Alien Isolation Sound Glitch - Found the cause

[Mattee]

So this game seems to have some glitchy problems with its sound effects. I noticed this several times and each time it really broke immersion and annoyed me. The most common glitch though is the alien itself - when it kills you MOST of the time it doesn't make any sound. There is also another problem where sometimes Ripley will talk as the alien is stabbing her through the gut as if nothing is happening. Sometimes she will curse as well.

The problem here is the frame rate. For whatever reason when you exceed a certin number of frames the games sound will start glitching out and cause all these problems. I have a beefy pc so my frame rate uncapped hovers around 140 to 180 most of the way through the game. I have a 144hz monitor so I typically play with vsync turned off. In fact that is the reason I bought this monitor, so I could specifically play games without vsync and screen tearing.

After lots of testing and reinstallation I have found that by switching my monitor to 60hz mode and playing with vsync it completely fixes all these sound glitches. In fact the game becomes so much more atmospheric that it's almost impossible to even think that this couldn't have been caught during development or testing. Once I turned vsync off I got the sound glitches back again along with the horrible screen tearing.

So there you have it. If you have a monitor with a 120hz or 144hz refresh rate and you're experiencing these problems too then I recommend giving what I said a try and see if it helps. I guess all we can do at this point is wait for some kind of patch to fix this problem.

[MrGoat]

No way am I going back to 60hz. Once you go 144hz you can't go back. I am still waiting on a fix.

[fpsobsessed]

Hmm, I haven't noticed this but I just bought the game and am only 1 hr + into the game. I'm gaming on a ROG Swift and this game is godly on this monitor. Yup, no way I'm going back to 60 hz, either, especially with the smoothness and visual quality of gsync.

[Mattee]

Yeah look it's completely playable and not much of a big deal honestly. I just happened to notice it because I look for things like this in games. This is the problem and that is the cause so hopefully we will see a patch in the future.

[Rémi (offline)]

5 years later, bug still not patched

[E c h o]

i hate this too. Also when the sound doesn't sync when it does play the sound.

[Reaper]

2021, ya they aren't fixing it.

[Natra]

Hi, I found a Kind-of Fix. I go to Nvidia Control Panel for Alien: Isolation and set the Max FPS to 100 and most of the time the sound works perfectly then. Maybe 90 would work all the time but I would say 95% of the time the sound works with the 100 FPS. It's a good middle ground fix if 60 HZ and 60 FPS is too low for you but you still want the full sound effects of the game. Which I admit, are pretty important to me. Oh, and I don't need VSync for this to work. And the sound only sometimes glitches if I have the game open too long, but it's definitely mostly working with 100 FPS.

[Bazz]

Fix what? Why are people having problems? Sure the Alien doesn't make noise sometimes, but that was only when I edited the config to a higher FOV, in game FOV is fine.
I average 300FPS and everything is fine. Guess it's a coin toss

[Natra]

Originally posted by ✫ Bazz:

Fix what? Why are people having problems? Sure the Alien doesn't make noise sometimes, but that was only when I edited the config to a higher FOV, in game FOV is fine.
I average 300FPS and everything is fine. Guess it's a coin toss

Yah personally I didn't change FOV at all and still had the glitch. To me FPS was the main factor. once I set it to 100 max FPS the problem was fixed.

[MrGoat]

Hey I posted in this thread years ago. Yeah, 100 fps max fixed the issue for me. Crazy they never patched this and actually fixed the bug.

[Madcat]

Replaying this game lately but my GTX 1070 had some kind of power failure. It runs good until too high of a demand, so I framecap more often. Im extremely willing to go to 90-100 fps as long as my GPU remains stable until I finally get around to repairing it.

[Jake Wolf]

2023 and still no fix, it's crazy how games are designed with 60FPS in mind and going above that could cause all sorts of issue.

[Mattee]

Originally posted by Jake Wolf:

2023 and still no fix, it's crazy how games are designed with 60FPS in mind and going above that could cause all sorts of issue.

Yeah I made this thread nearly ten years ago and I'm surprised how every few years I get a notification about it lol

[Jake Wolf]

Originally posted by Mattee:

Originally posted by Jake Wolf:

2023 and still no fix, it's crazy how games are designed with 60FPS in mind and going above that could cause all sorts of issue.

Yeah I made this thread nearly ten years ago and I'm surprised how every few years I get a notification about it lol

For me the best medium is 84 FPS since any frame rate above 60 FPS somehow makes my guns stutter like crazy when I try to aim it Left/Right/Up/Down.

So far 84 & 120FPS are the only two frame rates that makes my gun aim smoothly, obviously 120 is the best but thanks to the sound bug (and other high FPS bugs) I have to go with 84

[Sk0ut]

Setting the max FPS to 99 in Nvidia control panel for Alien Isolation fixed the bug for me!