Audio Problems with HL2

Status
Not open for further replies.
Just want to post that i have the same problem, because as many people as possible has to show valve that this problem has to be fixed as soon as possible. Some of the thinks that has been posted here made this stucking think a little bit better, but there is not really a solution for it. Please valve just give a statement or something like that.

Athlon XP3000+
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
9800 Pro
1gig ram
 
Another one registering to add to the list, just to emphasize that it's not just a Soundblaster issue.. My Audiophile 2496 is doing the exact same thing. Can't face playing the game in the state it's in at the moment - after waiting such a long time for the release, upgrading my system (although not near some of the monster machines in this thread :eek: ) and having an install take over two hours this is really a kick in the teeth.

But I do have faith that it wll be worth it in the end.

Intel 2.4Ghz
512MB PC3200
Asus P4P8X
Audiophile 2496
Radeon Pro (XT speeds)
 
cl_forcepreload "1"
sv_forcepreload "1"
cl_smooth "0


+


snd_mixahead "0.4

made it a lot more playable.... the stuttering is still there but not so often as before...
 
I’m sorry to say I’m in the same boat.....

Both my live Platinum and SoundStorm both do it....

I have managed to get rid of most of my problems though..

First off select the graphics options valve suggest (yes I know, goes against my rules too!).
Second do make sure you are fully defragged (just go and check now.. it won't hurt).
Third do a clean as you can boot (mentioned somewhere else in this thread, using msconfig) so there is as little as possible running in the background.

Next up it's a fiddle with "snd_mixahead" for me.

I’m at the point now where it is very playable but does have a LITTLE stutter here and there (but nowhere near as bad as it was).

I too have had a problem with the miles system in the past! ;(

Oh and to the people saying "I’m taking it back, this is rubbish" I know it's upsetting not being able to play it... but when you do WOW!!!!!!

Valve, this is one great game!!!!! It just tramples on DOOMIII, way WAY better... :p
 
Yeah people, dont take the game back...Just wait. I am trying to keep faith that valve can fix this problem in a flash.

Hoping!
 
problem same here!!

specs:
AMD Athlon XP 2800+
512 Mb ram DDR 400mhz
Ati Radeon 9800 Pro
Abit NF-7 S mobo

i managed to come to the airboat part, on medium settings, but i belive it should work just fine on high if it wasnt for this crappy bug!
Valve really screwed up whit this, otherwise the game is great...i had quite some WOW or WTF moments, but i belive the best is still to come! hope they patch it soon! not playing until then :frown:
 
Well im about to try the fixes posted.

Just wondering if Valve could comment?

anyone from valve fancy telling us whats going on? Chrz guys!
 
Hello @ll!

I have the very same problem. =(

Why had this game a gold status with such a horrible failure???
I can't believe this all. First about 2 hours of installation, then one hour for the registration because the steam can't connect and now I can't play it really.

"Valve... please give us a patch!!! I have to play it all the day!!!"


Greetings from germany, DarkJedi
 
Hello everyone..............what a shame.

I too am getting this problem all the way over here in sunny Northern Ireland. Installed from DVD.

I so hope they fix this soon, its not nice watching the backlash happen against valve with SUCH an important game. This is the sort of moment where they can go from heros to zeros so quickly.

I for one hope they can be heros and get this fixed.

Andy

:thumbs:

specs:

Athlon 2500 Barton @ 3200
MSI K7N2Delta L
Radeon 9800 Pro 128Meg w/Arctic Cooler
1.5 Gig pc2700 ddr
2 * 160gig IBM
1 * 80gig IBM
1 * 60gig IBM
 
Did anyone notice their Steam updated today? I didn't get a chance to test the sound. Anyone know what the upgrade was for?
 
Things Not Causing The Bug

Rather than people keep posting ideas that have already been proven to not be the cause, let's summarize what is not causing this problem:

1. ANY specific types of hardward or drivers

2. Anything related to savegames.

3. Anything related to graphical settings.

4. Anything to the AMOUNT of ram.

5. Anything related to DX hardware acceleration.
 
A big hi from sunny Scotland. I bought the dvd yesterday and have gave up playing it. Skips all the time. Just got to the train in tunnel bit and its murder.

Have a asus motherboard with onboard nvidia soundstorm.
athlon 2200
radion 9700
and 1 gig of ram.
 
Im off to work. Hopefully when i get home their will be an answer from one of the "coders" at valve.

Keyword, hopefully.
 
Hey, I'm for Scotland too. It's certainly not sunny here... or was that sarcasm? :)

Anyway... I have this stuttering problem as well, so I'm just adding my voice to the spree in the hope that it somehow triggers the guys are Valve to work twice as hard to fix this before I explode.

Here's me specs:
Aopen AK77
Athlon XP 1800
512 MB RAM (266mhz)
Radeon 9600 pro 128mb
SB Live!
XP Pro (SP2)

I hope a fix comes soon as I'm putting off playing further than the first couple of chapters. What I've seen so far as has been so damn unbelievable that I don't want to dilute the experience any more then nessisary.
 
I too have this problem. I am running the game on an i9100 laptop using onboard sound. Game runs amazingly well except for this stutter. I need to track down updated audio drivers for that onboard sound. :imu: :x
 
I've been having the same problem (stuttering and the game just quitting on auto save) but I also get a nicely annoying window that I finally managed to screen capture (I have yet to read the entire thread so I don't know if there is a fix).

Here is the warning I get everytime the game autosaves:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v93/handfed_babies/ErrorfromHL2.jpg


I hope Valve comes up with a fix soon.

ETA: The hard drive was defraged Sunday afternoon and error checked(in anticipation of the release), I have XP sp 2 updated...as for specs since I'm not home I can't post them but its a high end machine.
Norton Anti-virus(up to date) was shut off during game play, and I have a zone alarm firewall in addition to the windows firewall (which has given a few warnings while I was on steam last night) Zone alarm had been set to accept anything short of the computer acting like it was a server.

Amy
 
Im curious as to why some of the more hardcore fans that have been registered here for ages dont seem to have any problems.. mostly headcrabs have them. Strange.

On a side note... come to think of it... this was not a problem in the ... *cough*anon*cough*release.
 
Ruben said:
Im curious as to why some of the more hardcore fans that have been registered here for ages dont seem to have any problems.. mostly headcrabs have them. Strange.
Click to expand...
I've lurked and waited and waited for this release- even through the push back dates. I have the entire platnium pack of the original half life, and enjoy playing it. I haven't registered or posted as I am not a very outgoing or friendly person. ;)

Amy
 
From sunny ole Southeast england here (Oooooh the sarcasm is killin me)and Same issues as all the above posters.

athlon 2800+
1.5gb ram
7200rpm maxtor always defragged..
Radeon 9800 pro 256mb
Audigy2 using 5.1 for Halflife.

its stutters bad in some areas, Like when its loading in new Sounds to play but generally my FPS is high and game runs good until moving into a new area.

wont be playing Half-life2 anymore till they fix this.
 
TheRook said:
where abouts in sussex are you? im over near brighton! WOO for sussex! TheRook
Click to expand...

I am north of Brighton in East Grinstead
 
Ruben said:
Im curious as to why some of the more hardcore fans that have been registered here for ages dont seem to have any problems.. mostly headcrabs have them. Strange.
Click to expand...

This is why I'd like to see some people that DON'T have the problem post their system stats and other facts in this thread. If we can see what they have going on that we DON'T, then we may be able to reach a solution [if there is one] before Valve can get a patch out.
 
btw.... the sun is shining in germany too. ;)
...all the day
...and there's always a rainbow on the sky.

...oh, and i forgot: all the people are dancing in the streets.


;)))
 
donald_wong_ooha said:
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.
Click to expand...

Not unless its taking 40 screenshots and autosaves a minute.
Please, people stop talking about autosaves, you obviously have a completely different problem than the rest of us. Read what we are saying, its not a stutter after an autosave, its a stutter EVERYTIME THERE IS A NEW SOUND. Which is literally every 3-8 seconds. So stop saying autosaves and whatnot, its getting infuriating. That maybe a seperate issue, but it sounds like a minor one. Our issue makes the game unplayable, yours is a very minor annoyance.
 
Tommieh ask a nice girl to massage ShivaX....


....relaaxxx :D


p.s. and i read the whole damn thread
 
i tired the preload cfg stuff, and well it's definetly getting better. but i think i'll just wait for a real patch to play it at OPTIMAL performance. meanwhile i'm playing chapter 2-3 again. i love blowing up combine with barrels ;)
 
Well, looks like Mountain King possibly has a fix. Ripped from another thread.

Right click Half-Life 2 in "My Games", select "Properties", then look for "Launch Options". Click that then enter the "-heapsize" command. I set this to half my RAM (1/2 768MB so "-heapsize 348000") and performance improvement was dramatic. Virtually eliminated freezing and sound stuttering for me and the game seems to run much more smoothly.

I plan on trying this when I get home. Apparently the heapsize is defaulted to 64Meg.

Hope this helps.
 
Defiler said:
Well, looks like Mountain King possibly has a fix. Ripped from another thread.

Right click Half-Life 2 in "My Games", select "Properties", then look for "Launch Options". Click that then enter the "-heapsize" command. I set this to half my RAM (1/2 768MB so "-heapsize 348000") and performance improvement was dramatic. Virtually eliminated freezing and sound stuttering for me and the game seems to run much more smoothly.

I plan on trying this when I get home. Apparently the heapsize is defaulted to 64Meg.

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

makes no difference
 
Yes, I recognised the heapsize defaulting at 64mb earlier on and tried the heapsize solution you've posted yesterday. It doesn't appear to have any affect.

As for Valves word on the matter, apparently they know its a problem with the engine caching sounds and are looking into it as we type.
 
Tommieh said:
Tommieh ask a nice girl to massage ShivaX....


....relaaxxx :D


p.s. and i read the whole damn thread
Click to expand...

Yeah send her over, I'm about to lose my mind.
Its just infuriating enough without people throwing out pointless or irrelevant information like they're some sort of geniuses. The problem comes completely from the game unextracting files from the .gcfs on the fly (who the hell makes a game that isn't extracted at all?). Once the sounds are cached, they work without a hitch, which is why you can play CS:S after a minute or two - all the sounds in that game have been used by then.
HL2 on the other hand, has literally hundreds (if not thousands) of different sounds that happen at all times. Thus the game stops on each new sound and stutters, which means it stutters all the time.
If you run through a level and get all the dialogue/sounds to trigger and then reload from the beginning of that level, it wont stutter at all - until you get past where you reloaded. So we know what the problem is (though not why it happens neccessarily).
Personally I'm still liking the Steampowered FAQ that tells me to go to my sound options and make sure EAX and A3D are unchecked. Since neither of these is even in Sound Options. Good job Valve, try booting up your own game once in a while.
Or better yet, give me a program that will unextract the sound files from the idiotic .gcf files. Its like playing a game where every file you need is .zipped and you have to unzip as you go.
Who makes a game that consists of 6 gigantic (essentially) zip files? Valve evidently.

/rant of unending anger and frustration
 
Cant we extract all the files and unpak everything like you could in Doom 3????????????
 
Ruben said:
Im curious as to why some of the more hardcore fans that have been registered here for ages dont seem to have any problems.. mostly headcrabs have them. Strange.

On a side note... come to think of it... this was not a problem in the ... *cough*anon*cough*release.
Click to expand...

Lol, just because someone has been registered here for a while or has a post count of 1,000,000 doesn't make em hardcore m8. I'm 40 years old and have worked in the computer/games industry for 20ish years but have only been registered here for a day.

Mebbe some of us don't feel the need to post threads in forums about every bit of inane drivel that pops into our head ;)
 
Someone posted this before but iI'm not going through 12 pages to find who. t elimnated about 90% of the problem for me:

Edit the config.cfg file if the hl2\cfg folder and set the following.

cl_forcepreload "1"
sv_forcepreload "1"
cl_smooth "0"
snd_mixahead "4.5"

Kudos to who posted it!
 
I think the new people signing up is more down to the fact the Steampowered forums are down for most of the time. Speaking of which, I started a thread over there yesterday when they went back up after their 'breather' so the problem is fairly out in the open.

Please, lets not turn this thread into some sort of ego related bitching contest as the true matter in hand will get lost.
 
snd_mixahead 1-4 will generally Fix the problem for about 90% of us, However its still a Work-around and not a fix, enticing newbies to screw with there Cfg files could get them in a spot of bother later on..

im sure Valve are working there collective arses off trying to Fix this thing.
 
Registered for the same reason as everyone else:

Specs:
Asus A7N8X Deluxe Rev2. Uber Bios 1007
Barton XP 2500+ @ 3200+
Hercules AIW 9800SE Softmodded to PRO
Nforce Realtek ALC 650 Sound unit
512mb Samsung 3200+
120gb Western Digital Sata 10,000rpm
120gb Maxtor Sata 7,2000
Win XP pro SP1

Formatted and reinstalled a couple of weeks ago ready, defragmented both drives before installing and after installing. Installed latest drivers for everything.

Same problem, very frequent sound stuttering. I've tried all the quality settings and DX settings and reinstalling drivers etc. None of that works.

"cl_smooth 0" decreases the stuttering but it's not an optimal solution.

Haven't tried 'snd_mixahead "0.4"' Yet, will get back to you afterwards.
 
I'm also experiencing the same thing on both a hercules sound card and the new intel High Def onboard card. On airboat stages it will freeze for 20 seconds and have a repeated sound and it will occur every couple minutes.. suucccks

Heres my system
P4 HT 3.4 Gighz @ 3.55
823 FSB
1 GIG DDR2 533 @ 553
Chaintech 6600 GT PCI-X
Windows XP Pro
120 gig HD Just defrag!
 
exact same problem here, very annoying

specs:
AMD64 3200+
1gb PC3200 ram
Geforce 6800(128mb)
hercules fortissimo III 7.1
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

MFL
Fascinating look at the ongoing psychological evolution of flat hieirarchies.
Replies
2
Views
2K
Tollbooth Willie
Tollbooth Willie
B
From Warren Spector to Arkane Studios: Half-Life 2's cancelled Ravenholm episode
Replies
2
Views
10K
Clan Wolf 2
Clan Wolf 2
B
Marc Laidlaw releases Half-Life 2: Episode Three's plot
Replies
32
Views
39K
BabyHeadCrab
BabyHeadCrab
B
The other cancelled ports of Half-Life
Replies
3
Views
7K
Tollbooth Willie
Tollbooth Willie
B
Gabe Newell's AMA summary (January 17, 2017)
Replies
1
Views
24K
Gerzowktz
Gerzowktz
Back
Top