When playing any Silverlight example featuring video, the volume level is ridiculously loud (termendous clipping and will literally blow your head off)

If all volume levels are turned to min/zero in Windows (using the audio mixer), you can still hear the clipping / distortion even though the volume level improves somewhat.

 An interesting note is that the WAVE volume sliders do not affect Silverlight volume levels, only the master slider.  However all other audio sources (i.e. windows media player, and any other app) will respond to both the WAVE slider and master slider.

 Is there a known volume bug with Slverlight?  This should be addressed asap, as it will leave a very poor first impression for new comers.

 note:  This has been an issue for many Silverlight versions, however I never reported it. 

 - Silverlight RC2, WinXP Pro SP2 - WMP, Flash player, QuickTime, Games, etc all respond as expected in terms of audio volume output
 

more info:

1)
Volume level remains at the same level even when controlling the volume slider using any Silverlight video example. (the volume level is off the charts with tons of audio clipping).  Volume can be muted, so its either muted or full level, no in-between.

2)
The motherboard on this system is based on the Nforce4 chipset.  I will install the latest drivers soon to see if the problem is solved.  Despite this, you may want to address the issue as you will not want users to hear what I hear when this launches :)

3) Experience is the same in Firefox and IE.

Thank you, JD97a.

Yes, definitely check your drivers first. 

The videos that you're using in your Silverlight example, do those same ones play with normal sound levels and sound control in the other players that you listed in your first post?  Did you encode these videos yourself?  If so, using what?

Jonathan [MSFT]
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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 I will update drivers soon, just wrapping some projects up and will report back in a few days.

 This issue concerns all videos played through silverlight. All videos from all demo sites, etc.  I also created a sample project with videos that have proper sound levels with the same problem.  I can assuredly say it is the Silverlight player/runtime that is causing this "max volume" issue only.

 I will follow up after driver updates soon. 

 note: It is not just the maximum volume level that a correctly running version of Silverlight would output (had the skin's slider been maxd).  It is the volume level if the Master / Wave channels in the Windows OS audio mixer were max'd (which they are not).

Thanks

 

Latest audio drivers (Nvidia Nforce4) installed and same problem.  

 Has anyone reported this problem yet?

JD97a,

You should update your audio driver as well as your video driver (the nForce4 is your video card).

To find your audio device, go to Start, right-click on My Computer and select Manage.

When the Computer Management window opens, click on Device Manager (left column).

Scroll down to Sound, video and game controllers and click on it to expand the list.  Find your audio device (like Sound Blaster, for example) and update the driver.

Another thing I'd like you to try is to put a Volume property in your <MediaElement>.  The Volume value can be between 0 and 1, with one being the loudest; the default is 0.5.  I know you're not looking for a workaround, but I'm curious to see if the Volume property has any effect in your environment.

Jonathan [MSFT]
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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

The nVidia nForce4 is a motherboard chipset with onboard audio support and not a Video Card. In the Device manager the Audio driver shows up as "NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM) Audio Codec Interface.
 

I too am having the same audio issues trying to play demo content in silverlight. I have not as of yet authored anything. 

I am also using on board audio on an nForce4 based motherboard. 

Thank you for the clarification, jc-561. 

Have either of you tried playing your Silverlight content on another computer?  Is your experience the same?  It may be a coincidence, but maybe there's an incompatibility with the nForce motherboard.  As it is, I can't replicate the problem.  Please let me know either way so I can give the product group some direction.  Thanks!

Jonathan [MSFT]
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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

I have been able to view the Demos on my Dell Laptop with out any playback issues although the installation process was rather painful. - The first demo I went to downloaded the 1.1 alpha version which did not work and the next demo could not install 1.0 but after uninstalling, rebooting & installing 1.0 all the 1.0 demos worked. The 1.1 Alpha downloaded the 1.1 installer again then none of the demos worked until i did another uninstall/reboot install process 

Thank you, again, jc-561.

Jonathan [MSFT]
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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Yes the demo content and volume is a non-issue on other systems I have tested.  This includes various laptops.

I do not have another NForce4 based system to test from, however thanks to jc-561, it sounds like it is Nforce4 related.

NForce4 is a highly mainstream MB chipset so hopefully you can find the solution.  Keep in mind only Silverlight content is behaving this way.

 
When setting the volume between 0->1, this makes no difference.  0 will mute, but any positive value will result in full maximum system volume levels with tons of distortion.

Thank you, both.  I've brought this issue to the product group's attention so they may look into it further.

Jonathan [MSFT]
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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Just to let you know that you might be on the right track with the nForce 4 idea.  I have a A8N-SLI Premium and have the same issue.

I installed on my Sony Viao with no problems.

I have the same audio problem. The problem was first reported in this thread from December 2006:
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=263776

Hmmm... interesting that this thread has 3,600+ views.

I'm not surprised there's been so many viewers of this thread. 

Just off hand without trying I know six people with this problem, myself included - all of us with NForce motherboards.  The few people with ATI chipsets are okay, as are those using add-on soundcards or USB headphones.  I just tried the release version and it too has the problem and this IS a blocking issue in my eyes.

I can't believe Microsoft would release something that has a bug that is so bad it will PREVENT adoption (even with volumes at minimum it's blaring out as loud as the speaker is set and you can't discern individual sounds at all).  Most people will give it a try and then just uninstall silverlight rather than experience the sound it produces when you go to a site that plays anything.

It works on my laptops fine though (intel audio on two and realtec on the other) but they are the only things I've seen it work on.  WHY doesn't it go through the normal mixer??

 (No, updating drivers doesn't help.)

Had this problem with the very first version of WPF/E

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1107289&SiteID=1

Later releases made it go away, but now its back again :(. 

likn:

Later releases made it go away, but now its back again :(. 

So much for unit testing, eh?

I'm also experiencing ridiculously loud volume levels no matter what any of the windows volume controls are set at. I have nForce4 on-board audio and experience this when viewing any video content, for example: http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070907&content_id=2195022&vkey=news_bos&fext=.jsp&c_id=bos

 I couldn't listen long enough to tell if there is actually sound being played, or if it's just noise since it's so absurdly loud.

Unfortunately Nforce is a very popular and highly sold chipset.  Furthermore, is it certain no other hardware is affected?

It is a shame the "release" was shipped with this bug.

We will definitely delay any Silverlight related projects until this is resolved.  This would be an embarassing and impossible bug to explain to a client that has been steered towards Silverlight.

To prevent this problem in the future, I think Microsoft should create a program whereby Microsoft officially certifies various audio chipsets and their associated drivers. Then they won't be surprised by hardware-related bugs that are only reported one year before release.

</sarcasm>

I have the same issue after installing silverlight 1.0 and have an Nvidia motherboard and audio.

Thanks, all, for the reports.  Keep them coming in.  The product group is looking into it.

Jonathan [MSFT]
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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Got this too on nForce 2 (!) with default Audio from Mainboard , "NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM) Audio Codec Interface".

Cheers 

So... almost 24,000 views of this issue and still no patch...? Hmmm...

I registered to this forum just because of this problem. I'm also on an Nforce 2 motherboard using the onboard audio, and the audio plays like one loud, continuous "screech". It really makes running into any Silverlight object unpleasant. Hope this is fixed soon.

Just to further support the idea, I am also experiencing the problem and I am also on a nforce4 chipset. So far it seems that it is definitely related to the nforce4. And I also agree, it really should be looked at since the nforce4 is a VERY popular chipset for many motherboards...

Edit: Oh, also in addition to the sound, when playing a clip in full screen mode, it runs a little choppy. It does not do that with ANY other movie format, my computer is relatively ok when it comes to speed, I have a nVidia 8600 gt video card that is overclocked, I can play just about all new games without a problem, etc. etc. So I don't think it is just that my computer is too slow to play videos on full screen, lol.

It has been 2 months since I initially posted this bug (which has actually existed since the beginning).  

We really require an update and ETA at this point.  Your clients/users cannot move forward with Silverlight projects with a bug like this still existing.

Is the dev team aware and when will a patch be released that fixes this problem?  Please find these answers and relay them to us.

Thank you
 

Eh who gives a crap. They don't care, neither do I. There are plenty of other movie formats out there, yah, they might not be as fast as silverlight, but my internet connection is pretty good and I can stream pretty high resolution videos with very little buffering already, so it's no big deal to me, I'll just stick with the other formats, oh well.

 I guess I can't wait on this anymore - Flash Moviestar does everything I need already and with h.264 encoding looks really good

Perhaps Microsoft has discontinued support for Silverlight...??

I am not on the development team, but I do know they were notified of this bug (I'm the one that filed it).  For reasons I'm sure you can appreciate, I am unable discuss progress or give an ETA of a fix. 

One thing I noticed reading through the thread again is the absence of mention of Windows Vista.  Is anyone experiencing this problem using Windows Vista?

Jonathan [MSFT]
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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

I'm on Windows XP Pro, sorry I didn't mention that.

Asus A8N-E, nVidia 8600 GT OC'ed video card, hm, what else would be relevant, well, the motherboard has sound built in, Realtek ALC850, 8-channel CODEC...

XP Pro here.  Not able to test on Vista to confirm if the problem exists on that OS.

 I too am using XP Pro,  with the nVidia chipset motherboard.   This really makes me angry.  I go to MLB.COM and they are using Silverlight,  I can't even listen to the interviews with the players and coaches for the ALCS.  I am going to write to them and tell them to stop using silverlight and use windows media player or even quicktime,  but stop using this JUNK

    GO TRIBE 

I'll add myself to the list of people with problems on a nForce4 board.
While the 6600GT video card drivers are a bit out of date, the audio drivers should be. This is on a XP system.
I don't recall problems with the Beta or one of the RCs (I don't recall what I had installed prior to this release), but didn't play any Channel 9 videos with Silverlight until the final release, then again I know I didn't use it after I first got it so perhaps it was there for me as well and I passed it off as a Beta bug.

Wow, there's been 53,000 views of this topic now ... I wonder if this is affecting a lot of users?

Next time, Microsoft should build a self-updating capability into Silverlight so that interim fixes to major problems like this one can be deployed quickly. Hmm, maybe something like this: How Silverlight Update Works

I'm having the same experience, specifically audio is always distorted to an unrecognizable degree when playing video files. The same files always works in Windows Media Player.

 My config:

* Microsoft Silverlight,  Version: 1.0.20926.0
* Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600
* BIOS Version/Date Phoenix Technologies, LTD ASUS A8N-SLI Premium ACPI BIOS Revision 1009, 2005-10-21
* Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "5.1.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)"

Audio Driver
* Name NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM) Audio
* PNP Device ID NVAX\NFORCE_VAD\4&212292CD&0&0000
* Driver c:\windows\system32\drivers\nvapu.sys (6.14.0462.0 built by: NVIDIA, 404,75 KB (414 464 bytes), 2005-04-13 13:34)

Audio Codecs
c:\windows\system32\iac25_32.ax Intel Corporation Indeo® audio software OK C:\WINDOWS\system32\IAC25_32.AX 2.05.53 195,00 KB (199 680 bytes) 2004-08-04 14:00
c:\windows\system32\imaadp32.acm Microsoft Corporation imaadp32.acm OK C:\WINDOWS\system32\IMAADP32.ACM 5.1.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158) 16,00 KB (16 384 bytes) 2004-08-04 14:00
c:\windows\system32\l3codeca.acm Fraunhofer Institut Integrierte Schaltungen IIS Fraunhofer IIS MPEG Layer-3 Codec OK C:\WINDOWS\system32\L3CODECA.ACM 1, 9, 0, 0305 284,00 KB (290 816 bytes) 2004-08-04 14:00
c:\windows\system32\lhacm.acm Microsoft Corporation lhacm.acm OK C:\WINDOWS\system32\LHACM.ACM 4.4.3385 33,27 KB (34 064 bytes) 2007-03-17 16:57
c:\windows\system32\msadp32.acm Microsoft Corporation msadp32.acm OK C:\WINDOWS\system32\MSADP32.ACM 5.1.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158) 14,50 KB (14 848 bytes) 2004-08-04 14:00
c:\windows\system32\msaud32.acm Microsoft Corporation Windows Media Audio Codec OK C:\WINDOWS\system32\MSAUD32.ACM 8.00.00.4487 288,00 KB (294 912 bytes) 2004-08-04 14:00
c:\windows\system32\msg711.acm Microsoft Corporation msg711.acm OK C:\WINDOWS\system32\MSG711.ACM 5.1.2600.0 (xpclient.010817-1148) 9,00 KB (9 216 bytes) 2004-08-04 14:00
c:\windows\system32\msg723.acm Microsoft Corporation msg723.acm OK C:\WINDOWS\system32\MSG723.ACM 4.4.3400 116,00 KB (118 784 bytes) 2005-12-17 21:01
c:\windows\system32\msgsm32.acm Microsoft Corporation msgsm32.acm OK C:\WINDOWS\system32\MSGSM32.ACM 5.1.2600.0 (xpclient.010817-1148) 19,50 KB (19 968 bytes) 2004-08-04 14:00
c:\windows\system32\sirenacm.dll Microsoft Corp. Messenger Audio Codec OK C:\WINDOWS\system32\SIRENACM.DLL 8.1.0178.00 49,86 KB (51 056 bytes) 2007-01-19 12:53
c:\windows\system32\sl_anet.acm Sipro Lab Telecom Inc. Sipro Lab Telecom Audio Codec OK C:\WINDOWS\system32\SL_ANET.ACM 3.02 84,00 KB (86 016 bytes) 2004-08-04 14:00
c:\windows\system32\tssoft32.acm DSP GROUP, INC. tssoft32.acm OK C:\WINDOWS\system32\TSSOFT32.ACM 1.01 8,00 KB (8 192 bytes) 2004-08-04 14:00

Jonathan-MSFT or any other staff,

 I actually do not understand why some information cannot return from the developers about this bug.  For example:

• Confirmation that the bug is identified and what priority is is receiving (emergency vs abandoning this group with an excuse of "un-supported configuration")
• An idea of approx. when an update with fix will be rolled out.  For example, "this year", "1st quarter next year", etc.

From the way the thread was initially answered (assuming nforce was a video card/video driver) I wonder if the scope of this problem is not full appreciated. I want to impress upon you how many people are actually affected.  NFORCE from Nvidia, is a very highly sold chipset (mobo chipset) found in HUGE segment of performance/gamer systems.  I don't have market share figures, but do a little research and you will see how bad this problem is.  Hundreds (or thousands) of motherboard brands use these chipsets.

From the lack of fixes, feedback, etc., I am getting a bad feeling Microsoft is viewing this problem as non-critical or worse, is considering not fixing this.  We are trying to bring services using Silverlight to market, and everything is on hold due to this. 

This issue was posted 3 months ago and has received over 60,000 views and climbing.  Break your "policy" and get some information from people in the know, fast.  Microsoft's credibility with Silverlight is being damaged by the day due to lack of communication.

 I understand why developers cannot comment on every bug reported, but special care should be given to "breaking" bugs that require 0 steps to reproduce.
 

Amen JD97a. If I took this long to fix critical bugs for my clients, I would be dropped like a hot potato. How is it that Microsoft gets held to lower standards than the rest of us??

Another Amen to that.  MS - Seriously think about it; the only reason you would have to even view this page because you're having problems. 

I'm in that club -

• ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Rev 1016
• Windows 2003, SP2
• NVidia Video (Quadro FX 1300 and NVS 280

I'm waiting to develop on this for the company I work for, and their/my patience is THIN!  I know you can make this work - it did back in the beta's on my box.

Skinner 

<insert crickets chirping here>

Just tested viewing a video in Silverlight on 64bits Vista  using the same hardware as in my previous post and it works okey, no distorted audio. 

Read the following in the the Reactor-Core-Temperature-Computer-Voice-From-James-Bond:

"This thread has 80,000 views... and counting."

nForce 2200 Professional chipset on my dual Opteron Win2003 machine (Tyan s2895 Thunder K8We board)- same problem. I am using the latest nForce driversWHQL certified, every other app sounds just fine on it. Silverlight sound is unusable.

 just checked today, still is the latest driver version. Silverlight is version 1.0.20926.0 in IE7

I want to thank everyone for their continued reports and their patience.  As the one who filed the bug, I check in on the status periodically and it is being addressed.  I don't have an ETA on a fix.

Jonathan [MSFT]
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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Does anybody know if today's VS 2008 release contains an updated Silverlight control that may address this issue?

Jonathan, does today's Silverlight service release address the problem discussed in this thread?

 Korggy - Still buzzing as ever - Microsoft Silverlight Version: 1.0.21115.0

(I supposedly went through the install - didn't have enough brain cells to check the version before upgrading to see if there was a delta)

 Skinner
 

I'd like to add another Nforce4 for Intel user to the group of people with problems. I use a realtek soundchip for sound but the chipset for motherboard (Abit NI8) is Nforce 4 for Intel. I run Win XP Pro.

This problem scared the crap out of me when I tried to watch my first HD demo from the MSN website. The distortion is incredible.   

Full un-install and re-install of Silverlight with latest release and same problem.

 Extremely loud sound clipping even at the lowest setting.

 My config:

• Mainboard Asus A8N SLI Deluxe
• nForce 4 Chipset
• Sound device "NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM) Audio Codec Interface"
• Windows XP Pro SP2
  
• Silverlight 1.0.21115.0
  

I develop web apps with silverlight video and this bug is a real showstopper. I am now using a different machine for development but some of my subscribers are not that patient, they just cancel their accounts (after writing angry emails, I cannot blame them).

I have used more than a dozen different audio and video applications under Windows without any sound problems which makes me believe it has nothing to do with audio drivers or DirectX but with Silverlight specifically.

This bug can be reproduced within minutes, has been narrowed down to the nForce chipset, exists for many months and has been reported in this thread 15 weeks ago. 

So Jonathan, please(!) try to shift priority up a notch and please try to give us more than "it might be fixed sometime". Thank you.

Well, for whatever reason, it appears nobody cares... Oh well... There are plenty of other codecs out there, maybe instead of posting here trying to help Microsoft identify and fix a problem, since they don't care, we should all go to any sites using this codec and notify them of the problem, maybe they'll stop using it if enough of us tells them that we can't view their videos. So everyone, post links to websites using silverlight, and we should all go there and email them telling them that it doesn't work for us. Maybe Microsoft will listen then when the content movers start using other codecs instead...

Hi - my name is Tom Taylor and I work on the Silverlight product team. I wanted to say a few things about this issue & confirm that we haven't been ignoring this problem.

First of all, I'd like to apologize for this bug on behalf of the Silverlight product team. We do realize that this is an *extremely* frustrating bug for any user of Silverlight - it makes videos unwatchable unless you are fine with watching video with the sound off, and most people are not.This is not a good user experience and not the impression that we want to leave Silverlight users with.

Second, I'd like to thank everybody that took the time to report this issue, even if just to confirm that you were seeing hearing the same thing as everybody else. As it has turned out, this hasn't been simply a question of having an nForce motherboard or not, and that's made it difficult to ascertain exactly what's causing the issue. Through the details that many of you have provided, we have reached the point where we have a clear idea of what's causing the problem and what we need to do to fix it.

Just like Jonathan, I can't provide an ETA on when we will have a public build with this fix available for people to download. I can only confirm for all of you that we are trying very hard to get this issue resolved for our users as soon as possible, and I will reply back to this thread when we have an update available.

Please feel free to reply to me privately about this or any other questions you might have.

thanks!

- Tom Taylor
Microsoft Silverlight

Thank you for the update, Tom. 

Tom,

Thanks for confirming the bug and stating it is a top priority for resolution.  We are are looking forward to updates as you can produce them.

Another week has passed. Any news? 

Absolutely. We've narrowed down the problem in the audio stack to the point where we believe we understand what's going on & how to fix it.

A few people have sent private messages asking if they can test the fixed build once it's available. I think that's a great idea, and I'll advocate for that, but I can't promise anything at this point. Right now most people on the team are gone for the holidays, so we won't be able to tackle this in earnest until January.

thanks for asking!

- Tom

Now that the number of views of this thread has passed 200,000, has anybody at Microsoft made fixing this bug their New Year's resolution? For comparison purposes, 200,000 is like filling Ohio Stadium ... twice.

korggy:

Now that the number of views of this thread has passed 200,000, has anybody at Microsoft made fixing this bug their New Year's resolution? For comparison purposes, 200,000 is like filling Ohio Stadium ... twice.

With all due respect, if you want to talk about ratios you can assume over 50,000+ users are affected by this bug per each 1 poster that has reported it.
 
You have said all the right things Tom, so I resist piling on here, but I am very annoyed that this bug got personal communication from your team after so many months. 

This is one of those bugs that:

a) should never have escaped your alpha/beta testing
b) if the above happens, your entire team drops everything they are doing to fix it immediately.  This bug was reported in August.  That is 5 months and counting.  Honestly this is beyond acceptable for a bug of this type.

 I respect the hard work I am sure all of your are doing, and respect the scope of what Silverlight is trying to do.  But as someone who wants you to succeed, humbly suggest taking a hard look at how something like this can happen and not be resolved in the amount of time that has elapsed.  If whatever processes that allowed this to occur are not addressed, Silverlight will have a hard time gaining any credibility. 

With that said, thank you for keeping us in the loop and giving indication a fix is coming shortly.  We do appreciate it.

JD97a:

This bug was reported in August.  That is 5 months and counting.

Technically speaking, this bug was reported in December 2006 ... see my posts at the top of this thread. So that's 13 months and counting.

I know this isn't exactly a workaround but I'm guessing many of the developers around here have VMware workstation and Silverlight videos play fine inside a virtual machine using the Creative AudioPCI virtual audio device.

Cheers, Rob.

Sorry Korggy,

Yes that is quite bad.  I know that I had the bug for many months before I actually posted here.  I just assumed someone was aware and it would be fixed when 1.0 was released.

 
Rob, interesting.  But the key issue is not that it works on our machines but the end-users that are consuming our apps.

Sorry, I have been in meetings all day - I was hoping to respond earlier. In the interests of greater transparency, there are a few things that I want to share as we address the concerns around this issue:

The major reason that this hasn't been fixed: Yes, we have known about this for a while (your posts really do matter!) and we have been investigating for several months now. The problem is that we can't reproduce the issue, and without that, we can't diagnose the problem. Most people on campus use standardized equipment (e.g. Dell or HP workstations) on an everyday basis, and those are recycled every three to four years once the warranty expires. So we've been working with the hardware lab managers on campus to find nForce-based machines. There are some, but not a lot. None of them have reproduced the problem despite a great deal of effort & experimentation.

I also ordered several different nForce4-based machines from a supplier - there are different varieties like SLI - none of them reproduce this problem, either. I really was at the point where I was thinking I was going to have to ask somebody from the community to send us their personal machine.

Fortunately, we have finally located somebody at Microsoft who happens to have an older machine that reproduces the problem, and are working with that machine. What we can tell at this point is that it's a low-level problem in the audio stack, but we don't know at this point if it's our code or the driver code that's causing this. We do know that it's not a generic nForce problem - rather it seems to be specific to a particular revision or machine configuration. So no ETA yet on a fix.

Could we have done a better job / been more responsive? Of course. There are always lessons to be learned and improvements to be made. I can think of things that I could have done personally to expedite the process. We have been discussing this as a team and will make improvements now and for future revisions.

Jonathan acknowledged this bug shortly after it was reported on this thread, and reported it to the product team at the same time. He's done a great job of canvassing the message boards and reporting issues as they pop up.

I suppose that we could have been more transparent about the status of this issue - I certainly am trying to be now. There are also things that we're not allowed to say, e.g. when a new release is coming out that has this fix in it. That's something that will be part fo the internal discussion I previously mentioned.

What about the post-beta / pre-release report of this bug? We thought we had that one fixed, based on something similar that we had seen and were able to reproduce in-house. Like I said, this particular issue has been really difficult for us to reproduce and we have been trying to understand it for a long time.


As I mentioned before, I'll see if I can get a few of you access to a build that has a fix in it - I don't have a build as of yet, and I can't promise that this will happen without clearing it with a few people first. Please feel free to PM me if you are interested and I'll respond privately.

thanks!

- Tom

Hi,

I'd like to suggest that maybe the reason this issue isn't showing up on all nForce4 motherboards is that it's only affecting a particular audio chipset that was a popular choice for inclusion on a number of nForce4 motherboards.  As I recall when researching the various options back when I built my system, many of the various nForce4 motherboard models used differing chipsets with varying levels of performance and features (for example I remember one even had an SB Audigy onboard, but there were many more generic options too).

I'm experiencing this issue with an Asus A8N SLI-Premium v1.02.  Looking up a review that has the specs listed, this motherboard uses the Realtek ALC850 5.1 AC97 audio chipset.  The driver I'm using is the 6.86 nForce Drivers from nVidia: http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_nf4_win2k_6.86.html
According to the download page this platform driver bundle includes Audio Driver v4.65 WHQL.

I'm going to have to second that opinion or at least also suggest that it could be more specific than simply the chipset. I've noticed that the majority of the people reporting this problem is using the Asus A8N series of motherboards, so it could be another specific component or combination of components used by this manufacturer and this line of motherboards from them.

Thanks for the additional information - that seems to fit our our observations as well. We finally have a machine with the right combination of hardware and software and have been able to reproduce the bug. We are currently working with NVidia on how to fix this or work around the problem.

There was a recent service release for 1.0 - the updates here are related to the installer. There is only one fix on the core media side, and it's not related to this issue.

- Tom

Just to add to this sound chipset speculation, I use an Abit NI8 motherboard and suffer the same distorted sound issues with Silverlight.

This board also uses the ALC850 Realtek sound chip, with which I use the latest unified audio driver from the Realtek website.

My Asus A8N SLI Deluxe board has a Realtek ALC 850 sound device, too.

PC Wizard reports that my ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe is also using the ALC850.  I too am experiencing the same issue.

In my last post, I mentioned that I also have an ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe using the ALC850.  On a whim, I did some googling and found an entry stating that Realtek had released new chipset drivers for Windows 64bit.  I followed the link it provided and found a driver set for Windows XP (32bit) dated 2007/11/7 (version A4.03).  After downloading and installing this update, I have not been able to duplicate the extreme distorted audio that I was experiencing previously.  Although I have found some video productions that contain some minor static, it is nothing like the "knock me out of my chair" distortion that forced me to uninstall Silverlight originally.  Maybe this is just wishful thinking that it would be that easy.

Does anyone have a url to Silverlight based media that causes the distortion on their own machine?  I believe that the following Url previously resulted in the distort.  Can someone please confirm?  ETonline.com - 65th Golden Globe Awards

Silverlight v.1.0.30109.0
Windows XP SP2

Many thanks - Ray

Our understanding and experience is that for affected machines, this should reproduce with any video. I don't have access to the machine that we have at this point (it's in a locked office) to test it out, but I will do that first thing Monday.

thanks!

- Tom

Installing the driver, as mentioned above by Ray, partly solves the problem with distorted audio.
It is now possible to listen to audio but there is still some random distortion experienced.

The following clip is an example of the remaining distortion problems:

http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=298337

The latest AC'97 Drivers for the Realtek ALC850 chipset are located here:

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=14&PFid=23&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

Installing these might change the look of your audio control panel.

Last night I installed the latest and greatest nVidia drivers for my motherboard and the audio problems are still there.

korggy - The drivers that I and GavinLeigh are talking about are not the nVidia chipset drivers.  They are the Realtek audio drivers, for users with the Realtek ALC850 chipset.  If your motherboad is using the ALC850, try downloading the drivers using the link in mine or GavinLeigh's last post.

Johan, I visited that silverlight link you posted before, and then after, installing the latest unified audio driver from Realtek. And yes... it's a big improvement. Unfortunately it still sounds pretty bad (on that clip)... but it isn't completely distorted. I guess this means there is some hope for resolution.

Johan and GavinLeigh,

Thank you for responding.  Johan, I checked the link you provided and have to agree with you.  There is still a bit of "static" or audio distortion detected after installing the Realtek chipset drivers (A4.03).  Did you happen to check the ETonline.com link that I provided after having install the drivers.  This webpage contains 21 small video clips.  Of these, only three of the videos results in the "static" effect during playback.  This may take some time to test, but could you or someone else confirm that the "static" is present in only the "American Gangster", "Dexter" and "Katherine Heigl talks" clips.  These are the 10th, 14th and 20th clips shown on this page.  The 10th clip has static throughout and the 14th clip has only a small static distortion while the Jennifer Carpenter is speaking.  The 20th clip has one two static spikes toward the end.  I have listed the text for each of these clips below and the words containing static are in bold and extraneous static between words is shows as .  I know this may be a bit obsessive, but I'm hoping it will help.

I don't want to distract from the resolution of this issue, but I wonder if the problem may have been two-fold.  1) An issue caused by old chipset drivers that were not compatible with Silverlight and 2) an encoder/playback problem with ambient noise.  You may notice that these three clips appear to have different audio quality.  They are slightly louder than the other 18 clips.

Clip #10: Motion Picture Drama: 'American Gangster'
<John B.> Oh, I understand, understand.  You know a man walks around with fifty thousand chinchila coat and never even bought me a cup of coffee. There is something wrong there.  You pay your bills Frank. 
<Denzel W.> I don't know what you...
<John B.> Do you pay your bills, I asked you.
<Denzel W.> If you are not getting your share, maybe you need to talk to the chief of police.
...
...
<John B.> Don't forget your card.  Have a nice honeymoom.
<car door closes>
<Denzel W.> Let's go.
<John B.> Blows kiss.  

Clip #14: TV Actor Drama: Michael C. Hall - 'Dexter'
<halfway through clip> 
<Jennifer C.> Did you hear that?  Thirty bags.  Do you know what that means?  I means that there might be a new mass murder out there, way worse that the "Ice Truck" killer.

Clip #20: Katherine Heigl talks Golden Globes
<last quarter of the video>
<Katherine H.> ... though I'm disappointed that the night isn't going to happen.  But umm, I would have been really awkward if I had been the only one there.  You know..
<Steven 'Cojo' C.> I would have have been with you.  I would have done you hair for you.

I played the same three clips on my HP laptop which uses the ALI M5451.  Although the poor recording quality is still noticeable, the static type distortion is not found.  The "knock me down" distortion appears to be replaced with less shocking but still annoying static effect on my ALC850 machine.  I will reinstall my old Realtek chipset drivers (A3.89) to see if the full distortion returns.

Ray, I checked those videos you linked to and I agree with your descriptions. However there was also distortion on the Daniel Day Lewis "There Will be Blood" clip too... in fact it was worse than any of the other clips.

I heard those distortions on my ALC850 based machine but when I tried my other ALC889A based machine they weren't there.

However there's more to it than that. After checking the videos you mentioned (a couple of times each) I went back and played back through all of them another time... and the distortion had dissappeared !!!

I have no idea why it went away... but it did. So then I went back to Johan's channel9 link about Sydney and that link played perfectly too. So now I don't know what to think.

Update: 
If I close that browser window and open a new one, the distortion returns to those video clips... plus I now also experience distortion on the Sweeney Todd Clip. Line - "NO.. not Barker". And also throughout the Jodie Foster "The Brave One" clip.

It's just plain weird.

Tom -

We haven't heard back from you in a while.  A couple of weeks ago you said you would try out the new drivers to see if it made any difference on the machine you have in the office.

Any news?

Ray

Hi Ray -

I don't really have anything that I can share at this point other than that we are actively working on a fix. As many of you have mentioned, this doesn't happen with Windows Media Player on the same machine playing the same video. We're investigating the possibility of changing the way we do audio, so that we can avoid a driver fix. That will require a fair amount of testing before we can confidently say that this is the right way to go.

I should have an update for you in a few weeks. Thanks for keeping me on my toes!

- Tom

Just to add to the list, I also have the same issue. DFI Lanparty nF4 SLI-DR. XP PRO. Using onboard audio.  I only installed it when www.thecomedynetwork.ca required it to play some vids. I nearly fell off my chair when the video started. I uninstalled it right away. :)

I have the same chipset as the others and have the same problems and a few others

 After attempting to play any silverlight content & getting distorted sound & being deafened. I have to reboot computer beforer I can get any sound on any other program or player

Needless to say Silverlight hasn't remained installed on my computer and I am disapointed that it has is being pushed on WU as an update albeit optional when it will cause problems on a lot of computers  

where or when can we get beta of silverlight 2 to see if it fixes the problem

I  am a Microsoft Security MVP and since MIcrosoft started doing most webcasts in silverlight I can't see them & get left out

tomtaylormsft:

In the new release, we have included a fix that we believe will address this issue. Given the difficulty that we've had in reproducing this because it's on very specific hardware, I'm asking each of you to help me confirm that this does in fact fix the problem.

Tom, thank you for the update. I hate to continually sound sarcastic throughout this thread, but how do 400,000 thread views and "difficult to reproduce" jive with each other?

Tom,

Thank you for the update.  I'll look for the update and definitely post back to this thread if there is a measurable improvement.  Unlike others, I know that there is a big difference between 88+ posts or replies to a thread and 390+K views of a thread.  Simply reading an article does not validate the issue or indicate its impact.

Thanks again,
Ray

korggy:

tomtaylormsft:

In the new release, we have included a fix that we believe will address this issue. Given the difficulty that we've had in reproducing this because it's on very specific hardware, I'm asking each of you to help me confirm that this does in fact fix the problem.

Tom, thank you for the update. I hate to continually sound sarcastic throughout this thread, but how do 400,000 thread views and "difficult to reproduce" jive with each other?

Tom,

 Thanks for your continued follow-up on this issue. I had the problem with the nvidia chip set. After installing the Silverlight 2.0 beta it is working great.

 landmark

yep silverlight 2.beta seems to work fine

Derek Knight:

yep silverlight 2.beta seems to work fine

fantastic news!

for those of you who have yet to try it out, Silverlight 2 beta 1 is available at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/resources/installationFiles.aspx?v=2.0 - give it a shot and let us know how it went.

- Tom

Ditto on the 2.0 Beta.  I no longer have a problem with the audio for any of the Silverlight videos.

Tom - Please thank the team for their hard work.

Works here as well. Now I can watch Channel9 content again!

After viewing some Silverlight (v2 beta 1) content at the Mix website, Firefox crashed.  Upon restart with "restore session" , Firefox cannot fully startup and with a error window "memory reference error, etc - sorry did not copy the error message). 

This is with Firefox 2.0.0.12 on Win XP.  Wanted to let you know in case there were other reports about this.  It may be completely unrelated to audio bug that has now been fixed.   I un-installed and will try later because I am working.  Perhaps a reboot since I have been running for over 2 weeks right now might be in order. Anyway, wanted to put it out there.

Interesting - let me know (privately) if a reboot didn't fix it.

Because of the nature of the fix for the audio bug, we were more comfortable field-testing this with our beta version first. Assuming that all goes well (and so far it has), we will be putting this into an upcoming service release of Silverlight 1.0.

- Tom

Just wanted to let everyone know that I also have an nForce motherboard and had the same sound problems (MLB.com uses the silverlight player). I downloaded Silverlight version 2.1 and now the problem is solved.

Thank you for this thread. Otherwise, I would not have known how to fix this.

Can some of the successful installers of the beta 2 please try this link... then listen to the Jody Foster or Johnny Depp clips and see if they have any issues.

http://www.etonline.com/silverlight/globes65/?utm_source=module&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=globes65

I still get a little distortion on these clips.

Good news - this has now been fixed in Silverlight 1.0. Check this blog post out for further details:

http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2008/04/07/silverlight-1-0-new-maintenance-release-available.aspx

Best wishes,

Tim Sneath | Group Manager, Client Platform Evangelism | Microsoft Corp.

timsneath:

Good news - this has now been fixed in Silverlight 1.0. Check this blog post out for further details:

http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2008/04/07/silverlight-1-0-new-maintenance-release-available.aspx

Best wishes,

Tim Sneath | Group Manager, Client Platform Evangelism | Microsoft Corp.

Tim, you beat me to the announcement. :-)

Yep, the fix for this has been ported to Silverlight 1.0 & released to the web as of a few days ago. Big thanks to the people that helped me offline with this. For those of you that are running Silverlight 2 beta 1, you can either keep that version on your machine, or uninstall it and install the updated version of Silverlight 1.

- Tom

 ya... great work by all people... its easy to solve problems in group rather trying individually...

asp net web development

 Hi Tom and everyone else!

I also have this problem(or another) with silverlight. I dual boot between vista ultimate 64bit and Xp pro32bit and the problem is in both OS. I tested it
with both IE7 och latest firefox and exist in both. Everything else regarding to sound works as a charm, like watching movies or listen to music(streams/mp3) but not in silverlight. Its like a extremly short soundpice that repeating it self like a static. The video moves on but not the sound, it just buzzes. To make things worse I dont even have a nforce chipset, I have intel X48 chipset and ASUS Xonar DX. I cant visit any sites with
silverlight since it just get buzzy.
my specs below:

Intel Q9450
ASUS xonar DX with  latest driver
Gigabyte X48-DQ6 and 2x2Gb DDR2

Any news how to solve it yet?

Regards
J Pihl

The fix for the nForce problem already shipped a while ago for both Silverlight 1.0 and Silverlight 2, as pointed out earlier in this thread.

I think you might be hitting a different problem here. Can you clarify what version of the Silverlight runtime you are using?

Thanks, Stefan Wick

Microsoft Silverlight | http://blogs.msdn.com/swick/

conor5:

I seem to have the exact same problem, i've just downloaded silverlight 2 to use with the new sky player upgrade and the video is fine but the sound is very distorted in the same way as described by electr0. Any help would be appreciated. Conor

I'll follow up with you both offline to get some more information - thanks for reporting this!

 - Tom

Very similiar problem here.  Killing my netflix feed for instant movies.

3 Machines, entirely different hardware profiles.
OS: Vista Home Premium, XP Professional x2
IE7 and Firefox updated and current.

Silverlight apps - very low, distorted.
*netflix.com
*silverlight.net/fox

Microsoft spent 6 hours, two level 1 technicians, one level 2 technician getting absolutely nowhere.
They verified that the settings are all correct but could not diagnose the problem.  They blamed netflix despite silverlight.net sharing symptom.

Microsoft techs left crap on the desktop, installed applications that i dont want, and now silverlight doesnt show up in my add/remove programs,
but when i try to update the silverlight website says its currently installed and cannot update until the older version is removed.

Silverlight is not lookin good from where i'm standing.