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[SOLVED] [1.2 and 1.2.1] Sound unloads during VAB construction

WanderingKid
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WanderingKid

WanderingKid

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EDIT: This is solved.  There was apparently loose hardware in my system, quite possibly one of the memory chips.  Reseating everything on the board seems to have cured it.

 

This is a really weird error for me that started showing up recently.  I've redownloaded my sound drivers to make sure that something hadn't gone silly there.  I'm using the x64 version 1.2.1 clean install.  The symptoms I'm seeing:

During the startup screen, the music is 'scratchy', like someone's playing with the wires.  Once I get to the second screen it's clean again.

Additionally, at some point the sound will cut out.  I can typically cause this to happen while building in the VAB and it doesn't take many parts to cause it.  Sometimes the initial pod will cause it.  Once this occurs, I have to disable, then re-enable, my sound card to get sound again.  As long as I'm in the VAB it'll keep cutting out though.  It's rare to get the sound cutout to occur except when building things, but I get static here and there when I'm flying ships.  It's not bad though.

It's a USB Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (1st gen). It has no issues with any other software, just KSP.  (Example: I can run overwatch while watching Netflix and get no sound issues or burps).  This started occurring in KSP 1.2, and continues to occur in KSP 1.2.1.  While my 1.2 version is heavily modded, the 1.2.1 version is clean (I was waiting for KER to catch up) and it occurs in a completely fresh sandbox.

Now, to add to my confusion: There's no events in the windows logs or anything obvious in KSP's either, either output.log or ksp.log.  Additionally, my headset works fine, and I get less lag in the VAB when I use it instead of the 2i2 and speakers.  I'd be digging into my manufacturer instead of posting here, except this is the ONLY software that seems to cause it, and it's being very elusive.

dxdiag info:

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diomedea

diomedea

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Not owning a device alike your USB audio interface, checking what causes the issue and giving correct advice is close to impossible. So, take what I'm writing with caution.

Your audio interface is indeed a sophisticated device, to perform better it uses software alike all modern digital musical instruments (a DAW, e.g. Ableton). That means the audio files are processed through the DAW, of course that is resident in memory. The DAW requires the audio file to be sent to it at the same time it would be played (through DirectX) from your PC native audio interface (then, to your headset that I understand is directly connected to the PC, instead of through the Focusrite).

During initial loading, KSP (as well as any software) loads a wealth of data from disk (the OS takes care to load all needed from disk to memory and reserves that memory to KSP). Memory isn't only RAM, it includes the swap file that is written to disk. When RAM isn't enough to hold all, those pages in memory that weren't accessed recently are swapped to disk. Of course, having multiple programs open at the same, means they all "fight" for available RAM. Given your system has 8 GB RAM, and KSP 1.2 unmodded alone loads in 1.8 GB, is quite possible your OS is finding a shortage of RAM and then needs to swap memory. Just when the DAW should be playing those audio files, is quite possible those files (and possibly even some of the DAW software itself) have to be swapped back to RAM to be accessible. In fewer words, it all is due to the bottleneck of the system in passing data from disk to RAM.

Clearly, there is no error to be reported about the time taken to move data, no wonder you'll find none with system and KSP logs; but you may find some programs able to show how memory is used and the amount of data moved by your system in real time, those would help diagnose the issue.

Can't really tell about the VAB, sure if the vessel you were building was complex, would require more RAM, and that alone would push other things to the swap file. Quite possible the audio parts among them. But you told it takes few parts to have that effect, so something else could be the cause.

Of course, more RAM could solve the issue if swapping memory is really the cause; a SSD to host the swap file would also help greatly. But I'd not commit to buy components before having confirmed that is really the issue.

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WanderingKid

WanderingKid

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  On 11/12/2016 at 12:44 PM, diomedea said:

Not owning a device alike your USB audio interface, checking what causes the issue and giving correct advice is close to impossible. So, take what I'm writing with caution.

[... much advice ...]

Of course, more RAM could solve the issue if swapping memory is really the cause; a SSD to host the swap file would also help greatly. But I'd not commit to buy components before having confirmed that is really the issue.

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A reasonable expectation regarding caution and thank you for taking the time to try to help.  I'd worried I was too esoteric for anyone to try to address.

To clarify on the headset: It's a Bluetooth Sound Blaster Rage and indeed has its own private connection to the PC via USB, bypassing the Scarlett 2i2.

I'm familiar with RAM concerns of KSP, and was watching that in Task Manager.  I should have mentioned that previously, my bad.  During play I usually can get up to 5 gigs of memory (overall system) being assigned if I'm not running other softwares, and surprisingly the sound card has an incredibly small footprint.  It can, on occasion, get CPU chewy but rarely memory, and the only time I saw that was when I actually hooked up an instrument.  I primarily use it as a microphone interface for YouTube and to clean up my sound output from the PC.  I'm digressing.

However, that doesn't mean there isn't a problem with the RAM or some other hardware component.  This is a new issue that wasn't occurring for a while (months) against the installation and suddenly 'showed up'.  There are only a few things I've done since then (other than maintaining windows updates), one of which was taking apart the system and cleaning out all the dust on the fans and heatsinks of the GPU and CPU because it was desperately needed.  I hadn't messed with the sound card itself other than unplugging it, but your comments about RAM remind me that I may need to go in and reseat *everything*.  Something is possibly jostled or out of place.

Thanks!

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