Hi all, I recently started my first ever playthrough of The Witcher 2 (though I've owned it for five years now) and I'm enjoying it a LOT, but I've noticed a majorly annoying issue. Any time there's a cutscene, I'll get random crackling for a few seconds before it fades away and then comes back.

I tried searching for a solution online but only found two suggestions:

1) Reboot (of course)
2) Lower your sound quality in the sound settings (though nobody said what I should lower it to)

Neither suggestion fixed the issue, sadly.

So I'm wondering: if anyone has any solution to this issue, I'd really love to try it because in a game where cutscenes are so heavy and important, dealing this nuisance is preventing the game from being as enjoyable as I know it will be.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Hi, thanks for the response. My issue is only with the audio, the visual side of things is flawless. Everything (minus ubersampling, haven't tried it) runs at max at a steady 60 FPS.

If you have your speakers set to 5:1, try setting them to stereo 2:1

Hi, thanks for the response. How/where would I change that? I use headphones so I'm not sure how I'd tweak such a setting as I haven't really ever needed to in the past.

Depending on your motherboard, you will have something like Realtek HD Audio Manager.
The pic is what the Realtek one looks like.
Just set it to headphones.
I know Witcher 2 used to have problems with 5:1 surround sound.

Hmm I can't seem to enable or disable surround speakers and I'm not sure how to get that pop-up. I may have an outdated version of the audio manager, I'll see if I can find a new version.

EDIT: I don't think it's outdated, the site says the latest version was released in 2017 and I built this PC just a couple months ago (after which I made sure to run Windows Update until I couldn't run it anymore).

There is a little green circle down the bottom (depending on whether your headphones are plugged into the front or rear jack.) click on the green button to bring up the headphones option.

I messed around with it and so far, I haven't heard any crackling. If this was the fix, I'll come back and mark the solution. I appreciate the help!

EDIT: Okay, it definitely is less often and less severe but it's still there, sadly. It only seems to happen in outside areas. I was in a tavern and it didn't happen at all.