Implement support for USB UAC 2.0

I recently purchased the game and using a USB DAC instead of the PC sound card I can't hear anything from the game, not even the sound when moving through the menu. On top of that when I'm in a race or practice, when I try to exit to the main menu the game freeze in such a way that it makes the PC completely unusable and I am forced to manually restart it from the button on the tower.

This is an issue inherited from Project CARS 2, which I have and when playing it with a DAC the EXACT same thing happens to me.

A few days ago I acquired a new DAC that includes a USB UAC 1.0 mode to help with console compatibility and finally putting it in that mode the game sounds perfect and when leaving a practice or race my PC doesn't freeze.

For this reason, please Reiza, implement USB UAC 2.0 support, as all modern external USB audio devices come with that mode by default. It's not very common these days for a USB DAC to come with a UAC 1.0 compatibility mode.

 

I also have an USB DAC, the Fosi Audio K7 and it works just fine in AMS2 in UAC 2.0 mode.

 

(While I have been writing this post I have been doing different tests with the game)

Hello,

I previously had a Moondrop Dawn Pro and what I mentioned happened to me. In the game's sound options it didn't appear as a device.

My new DAC is an ONIX Alpha XI1 and the problem persists. However, when I put the DAC in UAC 1.0 mode and voila! the game works perfectly.

My OS is Windows 11 and in 2 years of owning the Moondrop Dawn Pro I've never had these types of issues in any game. It only happens in Project CARS 2 and Automobilista 2.

EDIT: I just confirmed that the problem is not UAC 2.0 but the hertz at which I set the sound device from the Windows panel. I have set the audio quality to 16 bit, 24 bit and 32 bit without any problems but as soon as I raise the hertz to more than 192000 Hz, when the problem occurs and it doesn't recognize the DAC as a sound device in the game options.

Testing the game with the DAC in UAC 2.0 mode:

· 16 bit 192000 Hz = no problem
· 16 bit 352800 Hz = problem
· 24 bit 192000 Hz = no problem
· 24 bit 352800 Hz = problem
· 32 bit 192000 Hz = no problem
· 32 bit 352800 Hz = problem

32 bit 192000 Hz (appears as an audio device):

32 bit 352800 Hz (doesn't appear as an audio device):


Since I started using DACs I have always had the audio quality from the Windows 11 panel at 32 bit 384000 Hz because I listen to music in high quality. As I mentioned before, I've never had this kind of problems before with other games except Project CARS 2 and Automobilista 2.

Could you set the audio quality to higher than 192000 Hz and confirm that this is the cause of the problem? Thanks!

Could you set the audio quality to higher than 192000 Hz and confirm that this is the cause of the problem? Thanks!

 

I confirm that if I set the DAC to a samplerate > 192 kHz, AMS has no sound, and "Audio" being set to "N/A" in audio settings. Other games and system apps do have sound, so it is an AMS2 specific issue. Probably the audio subsystem of the ME having something capped at 192 kHz.
This can probably be fixed because the game should not care about what samplerate the Windows audio mixer outputs at.

 

Thanks! I feel more at ease now

I've read several cases of users on different sites (Reddit, Steam forums, SIM forums...) with the same kind of problems (no sound, choppy sound or the sound device not showing up in the game options) and almost all of them had in common that they were using a DAC... and maybe all those problems are due to this, because they have the sound output at more than 192 kHz.

I hope Reiza can fix it in the next updates

 

"Allow application to take exclusive control of this device" was enabled for my DAC, but disabling it does not solve the problem.

I have tried 2 other games that use FMOD and they have no issue outputting sound when the DAC is set to 384 kHz (samplerate confirmed by my DAC display). Not sure how FMOD is configured in AMS2, but there is surely a mode operation compatible with > 192 kHz.

IMHO , there is no much point to configure Windows to such a high samplerate, as it will make the mixer resample everything to that samplerate which is overkill.
Capable music players such as foobar2000 or JRMC can instead be configured to use the DAC in exclusive mode and configure the DAC to the samplerate of the audio being played.

In any case, it is worth fixing in AMS2, so "it just works". I would look into why the Windows mixer configured to > 192 kHz for the default audio output results in no audio card being found by AMS2.

 

I already had that option enabled by default.

I'm also currently playing other games that use FMOD and I don't have these kinds of issues. To name one, the CarX Drift Online 2 demo that was released a few days ago at Steam's current Next Fest.

 

Just out of curiousity, what music do you listen to that is in 384khz? Music is typically mixed at around 96khz as it allows for better processing of effects etc., but then still typically rendered to 48khz or (rarely nowadays) 44.1khz (CD quality) for release. I don't think humans can even perceive a difference between 48khz and 96khz without specialised equipment, let alone 192 or 384. I actually didn't even know you could buy hardware that support 384khz now.

Edit: Just to clarify I'm not saying it's not a thing that should be fixed, just genuine curiosity

 

Although this is not the topic at hand, I listen to all kinds of music, from EDM to K-pop (usually with female vocals), Metal, Classical, Commercial, Hip-Hop, etc.

If you have a DAC that plays high-quality audio and good headphones (IEMs in my case) to go with it, in addition to a good ear (the most important thing ), you can distinguish between audio qualities. In my case, I notice this most in the high notes and female vocals, which sound more crystal-clear. But overall, the sound is more cleaner.

Can I listen to music in lower quality? Of course, but... if you own a Ferrari, wouldn't you want to go faster than normal?

 

Yeah but where do you even source music recorded and released over 96Khz? If you insist on everything coming out at 384KHz, then you're just resampling (and there is zero way you are hearing an improvement in audio quality by resampling 96KHz to 384KHz).

 

Yeah but it seems to me that some of you are not understanding the purpose of this thread.

I'm not insisting that everything has to be 384 kHz, I've just opened the thread and highlighted an issue that other games that use FMOD don't have and that can be fixed. Instead, all I get is interrogation and lessons about audio quality as if I'm the problem, when the problem is the implementation of FMOD.

· Does Windows allow audio quality to be set higher than 192 kHz? Yes.
· Does the sound in Automobilista 2 work when set to more than 192Khz? No.
· Do other games that use FMOD work with audio above 192 kHz? Yes.
· Does Automobilista 2 do it? No.

As simple as that, anything else is beating around the bush and trying to get away from the problem. For my part I have found a bug, fixing it is part of Reiza.

Thanks to those who have tried to help and to those who have confirmed that this is a widespread problem

 

I'm still not sure it's a problem. Even if AMS 2 allowed its audio to be resampled up to 384KHz, the absolute best-case scenario (and even this is a stretch) is that the audio quality remains the same as the 48KHz sampling rate the game handles its audio with. In almost all cases, such resampling can introduce artifacts and possibly aliasing. This is issue you are experiencing is 100% the direct result of the DAC marketing its nonsensical sampling rate as an improvement in quality when there is zero evidence to support it.

Even sampling rates over 48KHz are only helpful for the initial recording process (at least when it comes to creating music/audio) as it allows for the creator to make edits/alterations to the audio while avoiding degradation in raw source capture. There isn't a benefit to resampling to higher rates for audio playback and it generally only leads to incompatibility issues with games, music playback software, DAWs, etc (and that's ignoring the degradation that comes from the resampling itself). As awful as Windows is at just about everything else, I'm outright shocked at how many people just assume that it does a great (or even accurate) job of resampling.

All your issues with AMS 2 and other software that doesn't play nice with being resampled to 384KHz can be resolved by using your DAC with a conventional output setting. It doesn't mean you're being cheated out of audio quality or that your gaming experience is lesser to someone else.

Edit: Not that it really matters, but I pulled out a pair of my own DACs to test upon your initial post claiming AMS 2 doesn't support UAC 2.0. I've sold lots of my equipment but I still have both of my SMSL DACs, the SU-8 v2 and the VMV D3. In all honesty, despite the big price difference between the units, they sound identical with all sources. I use them at 16-bit 48KHz when they are daily driving on my desktop as that is the default for most things and hopping into foobar for 24/96 needledrop playback is as easy as one click (specifically swapping into WASAPI instead of DirectSound to avoid the Windows audio stack touching the recordings). Sure, they go up to 768KHz output, but that is entirely a spec sheet circlejerk in order to confuse customers.

 

I don't want to nag or interrogate, but are you sure you're not getting sampling rates (which affect the maximum possible frequency in the recording) confused with bitrates set by audio compression algorithms? I.e., a 128kbps MP3 sounds noticeably worse than one recorded at 320kbps, which again still has flaws compared to uncompressed or lossless compression. And even I have been caught out by blind tests despite the fact that I know for a certainty that I can hear a difference in the car, when I blind tested myself on my studio monitors I actually picked the lowest quality MP3s as being the uncompressed format. I have a couple of theories as to why this might be the case, but I was completely taken aback by that result.

Your sampling rate (e.g., the 44.1, 48, 96, 192, and 384khz settings) from a practical sense determines the maximum frequency that is audible in the recording. For most people, 44.1khz will be fine as according to something called "Nyquist Theorem" (which is way too complicated for my tiny brain to understand) essentially you halve your sampling rate to get your maximum frequency. So since people generally can't hear over 20khz (and most can't hear over 16khz), 44.1khz halves to 22.05khz which is still above the audible range.

That's why I was asking what audio you're listening to that is in 384khz, because I'm not aware of any that is mixed above 96khz and then not sampled down to 48khz or 44.1khz. But you can then from there compress it to say, 320kbps MP3, which is a further loss in quality, but it will sound exactly the some on 48khz sampling as well as 384khz as that's a separate thing. Does that make sense?

 

I know this is the internet, but we also shouldn't make assumptions about others without all the facts. If OP is a golden retriever, the range of hearing could exceed beyond 22.05KHz....

(In case it wasn't obvious - this is a joke and I do not intend to insult or belittle anyone in this forum. I want everyone to enjoy AMS as much as I do.)

 

It's not that AMS2 does not support UAC 2.0 (it supports it just fine), it is just FMOD (the middleware audio library in AMS2) whose mixer does not support samplerates > 192 kHz.

From some educated guess, it probably goes something like this when an USB DAC whose mixer in Windows is configured with a samplerate > 192 kHz:

- FMOD discovers the USB DAC as current audio output device
- it queries the output samplerate it is configured at in Windows, let's say 384 kHz.
- that samplerate is deemed unsupported by FMOD because > 192 kHz
=> Audio card is discarded as not usable and appear as N/A in the game

I suppose that for some reason, AMS2 configures FMOD's mixer samplerate to the Windows mixer's samplerate. No idea why it does this as most games would not and indeed other games using FMOD work just fine whatever the Windows mixer samplerate is set at.
Instead AMS2 could probably set FMOD's mixer to whatever samplerate the audio samples and other sounds are recorded at (probably 44.1 or 48 kHz / 16 bit). Then Windows' mixer would transparently resample (if necessary) to the samplerate it is configured at.
If for some reason, the above is not possible or desirable (for some reason that escapes me but that could be related to audio quality), then a fix could to configure the FMOD's mixer to the samplerate below or equal to 192 kHz and an integral multiple (384 kHz -> 192 kHz, 352.8 kHz -> 176.4 kHz).

These are just educated guesses (I have some experience with FMOD API) and I suppose exact details falls in "reasons i cannot go into" and "something that looks quite simple to fix may be quite the opposite".