If after trying the below, you are still experiencing issues, please fill out this very short survey / template with your system specs to help me track down the issue!
I BELIEVE THIS HAS BEEN FIXED IN V1.3 BUT PLEASE LET ME KNOW YOUR EXPERIENCE.
There appears to be a "perfect storm" combination of things -- FO4 engine weirdness, hardware configurations, application priority -- that lead to audio stuttering for some people. This mod does use a lot of additional audio, but not a crazy amount, so this has been a "ghost in the machine". Something about the FO4 engine goes crazy and starts causing CPU spikes, which I cannot reproduce.
For many, simply using the LITE version fixes it. For others, seemingly nothing would fix it. However, a few things recently came to light, that when combined all together seem to do the trick.
If you are experiencing audio stuttering, please try the following first:
- Make sure you are running the Fallout 4 official 1.2 patch that was released on Dec 7th
- Download and install True Storms v1.3 (or above) LITE
- Make sure your audio device is set to 16-bit / 48khz:
Windows 7 / 8 / 10:
-Open Sound in the Control Panel, or right-click the speaker in the task bar and select playback devices.
-Right click your main audio output device is (should say default device) and select properties
-Click the advanced tab and you should see the sample rate being used. Set it to 16-bit / 48khz. - Run the game, use the console and enter fw 1CA7E4 to force a rainstorm. Do some crafting, get in some gunfights, see if the stutter occurs after 15-20 minutes. If not, congrats, you're done! This fixes the issue for the majority of cases.
If you continue to have audio stuttering after performing the above:
Fallout 4 puts a lot of priority onto the CPU, and it may be that during low periods of activity in the game (crafting, other menus) that the CPU goes into a low-power mode and when it comes back is not in lock-step with the engine. Users have reported that giving Fallout 4 high CPU priority has completely fixed this issue as well, enough that they don't even need to use the LITE version any more.
You can use the Fallout 4 Configuration Tool by Bilago to set your CPU priority to high, or you can Google how to do it for your version of Windows.
Please let me know how your experience goes. With mods like this that do so much while the game is so new, and being patched by developers is bound to bring to the surface certain oddities and problems, but hopefully this fixes it for you!
If after trying the above, you are still experiencing issues, please fill out this very short survey / template with your system specs to help me track down the issue!
44 comments
I left my game in "audio stutter" mode for like 10 minutes, and closing the game took forever.
I then left my game in audio stutter for only a minute or two, and my game took longer to close, but closed eventually and much quicker then the first time.
Now what's interesting is I had similar experience with Skyrim at one point where I was in a certain dwemer ruin and this sound kept multiplying endlessly until my system just couldn't take it anymore. Can't recall the sound mod atm that did it. So I think there's a critical point when things come together that this happens with engine + mod.
Anyhow I'll check the light version out and I hope for a solution I really like this mod as in Skyrim.
I think it's possible that some looping sounds aren't recognized as looping, and get re-started over and over again, to the point where there are probably hundreds of them initialized and playing, which explains the white noise, etc.
Skyrim had TONS of audio problems when it was released, for most people setting their cards to 16-bit 44.1 usually fixed it.
16-bit 44100 Hz is as high as I can set on headset. On speakers it's set to 24-bit 48000 Hz.
Logitech G35 7.1 surround, with no 16/48 option, highest is 16/44.1
Are you sure THAT isn't the problem? the 48k?
I ended up just getting a stuttering sound during a rainstorm while in BUILD mode and also repairing some power armor.
All sounds went away after that except for the stuttering
Exiting the game didn't work it let me use the menu option and pick "To Dekstop" but it stayed on the screen, and I had to CTRL ALT DEL and stop the process as it must've been stuck in an audio loop.
I hope this gets fixed, because I love just walking under a roof and listening to the rain
In troubleshooting it I have noticed that the stuttering happens for me only in settlements. Several times I have had an issue where the interior rain sound persists in the settlement. This happened both in Red Rocket and Hangman's Alley. Even though it stopped raining, within the settlement the sound persisted. Leaving the area (bright sunny day) and the sound faded away, but if I got close to either or went back in you could hear the rain sound still. Even on the main street to Diamond City going inside a building near Hangman's Alley you could hear the sound of interior rain.
The audio stutter definitely seems to be a buffer issue. I got to the point where I quick traveled to a different location and the repeating sounds continued. Even when I quit to the main menu the stuttering persisted and after 30 seconds on the main screen I heard the sound of a weapon I had drawn almost a minute earlier.
Quick save / load tends to CTD for some reason when I have tried it.
Setting priority to "high" is generally not recommended. Setting to "above normal" is going to put the process priority above almost everything else running, even most windows services. Setting to "high" will make the game compete with important and critical processes, and could even result in worse performance from competition with background tasks such as when the game asks windows to load files from disk. It's not going to break anything (but setting the game to "real-time" would bring your computer to a stall and force a reboot in most cases, so don't do that, since that's for the reaaaally critical things), but it is potentially less effective than using "above normal."
You are very likely to read on many websites and from many people that setting to high is the way to go, but that is a very common misconception. Above normal is better. Probably more common than the misconception that the distance from the sun causes the seasons, when it's actually the tilt of the earth.
Adjusting the processor scheduling to favor best performance of programs versus background services is a useful thing, but I believe that is by default. It's different on every version of windows how to do it, so that's something to google. As well as turning off un-necessary windows services (or ones installed by other apps).
https://bitsum.com/parkcontrol/