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Neverwinter Nights seriesNWN 1.69 distorted/lagging/crackling sound(5 posts)(5 posts)
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Posted January 30, 2018
During scenes in NWN1 that are more busy than "a single person in an empty room" the sound tends to skip, lag behind the game, and distort heavily. I have tried all of the sound setups available in the audio settings menu to no avail. Does it just not like my computer? I'm not using a fancy sound card. Just plain Realtek onboard audio.
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Posted January 31, 2018
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letmetrythisname: During scenes in NWN1 that are more busy than "a single person in an empty room" the sound tends to skip, lag behind the game, and distort heavily. I have tried all of the sound setups available in the audio settings menu to no avail. Does it just not like my computer? I'm not using a fancy sound card. Just plain Realtek onboard audio.
The game might be having trouble with your multicore CPU, try this:

Dual-core or multi-core processors

NWN was not meant to run with more than one core. If you have a multi-core system, you can set the game to run on only one core.
Open Task Manager with NWN open, rightclick nwmain.exe, Set Affinity on one core. If it gives you an error, click the button "Show Processes from All Users" at the bottom. You can experiment to see which core gives you the best performance.
To avoid having to do this every time you play the game, open nwnplayer.ini in the main NWN folder. Locate Client CPU Affinity and change the value to 1 (or whatever other core you determined gave you the best performance in the first step).
If you have a problem with a stuttering audio when playing video cut-scenes, it can be cured with setting your "CPU affinity" to "All cores". To do so, you'll have to set the nwnplayer.ini setting for Client CPU Affinity to -2
That's a direct quote from https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Neverwinter_Nights#Dual-core_or_multi-core_processors
Setting Client CPU Affinity to -2 works best for me but your mileage may vary.
Post edited January 31, 2018 by user deleted
Posted January 31, 2018
avatar
letmetrythisname: During scenes in NWN1 that are more busy than "a single person in an empty room" the sound tends to skip, lag behind the game, and distort heavily. I have tried all of the sound setups available in the audio settings menu to no avail. Does it just not like my computer? I'm not using a fancy sound card. Just plain Realtek onboard audio.
avatar
Crank9000: The game might be having trouble with your multicore CPU, try this:

Dual-core or multi-core processors

NWN was not meant to run with more than one core. If you have a multi-core system, you can set the game to run on only one core.
Open Task Manager with NWN open, rightclick nwmain.exe, Set Affinity on one core. If it gives you an error, click the button "Show Processes from All Users" at the bottom. You can experiment to see which core gives you the best performance.
To avoid having to do this every time you play the game, open nwnplayer.ini in the main NWN folder. Locate Client CPU Affinity and change the value to 1 (or whatever other core you determined gave you the best performance in the first step).
If you have a problem with a stuttering audio when playing video cut-scenes, it can be cured with setting your "CPU affinity" to "All cores". To do so, you'll have to set the nwnplayer.ini setting for Client CPU Affinity to -2
avatar
Crank9000: That's a direct quote from https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Neverwinter_Nights#Dual-core_or_multi-core_processors
Setting Client CPU Affinity to -2 works best for me but your mileage may vary.
That does the opposite of what you suggest and is as pointless as a rain dance, for influencing the weather.

By default NWN runs with Affinity on 0. That means it is locked on core 0, so effectively behaving more like a single core CPU that NWN was written for.

Setting it to a negative number, disables this feature, so the game floats from core to core. There is no benefit to this, and if anything this is more likely to be disruptive, than just having it locked on one core.
Posted January 31, 2018
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letmetrythisname: During scenes in NWN1 that are more busy than "a single person in an empty room" the sound tends to skip, lag behind the game, and distort heavily. I have tried all of the sound setups available in the audio settings menu to no avail. Does it just not like my computer? I'm not using a fancy sound card. Just plain Realtek onboard audio.
What is the computer? What is the CPU, what is the OS? Could your computer be so slow that it can't handle action and sound?

I have Realtek Onboard Audio, and it works fine here.

On NWN I leave the advanced sound set for "Miles Fast 2d". IIRC this is the lowest overhead option, but you can experiment.

NWN does't talk directly to your audio device. Whatever you configure in Windows, is what should be used. For instance, I just plugged in a USB headset, and switched to that. USB Audio, doesn't use the chipset on the motherboard, and as soon as I switched device to that, NWN audio worked fine with that. If all else fails you could try a USB headset or USB sound device.

I would check your device properties (see attached), and make sure level isn't too high (overdrive), and on the enhancement tab, click "Disable all enhancements". These will only introduce more issue, and finally on the "advanced tab", switch between CD (44.1 KHz) and DVD (48KHz) sound and click the test button for both. Some chipsets work better with 44.1 others with 48KHz, but really it should work on both. Hit the test button, make sure it sounds nice and clean. It might be worth a shot changing to 48KHz if this was originally on 44.1 (or vice versa). Hit "Apply".
Attachments:
device.png (88 Kb)
Posted January 31, 2018
avatar
Crank9000: The game might be having trouble with your multicore CPU, try this:

That's a direct quote from https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Neverwinter_Nights#Dual-core_or_multi-core_processors
Setting Client CPU Affinity to -2 works best for me but your mileage may vary.
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PeterScott: That does the opposite of what you suggest and is as pointless as a rain dance, for influencing the weather.

By default NWN runs with Affinity on 0. That means it is locked on core 0, so effectively behaving more like a single core CPU that NWN was written for.

Setting it to a negative number, disables this feature, so the game floats from core to core. There is no benefit to this, and if anything this is more likely to be disruptive, than just having it locked on one core.
I get audio issues just like letmetrythisname is describing unless I set it to -2, so there sure is benefit for me.
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Neverwinter Nights seriesNWN 1.69 distorted/lagging/crackling sound(5 posts)(5 posts)
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