Audio Problems with HL2

[xander]

I'm yet another player with the same audio problems mentioned in this thread.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned that also plagues me. My in-game sound seems to be reversed. When someone is talking to me I can hardly hear them until I turn my back to them. Their voices then come through loud and clear. If I rotate and face them, their voices go faint again. Anyone else experiencing this one?

 

[The DJ]

At least you guys can play the game.


I have the audio problem too, but it then proceeds to give me a black screen followed by a straight faint beep (it doesn't come from my speakers and it doesn't sound like a BIOS beep code..hmm). I haven't been able to play for 10 minutes and sometimes I can't even get through the intro. I'm forced to manually rest my pc.

2800+ Athlon XP
512 PC2700
A7v8x-x
9800 Pro
Audigy 2 ZS
XP Pro SP2

 

[JoeBeasley]

These are some pretty high end machines having issues. I am a bit dissapointed in all of this.

I quit shortly after seeing barney and decided to wait for a fix before continuing. I just want to have the sound problem resolved so i can fully enjoy the game.

Funny thing is, when gman is talking at the beginning, i thought maybe the stutters were normal..lol...

Valve, please fix quickly

 

[DC9884]

The problem isnt sound cards. HL2 uses Valves own sound engine, which uses up a lot of CPU time and RAM i assume. On that note its most likely a bug in Valves engine which they will fix sometime.

Boo....got no money, cant buy HL2.....bills are kinda more important.

 

[Slik]

I thought that the game was soposed to be bug free....

 

[JoeBeasley]

Ive never seen a bug free game at release....then again, i've never seen a game with this kind of sound issue either....at this point, im stumped...lol

 

[El Biffo]

My sound also seems to stutter in new areas which in turn makes the game lag. I have a P4 3.2, 1gb RAM and an X800 Pro. I've also updated all my drivers.

 

[donald_wong_ooha]

Looks like the audio problems may be a result of auto-saves. Here's a snippet of my console after about 10 minutes of playtime. Each time the game froze and stuttered corresponded to an autosave.

Saving game to SAVE\autosave.sav...
Missing caption for 'player.weaponselectionmoveslot'
Missing caption for 'player.weaponselected'
Missing caption for 'player.weaponselectionclose'
Missing Close Caption Token wood.scrapesmooth
Missing Close Caption Token flesh.scrapesmooth
Missing Close Caption Token flesh.scraperough
Saving game to SAVE\autosave.sav...
Missing caption for 'flesh.bulletimpact'
Missing caption for 'concrete.bulletimpact'
Missing caption for 'flesh.scraperough'
Missing caption for 'flesh.scrapesmooth'
Missing caption for 'solidmetal.bulletimpact'
Missing caption for 'dirt.bulletimpact'
Missing Close Caption Token wood_crate.scraperough
Missing Close Caption Token carpet.scrape
Saving game to SAVE\autosave.sav...
Missing Close Caption Token ambient.electrical_zap_1
Missing Close Caption Token cardboard.scraperough
Missing Close Caption Token cardboard.scrapesmooth
Missing Close Caption Token solidmetal.scraperough
Missing Close Caption Token metal_box.scraperough
Missing Close Caption Token weapon_flaregun.burn
Missing caption for 'metal_barrel.bulletimpact'
Missing caption for 'drywall.impacthard'
Missing Close Caption Token weapon.scraperough
Missing caption for 'general.burningflesh'
Missing Close Caption Token solidmetal.scrapesmooth
Missing Close Caption Token apc_engine_start
Missing Close Caption Token apc_engine_idle
Missing Close Caption Token apc_firstgear
Missing Close Caption Token apc_throttleoff_fastspeed
Missing Close Caption Token apc_firstgear_resume
Missing caption for 'general.stopburning'
Saving game to SAVE\autosave.sav...

 

[thinkingfeller]

stuttering here as well.

system:
ASUS A7N8X-Deluxe Rev 2 (nforce 2 onboard sound)
Gainward Geforce 6800 GT
AMD XP 3200+
1 GB RAM

Fresh install of XP Pro last week, all the latest drivers. hmmmm...scratches me head. hope they fix it soon.

 

[ukd_windwalker]

Surely valve can knock up a quick patch so we can disable the auto save feature (may even be a way now), I don't wanna play it till it fixed. Its that good I want it to be perfect.

BTW I did read something on creative's site with regards to popping/stuttering sound, they suggested trying different values in the PCI latency setting in your bios. Not sure what this does but I can't try it because I am at work.

BTW first post, HI

 

[Phalanx114]

I have the exact same problem, and I thought it was my RAM.

I do NOT have an Audigy, but rather a Creative soundcard, and it stutters when I turn a corner, when someone starts talking, etc.

(Especially in the later levels!)

 

[The DJ]

Looks like the audio problems may be a result of auto-saves. Here's a snippet of my console after about 10 minutes of playtime. Each time the game froze and stuttered corresponded to an autosave.

Seeing as how it starts with the intro and I haven't even been able to trigger an autosave, that's not it with me. Unlike most people, it crashes my game (see previous post).

 

[Rirath]

Same here

I registered just to say I too am having the same problem... and thank goodness it's not just me. Half Life 2 is running better than I had hoped it would on my system, but the sound skips are truly annoying. They really kill some of the drama from the "cutscenes" when everyone speaks like a broken record. I'll probably keep playing anyway, but eesh... not the flawless first playthrough I was hoping for.

Hopefully Valve will actually patch this, and not just give the standard issue <try doing this or this to your hardware, or set that.> Which should be read as: "Sucks to be you." With this many responces already, it almost has to be an in-game problem.

AMD 2000+
512MB Ram
Nvidia Geforce 3
Soundblaster Audigy

Everything runs great, but the sound.

 

[akula]

Just wanted to add:

Athlon 64 3800+
Audigy 2 ZS
1024MB Corsair Ram
Radeon x800XT PE

I experience the "sound studder" problem, it is VERY annoying.

I have no extra processes running in the background, all latest drivers. I tried rolling back to the Audigy2 ZS drivers off the CD rom, but no dice.

Im suprised more people didn't complain about this in CS: Source.. I experience the same problems there

 

[JoeBeasley]

I have almost the same setup as akula. Ive tried 3 different sound cards now.

Nothing is working.

 

[Gossoon]

Just wanted to add my voice. I have the same problem. Have been wondering if it was a problem with lack of RAM, but I see a lot of you have at least a gig. So it's obviously a bug. How could reviewers not experience this if a vast number of us are? Maybe that's what that 2 gigs of RAM on Valve's test computers were all about. Well, they're nuts if they think I'm going to shell out for that much RAM. Hope this is fixed because it is really detracting from an otherwise beautiful game.

 

[Rirath]

I can be pretty much 100% sure (as much as possible, anyway) that it's not any background processes like virus scanners or a firewall that's the cause. Before playing, I restarted my comp with a "clean boot" to get the max performance. (A good + 250 in 3DMark2001 SE)

To anyone that wants to try, it won't fix your sound bug, but it'll give you a pretty clean system to eek out a couple more FPS perhaps and fix any other bugs due to background problems. In WinXP with the proper admin rights:

Start > Run > msconfig
Choose "selective startup"
UNCHECK Process System.ini, Win.ini, and Load Startup Items
Switch to services tab
Check "Hide all Microsoft services"
Disable all.

Reboot, and you'll have one dang clean system to run in.

 

[JoeBeasley]

Yeah i have a gig also, and i just refuse to believe i need 2 gig to play this game. It has got to be something that can be fixed over at valve. I hope they can sober up from the release party and get it working before the weekend...lol

 

[Ruben]

HEADCRAB INVASION!

BTW people theres a thread over at steampowered.com aswell:

steampowered forums

I have turned down everything on my computer, i run the game now on 640 resolution. Low EVERYTHING! And the damn game still studders. I see some people with uber computer complaining about the same thing. It seems that the game is demanding a HEAVY disk access to load textures and sound at the same time.

Its like the computer is going "Oo no i forgot to load that sound, stop the game and load sound and syncronize it with that moving texture". Also it might be demanding a whole lot of bandwith on the PCI`s. I dont know how to remedy the situation seeing as my system is quite up to date and as i mentioned there seems to be a lot of high end system that suffers from this aswell.

 

[CavernTan]

Adding my name to the list

Howdy.

So, I'm experiencing the same problems as all of you. I have Turtle Beach Santa Cruz soundcard and I get the audio stuttering, but no static. I think I'll stop playing the game until a patch is released, like many of you have decided to do. BTW, my computer renders the game beautifully on high settings, but it just chokes on the sound. I've even tried lowering the visual settings to "recommended" but the problem remains.

I'll try defragging to see if that helps.

Specs:
AMD AthlonXP 2500+ CPU
512 MB DDR PC2700 Crucial RAM
ATI Radeon 9600 XT, 128 MB video card
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card

 

[ukd_windwalker]

Has anybody tried adjusting the PCI latency settings in the MB bios to see if it helps?

 

[JoeBeasley]

all i can think to do is keep this thread going and hope that someone sees it and gets a fix implemented.

The suggestions of turning sound acceleration down, etc, are not working. And frankly, even if they were, who wants to turn down things to play the game. The whole point of PC gaming is to enjoy a game in ALL its glory. I bought these Z680 Speakers for a reason

Man i hope this gets fixed soon.

 

[diluted]

I can't believe Valve released HL2 with this massive bug in it. Maybe they thought we wouldn't notice.

 

[Kabal]

The weird part is I have had this bug in CSS for a few weeks so they surely had time to fix it. In CSS its not so bad though as after a minute on the same level you've loaded all the sounds and its fine until the next level. Also this bug appeared after CSS came out for real, I didn't experience it in the beta.

 

[donald_wong_ooha]

Here's another theory. The stuttering may be caused by the screenshot generation during the savegame process (to be used as the thumbnail in the loadgame screen). If I hit F5 to take a screenshot, sometimes it finishes in a split second, but other times it could take several seconds. During these several seconds, the game behaves exactly as it does during these stuttering episodes -- the screen freezes and the audio loops.

 

[Neutrino]

Yup, same problem here. It's really pissing me off too as I really can't play the game until this is fixed. I've already died about 20 times because it locked up during a fire fight.

 

[ÜberJumper]

I don't think this is specifically an audio problem, likely related to the game engine extracting data from the files, perhaps trying to check steam first for them? I'm not able to play in offline mode, so I can't verify that.

However, I have tried the following.

Lowering all graphical options to their lowest
Lowering all audio options to their lowest.
Turning off Hardware Acceleration in the DXDIAG control panel.
Turning sound completely off using the -nosound 1 command line option.
Using a heapsize of 256MB

Attached is my DXDIAG.txt if anyone wants to compare.

 

[Kabal]

I dont think screenshots or autosave have anything to do with it, because if they did, why would CSS do the same thing?

 

[neomoz]

One thing i have noticed is that when running half life 2 my memory usage is very low. ie I have 1 gig of memory and my system is only using around 400mb in game. It appears that the HL2 doesn't see the extra ram and pre cache content like it should. I have 600m of free ram, the game should be loading the sounds and other textures into memory, instead is just uses a small amount of the heap and everytime it needs new sounds it loads em straight from disc. I'm currently doing a defrag but it does smooth out the loads, I'm gonna stop playing because it's friggen annoying.

 

[Slik]

wow so many people have the same problem, I also stopped playing the game... its too annoying. I cant tell what the people are saying sometimes. its so sad that after waiting for so long this happens..

 

[Ruben]

I don't think this is specifically an audio problem, likely related to the game engine extracting data from the files, perhaps trying to check steam first for them? I'm not able to play in offline mode, so I can't verify that.

However, I have tried the following.

Lowering all graphical options to their lowest
Lowering all audio options to their lowest.
Turning off Hardware Acceleration in the DXDIAG control panel.
Turning sound completely off using the -nosound 1 command line option.
Using a heapsize of 256MB

Attached is my DXDIAG.txt if anyone wants to compare.

I have done all off this... it did nothing ... this is really starting to get to me. The only thing that helped infact, and made the game as smooth as i hoped it would be, was to use a diagnostic boot.

start>run>msconfig>general tab>startup selection>diagnostic startup

This solved the stuttering problem for me. Alas... no sound. The game did not need to load in the sound files and hence boosted performance. NO STUDDERING! fantastic!

BUT! The game is unplayable... if i would have been completely deaf this would be the preferable option to play the game.

This sux!

Edit: Valve.... can i get a refund? I am not very satisfied with this product.

 

[danceej]

I have tried loads of work arounds for hrs, playing about 5 mins of the first scene over and over, but i just cant fix it or solve the problem ;( .

This has ruined the experience for me and after waiting so long for it. I was even counting the days to release now i have it its just unplayable.
I could soldier on and put up with the sound stuttering while it loads in the next audio clip or ambient sound effect but i dont wanna ruin the experience its not a wow factor its an ehh! factor. I waited years for it so i will wait for however long it takes for Valve to fix it. But im not playing it in the state it is at the moment.

"Puts his HL2 to bed for now"

Im not bitter at all, just unhappy a bug of this SIZE slipped the quality assurance tests.

 

[nulliar]

Another Headcrab signing up (and hopefully staying) to report that I have this problem and I'm [kind of] glad I'm not alone on this. I wish I could see the steam thread, but the "server is too busy"

Shouldn't Valve have predicted that their forums would get flooded? I really hope this gets fixed quickly, particularly since it seems you guys even have Valve staff viewing these forums

Audio Card: Creative Audigy LS
Video Card: Radeon 9600 PRO
CPU Speed: 2.68 GHZ
RAM: 1GB and some change

 

[ÜberJumper]

Ruben:

I tried that as well, locked up right away with only the PNP service and the DHCP Client service started.

Not having any luck with this at all... definately not a sound issue IMO.

 

[BlackMesaDude]

Yes im having also theese kind of strange sound problems, i have no idea why.

But i tryied turing off full accelration on dxdiag to normal and it helped a bit, but i dont think i should be doing this.

It must be a bug in the game.. i mean constant lag jerking when someone or something happens with a few seconds delay ?

I hope this can be solved.

And im using

Abit nf7 2.0 nforce2 mobo with latest drivers
xp3200+
512mb pc3200
nvidia 6800
xp pro.

 

[wasted]

btw, is anyone here with this problem and does NOT have the sp2 installed?

 

[Slider]

I really hope this can be fixed soon, its very annoying. No way can it be a RAM problem, Im running my system with 1.5Gigs of ram, and this would be the only game in histroy to require more than that.

All the sound drivers are upto date, I'm running the latest Video drivers with my 6800 so its not that. Just seems someone dropped the ball on this one and a patch is definatly needed.

 

[beppino]

same same

Got the problem as well with SP1.

Windows XP SP1
P4 2,4 Ghz
512 MB RAM
Radeon 9800se
EMU 1212m

I tried disabling my sound card in Windows to check if that would help. Well, it´s hard to tell if the sound still stutters , but since my graphics also hung for a mere second everytime the sound stutters occured and that didn´t go away I suppose the problem is still there, even without sound.

Tried all the tweaks mentioned before, nothing.

I also have the problem in CS:S, especially when someone throws a nade for the first time.

AND, at the teleporting scene at the beginning of the game. When it´s Gordons turn to get teleported I´ve got sound and graphics problems everytime the location changes. What really annoys me though that at the end of that scene the screen freezes (with view on some sort of beach?) and the game crashes to the desktop.

 

[ÜberJumper]

beppino:

The teleportation scene is the bad one for me as well, and I've tried it without sound also. I don't believe that this is strictly a "sound" issue, but that the sound problems we're experiencing is a symptom of the problem. Simply the sound looping when the game stops working.

I've also noticed graphical glitches, like entire models disapearing (the teleportation device) etc etc.

 

[El Biffo]

From what I can gather it is the process of loading a new area, or enetering unexplored locations, which makes the game jerk around. Once the files are cached Half Life 2 runs beautifully. I dont think that sound has anything to do with this issue. I've tried the catalyst 4.10's and the 4.12 beta's on my X800 Pro but the problem remains. Might give the 4.11's a go. If they work I'll keep y'all posted.