WoW Dalaran Lag / Stutter fix

[Kokolums]

If you are on an older computer and it gags when you are in Dalaran or join a raid, it might be the sound channels of all things.

Way back in the old days, you'd have 12 of 16 channels. WoW today offer 24, 24, or 64 channels. As it turns out, even 24 channels can bog down older computers. You cannot set it to 16 in-game however. You have to exit WoW, open the config.wtf file, and change this setting:

SET Sound_NumChannels "16"

That must be set to 16 channels in the file. Then re-open WoW. When you reopen the game, hit ESC, click "system", & click "sound", you will see that the sound channels will now be set to a hidden option called "custom". Your Dalaran lag and raid lag should now be gone as well.

[HumbleDuck]

Suramar is way worst than dalaran for me, fps dips down to 40s with occasional stuttering.
I should test if this works for that as well or not.

[Kokolums]

Suramar is way worst than dalaran for me, fps dips down to 40s with occasional stuttering.
I should test if this works for that as well or not.

I just tested this in Suramar on my old computer and it lagged and stuttered badly at 24 channels but no lag or stutter at all at 16 channels.

[HumbleDuck]

I just tested this in Suramar on my old computer and it lagged and stuttered badly at 24 channels but no lag or stutter at all at 16 channels.

Well, my PC is far from old, but still have to check when get home.

Update: it actually did help a bit ( 5 fps on average), but not as effective as I hoped.

[Kokolums]

I have to make an important addendum here. Blizzard periodically forces a reset of this setting. They will push it back to 64. Always check to make sure it is still 16, especially after patches.

[Wries]

Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe DBM takes every opportunity to reset this to 64 as well. Back in WoD they had some announcement about it being required for their added sounds to be heard, and the addon took the freedom to adjust this setting.

Regarding suramar, seems its a lot about the objects rendered. Unless already at lowest, lower environment detail a couple steps and it improves greatly.

[Osmeric]

This no longer appears to work. Setting the value to 16 in the file causes it to come up as 64 in the client.

EDIT: could be DBM. Will check.

EDIT: disabling DBM made it work.

[Kokolums]

This no longer appears to work. Setting the value to 16 in the file causes it to come up as 64 in the client.

EDIT: could be DBM. Will check.

EDIT: disabling DBM made it work.

Interesting. I'm running DBM and it made a dramatic improvement on my laptop. Like MASSIVE.

I'll take a look at the DBM code and see if I can disable it. Might be ok without it.

In DBM-Core.lua search for "64" until you come to the lines

if soundChannels < 64 then
SetCVar("Sound_NumChannels", 64)
end

Comment out those 3 lines.

How do you comment out those lines? Put two dashes before each line so it looks like

--if soundChannels < 64 then
--SetCVar("Sound_NumChannels", 64)
--end