Audio Problems with HL2

[palefire]

Hi,

I have created a site that contains all of the information on this issue that I have seen to date. The site also contains my correspondance with Valve, some theories about the cause, as well as a demo file and config tweak that can be used to test and easily reproduce the stuttering problem for troubleshooting purposes.

http://www.blep.net/hl2stutter/

I would appreciate it if people could post this on the Steam Users Forums as I am still waiting for my account to become activated.

Thanks.

Moolicious has updated his site.

 

[arkanis]

Theres some 67.02 beta drivers out for the nvidia cards that were used in a benchmark.
I was just wondering has anyone tried these out and had any success?

I have even newer 67.20 drivers and n-n-nothing has really changed. I might investigate rolling back to the oldest Nvidia drivers which support my 6800.

 

[efilflah]

I can't find these in either the Catalyst control panel or the Direct X settings (under Direct3D)...am I missing something?

You shouldn't be using CCC in the first place, it is a useless piece of bloatware.
Download r3dtweak, it is the best radeon tweaker program out there.

 

[quakemazer]

r3dtweak?

Is r3dtweak really better than the badass Rivatuner?

 

[efilflah]

Is r3dtweak really better than the badass Rivatuner?

Download it and see, you will be disappointed since Rivatuner really has limited Ati support.

Riva Tuner has never and will never support the ati driver detection.

 

[arkanis]

Tried the latest Omega drivers for Nvidia (didn't even know there were Omega drivers for Nvidia) and it made no difference. Going to roll back to 61.76 as it was the first set of drivers to support the 6800, and if that doesn't work, I'll try 45.23.

 

[appoooh]

Stuttering? use -preload -mat_preloadshaders

Worked for quite some people. Please give it a try.

Fool. The truth is that the so-called stuttering is due to the current Global Warming problem. It's all to do with salt deposits on the metal contacts of your graphics card.

To fix it you need to take your graphics card and deposit some dilute mineral salts on it. Don't have any dilute mineral salts? Then just stick the card in your mouth and drool on it. But make sure you wipe the contacts to get rid of any germs, and TURN THE SWITCH OFF ON THE MONITOR before you do - we don't want a nasty accident!

Let me know if this helps.

 

[wasted]

please post another picture, or i have to kill myself

 

[Finnegan]

Its so true that this dilema has brought many people together from many countries. Not that this isnt a good forum but i and others may not have joined if it wasn't for the stutter. Ive thoroughly enjoyed all the funny pics. And this forum has done well out of it with so many new recruits.

When the game does get fixed and the sound glitch stops we'll all be suprised and will be acting like its a low fat spread. "I Cant Believe Its Not Stutter" lol.
Peter.

 

[arkanis]

"I need Photoshop... lot's of Photoshop"

 

[josh7485]

Someone posted a few pages back that going back to the old 45.24 Nvidia drivers fixed the problem. While it did not eliminate the problem I found that the problem has been reduced significantly reduced the stutters.

 

[arkanis]

Someone posted a few pages back that going back to the old 45.24 Nvidia drivers fixed the problem. While it did not eliminate the problem I found that the problem has been reduced significantly reduced the stutters.

What sort of video card have you got? I'm just wondering if it is worthwhile for people with reasonably new cards which weren't supported back that far, like 6800's etc.

 

[josh7485]

What sort of video card have you got? I'm just wondering if it is worthwhile for people with reasonably new cards which weren't supported back that far, like 6800's etc.

Ti4600

 

[Avery]

I just tried 45.23, still stutters - unplayable!!

I have until Monday to take this game back, and with things as they are now i will do!! I really don't want to coz it's such a great engine and gameplay.... Valve will loose alot of sales by refunding if they don't say something soon!!

 

[quinnd6]

If valve don't fix this problem completely via a patch or something that works within the next couple of days I think I'll just get a refund.
I mean it was enough of an annoyance having to download files without this rubbish happening.
It's ridiculous that someone whose paid for their copy in the shops should have to download files.You don't see any other companies making you download files.
If you buy a game in the shops you should be able to play it straight away.
And you'd imagine they'd test the game properly without releasing it worldwide and theyve definitely had enough time for testing am I right?
I am extremely annoyed at the way things have been handled by valve I want to see this bug being resolved within the next week.
It should have been tested properly on all systems in the first place.
Valve have no excuses this time.
They should sort this out right now.

 

[the_guru]

A friend of mine played gets a message "rebuilding node map" or something when the sound lags, does anyone of you get that message?

The game runs fine on my computer.

 

[danceej]

 

[Kane827]

Audio problems?
stuttering, lagging, or something else?

Go to the audio options and set the audio quality to medium or low.
I cannot tell a difference between high quality and medium quality, and it fixed the stuttering.

How in the world are VIDEO drivers supposed to help AUDIO problems? jeez.

 

[x2501x]

You seriously think you have singlehandedly solved this problem?

 

[palefire]

Before posting your brilliant ideas, educate yourself on the problem. This is a good place to start:

http://www.blep.net/hl2stutter/

 

[quakemazer]

Miles Sound

http://www.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=176237&perpage=15&pagenumber=111

Amsterdammed over at steampowered has mentioned that Miles sound may be the culprit.

Indeed, after downloading Miles Sound Tools and firing up an .mp3. Then surfing the net with firefox, I get the horrible stutters....

 

[arkanis]

http://www.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=176237&perpage=15&pagenumber=111

Amsterdammed over at steampowered has mentioned that Miles sound may be the culprit.

Indeed, after downloading Miles Sound Tools and firing up an .mp3. Then surfing the net with firefox, I get the horrible stutters....

I played a few MP3's through the Miles Sound Player and didn't get any stuttering. I downloaded whatever the latest Miles sound drivers on the site where (about 495k). Of course that doesn't mean much, since HL2 is very likely using an older version.

 

[Gollan]

I've noticed a bit of stuttering on my machine (Asus A8V/FX-53). I went ahead and moved my Audigy 2 card to a different PCI slot (was in 4, now in 3) as suggested on one of the customer support pages (either Valve or VU). It *seems* to have cured the problem but I'm in a new area so it is hard to tell.

I'm really wondering how the folks at PC Gamer managed to play through the game (and rated it 98%) without encountering this problem? I'd love to know the detailed specs of the machines they used.

If this theory mentioned in the thread on steampowered about it being caused by Miles audio software decoding is correct then the slowest CPUs should have the worst stuttering and the fastest CPUs should have the least (or no) stuttering. It would be kind of hard to rate the stuttering though as what I consider 'mild' could be 'severe' to someone else. EDIT: I thought of a way to test this - just underclock a system to various speeds and compare the sound. Sounds like a project for a rainy Sunday in Ottawa .

HL2 is still a lot of fun and a great achievement but it is hard to understand how this audio problem got out of the door.

 

[Wthrman13]

I got some stuttering when I played an mp3 through the Miles Sound Player. They weren't severe, but occured every 10 seconds or so, just like in HL2. They also seemed to occur when I would load a new page in my browser, or sometimes just when moving my mouse. The stutters I got were eerily similar in quality to the ones I've been getting in HL2.

I somehow doubt this a coincidence.

Playing an mp3 in Windows Media Player is perfectely smooth on my system with no stutters or popping at all.

 

[ArKTisK]

my theory is that they always knew about the stutter, but thought noone would care, becuase the original half life did that when it came out.

 

[Trp Werewolf]

Anyways, i wanted to try out what Rick said, but somehow i cant open the console. I have the "developer console (^)" box checked, but when i press ^ in game nothing happens.

So, how does the console work?

To open the console, use the tilde (~) key.

Sorry if this is old information.

I don't get out much... :dozey:

 

[Specialist_R1]

Not just stuttering but LOCK PC UP TOTALLY

Hi

Sounds like I am having a more serious dose of the stutters as most times mine will LOCK-UP FULLY with the constant stutter noise going, this can happen at any random point sometimes at the main menu, sometimes 5 secs into playing others 20 mins and i have to press reset button to try again. I originally had a SB Live and today went and bought a Audigy hoping to be rid of the prob but to no avail. very disappointing.

my Rig

P4 2.8HT Dual Channel, 1.5Gb DDR400, 9800 PRO, Audigy LS & SB Live. latest drivers blah blah

 

[shinrai]

Audio problems?
stuttering, lagging, or something else?

Go to the audio options and set the audio quality to medium or low.
I cannot tell a difference between high quality and medium quality, and it fixed the stuttering.

How in the world are VIDEO drivers supposed to help AUDIO problems? jeez.

Sorry, your a joke!

 

[Trp Werewolf]

For those of you with ATI drivers, check my Catalyst 4.12beta post in this forum.

:naughty:

Yes...I KNOW this thread is about audio problems, but it hasn't absolutely been proven to be just audio-related.

I'm just trying to help... :hmph:

 

[quinnd6]

How do you enable compressed textures in nvidia cards?
Someone said that pretty much solved it.

 

[nanaman]

Yep, you guessed it....same problem. It seems more prevelent during the water level. I don't want to play any further and seemingly spoil the game.

System -

A64 3000+
MSI K8N Neo Plat
6800GT
Clean Maxtor SATA
512 3200
SB live 5.1 digi

 

[ukfluke]

i get the stuttering but for large parts its pretty smooth & playable.

***spolier Alert****






when i do the end bit the big explosion stutters real bad for like 2-3 seconds. Also when dialogue is being loaded seems to effect it more.

i have athlon 2800+, 9800 pro, Nforce 2 onboard sound (latest drivers) 1 gb ram

 

[Starkaas]

Having the same problems with the sound.

Also have noticed that the worst sound errors/lag are when the game auto saves (which in my mind is alot).
Is there anyway to turn this feature off in the console??

As a side note I have also noticed in the console there are some errors in loading some of the textures/sounds/models.

Didn't think too much of this at first as noticed this with MOHAA and that ran with out any problems at all.

Cheers

 

[Garindan]

Now that i think about it, i've got a funny feeling that this may be in some way a graphics drivers problem aswell. I dunno why i didn't mention it before, but when i first started hl2 and had stuttering, the game shut down, and there was a strange error which i've never seen before (or since), it said something like 'the graphics driver has encountered a serious error, bla bla, windows will have to restart'.

FYI, im using 66.93 drivers on Geforce 4 Ti4200.

I mean the source engine is one of the most advanced and using features not used much before. The only other engines as advanced are doom3 and mayb farcry. Farcry had driver probs for ages (still has i think) and id have been doing engines for a LONG time, so its not hard to believe that source might have problems.

Any thoughts???

 

[Infidel]

I use a C-Media soundchip and the same thing happens.

Given the variety of the soundcards/-chips the problem occurs with, this is not hardware, but software related.

Infidel

 

[Gobuchul]

Audio problems?
stuttering, lagging, or something else?

Go to the audio options and set the audio quality to medium or low.
I cannot tell a difference between high quality and medium quality, and it fixed the stuttering.

How in the world are VIDEO drivers supposed to help AUDIO problems? jeez.

Thank you. Thank you soooooooooooo much. Thanks for your input. If ONLY we had more clever helpful people like you to enlighen us with your BRILLIANT solutions. How could we all have been so dumb.

 

[Hotpot]

Do I detect a note of sarcasm here?

 

[Gobuchul]

Do I detect a note of sarcasm here?

Perhaps just a teeny bit.

 

[Infidel]

Thank you. Thank you soooooooooooo much. Thanks for your input. If ONLY we had more clever helpful people like you to enlighen us with your BRILLIANT solutions. How could we all have been so dumb.

ROFL

Infidel

 

[MotoR31]

There's 2 things i hate:
1. People posting in these threads saying they DONT have a problem with the audio stutter - who cares!
2. People posting rediculasly obvious solutions in a thread that is 62 pages long - as if we havnt already thought of it!