Issues with Xenoblade Chronicles

[DuoMaxwell43]

Okay, so this kind of a long question. I've been able to play the game with around 25fps, 40vps, and around 74% speed. That's playable for me, but during most cutscenes, if the fps drops below 20 then the audio starts kinda stuttering and becomes all garbled for the rest of the cutscene. It's still in sync, but just sounds distorted.
I do have:
-Dolphin 3.5 x64 (the one I'm using) and 4.0.2 (which stutters alot)
-Vbeam enabled
-Idle skipping disabled
-MMU and MMU speed hacks disabled
-Framelimit set to 30 with limit by fps checked
-Using DPS HLE with XAudio2
-Running in IR 2.5, no AA (and anything below 2.5 doesn't make a difference to fps)
-OpenMP Texture Decoder enabled
-Per Pixel Depth disabled

Okay, with that being said I would still like the game to run smoother. The KEY thing here though, is if I enable Idle Skipping then the game runs GREAT, but the sound gets that same distorted/stuttering alot.

So my question is, is there anyway to get the framerate boost from having idle skipping on while still getting good audio, or is this the best it will get for me? Thanks a bunch for your time!

[pauldacheez]

>Framelimit set to 30 with limit by fps checked

Try setting this back to Auto, I've heard the game doesn't like anything else. Any benefit you get from it in other games is probably placebo, too.

>Vbeam enabled
>Idle skipping disabled

If your CPU could handle it, it'd be better to have these two switches flipped the other way, but evidently it can't, so... overclock the thing. Heavily. Or replace it with a better AMD CPU, or just replace it with an Intel CPU since those run everything twice as fast at the same clockspeed. Fucking goddamn AMD with their CPUs that happen to be shitty for Dolphin because of their low single-/lightly-threaded performance. v_v

[DuoMaxwell43]

Well about the setting framelimit to auto, I have a weird problem with that too that maybe you or someone can help out with too. If I set it to auto, it's actually TO fast. The framerate jumps up to around 35-40 and the speed jumps up to about 110-125%. When that happens, the audio gets out of sync during cutscenes because the animation is moving faster than the audio (which stays at it's normal pace it seems).

And alas, my cpu can't seem to handle this game without those switched on. The video stays at a nice steady pace at all times, but the audio is just all garbled and stuff. I want to get a new cpu, but I have a prebuilt Cyberpower PC and I don't know if I could even change anything on there. Plus, I have no clue how lol.

[Shonumi]

The framerate jumps all over place with Auto because you have the VBeam Speed hack enabled. That option messes with proper framerates a lot (especially when Limit by FPS is unchecked).

Just a reminder, we don't support 3.5 anymore. If you're getting issues XBC on the (or anything older than 4.0) it's on you to deal with them. You can try the latest development builds (not the latest stable builds, two different things) since those are faster than 4.0.2, but there's no getting around slow hardware.

[pauldacheez]

OpenGL on latest dev builds is quite a bit faster. There's also less audio latency, but as a side effect of that improvement, the audio stuttering sounds worse...

If you put everything back at the defaults (no VBeam, yes Idle Skipping, Auto without Limit by FPS) and switch to the OpenAL audio backend on 4.0.2 and up, you'll get timestretched audio instead of stuttery audio when the game's not running at full speed. The timestretching is a bit wonky sometimes, though, and the audio latency is ridiculous, but try that anyway to see if it sounds better than stutters (4.0.2) or broken audio (3.5).

Setting the framelimit to a lower value on current dev builds also produces smooth audio, but it's noticeably pitch-shifted and you have to set it to whatever framerate you're most commonly running at – for example, if my shitty MacBook Air usually runs SSBM at 25-50 fps, I can set it to 30 and have audio that doesn't hurt my ears, but instead just hurts my mind and soul. (Note that the framelimiter options now correspond to VPS and the Limit by FPS option is gone. If you run Xenoblade or any other 30 fps game at 20-25 fps, you'll want to set the framelimiter to 40-50.)

...Ideally, though, the speedup you get from current builds' OpenGL improvements should let you use the default settings (no VBeam, yes Idle Skipping, Auto without Limit by FPS) comfortably, with a fallback to OpenAL or framelimit pitch-shifting if necessary. (Or just overclock! Seriously, it's free performance if your cooler can handle it.)

[DuoMaxwell43]

Alrighty, thanks for all the suggestions guys! I'm going to try em out once I get over this stomach flu and can actually think straight. Thanks a bunch again!