Steam - Valve’s digital distribution mechanism - is having a sale at the moment with some reasonable bargains, including a decent deal on Max Payne and Max Payne 2. Having enjoyed the original and never having played the sequel, I snapped it up.
There are problems, however: while the original works fine, Max Payne 2 suffers from major audio glitches in the video sequences. Sticking, juddering, popping every few seconds - it’s a mess. I tried setting processor affinity, turning Direct3D acceleration off, setting Windows 2000 compatibility mode - the works.
I finally figured out that it’s not actually Max Payne 2 that’s the problem, but rather the Bink video playback DLL that comes bundled. Having upgraded the RAD Video Tools to the latest version, I was able to recreate the problem outside the game engine simply by playing back the - admittedly fairly high-resolution - intro video within the Bink Player.
It turns out that some older software - Bink playback tools included - don’t like SMP systems, i.e. systems with two or more logical processors. The good news is that there’s a relatively simple fix.

