There is a very very old DLL file that is used for Audio in Diablo III. This file is over 10 years old, and that’s the latest version. Not the one that the game is using.
The stuttering you have in game, worse when you are grouped, is caused by an issue with this Lib/DLL/Diablo III. I’m referring to Fmodex64.dll.
How do we know this? Simple, and many know of this “fix” already which has been a thing since at LEAST OCT 2020 (wtf Blizzard/EA?!).
All you need to do is grab a copy of this DLL from another Blizzard game folder (Heroes of the Storm for example, I took mine from a Steam game and that worked) and overwrite the one in the /Diablo III/64 folder and start the game up.
100% resolved. Smooth as silk, no stuttering… However, like all quick fixes there is a downside, it disables ALL AUDIO in-game when you do this, however the stuttering and jerky game play is one-hundred-percent-resolved.
I reached out to fmod (dot) com because Blizzard won’t or can’t do it, clearly. They are Firelight Technologies who made the “base” Lib/DLL that Blizzard are licensing directly and adding in their own custom code.
All that needs to happen is someone from the Diablo III Dev team needs to contact Firelight Technologies and work on a fix. It’s a bug, it needs to be fixed by Blizzard/EA not you, not your drivers.
The Lib is licensed directly to Blizzard so they won’t support just anyone reaching out. I’d hazard a guess the idea is to just ignore this and it will go away by it’s self, or at some stage another Windows update will fix whatever is causing the problem with this Lib.
If a simple copy/paste fixes the issue from another game folder, I can’t imagine the issue should take a year to resolve from a coding perspective. I mean, other games work with the exact same file… If it does take a year to get this resolved and it’s reasonable for it to take this long, here’s an idea, perhaps some details on where things are at since it’s been reported since OCT 2020!