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Aziere

Member

Registered: 2007-03-16

Posts: 23

Intel hda, sound stutters in games.

I have yet another problem. Whenever I play games, the sound stutters very badly. I'm using alsa and pretty much everything else works. No problems in mplayer/vlc. Just in games.

My guess is that heavy load causes the problem. I have no clue how to fix it though. Been searching around on forums for a while, but haven't found any solution.

Maybe worth mentioning that the games run just fine. No choppiness at all or other problems.

Last edited by Aziere (2007-03-30 12:12:22)

test1000

Member

Registered: 2005-04-03

Posts: 834

Re: Intel hda, sound stutters in games.

weird. xmms sometimes stutter(actually stops) for me but that's about it. but i'm not using kernel26 i'm using the -ck kernel which is supposed to be better with these things.

i have an ac97 onboard audio. what sound(-solution) do you have?

it *could* be that your running esd and arts in the background though which _might_ make the sound stutter.

disable esd in a startup manager/script/dir like 'esdctl off' and remove arts.

OT: Is gnome 2.18 compiled now without esd or is it possible to compile gnome without it now?

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KISS = "It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience." - Albert Einstein

e_tank

Member

Registered: 2006-12-21

Posts: 80

Re: Intel hda, sound stutters in games.

if the problem is not what test1000 suggested (you may be running arts or esd), post a list of some of the games that are giving you problems, and maybe one or two that don't if any.

Aziere

Member

Registered: 2007-03-16

Posts: 23

Re: Intel hda, sound stutters in games.

I'm not running arts or esd.

So far I have only tried Savage and Pogo Sticker, and both have had the exact same stuttering.
Will try out some more games later probably.

As for my sound, it's built-in on my GA-965P-DS3 motherboard, running through ICH8.
Playing through analog ports if that matters any. All others including input are muted.

And in case anyone wonders, I'm using kernel26 in current, latest available. Alsa and all other packages are up to date as well. And as for my desktop, I use xfce4.

Aziere

Member

Registered: 2007-03-16

Posts: 23

Re: Intel hda, sound stutters in games.

Tried some games, as it might give insight.

Abuse had horrible horribe distortion. I don't know if it's the game or my system.
Neverball had no stuttering, but it had slight distortion when changing levels. Aside from that it was fine.
Wesnoth worked perfectly fine.
Nexuiz (SDL) had awful stuttering. Nexuiz (GLX) worked perfect.

Seems to me that the problem is SDL related. Anyone got any ideas on what to do then?

e_tank

Member

Registered: 2006-12-21

Posts: 80

Re: Intel hda, sound stutters in games.

check out this thread, try experimenting with the SDL_AUDIODRIVER environment variable

Aziere

Member

Registered: 2007-03-16

Posts: 23

Re: Intel hda, sound stutters in games.

e_tank: Thanks. export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa works good. Although not 100% good, it's now possible to play without getting headaches.

I wonder though, wouldn't a small comment about SDL_AUDIODRIVER be suitable upon installation from pacman? Or is this just not that wide of a problem?

Anyways. Thank you.

Aziere

Member

Registered: 2007-03-16

Posts: 23

Re: Intel hda, sound stutters in games.

That solution only helped in some games though (should've have checked them all). I'm still having problems in games that have fmod and ogg as soundfiles. I don't know if it's either fmod or ogg that is the problem, but one of them seems to be. Any solution?

This problem is related to Savage and PogoSticker btw.

test1000

Member

Registered: 2005-04-03

Posts: 834

Re: Intel hda, sound stutters in games.

tried deleting your asound.conf or adopting/making a custom one, perhaps with a bigger sound buffer? (i hope this isn't the "solution" and i have no knowledge about asound.conf...)

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KISS = "It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience." - Albert Einstein

Aziere

Member

Registered: 2007-03-16

Posts: 23

Re: Intel hda, sound stutters in games.

I got no asound.conf. And sadly I don't know anything about setting one up.

test1000

Member

Registered: 2005-04-03

Posts: 834

Re: Intel hda, sound stutters in games.

then try the -ck kernel

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KISS = "It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience." - Albert Einstein