Sound Buffer Underruns Suspect Unity Project Issue

[doubledgedboard]

As many others have reported, sound stuttering continues to be an issue with this game.

When I first bought it I never had this problem, now, a couple years later, I'm trying to go back and pick it up again and finding that I cannot play it due to this pervasive issue.

Having dealt with recording, sound buffers, ASIO, latency, DPC latency, core utilization and resource overloading issues in the past, I immediately recognized this sound as a 'buffer \ latency' glitch sound.

Doing research, it seems that Unity may have changed project setting defaults from version 4 to version 5. I know Cities has been upgraded to a newer version of Unity at least once since I've bought it.

Unity supposedly has settings related to latency and buffer size, and the ability to specify preferring latency vs performance.

I am fairly confident, based on my experience and that of many others, that the Cities game itself is configured in Unity with too aggressive of sound buffer \ latency settings, causing buffer underrun and the associated sound glitching.

I believe this can be resolved by tweaking the settings in Unity and causing the game to favor performance over latency, and to possibly increase the depth of the sound buffer.

Note that I have ZERO resource exhaustion when this issue occurs... NO MODS INSTALLED... and an extremely over-powered system (see below). I can literally alt-tab the game and the buffer underruns still noticeably occur in the ambient wind sound over time.

6core/12thread 3.2ghz intel i7
32gb ram
gtx 1080 fe 8gb
ssd space free
windows 10 anniversary (enterprise) + latest patches
latest gtx drivers
realtek audio, latest drivers

I've tried using digital and analogue outputs, 16bit 44.1 / 24bit 44, and all permutations within, no change.

Please advise. This is a devastating issue and I can offer as much assistance as needed so we can resolve this together.

 

[MarkJohnson]

How does it play with both --noWorkshop --disableMods launch options?

I only get this issue with a lot of workshop and only during loading and exiting and no other time.

I even went from an i7 quad to an i7 6-core system and no difference. Except the 6-core was running 40% CPU while the quad was pegged at 100%.

How big is your city? i.e. number of tiles unlocked and population?

How many agents are running around your city? Use CSL Show More limits mod for Active Vehicles and Citizen Instances.

 

[doubledgedboard]

I'll try with the additional launch options and let you know, but this is occurring already with NO MODS and on a brand new empty map, even while alt tabbed. Confirmed no resource exhaustion, as previously stated...

 

[ColdSpiral]

Thanks for offering some expertise on this issue, doubledgedboard.
I've just started playing C:S after a long break and can confirm that it's an issue that I didn't experience at launch, that it occurs on a new, empty map, and that it's incredibly annoying and makes me glad that I didn't pick up the radio DLCs, as I have to turn the game music off entirely. Even then it's present in the ambient noises.
If it's as easy a fix as you suggest I sincerely hope that the devs can make some progress on this.

 

[MaZsika2018]

After years, most CS players are experiencing the same: sound is shuttering.

 

[MarkJohnson]

Most? Only 2 types of users seem to have this issues.

1: Systems with dated sound cards.

2: Users with workshop.

 

[akeela84]

Most people are not listening to the game music as it gets repeating.

 

[38balancedAction]

Most people are not listening to the game music as it gets repeating.

1) that's not a safe assumption
2) if it is a feature of the game it should work properly whether you think it is important or not
3) Paradox obviously cares about the radio feature because they put out special tracks for the holiday season on the in-game radio