I decided to reformat my computer and reinstall everything. Usually when I reinstall Steam, it’s an easy process.. When I finally did open up Dota 2, the music and character talk was all static sounding. At first I thought maybe it was the sound driver or video driver. I tested this out by playing a random YouTube video and it played fine. Which makes me think this is only isolated to Dota 2. What I’ve tried:
- Reinstall sound driver. No change.
- Reinstall my video driver. No change.
What worked to my surprise was the “Verify integrity of game files” feature in steam:
Step 1
Right click the Dota 2 in the library and the click properties
Step 2
Click “local files” tab and then click “verify integrity of game files”
Step 3
Wait until it’s done validating.
For me, after the files were done validating it says I had 198 instances of files that were invalidated. It re-downloaded those files and when I opened Dota 2 the crackling noise disappeared.