Phonics Alive - literacy software - frequently asked questions

FAQ: [INDEX] - [2] - [3] - [4] - [5] - [6] - [7] - [8] - [9]

OS Specific Issues

Win - Sound issues, lag & missing sounds

Lag/sound delays. Sometimes there is a noticeable gap between when you hit a key on the keyboard and when the sound effect plays. This can be caused by many things, including sound drivers and the hardware you have in your computer. Some sound cards and drivers are just better than others. In development, we discovered several "magic" settings that reduced the appearant lag on one card, but increased it on another. Thus we had to find a happy medium which resulted in acceptable performance on all of our tested configurations.

With "The Speller" we attempted to reduce this "lag" issue by integrating with DirectX and Quicktime under Windows 95/98. By default, this program does not use the special sound speed up code, but if you have DirectX 5 or greater and Quicktime 3 or greater installed correctly (this can be tricky to set up sometimes, which is why it isn't set default) then if you go to the "Admin" page from the main screen (Windows hold down the control key and click the book, Mac hold down the Apple key and click the book). Then unset the "Use safe sound mode" checkbox. If everything is installed correctly, and everything is compatible, this will significantly reduce this apparant sound lag.

However, it is quite possible that after all of this, sound lag could be worse! Also, you may end up with no sound at all, or missing things like the instruction voiceover. If any of these happen, just go back to the admin page, and recheck "Use safe sound mode".

If you are using "Safe sound mode" in Speller and are still missing sounds then check that you can actually hear audio from your computer. Things like the system "beeps" and noises. Check that you can hear the music from an audio CD. Check another program that you know makes noises.

We have also had a report that changing the "Hardware Acceleration" setting for sound cards can solve some "warbling" issues. Most cards are set to "full" by default, and dropping this settting a notch or two has reportedly solve this problem for some customers. As with all hardware, it is always a good idea to check that you have installed the latest drivers available from your manufacturer, but changing the hardware acceleration setting may work for your system.

Speller & Intel RSX

We have had several reports of issues with Intel RSX. These reports vary from no sound at all, to laggy sounds, to missing sounds. The first suggestion is to upgrade to the latest drivers from Intel.
If that doesn't work, there are other things that you can try, such as changing the sound output device if you have Quicktime installed.
The third suggestion is to edit the file in the installed location called

Another suggestion, if the above suggestions fail, and which has solved almost every customer enquiry with regards to issues with RSX, is to uninstall RSX.

As a note, the development environment which we use (Macromedia Director 6.5) stopped supporting Intel RSX with the very next next version (Director 7), which was shortly after the release of Speller.

How do you know you are missing sounds that you have never heard?

Good question! Generally speaking, there are lots of sounds all through our programs. Learning activities usually consist of a teaching section with full voiceover at the beginning of a task, followed by an interactive learning section with a voiceover introduction of the question, and sound effects throughout the activity.

Windows - "The Speller" - Missing sounds - All versions

The quick answer to this one is to go to the "Admin" page and change the "Use safe sound mode" checkbox to the opposite of whatever it is set to. If you are still missing sounds, please refer to the above topic "OS Specific Issues - Win - Sound issues, lag & missing sounds".

Mac - Why is the program slow and unresponsive under MacOS 9 ?

MacOS 9 requires significantly more RAM than 7.5-8.6. The minimum suggested RAM for this version of the Macintosh operating system when using any of our programs is 64Mb. This is true for Blender, which actually only needs about 4Mb, or Speller which needs about 12Mb.
Also, if you are running Speller, Grammar or Typing with a version number less then v2.0, then there is another trick that you can do to increase the program responsiveness if you have 64Mb of RAM or more installed.

This will give the program a little bit more memory to work with, and significantly increases the appearant speed.