Audio Problems with HL2

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Another sad man added.

Having same problem, the game is unplayable and i refuse to play until this is resolved as it has really spoiled the experience. I have read so many posts on various forums and tried everything suggested... no change. I have a friend also having the problem.

What i dont understand is the people that dont get this issue.. what is the difference in their machines or config... just doesnt make sense.

amd 64 3.00+
120gb western digital SATA
Gainward golden sample 6800gt (not overclocked)
ac97 Onboard sound
512mb DDR 400
Win XP service pack 1
All latest drivers.
 
Same problem with video and sound stuttering when scripted events happen / I move into new area / open a door / shatter some glass / a new sound is played / gun is fired etc. I found that lowering the video settings improved things slightly. Also tried reducing DirectX hardware acceleration for graphics and sound to minimum settings - made no noticeable difference. This problem is still significant enough to put me off playing any further until a fix is released. I hope this info helps fellows gamers as well as Valve.

System specs:
Windows XP Service Pack 2
AMD Sempron 2600
1Gb PC2700 RAM
MSI KT4AV mobo (inc latest chipset drivers)
On-board Realtek ALC650 AC'97 sound (inc latest drivers)
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro - Catalyst drivers 4.11
 
Okay I just had a go at HL source and lo and behold the same issue arises. I think that this may hint at the problem being related to Steam since the original HL and its sequel are running on totally different game engines. Oh and the various tweaks I've read on this forum have improved things ever so slightly but the problem remains...
C'mon Valve get your act together... We want a PATCH!!!
 
Got the same problem, downloaded & installed Catalyst 4.12 beta, and it reduced the problem, but not 100%... it's acceptable now... expecting patch soon now...
 
well by the looks of it STEAM is to blame, something with those GCF archives is causing the issue Since Bloodlines uses the Source engine and does not suffer from this crap.

WAY TO GO JOHN ASHCROFT!!
 
If you want to cut down on the games start up load time edit your valve.rc and delete the last line. Takes away the start up animation. Loads so much faster. Handy for all on and off testing we have been doing.
 
I have been playing Bloodlines for about 4 hours and not a problem. Smooth as silk no stuttering at all.
 
i have just read threw this entire thread, and have tried everything that has been suggested, but to no avial.


p4.2.4
512 ram
ati 9600 all in wonder pro


this is rediculous
 
Try reducing video settings - it'll help a bit. Even though it's not an ideal solution, it'll help until a patch comes out.

I found that even though HL2 recommends I use High on everything, if I change to Medium (or Low if there's no Medium for that option), I get much less stutter. I can even set AA to 4x (recommended was Off) and AF to 4x (recommended was tri-linear). The stutter is much better and still get a really good framerate. If I go back to High on everything and reduce AA to Off and AF to bi-linear, the stutter is awful again.

I have noticed that you ALWAYS get some stutter at the auto-save points. There doesn't seem to be any getting away from that.

My spec:
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (128Mb)
1Gb PC2700 RAM
AMD Sempron 2600
On-board Realtek AC'97 sound
Latest drivers for everything
 
Yet another person with the problem!

Athlon 2800
512MB Corsair RAM
Leadtek 6800
Abit NF7S v2 Motherboard
Onboard Soundstorm audio

I decided to spend the time I should have been playing HL2, and made this stupid picture to show how I felt:

HL2_bluescreen.jpg


I've tried all the suggested fixes to no avail, I hope a patch or fix is released soon as I refuse to play it in its current state. :flame:
 
Pippinator said:
with all respect Sticktron, you dont know what you're talking about. You are suggesting the stuttering goes away further into the game, which isn't true.

You are also suggesting cl_smooth 0 will work, well it doesn't.

You are also suggesting that every single one of the thousands of people haven't thinked to defreg their machine... well, you're wrong.

You post doesn't help. Please don't bother posting information suggesting how you think it may be fixed without reading the whole of this thread.

You just look like a moron. Oh and one last thing, some people have had the problem go away with turning the graphics setting down, so who the hell are you to tell people not to do it?

This was your first post, and i hope your last.
Click to expand...

A bit jumpy are we? If you re-read my post, I said I HAD the skipping in the beginning, but DO NOT anymore. I didn't say it would go away for you automagically later in the game. Don't get all pissy because you can't play the game right.

I'm going back to playing now, and as I listen to the silky smooth audio, I will laugh to myself at the thought of you sitting at your desk crying because your game is st-st-stuttering. :rolling:
 
I deleted the local game content and am now downloading it again. I will let you know in the morning if this fixes the stuttering problem.
 
640MB RAM
Intel Pentium 4 1.3ghz
GeForce FX 5600 with latest drivers
Soundblaster Live 5.1 LS
Windows XP SP2

I have 640MB of RAM. The XP task manager shows Half-Life 2 using...128MB. In Ravenholm. What is going on? Is this normal?

I've decided to not play the game until there is an apparent fix; not so much because of frustration, but because it has lessened my game experience. "A-a-i-i-m f-o-o-r-r t-h-he-e h-e-e-a-d-d!" I can't get immersed very well in the game, and the stuttering has gotten worse as I've progressed. I've gotten as far as Ravenholm, and when a fix is out I will replay the game from the beginning and attempt to pretend none of it happened. Every time the audio stutters and the background sounds get scratchy, I'm reminded again that it's just a game, and I just can't get into it. That didn't happen when I played Half-Life 1 back in 1999. It didn't even happen when I played Doom 3, a game I can't stand now.

Valve isn't talking, so nobody knows how hard they're working on fixing it, if they're fixing it at all, or if they even know what the cause is. If we just knew that they're aware of it, it would make the wait easier. Why won't they say something? Other game companies, even some owned by the big corporations like EA, are more forthcoming when unforeseen issues arise in their games. It's confusing to read all about how Gabe and the rest of Valve care so much about their fans in the online articles, and then have silence and forum downtime when the fans have real problems affecting the game.

I paid $80 of my hard-earned cash for the collector's edition. It's a rotten feeling when you're introduced to something cool like a new enemy climbing up at you, only to have all visuals and sound begin stuttering to a slowdown, completely ruining the sequence. You don't get another first time to be surprised. I meet all the minimum system requirements for this game, so what's up?

How many people here have already stated how the beginning intro stuttered all the way through? I mean, that's how most of us have been introduced to this game, through stuttering audio and framerate. It's horrible. That should have been the kick-ass intro to the game! The Bink video version months ago had none of this, so you can't help feeling misled a little. Didn't ANY of their test systems exhibit this behavior? It's way beyond a short pause now and then as something loads. It's continuous, often during character speech and scripted sequences.

How many people on these forums AREN'T experiencing stuttering of any kind? Why did none of the reviewers mention it?
 
Page three was quite a while ago, my friend. :)

Nobody has said that they are aware of the problem and are working on it. A few employees have offered ineffective solutions on a few messageboards, and then all was silent. It's just frustrating to sit here wondering what the status is on this. Even the 3D Realms guys are more open about answering questions.
 
as an update, I punched in cl_smooth 0 and the game runs considerably better since I have. It seems ot actaulyl run a little better each time I run it, but still stutters during any really intense scenes, and stutters occasionally every once in awhile.

just as a heads up to anyone tinkering with this.
 
hmmm, 6 new pages while i was sleeping and nothing new...

welcome to day 3 of our banishment from hl2!
 
Hey guys, what's up. I read through this whole damn thread! But fortunately for me I fixed the problem on my machine. I changed three things at once so I'm not sure what it was.

1. I did the snd_ahead (or whatever the variable is) to ".7" mod to the config.cfg file.

2. I also changed the properties of the shortcut ala this gamefaqs thread:

http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=36599&topic=17550494

3. I installed the new 6.14 beta nforce2 audio drivers from here:

http://drivers.softpedia.com/public/drivers/1-1066.shtml

I'm guessing it was the first or second change that fixed the problem since plenty of people don't use nforce boards and are getting the bug.

Anyway, it's 95% better. The only stuttering I get is from the autosaves now. Played for like 2 hours straight!

My specs:
ASUS A7N8X2.0 (Realtek audio)
1 GIG PC2700 RAM
XP 2500+ @ 2700+ speeds
Sapphire X800 XT
er... what else to list... is that it? a floppy drive?
 
The.Spiral said:
Got the same problem, downloaded & installed Catalyst 4.12 beta, and it reduced the problem, but not 100%... it's acceptable now... expecting patch soon now...
Click to expand...
In my case, installing the Catalyst 4.12 beta drivers made things considerably worse. Back to 4.11 for me.
 
p.s this is the fix from gamefaqs for those too lazy to click:

From: PercySJ | Posted: 11/17/2004 7:07:32 AM | Message Detail
This has helped A LOT with the stuttering/loading
problem! Many of you may remember this command
from Doom3, which it helped out tremendously!

1) Right-click on desktop shortcut icon and choose "Properties".

2) Find the "Target Line" that has the location of the original .exe file.

3) Add this command to the beginning of the Target Line:
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\cmd.exe /c start /high "" "C
(note: the last "C" is the location of the drive. If your game is installed on a different drive, replace the "C" with that drive letter. Copy over the "C" that's already at the beginning of the Target Line)

4) Click "Apply" and then "OK".

5) Double-click icon and start game as usual.

This is not guaranteed to work for everyone. I did notice a significant improvement, but it didn't eliminate the problem entirely. To FULLY get rid of it, it's going to need a patch! Hopefully, Valve will deliver SOON!!
Click to expand...

Sorry if this fix has been posted in this thread. I've read so many things trying to fix this problem that they've all mushed together. Good luck, everyone. The frustration melts away (mostly) once it's solved.
 
I get the stuttering too, but mostly it only happens when a big event is about to happen. I reckon it only happens during autosaves. Still annoying though, and none of the fixes mentioned in this thread have helped.

So, in my frustration, I decided to take it out on this poor henchman who was just stood there, minding his own business, enjoying the view. Ah well.

http://home.swiftdsl.com.au/~simonk/hl2.avi
 
danceej said:
Dont bother with the above fix it dont work
Click to expand...
Agreed. This 'tweak' is up there with those free energy and perpetual motion machines.
 
thats pretty good aim (i wish i could play more that once per install)
 
"I reckon it only happens during autosaves."

It's not autosaves. This has been discussed before. It happens during the intro to the game, whenever something new appears (i.e., a new enemy you haven't seen befre), character speech (for me, whenever Gregory opens his mouth) or scripted events (when I was playing fetch with Dog, everything paused so it gave away that something was coming up), and even in Half-Life: Source when you enter new areas, and I'm not talking about the "Loading" screen but simply passing through doorways to other areas at certain points. S-s-t-t-u-u-t-t-e-e-r-r.

It's not just an audio problem, it's something to do with memory and caching, asset loading, or something else related to that. Sometimes the game continues but the audio is scratchy and stuttery. Other times, everything actually briefly pauses and the audio just loops until it's finished.

Anyone remember the E3 2003 video demonstration? Remember hearing that part where the audio stuttered during a level load in the presentation Gabe was giving? Yeah, that's what we're getting, but during the game!

I've decided to just replay Half-Life: Source until the issue is sorted out. I've played Half-Life 1 enough times before to tolerate the stutter. Once this is solved, I'll continue in HL2 again.
 
I was wondering if we all have something in common, not talking about STEAM, theres alot of Nforce 2 boards here.

Could it be the Nforce HDD controllers that are installed when you install the drivers, its optional but if eveyone here said yes and we have the stuttering problem maybe it those and we need to go back to the standard windows IDE controllers.

I know there are audigy problems to but they may still be on nforce boards, can someone confirm the stuttering pursists with normal windows IDE controllers installed and not the Nforce ones thanks.

Another shot in the dark but you never know.
 
no - lots of ppl with creative audigy soundcards....its a source problem....

d
 
I have nforce2 mobo drivers installed..the IDE drivers and such..no major stuttering exept when autosaving..

don't know if this helps or even if it counts..good luck..
 
Yes i know that Audigy cards are effected to, but they could still be on a Nforce motherboard or another Nforce Platform with the Nforce custom IDE drivers installed that come from Nvidia.

If other motherboards are effected that dont have the custom Nvidia IDE driver set then i can eliminate this to, and save the hassle of trying to reinstall the default windows IDE driver.
 
danceej, honestly, you could try it but I don't think this is a driver issue. This is an issue with the game, something to do with resource loading of some sort. It must be.
 
The problem is not hardware related. It is most likely the fault of the GCF files. Look at the HL2 dirs, none of them have any sounds, just references to the cache. It seems like the solution is to remove the sounds from the cach to a folder on the HD in uncompressed format. I dont know where on our HD's HL2 is putting the sounds as it pulls them out, or if it is even doing that or just putting these sounds in RAM. anyone care to take a look?
 
Doom 3 loads files from compressed archives as well and there isn't this widespread problem we're seeing. I think it has more to do with the way the game is managing its resources after they're loaded. I'm not even getting hard drive reading, just pausing, scratchiness, and stuttering, so it seems to be allocating/deallocating something in memory, and we're stuck waiting for it to catch up while it's doing whatever it's doing, stuttering our audio and framerates. I could be wrong, obviously.

The audio problems remind me of what it sounds like when you're using audio recording software, and you have your sound card buffers set too low. The audio stream is all broken up and scratchy because the buffers run out and the CPU can't keep up. The effect sounds similar to what I'm hearing on my machine but to an even greater degree, where everything freezes and the audio buffer either just loops or is scratchy and broken apart.
 
face it, Steam is a pile of s**t..

i could almost garauntee steam being a Big cause of this problem..
 
So people are reporting this problem in that Vampire game? - have the developers of that released any info about it. Maybe they might let something slip on the progress of a fix from Valve, since Valve isn't saying much - which hopefully means they are working on a fix.
 
Vampire Bloodlines runs fine, no stuttering.
You do get this in the readme but the Cards are old hat.

IMPORTANT NOTE: You may encounter distorted sound and/or choppy gameplay if your sound card is not 100% DirectX® 9.0c compatible. The following sound cards may not fully support DirectX 9.0c:
Yamaha® OPL3 Series
AD (Analog Devices)
Sound 2
Ensoniq™ (Gateway™ 2000)
IBM™'s MWAVE
Compaq®'s ESS
You may want to contact your sound card manufacturer to see if your card is 100% DirectX 9.0c compatible. Most sound card problems are remedied by installing the latest version of DirectX, or obtaining newer sound card drivers (usually maintained for free download on the hardware manufacturers’ web site). This is highly recommended and easy to do. You can contact your sound card manufacturer for details.
Click to expand...
 
When you change something big like the ide drivers, or bios settings after a reboot steam validates the hl2 files :( Doesn't help bugchecking that long time it validates.
 
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