Audio skipping

[teranoid]

Hello everyone. I am currently playing through Episode 2, and have reached "This Vortal Coil". Throughout the game I have noticed intermittent audio skipping. I am aware that the Source engine has an issue with video ram access but I think my problem is different to that. I have a fairly powerful system which eats the source engine for breakfast, so performance shouldn't be an issue. Also, I am not experiencing any problems with either Episode 1, Portal, TF2, HL2, or any other game for that matter. My spec's are:

Q6600
XFX 680i LT
4gigs OCZ 800Mhz
8800GTX
WD 320mb sata HD
SB X-fi Xtreme Music
Thermaltake 750w PSU
Vista Home Premuim 64-bit

If anyone has had a similar issue, perhaps with a similar setup, then please post. Thanks for looking.

 

[Moonraker]

im sorry to barge in on your post but you said something aobut the source engine having problems accessing video RAM. what can you tell me about that? there a posting someplace on it? i was having problems with fps lag and audio skipping and it was gone, now its suddenly back. however i think the audio skipping is a result of whatever is causing the fps drop. sorry i couldnt help you.

have you tried some of the cfg variables that are supposed to help with audio skips?

 

[teranoid]

Hello here's the page where I found the info on the vram:

http://www.tweakguides.com/HL2_3.html

cfg alteration you say? I'll look into it. What do you know about it?

 

[Moonraker]

some claim adjusting these will help. i am no expert, so someone stop me if im being dumb.

snd_mixahead "0.5" <- moving this somewhere from .5 to .7 is said to help
snd_async_fullyasync "1" <- i think this plays audio as it comes rather than sync-ing it to events... its pretty lame.
cl_forcepreload "1"
sv_forcepreload "1" <- both force assets to load beforehand?

also you could try since you have so much RAM to make the game use it. im not sure if you have that done already, and im no expert by any means, but the game has settings to the amount of memory it uses.

 

[teranoid]

Sadly those commands had no effect, but thanks for posting them. Am I to believe that I'm the only one who's had the problem i've described? There must be some of you out there. Its really starting to put a downer on my experience. Its as if the engine can't support enough channels. I've tried updating my sound card drivers and have deactivated the sound card and enabled the onboard audio, to no avail. I've also verified my installation again and there are no problems reported.

 

[teranoid]

Also, the sound skips are not confined to the dialogue. Its becoming unbearable. It happens even at the lowest res at the lowest settings with the fps probably in excess of 200 or so.