Audio Problems

sound stutters for me too. had the same problem with far cry.

using the onboard soundcard(motherboard a7n8x)
 
Although I don't have this problem, most sound problems in games can usually be solved by following these steps:

1. Go to the Control Panel and click on "Sounds and Audio Devices."
2. Click on "Advanced" and then click on the "Performance" tab.
3. Set "Hardware Acceleration" to "basic," one notch from the left.
4. Boo-yah. Should work fine.
 
I'm using SoundMAX Digital Audio and I'm having problems. It seems I can't hear anything when it's being said through a video monitor. For example I can't hear the old guy with the white hair at the beginning. I can't hear the "Welcome to City 17" thing. After you meet Barney at the beginning, I can't hear what the doctor is saying.

Anybody have a guess at what the problem is?
 
None of the above tips work :( Dammed valve should had fix this already because it was also a major problem in CSS. In CSS when choosing 2 speakers or headphone instead of 5.1 it went to a minor problem but was still there. In all other games (farcry, doom3, mohpa, sims2, starwars battlefront etc) i have no problem with sound (soundblaster live). Seems like some bad coding of the hl2 engine.
Hope someone finds a fix or valve makes a patch very soon.
 
Bah, I think I need to get a new sound card. I'm looking for something cheap at the moment that will solve my problem. Anybody have any suggestions?
 
Seriously, once the creative drivers are installed properly, the cards are bullet proof. I'd recomend the audigy2 zs, can pick one up for about 40 quid.

So far as the sound problems are concerned;

HL2's sounds are all 16bit stereo 44000Hz, a lot larger than HL1's files, then you have the capability of your system and sound card to play these files whilst streaming them off the disk, all the while, the rest of the game is taking your system resources.

I HIGHLY recommend defragging your hard drives, even after installing the game as well. Personally, i use Diskeeper 9, i've found it to work exceptionally and improve hdd access no end. (google for this program, there is a free 30 day trial for it)

Also, make sure your sound drivers are as up to date as possible, they are one of the least updated drivers on anyones system.

Getting the game to load as much of its self into memory as possible also helps a lot; to do this, right click on Half-Life 2 in steam and select properties, then click launch options, put in "-heapsize 256000" without the quote marks. For the number, choose half your total system memory, in the examples case, its for a system with 512megs ram, you should use 512000 for systems with a gig of ram.

you can also try general system tweaks, do a google search for windows xp tweaking guide, there are plenty around, many with great advise for making sure your system is at the very least healthy before you start.
 
Just wanted to say that i have stuttering sound ingame aswell. Dont have this problem in other games(Doom3, Eve-online, Axis&Allies).
My system is about 3months old(AMD-64 3200, 1gb Ram, 6800GT, WD Raptor 74Gb) so it should be able to handle HL2 just fine :)
Will try some of the tips given in this thread when i get home from work. But i think Valve needs to fix this with a patch
 
Yeh Same thing here its very frustrating and I'm not playing anymore until Valve fixes this problem!!!!!
 
CR0M said:
PIO mode is an inefficient windows setting for harddrive data transfer/ caching. Windows defaults to this if it detects errors on the drive. This slows down everything including sound and texture caching in games making them choppy.

What it SHOULD be set to is DMA (or Ultra DMA) if it isn't already.

Just go into your harddrive properties, see if it's running in PIO mode, change it to DMA if it is. Things will run a lot smoother.
Click to expand...

Where do you change that?
 
My problems was fixed after i did the following:
- Set "-heapsize 512000". See MaDMaXX post above
- Changed these options in the HL2 config file:
snd_mixahead "0.5"
sv_forcepreload "1"
This file is located here "\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\user\half-life 2\hl2\cfg" on my HD.

Hope this will help some of you aswell.
 
Similar problem , but only with the character voices. They echo and I'm getting some interfearence in the form of scratching when the charcters speak??
 
audio problems?

I have 5.1 surround sound system.
The audio problem I'm getting is with the character voices. They are echoing and there is a backround scratching when they speak.
Can anyone advise, cheers,
Gad_zooks
 
Same, I've done a bunch of tweaks that were mentioned but it didn't go away completely.

AMD A64 3000+
K8V SE Deluxe
1 gig kingston
R9800 Pro
60gb 7200rpm HD
 
fINALLY fIXED

I adjusted the mixahead value from .1 to .5 and the stuttering had completely stopped. Also made sure that my windows audio was set to 5.1 and my Auidgey2 had the CMSS turned off.

AMD 64 3200
512ram
6800GT
XPpro SP2
 
There is no fix for everyone it seems, why hasn't Valve responded to this yet? A hell of a lot of people on hlfallout forums are having this problem.
 
short stutters here.

No matter what resolution and texture settings.

Seems like audio.

Gone for a minimal hardware profile on the services, tweaked XP to hell and still no better. All other games run as smooth as butter.

Wont play this until a fix is found. Now they have my money lets hope it means something to them and they at least give us an indication that they are working on it.

AMD 3200+ Barton
ATI X800 XT PE
1GB OCZ 3700
Audigy 2Z
Western Digital Raptor
 
Bump, god damn, this thread keeps going down because of "omg I finished hl2 in 30 minutes lololl" topics.
 
Just a thought,probably wont work but for all those people that have a dedicated sound card try disabling your mother boards on board sound in the bios,perhaps there is a conflict if you have both enabled.
 
I'm running windows xp pro with a sounblaster live value bd, and
hl2 would run fine anywhere from 30 min - 4 hours and then the
sound would start looping and otherwise sounding strange, and the
game would usually crash. I downloaded the latest soundblaster
live drivers (windows xp & 2000) from here:

http://us.creative.com/support/downloads/download.asp

I've been playing for about 2 hours so far, and after installing the
new drivers, the above problems seems to have gone away (cross fingers),the stuttering problem is still there a little, but not as bad as before.

jbailey8
 
Ive tried it all. I have a x800 and the gfx is super smooth but that god damn soundskipping is killing me.
 
I hav tried most solutions here except from the async thing. My harddrive is running DMA. But may the lag have something to do with the textures? I will try to lower them, and post the results here again sometime later. I "only" have 128 MB memory on my 9600XT...
 
^^

This is an enormous issue. Nearly everyone is getting this memory problem where the system hangs, audio loops, while it fetches info from the hard drive. Sounds like the game is only using a fraction of your total memory (I have 1 gig). Everything is complaining in steampowered, it's gotta be the LARGEST THREAD there!!

I hope they issue a patch soon.
 
Okay, I know this topic has been beat to death. However, I have noticed that my stuttering problems (echoing sounds, lagged visuals) have some particular characteristics. First of all they were the worst and occured the most during the beginning of the game when you have to jump across the train and you are moving down the tracks. After that, the airboat part and everything has been moving quite well regardless of how much action or sound.
What is most particular about the problem and where i think the answer might lie is the following:
if I point my head looking down the tunnel and tracks it is the worst, but if I turn my head and look sideways and just strafe down the tunnel and tracks, like magic, everything is smooth regardless of what the hd has to access. Anyways...these are my observations. Any Ideas?
 
Hi all!

Huhh....
This will be hard. I had'nt practiced english since years. Many years...
But I need help...
So first of all, excuse me becouse of my terrible english.

My problem is the following:
I have a 5.1 sound system wich is working by my Gygabyte motherboard-integrated sound "card". This surround system works perfectly in every games and applications, except Half Life 2!!! ;( ;( ;( ;( ;( ;( ;(

In HL2, only my center speaker works, if I choose 5.1 in the sound options.
Choosing 7.1 (just for try) makes the same situation.
Choosing 4 speaker: there is no sound at all.
Choosing simple stereo: my two front speakers are working.

In Windows (XP) 5.1 have been choosed correctly.
Just like in the Gigabyte's own sound software.

Please help! ;(
 
Same with my Asus A8N-Sli motherboard? Probably both based off the Nforce 4. Anyway I think it's the program RealTek Sound Manager. You set it up to work with that, while HL2 needs a diffrent set up.

4 speakers wont work, but setting it to 2 will have all 4 give noise but my 2 left ones give the exact same noise as my 2 right ones. I really don't care though.
 
This stutter/pause thing is killing me too. I played and finished the game with very little stutter problem earlier in the year. I have not played the game much lately. I have been waiting for Lost Coast/Aftermath. I loaded the game(lots of steam updates) and now it plays terrible! I have not changed my setup from before. Lowering the sound to medium helps a very little. What helps more is lowering the texture to meduim. What did they update that would forced me to lower the graphical detail to medium to play the game? I upgraded my vid card from AIW 9800 Pro to AIW X800 XT, but same thing. I tried all the tips and tweaks with little or no help. I made sure I had all the latest drivers. I can play Doom3, Far Cry, ect at 1600 and maxed settings with no problem at all. I see by reading this forum that it is the same for others.....so sad.

I was looking forward to Lost Coast with HDR and then Aftermath, but why would I want HDR if I can't play the game smooth without LOWERING the graphics?!

I am reading this all over the place....they did something and made it worse. I hope they fix it!

I have...
Intel D875PBZ Motherboard - P4 3GHz
1GB RAM
ATI AIW X800 XT
SB Audigy 2
Plenty HD space
 
sholmes01 said:
SB Audigy 2
Click to expand...
Audigy's sometimes tend to really **** up HL2. Try taking it out and playing with onboard sound only.
 
I would take it out, but then I would get no sound. I don't have onboard sound.

What about the new Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty with RAM...think that would help?
 
Same here! It ran fine a long time ago, but a recent update to the game has left me and others with a ruined game. They messed the game up good.

I have tried all the tips and tweaks I have read in what seems like thousands of posts about this problem and the only thing that helps me is to lower the texture depth. Why should I have to lower it now when it played fine before. I even got a bettere vid card ATI X800 XT, but it plays the same. It sucks

I don't think that Valve or Steampowered read this or many of the other forums that we are writing in.

I wrote a game problem report to: http://support.steampowered.com, but have not heard anything yet.

If everyone with this issue writes to them, maybe they will see it is not a limited problem and fix it.
 
I have an Audigy2 ZS, I have stuttering problems in a few games, but the latest drivers fixed it. So go onto creative.com and get them. IF you have them and are still getting problems, well your SOL. :/
 
taku said:
I'm using SoundMAX Digital Audio and I'm having problems. It seems I can't hear anything when it's being said through a video monitor. For example I can't hear the old guy with the white hair at the beginning. I can't hear the "Welcome to City 17" thing. After you meet Barney at the beginning, I can't hear what the doctor is saying.

Anybody have a guess at what the problem is?
Click to expand...

You're using intergrated sound. They're bad compared to a seperate audio card. For example, they use the CPU for processing all sound information, which no doubt can slow things down.

How to enable Ultra DMA:
http://www.google.com/search?&q=enable+udma+xp

Another tweak is set set PCI latency to 0 in BIOS settings. Press DEL (or whatever else it says to enter Setup during start up) to go the BIOS settings.
 
I have the latest Audigy 2 drivers already...thanks.

Ultra DMA is already set. I have an AGP vid card, but I tried changing the PCI latency any ways(higher and then lower) with no change.
 
my game stutters and freezes with looping sound everytime I play

SB Audigy Player ... :(

never freezes if I play with -nosound BUT still stutters (graphically)
 
Mine does the same thing now too after the update.

I have not heard anything from Steampowered about the problem. I wrote to them over a week ago and my problem is still listed as NEW with no reply yet.

I am wondering if a better sound card would help. Maybe like the new Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty with onboard memory.
 
Idiot alert.

Don't get your PC infected with spyware from going on the gay sites, mmkay.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Krynn72
You guys, what the **** is up.
Replies
11
Views
2K
Tollbooth Willie
Tollbooth Willie
Tollbooth Willie
HL2.NET HORROR SLAP
Replies
7
Views
2K
Tollbooth Willie
Tollbooth Willie
Tollbooth Willie
To Those That Stand, Those That Fell
Replies
6
Views
2K
Tollbooth Willie
Tollbooth Willie
bbson john
Hi everyone. I am new to this forum!
Replies
11
Views
6K
Tollbooth Willie
Tollbooth Willie
MFL
Fascinating look at the ongoing psychological evolution of flat hieirarchies.
Replies
2
Views
2K
Tollbooth Willie
Tollbooth Willie
Back
Top