Stepmania sound stutter

Hello i used to play stepmania a few years back (3.9)
And i wanted to play stepmania again however i noticed that i am having stuttering problems with the sound.
(music drops for 0.2s) then continues
note: This is in main menu and when playing the songs.
I have Tried both with the 5.0.6 version and a 3.9 version. (my old i know that used to work)

my computer specs are:
CPU: 5930k
GPU: 980 (custom factory OC edition)
Motherboard: ASUS RAMPAGE V EXTREME
RAM: DDR4 2800(mhz) 32gb 4x8
(using g930 headset for sound)
windows 7 ultimate 64bit

I have no problems with any other games (demanding or not)
so i found it weird but when i looked online i did not see anyone having this problem
I hope there is somebody out there that can help me because i really love this game and i want to play it again


If more info is needet on my system just ask (or anything else obv :p)

Find your stepmania.ini or maybe preferences.ini file, open with notepad and find:
SoundDrivers=
Change it to
SoundDrivers=WaveOut

Find your stepmania.ini or maybe preferences.ini file, open with notepad and find:
SoundDrivers=
Change it to
SoundDrivers=WaveOut

Where would the be located? i looked trough all the maps of the location where i installed it and i can't find it (checking with 5.0.6)

I can't find any folder names like that or close to it in (5.0.6)
I have done multiple re-installs but i don't see anything.
However in my old 3.9 version i did find one and i changed it to (SoundDrivers=WaveOut)
However that did not change anything

I Did notice something weird however i started stemania(5.0.6) up it did not have any sound problems this remaining untill i closed the program and restarted it
However after starting the program up a few times i had sound problems again (stuttering)
I have not been able to reproduce it and i did not change anything to the program or my computer itself

note: Restarting the program +20 times still makes it have stuttering problems
Also when the game did work and i selected something else then the game (browser/notepad/anything)
The game was stuttering again when i reselected the game it stopped

I have fixed the problem it seems its a problem with Chrome or a large useage of ram (14gb+)
not sure which one it is
But it seems using a large amount of ram or having huge amounts of tabs open in chrome causes this problem. (200+)

Also changing process priority does nothing so its probably chrome.


I am gonna check a bit more just to make sure this is not random.
Also if any knows how i can have chrome open and using stepmania at the same time without audio stutter please do tell.




for those wondering why so many tabs open its handy :3 and i have multiple screens.

Interesting thanks for sharing. Would putting StepMania in full-screen mode give the game priority over everything else? You can Alt+Enter to change between full screen and window mode. That should let you use Chrome and StepMania at the same time by alternating to full screen when you're ready to play another song.

WaveOut in preferences.ini, minimize or close chrome and any programs like f.lux which draw over the whole screen.

Preferences.ini for SM5 is located in %APPDATA%/StepMania 5. StepMania.ini was removed a decade ago.

So far the WaveOut works
(however when i don't select stepmania i get stutter again)
but whenever i re-select stepmania everything works again
This is with chrome open
When i close chrome i have no problems no mather what i do
i did notice in the song selection screen i saw huge CPU spikes that only used 1core it did not pose any performance problems but i am guessing the game does not have multi core support?
which might be the entire reason for the stuttering but i am just guessing at this point so..
And i have a 5930k so that should not be possible

As for the full screen i actually did try that out before but it did not change anything (before i posted here i tried some different resolutions and other settings :p)


I would like to thank everyone here for helping me now i am gonna go back and i am gonna enjoy this game.
(now to find a nice anime themed skin...)