It's not a lag spike, just Direct Sound that makes your experience horrible

I know this is a sort of on ass title, but I wanted to gather as much attention as possible, in the least amount of time. I also know I shouldn't post it here, but the technical forum looks like pre-searing catacombs: it feels so lonely in there that your posts produce an echo.

I have met dozens of people (roughly more than 60) complaining about Direct Sound music free pack for SF is causing then frequent freezes and lock-ups. Misinformation made them look like lag spikes (somehow, since this is a new and crowded area, people would expect some bandwith management issue), but they aren't. I do have those issues as well, and I checked my ping - no lag whatsoever, but often, once a new song starts, Guild Wars freezes for 4-5 seconds, sometimes even more.

My Pc is an Athlon 64 3200, i've got 2 gigs of ram, an ati x850 pro, so definitely I wouldn't blame the hardware. Never had crashes, freezes or lockups in 3 months with GW.


To the mods: could you please not move my post immediately? I know this doesn't exactly belong to Riverside Inn, but people won't even look at the Technical Forum if they think (and 99% of them do) that those issues are caused by lag spikes.

Thanks

Your DAMN right!!!!!

I have an Alienware with no expense spared..
when I got to the new area's last night I was getting TERRIBLE locking up... nearly cost us on several occasions..

The only thing I can put this down to is direct song!... I'm going to turn it off.. I dont care how nice the music is... I wont be a nice person to DirectSong if they get me killed in game and make my experience unplayable..

and I should imagine A-net wont be too happy that this is wrecking their game so much.

Im not going to be hasty though... it is still possibly something on my machine that us causing it.. but now that I see other people are having the problem... hmmmm

That's exactly what I'm talking about, but like you, I'd rather find a way to fix this issue rather than uninstalling the Directsound Miniupdate and delete the tracks. The new music isn't bad at all.

Probably contention for net access. I've not noticed any lag yet, but then I've not been to the new areas and so not heard the music in-game, but I HAVE noticed directsong keeps accessing the net for some reason (probably the goddamn drm) and one would expect that to cause 'stuttering' in the game when it happens.

OK... I have tested it...

its definatly DIRECTSONG.... everytime a NEW song starts it locks up completly, freezes for about 7 seconds!!!!

should post something on technical really

I have both the free pack, and the $6 one and have not had any probelms. My guild mates don't seem to be having any issues either, most of them only have the free pack. We played till 2am last night, completed the first 20K XP quest with not a single issue like that.

My sepcs:

Athlon XP 2500+ M @ 3200+
1gig DDR400
6800gt

I put the music in my guild wars folder too, I also put the origional exe file that downloads into the direct song folder. I don't know if that has anything to do with it. I also listened to both of them almost all the way through on WMP. I had to delete all my old licenses to get the direct song to work though.

Hell, I can't even listen to the new music. I get a nice sql error when trying to get the liscence. I can't convert it to mp3, can't audio grab it cause it wont play, I can't burn it either because nero suddenly cares about copy protection. Someone send me the damn mp3's so I can listen to this!

I have the exact same problem, installed the music and now whenever it changes song the game will pause for around 10 seconds, not great when you play as a healing monk.

When I get home I'll post how to delete all your licenses. Then you will be able to get it to play. You have to have the license for it to play, I think that may be your problem.

I have both free copy and $6 copy.
My specs ..
Pentium 4 3.0 Prescot
1.25 Gigs of DDR400
nVidia 5900
Highspeed Cable

played fine ... I did get what I thought was a lag/kick last night at the end of one of those Sorrows Quests ... but regular gameplay 'seemed' normal. I may not have been playing much attention between songs ... if this is the case ... wow ... I would be pissed if I were Anet.

Me too! I was in Grenath Footprint and when the new music start playing, my whole party lag for 4 or 6 second before we can attack anyone.

Likewise.

Though Direct Song being the culprit didn't even occur to me, as I had GW music set to 0 volume and was playing my own, custom, personally composed Sciros-kicks-arse-theme music, hahah

They need to integrate it better.

I may just nuke direct song and do this as well. Hmmz. I hope they look into it asap.

Yep, the problem IS DirectSong related... however i made a thread in the Technical Forum for it.

-> http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=57145

Maybe we all should just send in our report and let A.Net try to fix that problem

Yep, Add me to the list of people having problems with Direct Song. At the start of every new tune, 5-10 second freeze up. To top it off, I couldnt even find a way to remove it properly, and just had to wipe the folder... utter crap.

Not a single problem with directsong here, no lag whatsoever. Perhaps you have something else happening in the background that you haven't noticed.

Glad I didn't bother Downloading it now

I bet one gold item that the stuttering is caused by the DRM phoning home to check that your copy of the song is legit.

Sounds like a plausible explaination to me. Guess this is another reason to hate the DRM system being forced down our throats.

Well thank god that most popular mainstream "content" is junk anyway, so ignoring it is no real sacrifice (they actually should pay you for illegaly downloading and watching most of the movies ). I really am looking forward to the "intellectual property" that makes me install an spyware-virus on my computer for entertainment purposes only.