You’ve just bought Xenoblade Chronicles on Dolphin, but something seems off about it. The graphics are good, sure, but the audio seems to stutter whenever you move the camera or an NPC talks to you.
While this issue will be resolved in time as emulation improves, there are some things you can do now that will improve the audio quality and reduce stuttering considerably until then.
Here are some suggestions on how to fix audio stutter in Xenoblade Chronicles on Dolphin Emulator until better solutions can be implemented.
How to Fix Xenoblade Chronicles Dolphin Audio Stutter?
- Update Your Dolphin Emulator
Xenoblade Chronicles is an excellent game with fantastic music, but sometimes the audio can stutter. The good news is that there’s an easy fix! You’ll need to update your emulator, though.
Here’s how: In Windows, go to the Control Panel and select Programs, then Uninstall Programs. Find Dolphin Emulator, select it, and click uninstall.
- Update Your Graphics Card Drivers
The audio stuttering could be caused by outdated drivers. To fix this, you need to update your graphics card driver. Here’s how:
- Go to the manufacturer’s website and download the latest drivers for your GPU
- Follow the instructions given by their website
- Restart your computer for the new settings to take effect
- Check if it has fixed the problem
- Set Power Options to Maximum Performance
Some users report that setting the power options to maximum performance resolves the stuttering issues. To do this, follow these steps:
- Right-click the taskbar at the bottom of your screen
- Click power options
- Click high performance
- Close the window and restart game
- Use Standard Configuration Settings
Open the Graphics Settings tab. Here, you can adjust the following settings:
- Enable Dual Core for Shader Compilation (enabled by default)
- Perform Shader Compilation on CPU (disabled by default)
- Perform Shader Compilation on GPU (disabled by default)
- Shader Precompile Size – 128MB (default)
- Shader Precompile Time, 10 seconds (default), Maximum Allowed Threads Per Job 8 (default)
- Number of Parallel Precomputing Jobs 4 (default)
- Num GPU Threads per job 2 (default)
- Asynchronous Shader Loading enabled (not recommended for general use; disabled by default).
You may need to restart the dolphin after making changes before they take effect.
- Turn Off GPU Scaling (Lines/Faces Only)
GPU Scaling is a setting that forces the emulation to use your computer’s graphics card rather than its own built-in graphics engine.
This setting can cause audio stuttering and low performance when it is turned on, so if you are experiencing these issues then please turn this setting off.
- Edit Other Graphics Cards Settings Section: If Nothing Works, Try an Older Version of Dolphin
If you’re still experiencing audio stuttering after following the steps above, it might be worth checking if your computer can run a lower version of Dolphin (e.g., 4.0-7820).
It’s possible that an older version of the emulator will work better with your system than the latest builds and fix the audio stutter problem.