If you are having sound problems, look here

from Stardock Forums

We have not changed the sound or music code for several versions of Gal Civ.  I don't know why, but people sometimes suddenly start having problems with the sound after they upgrade to a new version. 

Here are some things that you can try to get your sound working again:

1) Update your sound drivers if there is a newer version.  Re-install if you don't have a newer version.

2) If you don't have the latest version of DirectX installed, update it.  Also run dxdiag and do all the sound tests to make sure that there are no problems.

3) http://www.stardock.com/files/ms_mp3codec.exe - this link will re-install Microsoft's default system codecs.  Sometimes other programs install their own buggy versions of these codecs and overwrite them.

4) Run Windows update.  I'm pretty sure that there's an update that addresses static in games.

5) http://www.radgametools.com/bnkdown.htm - this is a link to the download page for the bink tools.  If another program like QuickTime has taken over your bink associations, that could cause problems with the sound. Installing the bink tools should reclaim the associations.

6) As I mentioned in #3, some programs install buggy mp3 codecs.  These can also cause crashes.  Windows Media Player is always safe.  WinDVD and Winamp3 are known to have buggy codecs.  Updating to newer versions of these programs may help if they've fixed their codecs.  You probably don't need to try un-installing these programs unless you are getting frequent crashes as well as the static. 

7) Make sure that the mp3s play in another media player without the static.  If you're still getting static, you may need to re-install the multimedia.

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1,657 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
I had a funny problem with a few other games a while back - It turned out to be stale sound drivers from a card that I had owned about a year before. Check device manager in safemode to make sure you don't have any old sound drivers still installed. The culprit in my case was an aureal vortex 2 based card.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Also check your Control Panel/Multimedia audio slider settings to make sure they are bumped up high enough to use Direct X. I'm running onboard sound, VIA AC `97 chip, and somehow my settings were pushed down to minimum quality playback. I also got the bink tools and was up and running fine. I was almost ready to return the game because it froze on startup. Nice support here, kudos!
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Are there any known sound issues with the KX drivers for a soundblaster live 5.1 card? I recently installed these drivers because they are better than the ones I got from creative for a w2k system, and they work with all of my sound programs like BPM studio. I have no problems playing any direct x games or playing mp3s, though winamp is my default mp3 player. I have had problems recently opening mpegs with media player, though no difficulty with mp3s.

Thanks in advance,

G

~SDC~
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

I chatted with Gorgazmo in #galciv and it did turn out to be his drivers, so I'm posting this for posterity. 

Also, one of the users suggested turning on background loading and waiting a few minutes before starting or loading a game.  Note that this may make your intro animations choppy; that's why the option is turned off by default.

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
I check which drivers I have for my sound card and there is something called legacy drivers it says standard drivers, also I do have the latest drivers for my sound card and I still hear that static and clipping noise
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
:sniff!:

I've tried all of those steps and while I can have music with the game unpatched when I install the newest one I have no music whatsoever. I also notice quite a bit more ctd than if I don't install the patch, which is.. quite odd. :(
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top

Sound problems can cause static, slowdown, and crashes.  So it's not surprising that you're getting more crashes.

Here's something else that I thought of: 

Open your prefs.ini file (in your data directory) and set

DisableSfx=1
DisableEventMusic=1

UserDefinedPlayList=1

(if the second line isn't there, you can add it under DisableMusic).

If you don't use the playlist option already, put one or more 128 kbps 44 MHz MP3s in the playlist folder.  A few of our mp3s match those stats, but most are 96 kbps.

Start Gal Civ.  If you don't have any music playing, you probably have to select the default playlist from the options menu.  Let me know if that fixes things for you.  If it does turn out to be the bitrates for the mp3s, I'll make sure that you get resampled mp3s.

Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
This may not help everyone with the problem, but I found that the static stops when an event movie scene loads. It seems strange to me that loading a new .mp3 makes the in-game music suddenly work, but I have seen stranger software behavior in the past (specifically "ghost" datasets in SAS version 6 that would produce results when no data was input).
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
I just fixed the sound problem by associating the game sound files to Windows Media Player. They were associated to WinAMP when I had the static issues.