Hi everyone, recently my friend brought up audio in Diablo 2 and how it causes lag in game and is a "known issue" in the community. He is convinced that running sound causes lag because the game has to work harder to load it in the more stuff that is happening in game. I wanted to find more answers but only have more questions.

I have seen the thread about speed running -ns and this causes overall load times to be faster but it doesn't delve into whether or not this affects other aspects of the game such as other audio present in game like sound effects for characters, spell effects, and enemies (notably cows).

For example, would running -ns cause running players 8 with a cow level/map with lots of spell effects to run faster or would it only affect the loading between portals, wps, and joining a game.

Thanks in advance for anyone who can help shed some light on this topic!