but when they speak its in my headphones, etc). More devs should let this happen I'm always disappointed when I can't set it up like this

IronHorse

Try to be sure that the device you want NS2 to use is set to the "Default device" in window's sound control panel, out of the list of devices.
Do this before launching NS2.
That may help with swapping devices in game.

coolitic

It does become the default device upon turning on, but NS2 just wont play audio without a restart.

Soul_Rider

This always has been a limitation in the engine, no idea how complicated it is to fix, I sometimes forget to power on my external Audio interface.

When i forget to do this, windows uses my monitor speakers as default. If I launch ns2 with default device to monitor, and then turn on my audio interface, while windows automatically switches my default device to the Audio Interface, NS2 still tells me I need to restart NS2 to use the new audio interface. Even when I am only sitting in the main menu.

The problem seems to be that NS2 needs to restart the engine to use the new audio driver, I am not sure if this is a technical limitation, or just an oversight in the way the audio loading portion was designed.

--edit--

This has always existed in NS2.

coolitic

Soul_Rider wrote: »

no idea how complicated it is to fix

Would any of the CDT like to clarify this in particular?

IronHorse

There was a cmd to restart the audio specifically.. Trying to recall what it was, i'll look into it.
If that works, it might be nice to just click apply and have it run that cmd..

Odd, considering I have no issues swapping between 3 different devices.