Well, I give up. I'm deleting MA from my computer. I've made several posts here, I've contacted support with the problems, and to be fair, I've had several good responses from the MA staff.

But the thing is, I'm plagued with continuous sound problems with this game. Distorted voices, distorted music, and distorted effects. It simply sounds horrible in every respect.

MA support hasn't been able to duplicate the problem. And I can understand that too, it seems to be an intermittent problem and I don't notice many other posts regarding this.

At the same time, it's ticking me off. I've got A LOT of games and none of the others have sound problems. I'm gonna play them. MA for me is a dead game.

madjoseph

Have you tried switching from Hardware to Software sound? I use an Audigy 2 with the latest drivers and can't played under Hardware due to the music skipping all the time.

Sometimes different programs fight over the soundcard.

I get horrible sound if I have WinAmp running (playing or silent) in the background.

Have you tried removing every possible running program to see if the problem disappears?

Myself, I don't have anything else running. What tends to happen, if another program has claimed the sound, you just won't get any sound at all.

Yeah, there you go, don't try to fix it your self, just quit instead.

I get distorted sound a lot of the time as well, and in my case it seems to be simply too weak of a processor (judging by the circumstances that it starts getting distorted). Try playing with the sound off, especially the music. It may not be quite as "cool", but it's definitely better than tossing the game.


I have an Audigy as well (not an Audigy 2, though, just plain 'ol Audigy), and the music has a skipping problem which eventually creeps into the SFX. Hardware sound makes it go downhill a lot more quickly for me.

You will still get sound in WinXP when you use the default sound device, because many programs can share the mixer. The problem is that this is really processor-heavy.

Well, thanks for all the suggestions. But this is exactly what I mean. I've already done, or tried every single suggestion here. That's the point I've been trying to get across. And I've made changes to the game's ini file as well. Been there done that, crappy music, crappy voices, crappy sound effects. That's why I give up. There's nothing left to do.

mj

Have you tried simply playing without sound? MA is too good of a game to quit over something that has absolutely no effect on actual gameplay.

I have a Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer, but I can't seem to use software sound... I just don't hear anything.
Hardware sound works for me but the music skips all the time.
I am running a duron processor on a Windows 2000 computer.

Yep, tried playing without the music. But even then, the voice and sound effects are simply atrocious. It's worse than dragging fingernails across a blackboard. At times, if I zoom in as close as I can get, the sound clears up. But it's rather difficult to play this way, and usually scrolling across the map starts the distorition again.

but once again, thanks for the suggestion.

No, no, no, I don't mean "without music". I mean "without any sound at all", and that includes sound effects and voice.

You will end up with the same effect as unplugging your speakers, i.e. no more fingernails on blackboard.

It sounds like your computer is simply overtaxed when playing the game. This may be due to crappy sound/video/activeX-drivers (but I'm sure you've already ruled those out) or a moldy Windows installation.

(By "moldy" I mean it's been about a year since last reinstall. Windows starts making your computer crawl slower and slower the longer it's been installed for some weird reason.)

My computer is top noch, has all the latest drivers, and is a fairly recent build.

Maybe I read through the posts too quickly, but what are your PC's Specs?
If I knew more about the Processor/Ram/Video/Sound card you're utilizing along with the OS, I may be able to offer you a better defined solution to your problem.

For Example, I'm running winxp on an Athlon xp 2.4+Ghz system, 512M ram a 256MB nvidia 8x video card and (i know this part sucks) onboard sound with no problems at all...

If you're running a true blaster compatible PCI sound card, there should be no reason why you can't obtain top notch quality sound...

On the other hand if you're running onboard sound with the AC 97 Codec there is a patch that can be found at either www.cmedia.com.tw/ or the motherboard manufacturer website that may be your remedy.

Just my 2 cents.. I hate to see someone abandon the game due to glitches

Gee you got the really jacked up computer!

For myself, I have the following:

P4 3.0Ghz 800FSB
MSI Neo-FISR motherboard
1024GB (512x2) Corsair TwinX 3200 RAM
Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB
Creative Audigy 2

All running on Windows XP SP1, fully patched, all with latest drivers. Sound works fine under Hardware, but the music skips.

Do you have the Audigy 2 patch from creativelabs website dated 3/29/04 yet? That may help you.

Also the Mother board has had 2 bios updates (2/24/04 and 3/25/04) that could have an impact on your system as well.

and lastly is that XP home or XP Pro?

Not a bad system for a P4.. Excellent Ram, Corsair is the best, but why skimp out on the Video card? ATI is good, but not in comparison with your other components.

Just thought of another question... What do you have for cooling? That system runs pretty hot with the amped up FSB and other compnents. AS anyone knows heat kills the PC. The downfall of intel in my opinion... Trading Heat inefficiency for proc speed

Finally Registered... No More Guest stuff

Ah, a new patch, I'll try that thanks.

I use XP Pro.

BIOS updates won't help my speed unless it's not detecting something correctly (but everything works fine), unless you mean they finally added D.O.T., which I already have.

Skimp on the graphics card? At the time this was the best card around (April 2003), and even now it's the second best, bettered only by the 9800 XT.

If you're suggesting I needed a 256MB card, that's a price premium which, at the moment, reaps no benefits in anything but Call of Duty, or high res (1600x1200) w/ high AA and AF (which it couldn't run at a decent speed anyway). In the future, by the time games need that sort of memory the card won't be fast enough to run the settings which need it. Graphics card always ship with a "too much RAM version".

If you're suggesting I should have bought a GeForce FX, then you need to stop reading Tom's Hardware/Anandtech/Older [H]ard|Ocp reviews, and go to Beyond3D where you can be educated

I have an aluminium Coolermaster case with four fans (two front, one back, one top). I use a Zalman CNPS7000A-Cu on the CPU and a VGA Silencer on the graphics card. I used Artic Silver 3 on the CPU and graphics core.

I have overclocked the graphics card (but using RadLinker it is only overclocked in games, not outside them), while the CPU runs at stock speeds and the RAM is currently running off its SPD values.

I haven't visited Toms guide or other tweaking pages since about '97 or '98.

I will admit normal performance speaking ATI is top, but for my personal needs which go heavy into graphics and not just for game performance, ATI overall performance without OC was less cost effective when compared to the Nvidia card w/ double the ram capacity and I/O feeds.

I don't want to have an ATI vs Nvidia debate, because Both are great card makers, Just like I don't want to start a Intel vs AMD debate because both are great CPU makers.

What I will say is that for my setup, Nvidia performs much better than ATI

You guessed it though, my gut concern was everything else looked to be top notch but the video ram was only 128. I prefer to have the extra vram as it generates less calls to my system ram and when switching between all of the things that I work with it equates to quicker, more efficient results... Maybe if I had a P4 at 3+ Ghz with freon cooling instead of an AMD at 2.4+ with air cooling I would go with the ATI setup too as It may work better on the P4, but I would still choose the higher vram if feasibly possible.