Audio Problems with HL2

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wasted said:
i wish people would stop posting "solutions" that do not work. the disappointment is growing bigger each time... i feel the anger rising...
Click to expand...

That's part of any troubleshooting process I'm afraid. At least we can be certain suspected causes of the problem are being trimmed away, making pin pointing to problem easier (and as such, quicker) for Valve.

I'd much rather be trying out solutions people are taking the time to share. You never know, one of them could just work.
 
I haven't read ALL the messages in this thread but I'm having the same problem. BUT there is one important point. I just purchased an ASUS 9800GT yesterday. Before that I had been using a GeForce 4 Ti4200 so I had my graphics settings set lower (800x600 + lower things). I was not having any problem and had played through quite a bit of the game. As soon as I put in my new video card (latest ASUS drivers) and cranked up all the settings I started getting the stuttering problem.
 
Here the multichannel sound (5.1) doesnt work, almost everything comes thru the center speaker (literally jammed thru it)
Now a friend of me bought HL2 also and guess what, multichannel doesn't work with him eather...
multichannel sound works with other games.
 
Cranking down settings helps with the stuttering. I get over 100 fps at times in HL2 on medium 1024 and low sound quality, but the stuttering is pretty much gone or very hard to notice.
 
Originally Posted by 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?

Phr3nzy said:
I am experiencing the reversed sound problem as well. Haven't been able to try any of the solutions as of yet as I'm at work. Will have a go at cracking it when I get home and let u know of any advances I make!

As for the slow down I am experiencing some but not enough to ruin the game for me.

P4 2Ghz
512Mb RDRAM
GeForce Ti4600
Soundblaster Audigy
XP Home SP2
HL2 Retail DVD Version
Click to expand...


Hell! I'm sooo glad I not alone with this prob, I've not seen it posted anywhere else.

I don't get too much stuttering, only just after each load. But the menau page takes ages to load when launched.

A64 3500+, 1gb ram, 6800GT, Audigy z2 Retail.
 
that's interesting...
the GF4200 is a directx 8.x card...
your new a directx 9.0.x ...

Other forums also talk about the directx diag stuff

Any word from valve yet?
 
Rick Ellis said:
We're looking into the problem, but it would help to know if this solves it for you.

Thanks,
Rick
Valve
Click to expand...

it's from page 3 of this thread
 
wow

I just wanted to add myself to this AWESOME thread. Is this not the best community ever? Random people helping out other people that they don't even know, without letting tempers flare?
Anyways, some people posted that changing the one value from .1 to .4 seems to work, but that was only from a couple of people. Can anyone else confirm that this works for them?
Are the steam forums down indefinately or what? They've been down all day.
Finally, can anyone tell me how important it is to defrag with at least 15% space free? I'm always one or two percent less and I hate uninstalling and reinstalling. Does it really matter one way or another?
 
I don't have this problem

Specs:
2500+ Athlon XP
1 gig corsair ram
nforce 2 board
audigy 2

However, I'm using http://www.omegadrivers.net/ for my vid card drivers. I think that might be the crucial difference.

My skipping is very small (ie: 1/4 sec hesitation everyone once in a while). All the scripted sequences work great for me :-D
 
frozensun said:
I don't have this problem

Specs:
2500+ Athlon XP
1 gig corsair ram
nforce 2 board
audigy 2

However, I'm using http://www.omegadrivers.net/ for my vid card drivers. I think that might be the crucial difference.

My skipping is very small (ie: 1/4 sec hesitation everyone once in a while). All the scripted sequences work great for me :-D
Click to expand...

I have also the omegadrivers but that doesn't work for me.
 
Hell! I'm sooo glad I not alone with this prob, I've not seen it posted anywhere else.
Click to expand...
indeed. Like I yesterday... =)

wtf? I have the game for two days now and cannot play it!?!?!?


Valve, can you please write something about the problem??? A simple statement??? :devil:
 
I'll say it again, this is going to be something really really weird causing the problem.

I'm considering video taping a "play" session tonight so we can confirm the same problems happening.
 
26kmansp said:
Are the steam forums down indefinately or what? They've been down all day.
Click to expand...



They're fine for me at the moment.

I've also been hearing Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines (which uses the Source engine) also suffers a bit from this and doesn't do too well in outdoor enviorments.
 
can anyone tell me what that "snd_mixahead .1" is doing?? what does putting it to .4 mean??? I would love to change these numbers but what is this one actually doing with increasing the number??
 
Just adding to thel ist.

Have a clean reformat and install of windows>

Installed the newest sound drivers, and video card drivers, Steam, HL2 (direct drom steam), and that's it.

EliteGroup PIV 2.4 Ghz MOBO (P4X266A chipset)
768 megs DDR ram
Nvidia Geforce 6800 CT
SoundBlaster Live! 5.2

It's not horrible, and when I stuck in '-heapsize 510000' the game runs a bit better, but the stuttering is still there every 30 seconds, or during more 'intense' scenes.
Annoying to the point of rather waiting for a fix than bumming my way through the game.

Good luck with the patching Valve.
 
26kmansp said:
Are the steam forums down indefinately or what? They've been down all day.
Click to expand...

When I use Opera, I get the message about them being busy. When I use IE, they work just fine. Stange.
 
Note:

This is a pretty big thread about this and other issues....

http://www.penny-arcade.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8125

There is a valve developer posting there (Locash it would seem) who's asking for more information from people. Sadly, can't register on those forums to chime in, although apparently there is a way to submit information through steampowered.com.

Edit: OH THEY TURNED ON REGISTRATION
 
Valve, can you please write something about the problem??? A simple statement acknowledging you're aware of the problem and working to fix it?

Valve, can you please write something about the problem??? A simple statement acknowledging you're aware of the problem and working to fix it?

Valve, can you please write something about the problem??? A simple statement acknowledging you're aware of the problem and working to fix it?
 
hmm..

Ok, I'm confused. I'm looking in the config subfolder to hl2 and there is no config.cfg file. I have a dialogconfig and an ingamedialogconfig. Where the heck is this config.cfg file?
 
Pip:

As per my last post, there's a valve developer posting about the problem in that linked thread.
 
26kmansp It'll be in your SteamApps folder:

X:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\YOUR@ACCOUNT\half-life 2\hl2\cfg\Config.cfg
 
New to this boards and thought I'd join the club of those who have the sound-problem. Hopefully Valve will solve this problem in a near future. My specs. should be in my signature.
 
I'm not going to register on ten different forums for the same issue.. these forums and official ones will suffice!!

But please give them a link for this thread someone, I think perhaps there are some Valve guys here too but not sure!!

This problem is surely fixable, damn PC's can be such a pain in the buttox. On my system the stutters seem to happen in the same places all the time from the first sequence. There's like a graphical pause and glitch in the audio and it's like lag too cause the inputs made during the stutter still move Gordon.

I've heard that this lag has happenned after a steam update, but not sure.. Valve better be hard at it by now trying to resolve this.
 
well that pennyarcade isn't very specific to this audio problem.

They go on about loads of problems, and the valve guy isn't addressing the audio stuttering.

can someone from valve please shed some light?
 
Someone from valve has posted in this thread stating they are working on the problem
 
ABIT NF7-S Onboard sound
AMD XP 2.0 @ 2.4 10x220 @ 7v
1 GB Corsair 2-2-2-5 @ 2.9v
WD 40 GB HD 7200rpm 8MB buffer
ATI 9800Pro no OC 256 bit CAT 4.10
XP SP2 Dx9c
Rez @ 1024x768 @ 75 refresh
Game @ 1024x768 @ 75 refresh
Half-life 2 launch options button = -width 1024 -refresh 75

Half-life 2 video settings
model detail *HIGH
tex detail *HIGH
water detail *SIMPLE REFLECTIONS
shadow detail *HIGH
aa *NONE
af *BILINAR
shader detail *HIGH
vsync *ENABLED

I posted this to hopefully help in some way, I have no jitter or stutter at all the game runs at a solid 75 FPS it will dip to 65 at times no sound jitter either. ATI can not do trilener for some reason it will jitter and lag then.
 
OK, I've basically tried ALL of the following:

In config.cfg:

cl_forcepreload "1"
sv_forcepreload "1"
cl_smooth "0"
snd_mixahead "0.4"

In launch options:

-heapsize 512000 (1/2 my 1GB of RAM)

Also set Sound Quality to "Medium."

The end result was that the hiccups seem to be less severe, but they still happen. None of these seem to address the root cause of the problem. But the game is more playable now.

I also tried turning off hardware acceleration on my sound card, that did nothing.
 
ok....*yawn* after reading all 18 pages of this thread, i'd like to say that i have the same problem too. i've stopped playing until i can get it fixed b/c its impossible to see what i'm doing. i only got past the part where i got teleported in the beginning, so i'm not far into it at all. i'll try some of these solutions when i get home from work.
 
Lol.

MclarenII said:
New to this boards and thought I'd join the club of those who have the sound-problem. Hopefully Valve will solve this problem in a near future. My specs. should be in my signature.
Click to expand...

Hah yea, same here. Im sure HL2.net will get 50% more new members to these parts cause of audio problems. Thats one of the reasons i registerd to see if anyone is having audio problems.. And what do ya know half of the board is :hmph:

Anyways.. i guess i'll be stuck on 2.1 speaker settings that are choppy and no good to steam releases some fix to these audio problems. But if its a souldblaster card issue im going to buy a newer card ..if thats the case which i dont think it is.
 
not help for this issue, but i noticed alot of audigy users having issues with "pops" and "crackles"....change the rendering options in the audio control panel to 24-bit/48khz...solved it for me(the crackling, not the jerkyness). Also puts less strain on the pci bus, so will have a small performance boost...only really noticable indoors.

my athlon64 system has no problems with the bloodlines game, but my mobile athlon system is subject to the same issues in both Vampire: The Masquerade : Bloodlines, and Half-Life2.
makes me think it's the sound engine.


character animation in bloodlines is a bit smoother and more detailed too....but maybe that's just my opinion.
 
I removed a program called "K-Lite Codec Pak" which I had read can cause this problem, and indeed HL2 runs smooth now without any of the audio glitches.

The problem is probably being caused by a codec that is interfering with one that HL2 is using. Give this a shot, if any of you have it installed.
 
acts like it wont pre-load sounds

SpeedDemon said:
It would appear to be that I, along with many other people are having Audio problems with HL2. Only after 4 hours I have been able to track down a bunch of people who seem to be having a similar issue.

While playing whenever you turn around a corner and there is a new sound or somebody new starts talking or you come into a room and a gun is shot, the game will pause for a second as if it has to take a second to load the sound file off of the HD. This make no sense to me why this should be happening unless I didn't have enough RAM, but I was under the assumption that 1GB would be enough to play this game.

Here are my system specs:
Athlon XP 2.5GHz
1GB RAM
80GB SATA HD
nForce 2 mobo w/ SoundStorm audio
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro

It would help if other people having the same problem could state their problem and the specs of their computers. Hopefully someone from Valve will see this.
Click to expand...

This is my first post and I am having the exact same problem as above. I feel that adding myself to the list will add a little to the importance of getting this glitch fixed. I have not tried any of the fixes suggested throughout this very long thread because I'm not off from work yet. I payed very close attention to what the game was doing whenever it was studdering and in my opinion, it seems that all the sounds are not loading into memory until right before they are needed. Each time the game pauses to load a new sound, (and whatever sound was already playing at the time just loops like a broken record until the pause is over) I can see my hard drive light flash orange constantly and then it goes out after the pause is over. I have two WD Raptor 10,000 RPM SATA drives RAID striped but it still takes 3-4-5 seconds for small sounds to load up and play. I have stopped playing the game like so many others here because it is ruining my Half-Life experience.

Specs:
ASUS A7N8X DELUXE
AMD ATHLON XP 2500 BARTON
512MB HYPERX PC3200
RADEON 9700 PRO 128MB
NVIDIA NFORCE2 SOUNDSTORM 5.1 AUDIO
 
Lunt said:
I removed a program called "K-Lite Codec Pak" which I had read can cause this problem, and indeed HL2 runs smooth now without any of the audio glitches.

The problem is probably being caused by a codec that is interfering with one that HL2 is using. Give this a shot, if any of you have it installed.
Click to expand...

The problem is caused by a bad hl2 engine cause with other games i have no problems.
 
Anyone tried pagedfrg.exe? That and diskeeper worked wonders for me.
 
Right Then.

I have just emailed 'Locash' from the Penny Arcade forums who is a Valve employee (for those who don't know) direct to his Valve email address. I've explained the situation and have drawn his attention to this thread in the email to help Valve try and solve the problem that little bit faster.

So hopefully, soon, we should hear something from Valve in addition to Rick's appreciated contribution.

Cheers
Sie.
 
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