AMD-FX CPU Issues w/Master EQ Enabled (4.22.3)

Development Audio
1

Hi,

Players of my game have been reporting issues for a long time now with the following models of AMD-FX CPUs:

  • AMD FX-6100
  • AMD FX-6300
  • AMD FX-8350
  • AMD FX-9590

The problem would manifest as a hang when loading levels, with no real identifiable cause in my levels, code or blueprints. Recently I started getting a bunch more reports, so spent a bunch of time looking around for similar issues.

What I found were a bunch of workarounds relating to AMD-FX CPUs and Realtek on-board audio devices, with the problem manifesting in various different ways.

Adding the following config to the DefaultEngine.ini fixes the problems:



[/Script/Engine.AudioSettings]
bDisableMasterEQ=True

A few example reports of this solution:

These are the first 4 hits on Google when searching for bDisableMasterEQ, there are many more threads.

The option appears to affect sound mixes, so for example any that are pushed using UGameplayStatics::PushSoundMixModifier no longer get applied.

Is this issue known, and are there any known workarounds - is there a way to use this option in my game with AMD-FX CPUs?

Thanks,
Alan

2

This is one of many reasons why we have developed our own native renderer and DSP solution. The XAudio2 (Microsoft’s audio API for Windows/Xbox devices) EQ uses functions that do not work on some AMD processors. Depending on how far along your project is, you may consider turning on the New Unreal Audio Engine (which is currently Early Access/Beta) which uses our own audio mixer/renderer including our own EQ.

3

Thanks Dan, I have switched to this and will test.

Something that started happening after 4.18 in the Linux build of my game was that the reverb sounded more pronounced than on Windows. Enabling the new audio engine on Windows now yields the same result (I missed that the new engine was made default in the Linux version of 4.18). It’s all making sense.

Thinking about other developers, it would have helped me immensely if there was some documentation for UE4 stating that there are problems with AMD FX CPUs and XAudio, and that the new audio engine alleviates these. I get that the goal is to transparently make it the default in a later engine version, there’s just very little information around this to help figure out what is going on.

Thanks!
Alan