HL2 sound stuttering problem: Valve is working on it.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 9:26 am

I get this myself, but only in very fast action - like the airboat ride when turning into a new area.

Some info here: http://www.blep.net/hl2stutter/

This site is a collection of information on a problem with Half-Life 2 that has plagued many players of this otherwise excellent game. This problem is characterized by a sudden massive drop in frame rate when turning corners or moving into new areas of the game. These drops are usually accompanied by looping or stuttering sound during the frame rate drop which is how most people become aware of the problem. Aside from these isolated drops in frame rate, the game is otherwise perfectly smooth. These sudden drops kill the immersion and lead to a very frustrating experience. Below you will find additional details on this problem, some theories, and all responses from Valve on this problem.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 2:32 pm

Yeah, I've had the same problem with my sound, and it's always when the new level is loading. I've set mine up to use 2 speakers instead of 4, but no difference (I have a 4.1 speaker setup). There are also some clictches when I select 4 speaker also. Every now and then, I get a lot of crackling and weird echo's, but going to 2 speaker setup will fix that part of the sound problem.

TruckStuff · Post by **TruckStuff** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 11:20 pm

Ditto here... I think that guy is on to something whith loading textoures into video memory. Mine seems to stutter when entering a "new" area (NOT loading a new section), and I'm seeing HDD activity also. Will defrag tonight. Thanks for the tip.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 1:44 am

Defragging has made a huge improvement in my case, even thought I still have the sound problem, it's more liveable than before.

Busby · Post by **Busby** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 4:40 am

I hear there are issues with nVidia Soundstorm and the game. So if anyone is running the nVidia sound card (like me) that could be why. I know I am also getting the stuttering when saving or loading a new section.

*EDIT* I just saw on the page that it's multiple sound chips. I know there was something about a bug with nVidia soundstorm though.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 9:37 am

Yeah, it's supposed to be multiple sound cards, and it doesn't seem to be a sound issue (the audio burps are a side effect) because it also happens with the sound card disabled or removed.

I'm with the guy in that link above that it's a background texture loading issue. This game is pushing so many textures through the vid card it may be saturating the AGP bus occasionally. Eventually they'll figure it out and fix it in a game patch or a driver patch.

I'm using the -heapsize load option switch recommended in that page I posted. That in combination with defragging the partition is keeping the stutters to a manageable level.

Right click the game in the "Play Games" Steam window, click on "Launch options". Type the following if you have 1Gb of ram:

-heapsize 512000

use 206000 if you have 512Mb (basically you want to set this to half your system memory).

I get it in CS Source also, but it seems to go away after 5 minutes of play, then returns for 5 minutes after loading a new map.

nexus_7 · Post by **nexus_7** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 1:59 pm

i had a few audio studers but nothing that ruined the game.

Greg

TruckStuff · Post by **TruckStuff** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 11:32 pm

Well the thread on Steam forums is growing exponentially. There is a new post about every 5 minutes to it. Its looking more and more like its the sound engine in the game. We'll see what Valve has to say this week.

I read through some stuff, tweaked some settings and things have gotten MUCH better than they were. I still get stutters, but its less than half a second rather than 10 seconds or longer that it was before. I did all of these at once, so I'm not sure which one was the "magic buller." FWIW, here is what I've done:

+ Defrag
+ Set the heap size to half of physical memory (as FP suggested above)
+ also add -precache to the loader options
+ In the config.cfg file, set cl_forcepreload to 0
+ Set snd_duckerreleasetime to 2.5
+ Set snd_mixahead to 2.5 <-- this seams to do the trick for a lot of folks.

Hope this helps some of you. I know it helped me a bunch. Skips are minimal and Level load times are DRAMATICALLY decreased.

*EDIT*
Accoding to the site FP posted, a patch is coming soon. Texture loading seems to be an issue, although the tweaks to the sound system mentioned above also improvide performance. Hopefully patch will be out this week so we can all play happilly ever after.

I normally won't play FPS's twice, but I'll DEFINITELY be playing HL2 again. Its unbelievable...

grumpy 1 · Post by **grumpy 1** » Wed Nov 24, 2004 8:51 pm

not to mention a growing thread on hardocp forums about the stuttering
Ive got it myself and it is bloody terrible
how the hell valve let it ship like that is beyond me
The game seems unfinished to me
The graphics are ordinary
ok
the ai is not as good as the original game mostly they just stand there and take fire
hard to see where 5 years development went
Its a enjoyable game but certainly not what i was excpecting
once you get past the physics engine and the hype its really very ordinary
cheers

tunis5000 · Post by **tunis5000** » Wed Nov 24, 2004 9:43 pm

I guess the patch just came out and it's pretty small you might not even notice it. I'm at work so I'll try it tomorrow but the stuttering isn't that bad anyway, mostly when it saves or loads something new and lasts a second or so but it would be nice to be rid of it completely...

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 12:38 am

Patch seems to have helped. I'm very rarely getting the stutter now. Seems to only happen during a large hard drive access (loading tectures I assume) or when it auto saves.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 1:12 pm

Steam News offers an update on the Half-Life 2 stuttering bug, as well as promised of the release of the Half-Life 2 SDK and a "surprise" soon:

The changes in this release are directed at reducing the problem some users are experiencing with sound stuttering. The sound stuttering is not indicative of a sound problem, sound stuttering is only a symptom of texture thrashing on your video card or AGP memory. For information on how to reduce texture thrashing visit this link on our support site:

http://steampowered.custhelp.com/cgi-bi ... _faqid=280

This update will fix sound stuttering that users were experiencing that would last for longer than a few seconds during normal gameplay. This update will also eliminate this same behavior following a quicksave or autosave. There will still be a short pause while the autosave happens, but not the more drawn out stuttering behavior.

We are still investigating another performance problem on some hardware, which will manifest where the game is getting into a state where performance drops to less than 5 fps and does not recover or crashes.

Next week we will be releasing the Source SDK, along with a surprise for the community.