There’s a very good chance Blizzard knows what the problem is, they’ve likely informed the companies involved about the problem and are waiting for them to come up with a solution.
It’s very likely some issue with Microsoft and/or various audio chipsets which so far Diablo 3 has been one of the few or even the only program so far to have this issue develop.
It all boils down to money, and how much of it the said companies want to throw at this problem to fix it.
They said they were in contact with windows like a year ago. Clearly nothing changed and I didn’t see an update.
I have been getting some results in, so I appreciate everyone that is participating. Be sure to do both of them so I have equal numbers of responses across them.
Once these hit their limit (40 I think it is) they will be done, and I will have to setup more of them if needed. I will post the results once I have at least 20 after the first 7 days so feel free to drop in and do them. They are short and simple.
Thanks everyone!
Is this related to the freeze as described by some streamer, Leviathan I think. In his video, he shows the error is logged in the D3error log file, and I do get the same error in my log when I freeze.
Yes it is. I’m trying to background various factors and see if we can pin down some common possible links between those having issues and why some don’t have issues. So if you feel like helping out, it would be appreciated!
Thanks.
Filling out now. Noticed on “How do you connect to hear the sound?” there is no option for USB connected device.
There is. Use the digital headphone option if you have a digital USB option.
If its a USB sound device of its own, that would be considered an “add-on”. For example, I have a Creative USB sound card, that provided both digital and analog outputs and it operated via USB. That would be an add on sound card. But some digital sound devices like speakers and headphones might use a USB connection, but they may in fact be sound cards themselves built into the device. There are some odd items out there.
Just so I keep things updated, I have now over 10 submissions. Please keep them coming, whether you are encountering freezing issues or not it helps.
You won’t hear D3 sound if replacing FMOD. Something else to try is to install video driver only. I installed AMD 21.4.1 “driver only” for WIn10/RX580.
That is what I keep hearing yes. haha
Some have had good results, some have not. I may do a followup query on things tried and whether something worked or not.
Don’t forget to fill out those two Silver if you haven’t yet. I"m assuming you haven’t because no one has checked off RX500 series cards yet. 
Still, it is confusing. I use Focusrite Clarett USB, but there are probably still people out there who have discrete sound cards installed into motherboards’ PCI slots. Especially on older (10+ years) systems.
Another thing, the SC / HC option. There is no “Both” choice.
That is technically its own soundcard device, so its an add on, and not everyone is going to have a 500-900 dollar sound card like that.
Actually I would argue that nearly all computer systems sold in the past 20 years all had onboard sound. Very few motherboards since the early Pentium 1 and 2 days had the sound cards as optional. I have been building and working on systems for nearly 30 years. While they still make installable PCIe (and still some PCI) cards, they are very few brands and models these days compared to 20 years ago. Any sound device that is not already built into the board is considered an add-on, hence the option.
Good point. I was looking for whatever a person plays the most, but yeah, I could have had that option as well. Though its not something that probably matters when looking at it from hindsight. Still, thanks.
Just fyi, I used that replace the fmod file or whatever to fix my issue, though my computer will completely crash after a while. The game still runs perfectly fine, but everything else hangs and I have to hard shut off my computer.
That doesn’t sound like a good fix then. Ugh.
Given it could be my computer. Maybe I need to OC my CPU, which makes no sense given the circumstances, but it DOES take like 4-5 hours before anything like that happens.
Aight, so I did the survey. I do appreciate your investment into this and hope you find some results. And I also hope Blizzard can follow up about this as well if you decide to try to pursue them with your info.
Anyhow…Device Manager: NVIDIA High Definition Audio; NVIDIA Virtual Audio Device (Wave Extensible) (WDM); Realtek High Definition Audio (Disabled)
In game, it shows NVIDIA High Definition Audio being used. While it’s always suggested that on-board Realtek audio has been the culprit, while mine is disabled as of a few days ago.
I’ve also recently tried a fix solution I found that recommends changing the Set Affinity to only enable CPU 0+1, and disable 3+4. So I’ve tried that (As of today)
Either way, D3 seems to feel smoother overall. But I still receive crash / bug reports window (sometimes), but this could as well be a different issue altogether (Game crash / freezes up, with windows cursor in game, when alt-tab to windows, D3 isnt on taskbar and cant alt-tab back to it, D3 is still open in task manager (Dead Lock), have to end task, windows is still in my D3 resolution as well until I end task)…
I haven’t run many 4man groups (Where I seem to experience the 10sec lag/freeze the most) here lately. Guess I’ll need to put this to more of a test in 4man groups to see if this is cleared up any.
Edit: I have all in-game graphics set to lowest setting, and sound channels are on lowest setting as well. (Since forever)
No argument here. The question is, whether people use them. Back in the day, when the only integrated option was AC97 (or worse), I had several PCI soundcards, eventually settling on Auzentech Prelude 7.1. Now, that was THE sound…
But I digress, nowadays people won’t bother with anything like that. Especially since the (essentially) only surviving PCI-E soundcard is either ASUS Xonar, which has its own issues, or exotique stuff like RME, whose prices I’m not exactly comfortable discussing here.
Your survey got me thinking, and yesterday I went into the BIOS and disabled the built-in audio completely. I don’t think it will make any difference, but still, shouldn’t hurt. Will need to give it a run and see.
Doesn’t sound like a bad thing to try though, let us know.
That’s interesting. Maybe the sound card is not the actual cause then. I like coming across nuggets of info like this.
Let me know if any of that helped.
As an update, I’m nearly up to 20 responses, so keep them coming everyone, no matter if you have the freezing/sound issue or not.
The only time the game really Freezes on me. Is just when I get into a new game. Other than that it really doesn’t freeze on me when playing the game. But when it does freeze it freezes the computer. I have to do a hard restart sometimes.
These are the main problems that I’ve noticed:
1: Hard game freeze when starting a game or joining a game. Solo or multiplayer. Must kill Diablo3 through task manager. Seems to happen more often when entering a game starting in Act 2 Hidden Camp. I’ve seen this issue happen several times in a row. The issue comes and goes I’ve seen this issue for several years.
2: Hard game freeze upon entering a rift or a greater rift. Solo or multiplayer. Must kill Diablo3 through task manager. I haven’t seen this often enough to recognize which map set(s) it happens on, or if that even matters. Very erratic on frequency, can happen a few times in one night, or not at all over the course of a month. This is a development within the past couple of years.
3: Random 10-15 second freezes while playing. Solo or multiplayer. Happens mostly in higher greater rifts, but I’ve seen it happen elsewhere. If playing solo, the game automatically goes into a pause state. This is a development in the past couple of years.
4: Stuttering issues playing certain classes or with certain classes. (Wizard) This is a more recent problem.
5: Error when jumping into a friends game. I don’t recall the error number right now, but you have to wait for the error to pop up, then you can join afterwards.
1 and 2 I’ve experienced with my current system and an older system. I don’t think 3, 4 and 5 were present or I didn’t notice them until after I upgraded to my current rig in 2019.
Current rig:
ASRock x570 Extreme4 (Realtek audio)
Ryzen 9 3900X
GTX 1080 Ti
16GB DDR4-3600
1TB gen4 NVMe SSD
Old rig:
ASUS P8Z68 Deluxe (gen1, Realtek audio)
i7-2600K
GTX 970
16GB DDR3-1866
SATA SSD
After disabling Realtek audio in BIOS, went through several 100+ GRs today, then made a full bounty run, then another couple of GRs; all of this was solo. All GRs were made with CoE equipped and AD from paragon on. No lags or freezes of any kind, but I suppose I might just been lucky.
I also use MM:Conflagrate and Slow Time: Point Of No Return instead of the standard setup; not sure if this has anything to do with it. Further testing required.
This is a separate audio chip built into the graphics card, which sends the audio via HDMI / DP cable (I suppose you use speakers in your monitor, right?). It doesn’t use Realtek or any other audio chip, it’s completely self-sufficient. Still, I suspect that disabling Realtek in Windows might not be enough, as the device is still present and game might trigger on it when it sees it. If you will disable built-in audio in motherboard’s BIOS, it will disappear completely.
(No idea if it will help; just food for thought.)