Mod recommendation : Sound Fix for Large Sector Drives

[Enla]

Hello, as some people might know Skyrim can be scuffed when it comes to audio, and particularly the player sfx. This often stems from one main thing :

The hard drive on which Skyrim is installed is not formatted with the proper sector size. Since the game was released on Windows 7, the only sector size possible was 512 bytes. Now it can go up to 4096, which can make Skyrim fail to read many of the audio files. After this issue drove me insane for quite a bit I finally found a mod that fixes it :

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/71567

 

It seems like it does not cause any issues with the STEP guide, but I think it could be wise if it were to be tested by other people as well.

[DoubleYou]

All my drives use 512 bytes/sector so I don't think I can test easily, but ianpatt is a good RE so probably doesn't hurt to add. My only concern is if it causes issues with 512 byte drives? But that I can probably test easily enough, since all of mine are 512.

[z929669]

I also use 512 bytes/sector on all of my drives, and I believe this is the default under all versions of Windows. Using > 512 wastes space with many small files, so it's generally recommended to use 512 on the OS drive. I had experimented with using sectors as small as 4 bytes to maximize storage capacity. Maybe a good thing for pure backup drives, but probably a performance hit on the OS or game drives.

This mod might benefit a very small subset of users, but probably n/a for 99% of them. It's good to have this topic though, as I recall just recently someone posting about sound issues, and it may have been related to large sectors.

[Greg]

  On 6/29/2024 at 1:36 AM, z929669 said:

I had experimented with using sectors as small as 4 bytes to maximize storage capacity.

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I may be wrong, but I imagine the overhead of tracking cluster allocations and file system objects would negate any gains with a 4-byte cluster size?

[Enla]

  On 6/29/2024 at 1:36 AM, z929669 said:

I also use 512 bytes/sector on all of my drives, and I believe this is the default under all versions of Windows. Using > 512 wastes space with many small files, so it's generally recommended to use 512 on the OS drive. I had experimented with using sectors as small as 4 bytes to maximize storage capacity. Maybe a good thing for pure backup drives, but probably a performance hit on the OS or game drives.

This mod might benefit a very small subset of users, but probably n/a for 99% of them. It's good to have this topic though, as I recall just recently someone posting about sound issues, and it may have been related to large sectors.

Expand  

I did post about sound issues recently but that was in an unrelated thread I made, though i think it could be a great addition as I spent more than a week searching for an answer and I tried many inconclusive fixes before finally stumbling on it. I'm aware most people are using 512 bytes cluster size and MBR drives, but Skyrim seems to have issues with anything differing from that. My drives are in GPT as it would otherwise cause bootloading issues when I use Linux.
 

After double checking, my cluster size is 512, but in MBR. It seems like this mod could benefit more people than I first thought ?

  On 6/29/2024 at 12:53 PM, Greg said:

I may be wrong, but I imagine the overhead of tracking cluster allocations and file system objects would negate any gains with a 4-byte cluster size?

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I don't think so, just that your transfers might be slower than using 512 or 4096 ?

[krazmuze]

Very glad someone here discovered the cause of random missing soundtrack and weapon sounds.   I struggled an entire day with this as I just started an AE playthru (opposed CC as online DRM but since GOG released it as offline DLC and no CC the price was right)   I was using two sound replacers, one for actual soundtrack music and one for music/speech ripped from PS4 and regard;ess of loose files or bsa/esl with this or that mod was bringing back the sounds.   I even stripped back to a SKSE only install and still had a problem.   Finally I concluded the GOG AE release must have broke with the latest JAN patch, and redownladed both my STEAM AE/VR releases and found the same problem with vanilla install.   Since VR does not have CC/AE DLC I was absolutely stumped as that could be ruled out as the cause.

Since SSD prices spiked it was cheaper to make a 4TB drive by stacking 1TB drives and using the Windows Drive Manager to merge them into one large drive, and it did not use the 512 sector by default  I had no idea Skyrim was programmed to bypass the OS buffers but makes sense for the prior decades poor HD performance with all the loading screens.  Soon as I read this post I realized this must be the cause and it was an easy mod fix, but it was buried deep in google results.   Most googlers are idiots that have no idea how to configured their sound panel and get no sounds not some sound.

I support adopting the mod, sure it might add OS overhead to tater laptops with HD but over the last decade those have been replaced by SSD (any BGS fan has already upgraded their game drive if they moved onto Starfield which requires SSD) so it is likely no longer noticeable now in the move from WIN7 to WIN11.

I really noticed the lack of sounds with the first dragon fight getting the shout, that scene really needs the soundtrack - it had far less impact without it.   The intro dragon soundtrack played so it took me a bit to realize I was missing something!

Edited July 11, 2024 by krazmuze

[z929669]

  On 7/11/2024 at 6:54 PM, krazmuze said:

Very glad someone here discovered the cause of random missing soundtrack and weapon sounds.   I struggled an entire day with this as I just started an AE playthru (opposed CC as online DRM but since GOG released it as offline DLC and no CC the price was right)   I was using two sound replacers, one for actual soundtrack music and one for music/speech ripped from PS4 and regard;ess of loose files or bsa/esl with this or that mod was bringing back the sounds.   I even stripped back to a SKSE only install and still had a problem.   Finally I concluded the GOG AE release must have broke with the latest JAN patch, and redownladed both my STEAM AE/VR releases and found the same problem with vanilla install.   Since VR does not have CC/AE DLC I was absolutely stumped as that could be ruled out as the cause.

Since SSD prices spiked it was cheaper to make a 4TB drive by stacking 1TB drives and using the Windows Drive Manager to merge them into one large drive, and it did not use the 512 sector by default  I had no idea Skyrim was programmed to bypass the OS buffers but makes sense for the prior decades poor HD performance with all the loading screens.  Soon as I read this post I realized this must be the cause and it was an easy mod fix, but it was buried deep in google results.   Most googlers are idiots that have no idea how to configured their sound panel and get no sounds not some sound.

I support adopting the mod, sure it might add OS overhead to tater laptops with HD but over the last decade those have been replaced by SSD (any BGS fan has already upgraded their game drive if they moved onto Starfield which requires SSD) so it is likely no longer noticeable now in the move from WIN7 to WIN11.

I really noticed the lack of sounds with the first dragon fight getting the shout, that scene really needs the soundtrack - it had far less impact without it.   The intro dragon soundtrack played so it took me a bit to realize I was missing something!

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It's not clear if the mod in question 'fixed' your issues. What exactly was your issue? How did you test the cause? How do you know this mod resolved it?