Audio stutter / crunchy sound on Thor Max units

[aabrole]

Reported by u/HighFivePondaBaba (Thor Max): music stutters constantly, choppy SFX; improved at 2x internal res but persists. Also cutscene audio stutter from u/Playtimegoofball (12GB Thor). Needs audio-queue investigation beyond pure perf. From Feedback Round 1.

[aabrole]

Status (unreleased test build, measured on the dev Thor Pro): root cause was emulation running over the 16.6 ms frame budget and starving the audio queue, with each starvation hard zero-filled. After coverage promotion (interpreter fallback 7.5M -> ~600 instr/s) audio underruns over the same 90 s window went 2,019 -> 110 at 3x internal resolution (227 at 4x), and starvations now fade instead of click. Residual in heavy gameplay at 3x: ~3 brief dips/s. Full write-up: docs/AUDIT-2026-09-05.md. This was measured on a Pro; a diagnostics zip from a Max (Settings > Share Diagnostics in the next build) will show whether the Max behaves the same.

[aabrole]

v0.2.5 is out with the root-cause fix (interpreter fallback eliminated, 125 ms audio runway, soft underruns). On the dev Thor Pro: underruns 2,019 -> 110 per 90 s at 3x. Thor Max owners: please try 3x with the FPS counter on; if it still crackles, Settings > Share Diagnostics and attach the zip here so I can see the Max's numbers.