: It adjusts the number of samples in the SDL audio buffer. Higher means a
: larger buffer, which is (should be) able to buffer out drop-outs due to
: crappy audio hardware or CPU or I/O contention, at the cost of a larger
: delay between the game action that causes the sound, and your hearing it.
Ok, that's about what I figured.
: It used to be hard coded at (adjusted) 512 for Macs and 1024 for Windows
: (many Windows PCs have simply awful built-in sound hardware). I guess I
: need to continue to make the defaults platform specific. I would never
: have guessed that having the buffer too *large* would cause stuttering!
Yeah, that is really strange. Why would that be?
Also, I noticed something else rather odd recently, when I convinced a friend who'd never played Marathon of any sort to try Eternal (Alpha 4) on his Windows PC. I have no idea what his specs are but he plays fairly recent games on it so it can't be that bad. Anyway, the weirdness was that it seemed to lag for a very very long time at each load screen (like 5x longer than usual), but that's not the really odd bit: the music continued without stutter and yet without progression during that lag. That is, it seemed as though the guy playing the piano in the title track was just holding down the last key he had pressed; the sound continued, smoothly and continuously, but just on that one note. I've never heard anything like it in my life, for any kind of audio playback - usually it either plays smoothly, or stops or skips. Any idea what might be behind that?
