No sound with external DAC

[Toride]

Dear friends, hello there. I have come to you to find out a solution with one non-typical problem.

Disclaimer: English is not my native language, I'm not edven from latinic language group, and so I apologize for any possible mistakes.

Sound device on my motherboard had very bad noices and can even catch up even static noice from plastic bag, so I bought external DAC, named Fiio K3. Most of the games are running well. But in Stellaris I have no sound. Just no sound at all.

I have checked audio settings on my OS control panel, I have also double checked that Stellaris goes exactly to USB-DAC sound channel, tried to reinstall drivers. Nothing helped.

Please, can you help me somehow? It's impossible to listen sound from integrated sound-device on motherboard, so USB-DAC is my only way.

Most of the games and software have no problems with it, even games of late 90s works well.

PC Specs:

Spoiler

CPU: Intel Core I7 8700K
Video: NVidia RTX 2080 8gb
16GB DDR4 RAM
Windows 11 Pro (22000)
Fiio K3 (driver 5.22.0)

 

[AndrewT]

Of course our games are not tested with a setup like that.

Do you get this with HOI4 and Imperator too?


DXDIAG is a program you run from the Windows search box on the task bar. After running it will open a window and start collecting info with a progress bar in the lower-left corner. When it completes click the 'save all information' button and save it to a file then attach that file here.

Please attach here your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/settings.txt and pdx_settings.txt .
From your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/logs/ folder, attach here system.log , error.log .

 

[Toride]

I understand, it's not typical setup and possibility that problems may happen is pretty high.
Right now sound is working well, I have replaced new beta driver with older one. But it looks like not this moves coused "fix", but some other random factor, like Windows "shadow" updates, or anything other. Actually, I have no exactly idea.
Anyway, same problem still exist in one another game, but it's not from Paradox, so I'm not sure that it will help you for the future.

I have no other Paradoxgames installed becouse of no free space on SSD, so I can't test it without deleting Stellaris. I'm sorry for that.

Submmary: right now problem with Stellaris is solved by itself, but anyway, i will attach these files, becouse I hope that they are will be somehow useful for possible future testing.

My greatest thanks to you for your attention!

p.s.: and happy new year!

 

[Toride]

Hello there again!
I'm writing this for people, who may search same problem in Google, Yandex, whatever. I'm not sure, but I think I have found reason and solution how to solve "No sound in games when using USB DAC". The solution is genius in its simplicity: DAC can be just "too high quality". All what you need to do is decrease discretization of sound quality (i'm not sure how it is called in English version, but itt is default option in sound control settings) from WHATEVER_IT_IS to 192 KHz and below.

It helped me not only in Stellaris, but even in Generation Zero - the most sound-problematic game I ever had.

p.s.: make sure twice that you are using exactly your DAC as sound output device.
p.s. (2) : dear Paradox developers, as (maybe) some sort of not just solution, but also QoL stuff, if it is somehow possible, can you please add option "Sound Output Device" to game options? Some games have it, and it is very useful when PC have multiple sound devices.

With best wishes for you all, Toride.​

 

[AndrewT]

p.s. (2) : dear Paradox developers, as (maybe) some sort of not just solution, but also QoL stuff, if it is somehow possible, can you please add option "Sound Output Device" to game options? Some games have it, and it is very useful when PC have multiple sound devices.

Developers do not read this forum, FYI. This request would be best posted in the Suggestions forum for this game.

Thanks and good luck!