[B1] Car engine "kills" all audio output if HRTF is enabled

[Dimitri1993]

This is a weird bug I had (presumably) since the updates to the build of 19/07/2012 18:11. Some other people claimed to have had this bug as well.

I kinda was in a rush because the PMC (starting at around 9 PM CET) was about to begin, and I had this audio glitch (described below) combined with a lot of random game stuttering... Fortunately, I found out a way to clear out my bugs before the PMC07 started, by messing around with sound options in the launcher (on my first try).

Okay, back to describing that audio issue:

What steps will (hopefully) reproduce this problem?

1. Open the ManiaPlanet launcher, access the advanced settings, open the Audio tab, and disable the HRTF option.
2. Save the settings, launch ManiaPlanet, launch TrackMania² Canyon.
3. Go in-game, and have a car appear so that its engine sound plays (in other words, either load a track in Solo or Multiplayer, or open the Track Editor and switch to driving mode). Notice how, at this point, audio still plays without interruption. Now exit ManiaPlanet.
4. Have some sounds or music play in Windows applications, outside of ManiaPlanet. This is optional, but this way, the consequences of this glitch should become more obvious after it occurs.
5. Do the same as in steps 1 and 2, BUT before relaunching ManiaPlanet, make sure that the HRTF option is enabled. Notice how audio is still played without interruption.
6. Now repeat step 3...

What did I expect? What do I hear instead?

• I expect all audio (in ManiaPlanet, and in all other Windows applications) to still play at this point. Instead, all system audio eventually gets muted until I quit ManiaPlanet (completely).
  
  When I produced this issue for the first times (in MultiPlayer mode with many players on the PMC server), once the Track was done loading, it sounded like one of the 2 audio channels cut off, and later (a few seconds after) the other audio channel cut off too, as if the audio buffer stopped playing or was left un-updated due to a fatal audio error (and after this, I seemed to suffer from random game stuttering and lagging)... Sometimes, in Solo mode, audio seemed to cut off completely from the beginning (just as the menu to select my opponent ghosts appears)... But one time, just as I chose High audio quality instead of Normal, it took some time for the audio to cut off, starting with one of the audio channels...
  
  Therefore, I'd say that the side effects (before the complete audio cut-off) are random or situational. But in my case, the complete cut-off is inevitable.

What are my settings?

• Let me know what settings (or computer specs in addition to the ones in my signature, or ManiaPlanet logs) I should be posting here.
  
  I usually set the Audio Quality setting to Normal (since I did this in TMUF, IIRC, to get rid of a certain "annoyance" in car engine sound, not sure which one it was...), but setting it to High doesn't fix this issue.
  Also, I have all other Audio settings enabled (except for HRTF if I disable it). The issue (with HRTF enabled) still occurs even if I turn off EFX, dynamic mix, doppler and "Allow music to change while racing".