I am on 11 khz, is this the standard or should I up to 44 khz for duels?
Any other settings that would help make hearing the other guy clearer?

thanks

Using 44khz definetly makes it clearer.

using 44khz always.

Anything but 11khz makes the sound go... nasty, is the only way to describe it. I can hear far more details, but the sounds are just freakishly disturbing. It's like listening through one of those old radios from the 30's or something. Sparklesparkle-someonetookanarmor-sparklesparkle. Nasty

Anyone know why?

Because samples are recorded at certain (lower) samplerate.

Playing sounds recorded either 11kHz or 22kHz at 44kHz will not make them sound better, instead worse. You can't add fidelity just by increasing the playback samplerate on something that was done using lower samplerate.


Not clearer, but higher pitched.

To clarify Renzo, unless you're using FTE or darkplaces, the upsampling of sounds is on a 'nearest' basis, which stops your soundcard/speakers from doing it instead. This can result in poorer quality of sound, its a matter of perception.

Most of quake's sounds were recorded at 11khz. However, there are a couple that were recorded at 22khz (like the lightning bolt sound). Where you loose sound information if you use the default.

Note that motherboards that use whats known as AC97 will always play all sound at 48khz, whatever happens. Which is of course not a multiple.

I think its mostly a matter of perception, go with the one you personally think sounds best. Familiarity with the sounds wins every time (I think I'm half-dead anyway...).

with ezquake sometimes the sound distorting, noisy for a while. after some minutes it is good again or if I change in the options the sound freq it also good again immediately. but just for a while. soon it is distorted again
what is the reason of that and how could I solve it?

Check s_mixahead and s_loadas8bit. Try higher values for s_mixahead (a value of .1 should sound fine on almost any sound card) an try 0 for loadas8bit

I checked them.
loadas8bit was on 0 and s_mixahead on 0.1
I tried s_mixahead on 0.5 but the only result was that the sounds delayed. so I reset it back.