6 réponses à ce sujet

[fountaincap]

Well it seems this game really has a lot of issues related to sound! Though I'm not sure the issue I'm having is the same as all the others so I wanted to check with you guys.

My issue is that every couple of minutes or so, at the beginning of spoken dialogue, the game will pause for like half a second and the first word will be cut off. This usually occurs in dialogue when you select a reply for Shepard to speak. I've also had it happen when talking to companions while walking around.

For example, if you take the sentence, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" and apply my problem to it, the game would freeze for a split second and when it resumes you would hear "...-e quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

My framerates are fine. Overall performance is great. Temperatures on my CPU and GPU are normal. And even most of the dialogue is ok apart from the beginning of sentences. But, as you can imagine this is quite annoying and breaks immersion.

Here are my specs:

Asus G74SX laptop
Intel Core i7 2670QM
8GB RAM
2 x 500GB 7200RPM SATA HDD
GeForce GTX 560M 2GB
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Realtek HD audio

Mass Effect Steam version 1.02

I'm not doing overclocking of any kind and have not modded the game other than tweaking Bioengine.ini in order to fix this issue.
I'm using the latest video, audio and chipset drivers although I have tried several versions with no change.

Things I have already tried:
Fresh install of Windows
Different video and audio driver versions (I've done this ad nauseum, seriously)
Disabling CPU core parking
Disabling CPU throttling
Disabling Intel Turboboost
Disabling all background programs and services
Installing Intel Rapid Storage Technology application
XP SP3 compatibility mode
Defragging the game and hard drive
Verifying game files in Steam
Setting max pre-rendered frames to 0 in Nvidia control panel
I've also tried probably every iteration of the audio settings in the Bioengine.ini file.

So, I'm all out of ideas. I'm wondering if it's just an unfortunate case of incompatibility of newer hardware and a newer OS which the game wasn't designed for. That wouldn't bother me so much. What makes me nervous though is I think I have the same issue in Crysis. There, it seems to happen when the game tries to load certain sound effects. But it's the same half second pause. Hope there's nothing wrong with my laptop.

If any of you have an idea what's going on, please let me know. Sorry for the wall of text but I wanted to make clear that I've tried pretty much everything. Thanks in advance!

Modifié par fountaincap, 11 décembre 2011 - 01:22 .

[Moondoggie]

Try doing this

go to My Documents\\Bioware\\Mass Effect\\Config and open BIOEngine.ini with notepad. (or whatever this is in steam i don't know since i don;t use steam)

Find the section [ISACTAudio.ISACTAudioDevice]

It should look something like this:

[ISACTAudio.ISACTAudioDevice]
MaxChannels=64
TimeBetweenHWUpdates=15
MinOggVorbisDurationGame=20
MinOggVorbisDurationEditor=4
//DeviceName=Generic Software
DeviceName=Generic Software

Change it like this:

[ISACTAudio.ISACTAudioDevice]
MaxChannels=64
TotalAvailableChannels=62
TimeBetweenHWUpdates=15
MinOggVorbisDurationGame=20
MinOggVorbisDurationEditor=4
//DeviceName=Generic Software
DeviceName=Generic Software

..and save it.

So if you have something else than 64 in MaxChannels (especially if it is less than 64) change it to 64 and add the TotalAvailableChannels=62 -line in there.

Also make sure that you are NOT using hardware acceleration in audio.

It might help

Modifié par Moondoggie, 11 décembre 2011 - 01:26 .

[fountaincap]

Thanks for the reply. Sadly, I've tried that tweak already and it didn't change anything.

[Moondoggie]

Honestly i don't know what else to suggest i think you have covered pretty much everything i could suggest from fixes that have worked in the past. And if you are having the problem in another game too it suggests it's definitely hardware specific. Quite a few people have issues related to Realtek HD Audio cards and games did you try posting for help with Realtek? Perhaps they may have some more answers for you if nobody here can suggest anything else that may work.

[hugh750]

fountaincap wrote...

Well it seems this game really has a lot of issues related to sound! Though I'm not sure the issue I'm having is the same as all the others so I wanted to check with you guys.

My issue is that every couple of minutes or so, at the beginning of spoken dialogue, the game will pause for like half a second and the first word will be cut off. This usually occurs in dialogue when you select a reply for Shepard to speak. I've also had it happen when talking to companions while walking around.

For example, if you take the sentence, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" and apply my problem to it, the game would freeze for a split second and when it resumes you would hear "...-e quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

My framerates are fine. Overall performance is great. Temperatures on my CPU and GPU are normal. And even most of the dialogue is ok apart from the beginning of sentences. But, as you can imagine this is quite annoying and breaks immersion.

Here are my specs:

Asus G74SX laptop
Intel Core i7 2670QM
8GB RAM
2 x 500GB 7200RPM SATA HDD
GeForce GTX 560M 2GB
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Realtek HD audio

Mass Effect Steam version 1.02

I'm not doing overclocking of any kind and have not modded the game other than tweaking Bioengine.ini in order to fix this issue.
I'm using the latest video, audio and chipset drivers although I have tried several versions with no change.

Things I have already tried:
Fresh install of Windows
Different video and audio driver versions (I've done this ad nauseum, seriously)
Disabling CPU core parking
Disabling CPU throttling
Disabling Intel Turboboost
Disabling all background programs and services
Installing Intel Rapid Storage Technology application
XP SP3 compatibility mode
Defragging the game and hard drive
Verifying game files in Steam
Setting max pre-rendered frames to 0 in Nvidia control panel
I've also tried probably every iteration of the audio settings in the Bioengine.ini file.

So, I'm all out of ideas. I'm wondering if it's just an unfortunate case of incompatibility of newer hardware and a newer OS which the game wasn't designed for. That wouldn't bother me so much. What makes me nervous though is I think I have the same issue in Crysis. There, it seems to happen when the game tries to load certain sound effects. But it's the same half second pause. Hope there's nothing wrong with my laptop.

If any of you have an idea what's going on, please let me know. Sorry for the wall of text but I wanted to make clear that I've tried pretty much everything. Thanks in advance!

The only thing i can think of trying is updating your audio drivers.
i too have a realtek hd audio onboard sound and i'm not having any audio problems with mass effect.

[fountaincap]

I've nailed the problem. It's my hard drive. I copied the game over to an external USB flash drive and ran it from there. No more pausing (apart from the usual pausing to load maps and textures). But the question now is, what's wrong with my hard drive and what do I do about it?

I've defragged it and ran chkdsk. I've tried setting it to both IDE and AHCI mode in the BIOS. And I installed the chipset driver and Rapid Storage Technology driver from Intel. Perhaps I didn't install them correctly? For the chipset I added the "-overall" switch and for IRST I just ran the executable. Any ideas?

[fountaincap]

In case anyone runs into the same problem in the future, check if your hard drive has an advanced power management feature. I'm not talking about the one in Windows. Apparently it's built into the drive itself and must be turned off after each boot using a utility such as CrystalDiskInfo. This is what's causing the drive to constantly spin down and spin up during gameplay, resulting in pauses/freezes.