Distorted sound in NieR: Automata after several hours of gameplay (524220)

[rkfg]

Compatibility Report

• Name of the game with compatibility issues: NieR: Automata
• Steam AppID of the game: 524220

System Information

• GPU: GTX 1070
• Driver/LLVM version: nvidia 410.57
• Kernel version: 4.18.8
• Link to full system information report as Gist: https://gist.github.com/rkfg/b1bbede62bf81935eb3819037bd12bb0
• Proton version: 3.7-7 Beta

I confirm:

• [x] that I haven't found an existing compatibility report for this game.
• [x] that I have checked whether there are updates for my system available.

Symptoms

Sound starts to stutter and echo after a couple of hours. The echo is extremely low-res, distorted and clipped, more like noise but it certainly reflects the sound the game produces. It can be fixed by restarting the game. PulseAudio version is 12.2. I don't have such issues in other games, including the Proton ones like DOOM, GTA V with no sound problems. However, this is the only Proton game that I played on the TV in Big Picture via HDMI so the sound driver is not Realtek but NVIDIA HDMI. I played a lot of other native games on TV without issues (for many hours in a single session) so it must be something with Proton or the game itself.

Reproduction

Play the game for several hours (like 3-4), for unknown reason the sound becomes distorted at some point. I didn't notice, maybe it happens after entering and exiting the main menu that contains map, inventory, intel, settings etc. Nothing can fix it after that, except restarting the game.

[N00byKing]

Originally thought that this was an Issue on my end, seems not to be the case. Can confirm Sound Distortion using pulseaudio 12.2, Steelseries Arctis 5 Headset connected by USB

[s3rg3]

i don't think it's a proton specific issue, i have the same sound issue after one hour or so with tropico 4 and also with murdered: soul suspect, and i also have it with the gog version of shadow warrior 2 which i run with normal latest wine from lutris.

it look like to be also the same sound issue with other games but it start at launch in snake pass and the turing test, installing xact with winetricks resolve the issue for these last two.

[simonvanderveldt]

For reference, similar to @s3rg3 I'm experiencing the same symptoms when playing Heroes of the Storm using wine-staging (3.14 is the last one I tested), happens after something like 3+ hours. So I guess this is a wine issue. Maybe we can identify if there's a common audio API/toolkit being used for these games?

[omicron-b]

Proton 3.16-5 Beta resolved the same issue in Prey (2017) for me. Relevant changelog , also Proton 3.16-6 Beta has further improvements.

[raceimaztion]

I'm having this problem on NieR: Automata under Ubuntu 18.04, PulseAudio version 11.1.

In my case, I think it's happening when another program tries to use the audio system. I'd left a DVD paused in the background and fumbled looking for the volume control keys on the keyboard as I was playing N:A, and this audio glitch happened immediately upon VLC (the program I was playing the DVD through) starting to play audio.

It happened in my next session when I paused N:A and did a bit of web browsing with Google Chrome (as it plays sounds when you interact with certain aspects of pages).

I'm not certain which version of Proton I'm currently using, however, as I can't find the option that used to exist for choosing which version to use.