Stop Choppy Audio

Get rid of choppy audio! Improve performance. Now with adaptive filtering!

Does your audio glitch in your bases or Ashlands from all the sounds coming from the environment or your crafting, lights, tames and other sound effects?

Stop Choppy Audio allows you to restrict sound effects based on their distance from you. All those sound effects takes resources and reduce performance even if you can't hear them because they're too far away.

You can configure Stop Choppy Audio to stop those sounds from playing until you're closer to them.

New

• Added Smart Filtering

Automatically detects when Valheim’s audio engine is saturated and dynamically adjusts at what distance sounds play.

When Unity starts “virtualizing” sounds (meaning it has run out of real audio channels), SCA block distant sounds to prevent stutter and cut‑outs.

• No tuning required
• Reacts to real engine load
• Keeps nearby sounds clear and immersive
• Best option for most players.

Configuration

General

Filter Type: Controls how sounds are filtered. SmartFiltering automatically adjusts 'playable' sound distance. BaseDetection provides legacy functionality.

Max Player Distance: How close a player must be to a sound source for it to play. Modified automatically by Smart Filtering (but never less)

Min Base Value: The minimum 'value' of a nearby base to start restricting sound effects (BaseDetection only). Setting to 0 will always filter sounds beyond Max Player Distance.

Smart Range: The maximum additional distance for Smart Filtering to include sounds to play. Actual distance depends on audio load.

Utility

LogLevel: Controls the level of information contained in the log

Notes

• Use of SmartFiltering is recommended. It works everywhere you're at, automatically. This version will set SmartFiltering as the default.
  • SCA will test to see if sound effects are 'virtual', meaning they exist but are not sent to your audio hardware to play.
  • This is an indicator that Valheim has exceeded the number of "voices" Unity can handle at one time.
  • SCA will then begin to stop distant (adaptively) sounds from ever playing and Unity won't waste resources virtualizing them or waste hardware voices on them.
  • Smart Range is not linear. The maximum distance for sounds drops off exponentially as audio load increases.
• For BaseDetection, your base value is calculated from the number of player placed pieces within 20 meters of you.

Examples

SmartFiltering

• Audio is not being virtualized (i.e. there are available hardware audio channels):
  • Sounds play regardless of settings or distance from player.
• Audio is being virtualized:
  • Max Player Distance = 10; Smart Range = 50: Sounds play if player is within 10 meters or up to 60 (10 + 50) meters depending on audio load.

BaseDetection

• Max Player Distance = 10; Min Base Value = 100: Sounds play if player is within 10 meters and near a base with a value of >= 100, but all sounds play if outside a base.
• Max Player Distance = 15; Min Base Value = 0: Sounds play if player is within 15 meters, everywhere.

In-game reconfiguration

You can use Configuration Manager (or similar) mod to change the configuration without exiting the game. You can force a configuration update by modifying the config file.

Compatibility issues & defects

• If you find a compatibility issue you can post it on NexusMods. Be sure to include the mod name and version you think may be incompatible.
• If you have a bug please report it on NexusMods. If you do post a bug report, please make sure to include the following:
  • What you were doing, or attempting to do when it happened
  • If it's repeatable - i.e., can you duplicate it?
  • The exact behavior you observed (or didn't observe)
  • If possible, post a capture of the log file with errors (errors always begin with this mod's name) on Discord

You can find all Neobotics released mods on:

• Thunderstore: https://tinyurl.com/NeoboticsOnThunderstore
• Nexus Mods: https://tinyurl.com/NeoboticsOnNexus

Your comments and feedback are always welcome. Post on NexusMods or Discord: https://tinyurl.com/NeoboticsOnDiscord