Tip: Altec Lansing / C-Media USB Headset

[coder_1024]

I recently started using a USB headset. I noticed with UCAWA (1.00.15) that the headset sound was at times messed up (specifically, when using F10 to view a target, you'd get this shrill noise in your ear). Granted, unplugging the headset and using my SB Audigy 2 ZS worked fine, but I liked being able to use the headset so as not to disturb the rest of the house as I'm getting blown to pieces by the enemy!

The headset itself is labeled as Altec Lansing and the Windows sound control panel lists it as "C-Media USB Headphone Set".

The headset didn't come with a CD as they just expect you to use the built-in drivers (it uses usbaudio.sys, v5.01.2600.2180, 8/3/2004). And I wasn't able to find any updated drivers for download on the net.

Anyway, the solution was to simply drop down the HW accelleration in the sound control panel by 1 notch. Doing this seems to have fixed the problem and its working smoothly now.

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- Start => Control Panel => Sounds and Audio Devices

- Audio tab, select Sound Playback device and click Advanced

- under performance tab, drop the HW accelleration by 1 notch

[Supreme Cmdr]

Your point? Sound issues like this is already covered in the FAQ.

[coder_1024]

None, just wanted to provide a data point for reference; you're right the FAQ does cover this though; my bad.

[Supreme Cmdr]

Yeah, dropping down the sound acceleration usually fixes Windows sound problems with games. But I will leave this thread here, just in case someone else doesn't realize that the use of headphones has nothing to do with sound reproduction.

[coder_1024]

quote:

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just in case someone else doesn't realize that the use of headphones has nothing to do with sound reproduction

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if you're just plugging in an audio jack headset into your existing sound card thats true, but from what I could see with this USB headset, it created a separate audio device which ends up using whatever default generic drivers get assigned to it. my built-in sound card (Audigy 2 ZS) works great and there's no need to drop the accel. settings. this puts itself in there as a separate sound device and this device can't handle the full accel. setting with the driver it uses.

perhaps the lesson is not to use a cheap USB headset :-) but, they are convenient since you don't have to dive around behind your machine, you can just plug right into an up front USB port.