Frequent in game freezes

I am returning to play D3 after about one year of stopping. And I noticed that the game now is freezing a lot. I am familiar with server/network lag, and it’s NOT it. I did a google search and found this video:

which has links to the following post on US forums (with a blue reply)

The video explains the lag, and that it’s related to FMOD errors. I opened D3Debug.txt and indeed the same errors where occurring after the crash which is strange since I play with the sound off.

The video suggests downloading a replacement for fmodex64.dll with one that doesn’t cause the error. With all due respect to the person who created the modified DLL, I don’t trust binaries from unknown sources (not saying it’s malicious but it could be), So I would rather not play D3 at all than risk compromising my PC.

One player suggested reducing sound channel from 32 to 16 in audio options which I did and it helped a LOT, but still the freezes occur but less frequently.

So my questions are:

  • This issue is known to Blizzard for at more than a year now, why isn’t it fixed yet?
  • WHAT kind of inefficient code are Blizzard engineers writing that cause freezes related to sound when in game sounds are turned OFF. Why are you calling that code that waits for “sound to be ready” when both music and in game sounds are turned off? Even if the freeze bug doesn’t exist, this shouldn’t happen for performance reasons.
  • I thought may be this bug doesn’t exist in 32-bit, so I tried playing D3 32-bit. And my question is when was the last time anyone at Blizzard looked at the 32-bit client? It is in a miserable state (very slow, icons takes ages to appear, etc) and still has the same freeze related to sound.
  • Is there any solution apart from me using a DLL from an untrusted source that would risk compromising my PC?

They’ve been investigating this on the PTR for almost two weeks now…

The latest PTR build seems to have alleviated most of the problem. They’re still asking for feedback though so grab the PTR client, do some testing, and let them know how you got on in that PTR thread.

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Thanks a lot for the information. I will give it a try.