Audio crackling after new patch

[Cyan]

The game was fine just hours ago but after updating the game the audio crackles even after trying the fix in the FAQ.

[River Running Games]

Oh no, I hope I can help figure this out! I'm not sure what would be causing that. Just to test, would you be able to switch to the "legacy" branch and have a quick check whether it crackles there, too? To do this, please right-click Crystal Project in your library, then click Properties, then choose "Betas" on the left, and pick "legacy - The previous build that was still 32 bit (version 1.1.1)" from the dropdown.

Also, is it just music, just sound effects, or both?

Thank you!

[Cyan]

Audio is fine on the legacy build.

It is both music and sound effects.

Thanks for the help I appreciate it.

[Cyan]

Switched back to latest build and crackling is back, just for info.

[River Running Games]

Thank you for the info!

Would you be able to try the solution in the FAQ, but paste the following into "system.ini" instead?

[System]
AudioEffectProvider=NAudio
AudioMusicProvider=NAudio
NAudioWavePlayerType=WaveOutEvent
NAudioEffectLatency=500
NAudioMusicLatency=500

I'm not sure what's happening, but, Crystal Project has two engines/frameworks to choose from for playing audio: FNA or NAudio. Since the legacy version, I have updated the FNA framework, and this is the default, so there may have been some changes which affected the audio for you. On the other hand NAudio has not changed. The FAQ solution causes it to use NAudio instead of FNA, and since it hasn't changed, this seems like a good idea, but you said it is still cracking. So, the above settings will make the latency 500ms which is way too high (all the audio will be very delayed) but sometimes having a latency that is too low causes crackling.

In other words, this is mainly for troubleshooting. If the above settings work, then the solution will be to lower the latency as much as possible while making sure that the crackling does not return. If the above settings do not work, then it is likely something else (however, please make sure that the above settings at least cause the sound effects to be delayed so that we may confirm that it is applying the settings properly).

Thank you for trying this and thank you for your patience!

[Cyan]

Just tried the new ini settings still crackling.

[Cyan]

I found out whats causing it, I'm using an audio interface a MOTU M2 to be exact and going through my MB audio has fixed the problem.

You wouldn't happen to be able to think of a fix for this? as its kind of a hassle to switch between them.

Just wanted to say again that it was working fine last update I did nothing between these updates to cause anything.

[durangokemre]

I am having the same problem, I'm running the Linux version, Switching to beta fixed the audio problem (but I can't continue my game)

[durangokemre]

adding

SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa %command%

to the command options in steam fixed it for me.

[River Running Games]

Originally posted by durangokemre:

adding

SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa %command%

to the command options in steam fixed it for me.

Thank you for letting me know! I didn't think to suggest this. Cyan, could you please let me know whether this also helps for you? If so, I'll add it to the FAQ.

[Shin-no-Ken]

New player here running the demo version (Lots of fun so far, will probably buy!) and just thought I'd contribute my experiences to help with bug-tracking.

I noticed a lot of audio clicking immediately, and judging by information I see here I'm probably right to assume the cause in my case is the virtual audio interface program Voicemeeter, which I use for its various audio mixing applications-- Since this is software, it introduces some inherent additional audio latency (in the realm of a few ms) in the process. Voicemeeter already has known audio conflicts with Discord and so it wouldn't be a stretch to think it has audio conflicts with some other things too.

My first discovery upon trying to research the audio clicking in this case was this discussion, so naturally I first tried the most readily-available solution here, the command option. On Windows, this option simply causes the game to exit on launch with the error "Windows cannot find 'SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa'. Make sure you typed the command correctly and then try again." This is likely expected since the solution was found/proposed by a Linux user and is probably inherent to Linux environments. (And yes, I included the " %command%" in the command line, Windows seems to have ignored that portion.)

Afterwards, I removed the command option and found my way over to the FAQ to try the system.ini fix there, which worked perfectly. I presume, however, that if my PC were lower-spec, I may also need to increase the latency as described here.

So it seems to me that whatever changes were made to FNA are not very compatible with third-party audio interfaces such as the OP's case or Voicemeeter. Would definitely recommend, if nothing else, to add an audio engine toggle in the game's settings if possible to avoid making new players dig through FAQ's or (if less dedicated) passing on the game entirely.

[Dragnoran]

if it helps my audio was crackling a bit yesterday only after game started lagging while laptop was unplugged, so the latency issue seems to track

[River Running Games]

Originally posted by Shin-no-Ken:

Would definitely recommend, if nothing else, to add an audio engine toggle in the game's settings if possible to avoid making new players dig through FAQ's or (if less dedicated) passing on the game entirely.

This is a great point. The options editable by the system.ini were implemented to help troubleshoot very niche scenarios without needing to push updates, but this specific thing has come up a lot and it would make a ton of sense to build it into the options screen.