It seems as if the built-in ogg decoder (using playlists) is prone to stuttering and giving jerky and uneven playback.

Details : Linux, Alsa driver ( alsa native system ) Its probably not due to load, I tried ogg123 while playing, and the music plays smoothly, only stuttering and jerkiness appears from ingame vendetta.

Could this perhaps have something to do with using the libvorbis snapshot from three years ago? (the one I'm using is Xiph.Org libVorbis I 20050304, the one compiled in is 20020717 )

if I get Vendetta to run properly with OSS, I'll try that too.

I used to use Vendetta's built in ogg playback also, but i stopped, most of my ogg's played fine, but i found recently that ogg's encoded with recent versions of libVorbis played strangley in vendetta, I didnt notice stuttering, but some tracks (most notably those not encoded at 128kb) played faster or slower than they were supposed to, some simply refused to play, even though they would with xmms ect.

Huh, I'll upgrade that then for the next client release. Thanks for pointing it out.

weird.. Vendetta doesn't allow me to choose OSS for sound. Is there a solid way to specify it in config.ini ?

I guess they still didn't get around to make driver switcher interface work:P
Just change the AudioDriver line to this:

AudioDriver=Open Sound System driver

Heh, when you try to switch to OSS it probably won't let you because the sound device is in use by the ALSA driver. Doh.

thanks, seems to have worked. Part of the jerkiness is there too, but not as much. ( its an hi-hat that comes a bit off-beat from once in a while, annoying )

though the "scratching" is there with OSS.
( my pick of music for the evening Is Tom Waits ;p )