Audio Problems with HL2

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From the Steam thread:

Originally posted by zerra
http://www.radgametools.com/msshist.htm

Fixed a bug in the DirectSound code where, if you cranked up the DIG_DS_MIX_FRAGMENT_CNT preference to maximum, then you could overwrite the play cursor which would cause sound glitching.
Click to expand...

The Miles DLL Half-Life 2 is using is 6.6a, while the latest version which mentions the above fix is 6.6f. The mix fragment count value determines how far ahead to mix sound. Is the engine cranking up that value when loading something, causing the play cursor to get clobbered and glitching the sound? What if it's a Miles issue after all?
 
I don't think it's sound related... using -nosound 1 to turn off sounds completely and it was still stuttering/freezing/locking up on me.

So unless the game's still trying to access the sounds with that switch on... I don't think it's actually sound related.
 
same problem here

Guys, I also just registered to report the same exact problem with the stuttering.

my rig:

3.2 GHz Intel
ASUS 875C motherboard
1 gig of RAM
Audigy 2 ZS

Defragged before and after installation.
 
Hey guys you are now my only refuge!
Steam forums are fooked, when i try to reply to the thread it says i have no permission, odd (or a conspiracy!)

I wont bore u with the details but i have the same problem

rig:
XP2500+ @ 3200+
9800XT
ABIT NF7-S
512 DDR333

Using Soundforce's Dolby Digital option.
lets all bow our head in silent pray that Valve pull their thumbs out of their asses and fix it.

-Aussie Kid
 
into.jpg
 
Very well put Dai-San. When trying to resolve an issue with a PC, dont go throwing money at it and blame the hardware. Most common it's software to blame, and a fix/patch is the answer. If you go changing so many different factors on at PC (new soundcard, defrag, re-installing software) how are you going to know which change resolved the issue?
 
So, when are we all meeting to burn down Valve's headquarters? I mean, it's only the next logical step, right! :thumbs:
 
That just made my day :cheese:

Does anyone get the same problem in CS Source? I do..


EDIT: day even :S
 
yep,, I have the same problems in CSsource,,, but they are much less and only happen when I have certain static meshes in view
 
Another Headcrab jumps into the forums

Hi just another Headcrab rising from the ashes to report i too have been having the same problem. At the very start and before i found and read all this thread me and my brother had been thinking it may have been my ram that was my bottleneck. Just to give you a little spec details
P4 Prescott 3.ghz with ht Win 200 and 512mb 266DDR

Of course i realise thats not the case since many people here have the stutter with double that amount of memory. My brother was to borrow some ram from work to increase my amount or speed to try that anyway. He put in another 256mb and i did that tip to go into options in steam console and change load thing to heapsize 256000. I have to say that since then the game is running a little better now. It is playable but not perfect.
Peter.
 
Sa-a-a-a-a m-e pro-pro-pro-ble-m here, along with bluescreen crashes and an intro which moves at one frame per second.
 
hardware acceleration

ilove64 said:
Changing it No Acceleration made the game worse, in fact, it was down right unplayable for me.
Click to expand...

Same here.
 
I hate to be one of these "I did this and it worked for me people", but suddenly my game is running pretty damn smooth. It has a minor tic once in a while loading a sound (and by minor I mean less than a second), and its not a real common thing.

What did I do?

Well I was playing with the "help" command in console (which btw is VERY handy since it tells you what all these commands are you've been putting in). I found a couple things, not sure if they did it, or Steam magically fixed it, or if pixies flew into my computer and made it work.

mod_forcedata 1
snd_async_spew_blocking 1

Not sure if these did it, but after putting them in things seem to be working as they should. I suppose I should save and restart without these in and see if they are the "magic". I'm just afraid I wont be able to play again.

Still for the sake of everyone else whos in hell, I'm going to quit out, try playing without those console commands enabled and see what happens and report back.
 
just a little update on the gcf extraction


it's freaking taking about 1.5-2 hours per content GCF file (materials, sounds modeles,, etc..) and there is almost no HD seeking or loading at all,, but my CPU is running at 100%,,,

so what does this say? the files are in an archive that is really cpu dependant to extract from,, when HL2 pauses the same thing happens, no HD load or seeking,,,,

Hopefully it will let me play with an uncompressed directory..
 
I want to add my name to the list just to make Valve realise how huge this problem is. I never really took the time to figure out why it might be stuttering but I hope they fix it.


HOW THE HELL DID THIS GET PAST QUALITY ASSURANCE
 
Had Stuttering problem then it went away...my solution.

I've been lurking here for awhile trying all the different solutions that have been presented. My machine is a P4 2.8 512 meg 6800gt realtek onboard audio. I had the same problem when I first played the game. Audio stuttering and graphical skipping.

Initially playing the game I bumped up the recommended graphical settings for my system. I felt the stuttering was due to my system not meeting the demands of the engine. So I lowered the settings. Nothing. My machine however was overclocked to 3.3ghz. After restoring the correct clock frequency for my chip and setting the sound to medium and reinstalling the game I have had no stuttering whatsoever at the recommended valve settings. Oddly enough I was then subsequently able to OC my machine back to 3.3ghz with no audio stuttering. So perhaps installation on an OC'd PC caused some type of corruption? I will now experiment with different graphical settings to see if this is a possibility.

J
MSN Developer
 
Does anyone else have a maps/soundcache subfolder? I have this folder, and it looks like it contains about 158 megs of cached sound files.
 
mod_forcedata 1
snd_async_spew_blocking 1

More info on these? I'm tired of throwing any old thing into my auto exec file.
 
it works!!

Yes! I've fiannly completly got rid of stuttering in game. there a second stutter just as the loaded game start and than ir rock solid and smooth.

here my autoexec.cfg


cl_forcepreload "1"
sv_forcepreload "1"
cl_smooth "0"
snd_mixahead "0.5"
mod_forcedata 1
snd_async_spew_blocking 1
 
The thing I'm finding interesting about this whole issue, is the fact there is next to no acknowlegement of this issue by the HL2 news sites. I can't find any of them, especially Planet Half Life who are even reporting on this, let alone saying it is being looked at.

It's almost as if they have their heads in the sand pretending this doesn't exist, or don't want to upset Valve. Considering this issue is possibly affecting anywhere from 15 - 50% of HL2 players, it seems very suspect.
 
arkanis said:
The thing I'm finding interesting about this whole issue, is the fact there is next to no acknowlegement of this issue by the HL2 news sites. I can't find any of them, especially Planet Half Life who are even reporting on this, let alone saying it is being looked at.
Click to expand...

There is an post from a Valve official on the Steam forums saying that valve are aware of the problem and are looking in to it.
 
Stalk3r said:
it works!!

Yes! I've fiannly completly got rid of stuttering in game. there a second stutter just as the loaded game start and than ir rock solid and smooth.

here my autoexec.cfg


cl_forcepreload "1"
sv_forcepreload "1"
cl_smooth "0"
snd_mixahead "0.5"
mod_forcedata 1
snd_async_spew_blocking 1
Click to expand...

Is that a universal setting that should work for everyone or would that only work for you? I am sure you are happy but I would like to see someone else say that it worked for them too.
 
wonkers said:
Is that a universal setting that should work for everyone or would that only work for you? I am sure you are happy but I would like to see someone else say that it worked for them too.
Click to expand...

Well I posted the mod_forcedata and the snd_async_spew_blocking, so that sort of makes two of us it works for.

I'm still playing with things atm.
 
Does this resolve the freezing/stuttering during autosaves as well?
 
its just an idea, it will keep me busy for a whil i think, but there is a command in the console that allows precachingsound.

I thought it was SV_PRECACHESOUND and then u need to enter the filename... What if you would open the GCFs and write down all the filenames, and then add them to a .cfg file, with the command placed before each filenamen.

I wanne try it, i just cant start GCFSCAPE, it crashes :s

If someone else could do it? it might be a temporal solution, but if it works, why not...
 
i'd like people who've claimed they've 'fixed' their stuttering to run the start again when the gman tells you to wake up

cuz what i am noticing is that when i add something to autoexec.cfg and go back to run the game everything is fast cuz its still in memory, when it loads a new level n stuff it starts to stutter again. and the best way to test is to do the gman intro part if that part runs smooth for you then, you've fixed it.
 
wonkers said:
Is that a universal setting that should work for everyone or would that only work for you? I am sure you are happy but I would like to see someone else say that it worked for them too.
Click to expand...

It didn't do anything for me unfortunately. :(
 
Well. It's really all in Valves hands. It must suck to be them right now. More and more people realise that this is happening to all of them. I know it's not a FPS problem that makes my game stutter.

It looks so much like lag from online play. I just thought it was my computer being a little slow at first then I realised that the problem is this. My real question is how did this get past quality assurance? Isn't that kinda odd?

I am supporting Valve on this one. Nothing is perfect but they are aware of the problem and will probably update & fix it through steam. Everyone past this post should calm down if they are really mad.

I love how the community is banding together to try and flush this one out! This is the way a Forum is supposed to work. Good job people. Be vigilent.
 
I've re-read the first 10 pages and I think I have found the one thing all of us share

We all have a DX9 graphics card.

Coincedence?
 
Ruben said:
I have a solution!!!
Install 20 GB of RAM ... make a virtual hard drive on 15 of those. Install steam and HL 2 on this virtual disk (that is really loaded into RAM) So now you have everything loaded into the fastest memorybank on any consumer computer. Et Voila! You now have everything loaded into ram and hence it does not need to read the disks! Everything is now smooth :)
Click to expand...
Windows is the pits but you can normally accomplish what you want using 3rd party utilities.

1. Download Winbolic Link 1.0
http://www.tucows.com/preview/343105.html

2. Work out from what directory the sound files are being loaded. I haven't investigated this, but half-life 2\hl2\maps\soundcache looks promising - and it's only 151 MB.

3. Copy this directory to your RAM drive. Rename the original soundcache folder. Create a link in half-life 2\hl2\maps called soundcache that points to the soundcache directory on you RAM drive.

Load Half Life 2 and enjoy stutter free gameplay. (Untested)
 
I really don't think the sound is the real problem. You can turn off all the sound and still have stutters.

Well, like I just said, judging by the posts that I have seen in here ( about 50% ) there is one thing we all share

WE ALL HAVE A DIRECT X9 GRAPHICS CARD.

I really doubt this is a coincidence.

Now, I'd apriciate it if someone could change their Direct X mode to 8 in the console.Sadly I can't try this myself, as you can't activate the console with a foreign keyboard.
 
I know alot has already been posted, but I found a solution (for me anyway)
I've tried all the above launch options and all types of combinations. Eventually, no matter how high I turn up things like anti-aliasing the only thing that causes the stuttering is having the textures on high. when turned down to low, I get very very very little stuttering, and it only happens as a large new area is loaded and only for a split second (I can deal with that)
Specs: 2.2ghz Pavillion
512 Ram
9600XT ATI
AC97 Sound Card (going to try using headphones)
 
I refuse to turn down my textures using a GeForce 6800 GT.
 
Well first off I got a DX8 videocard and I have the problem so to the guy who thinks its DX9 VDs your wrong.

Second, using your harddrive as Vram WILL NOT WORK DO NOT EVEN TRY IT, well you can if you want, but its a waste of time. WHY wont this work? Because your RAM on your computer is a BILLION times faster then your harddrive so by haveing your CPU access this from your HD you MIGHT (not sure) make it even worse! but anyway I dont think your CPU uses HD Vram till its out of the good stuff anyway so itll most likely do nothing!
 
Half-alife said:
its just an idea, it will keep me busy for a whil i think, but there is a command in the console that allows precachingsound.

I thought it was SV_PRECACHESOUND and then u need to enter the filename... What if you would open the GCFs and write down all the filenames, and then add them to a .cfg file, with the command placed before each filenamen.

I wanne try it, i just cant start GCFSCAPE, it crashes :s

If someone else could do it? it might be a temporal solution, but if it works, why not...
Click to expand...

Actually I remember using this as well, I think I tried it with *.* as the file name. It didn't give an error, but it didn't seem to do anything (ie it was instantaneous). Then again, maybe it did help and I just didn't realize it.

And for the record, I always test at the beginning with the Gman because I never went any further than that after the stuttering started up.

I'll try out the Soundcache thing and see if it makes a difference. Currently my game is very playable, but it does hiccup once in a while, which is annoying and something I'd like to get rid of.
 
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