No Sound effects

[johnvosh 13]

Hello all, I have recently built a new windows XP system for playing SimCity 4 that's a bit better then my old system. Anyways, I installed SimCity 4 & the rush hour expansion, then I installed the update and I also installed the full Network mod as well. Windows XP is fully updated with the latest updates. I get the music, but I don't have any sound effects. I even took and uninstalled the onboard audio and installed a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 card and it didn't help. I get no sound effects at all. So anytime I click on info icon then click a building there is no sound, and there is no sound when building a road or destroying a building. It works fine on my other system, but not this one. Any ideas?

The game runs pretty good, except for a bit of lagging when I am running triple speed. I think this is probably due to the video card which I plan on updating to a Radeon HD 3850 if I can find one at a good price.

System Info:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Socket 939

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum

WD Velociraptor 150GB SATA

2.5GB DDR400 Ram

Radeon 9700 128MB AGP Video card

Windows XP Home SP3 and all updates

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

Hi johnvosh,

As an initial small step, I suggest checking the Sound is enabled and the volume slider turned up in the game's Audio Options.

Like so:
 

Then once done, press "Accept" to confirm the changes which are stored as a saved preference.

The other thing I wonder about is whether you've had the -audio:off command used at some point (added to the Target field of your game's shortcut). Testing this myself just now, I've found it overrides the set Audio Options and even if manually toggling them back in SC4.

Using the -audio:on command is needed to make the audio be enabled again. Then once run it's no longer needed.

The off toggle also turns off the music as well, so I don't suppose it's the root cause of the issue you're experiencing since it's with no sound effects. But perhaps first adding the on parameter could be worth a try to attempt a reset in case something has gotten messed up with the settings.

[johnvosh 13]

Thank you for your reply.

I checked all my windows audio settings and everything is good. Took and added that extension like you said and it changed nothing. the music works, just the sound effects don't. I just hope I don't have to do a complete uninstall and then reinstall. Even took and tried with the sound checked and unchecked and made no difference. It's weird. Because I installed it the exact same as I did on my other system running Windows XP.

 

22 minutes ago, Cyclone Boom said:

Hi johnvosh,

As an initial small step, I suggest checking the Sound is enabled and the volume slider turned up in the game's Audio Options.

Like so:
 

Then once done, press "Accept" to confirm the changes which are stored as a saved preference.

The other thing I wonder about is whether you've had the -audio:off command used at some point (added to the Target field of your game's shortcut). Testing this myself just now, I've found it overrides the set Audio Options and even if manually toggling them back in SC4.

Using the -audio:on command is needed to make the audio be enabled again. Then once run it's no longer needed.

The off toggle also turns off the music as well, so I don't suppose it's the root cause of the issue you're experiencing since it's with no sound effects. But perhaps first adding the on parameter could be worth a try to attempt a reset in case something has gotten messed up with the settings.

 

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

37 minutes ago, johnvosh said:

I just hope I don't have to do a complete uninstall and then reinstall. Even took and tried with the sound checked and unchecked and made no difference. It's weird.

I've just been chatting with @CorinaMarie about this since she runs XP for her preferred game comp. One thing Cori suggested was to try running the DirectX Diagnostic Tool. Given the game uses DirectX for the display and sound, it's possible there are problems here which it may detect.

To use the tool, go to the Run dialog (Win+R), type DxDiag and click the OK button.

Then it'll initially open a System summary page. Clicking each of the tabs for Display, Sound, and Input will reveal whether there are any problems identified.

For example in my Sound tab:

 

I'm personally running on Windows 7 here, so it's possible on XP yours may look slightly different (and also depending on your hardware).

[johnvosh 13]

K, thanks again for the help! I took and ran dxdiag and even ran the tests under sound and music tabs and everything was good with no errors.

im thinking maybe I should do a complete uninstall and reinstall the game. I don't have much saved right now as I just got this system running.

[rsc204 21,808]

I've yet to see DxDiag actually show anything except "No Problems Found" myself. Whilst that should mean you've a DX compatible sound board, something is obviously not working.

Things like SoundBlaster compatibility are not hugely important with DirectX games, unlike the times before it when having one was a guarantee games would actually work. Although it is interesting that with two separate audio cards, you got the same results. That would lead me to believe that whatever is happening is a problem with SC4, rather than your system/drivers.

Before going to the hassle of re-installing the game though, I would check a couple things. Check in the sound driver you are outputting Stereo sound, not surround. Fixed a similar problem here:

If that doesn't help you any, could you give us some data, to help us see what might be going wrong. Open the SC4 Install directory, then enter the Apps directory. There you will find a file named

mycomputername-config-log.txt

Open this and paste the first three sections Flags, Strings & Numbers into a follow up post. Note that anything beyond those sections is really not very helpful.

2 hours ago, johnvosh said:

I plan on updating to a Radeon HD 3850 if I can find one at a good price

Be careful to check the new card fits and is 100% compatible with your mainboard, in case you didn't know AGP had a couple different variants with different voltages, get that wrong and you'll wish you didn't.

Note too you'd probably need to set it up manually to work best with SC4:

When SC4 released, 9500 and older cards lacked support for features SC4 utilised, causing performance issues. So if the game detects a Radeon, but doesn't know about it (i.e. and Radeon's from after SC4's release data), it will assume it's not up to running SC4 well. In essence throttling performance of the card. This doesn't affect the 9700 thankfully and that is listed as a "fast card", but something to keep in mind if you do upgrade.

[johnvosh 13]

OK, so I took and checked into the older post and I tried changing my speaker setup from 2 speakers to headphones and it didn't change anything. Checked the other two files were there and they were. And my Athlon XP system also has a Sound Blaster card in it.

Here is the info from the log file.....

Spoiler

Log generated on 8/26/2018, 19:32

Flags
-----
hardwareDriver = true
DXT = true
fullscreen = true
MMX = true
FPU = true
backingStore = true
forcedFSAA = false

Strings
-------
userName = Owner
appName = SimCity 4
version = 1.1.638.0
osVersion = Windows NT 5.1
computerName = OWNER-66C981B4E
CPU = AuthenticAMD
sglDriverName = DirectX
sglDriverVersion = 2.0
driverName = ati2dvag.dll
driverVersion = 6.14.10.6925, GUID: D7B71EE2-D04-11CF-B273-0220AFC2CD35
cardName = RADEON 9700 PRO
cardVersion = Vendor: 1002, Device: 4e44, Board: 21002, Chipset: 0000
cardIdentity = ATI, Radeon 9700
soundDriverName = ctaud2k.sys
soundCardName = SB Live! Audio [9C00]
buildType = Release

Numbers
-------
cpuSpeed = 2210
memory = 2560
freeMemory = 2208
screenWidth = 1280
screenHeight = 1024
screenBPP = 16
videoMemory = 245
textureMemory = 245
textureStages = 8
bogoFPS = 0
bogoMPPS = 0

 

[rsc204 21,808]

Thanks for the log data, in case it's not obvious, in essence this data shows the settings used the last time SC4 was ran. It clearly had no trouble detecting your SoundBlaster device and is using the drivers for it. In that sense, I have the feeling re-installing the game won't change things much. Because unless there was a problem during installation, which is usually noticeable, re-installing the game doesn't refresh the drivers the game uses. That will happen every time you run it anew.

I can see you have the EP1 or 1.1.638.0 patch applied, which is usually the recommended. I have seen people with problems, although in this case reporting no music but sounds, where installing the final 1.1.640.0 patch fixed the issue. Whilst the technical run down of this later patch states only that it adds support for lights on custom downloads, it certainly can't hurt to install it. Not to mention, often not every little thing that's fixed will be listed, so it's not inconceivable other fixes were included. Find that patch here by the way:

https://community.simtropolis.com/library/maxis/sc4/patches/SC4Update4BAT.exe

If at that point you still have the problem, I'd just check a couple of things. Try using different audio ports, some cards have Line Out and Headphones, which may appear to work the same, but are not the same thing. If you are using speakers, perhaps plugging in some headphones to see if the issue persists is worthwhile. Also, assuming the non-soundblaster card is an on-board sound card, have you disabled that in the BIOS of the mainboard? Since having two may conflict, you should do this when using a dedicated card.

If none of that helps, then I'd perhaps give a re-install a try, if nothing else we'll need to "check" that box at some point anyhow. Hope somewhere here you can get it working.

[johnvosh 13]

Thank you everyone for the help and advice. I ended up uninstalling the network mod to see if it would change anything and it didn't, so I uninstalled the entire game. I then took and restarted the computer and reinstalled the game.

I am now getting the sound effects, which is nice. Now I have another problem and I think it is probably the sound card, although it does seem to just be in this game when it is in play mode for the most part. It almost seems like feedback when the game is running. So I am going to try uninstalling the sound card and use the onboard sound again.

Thanks again everyone. So I don't know if something screwed up during the installation last time or what, but it seems the sound effects problem is fixed for now.

[markussaage 762]

Well, sorry, but I saw this post a little late today. A while ago I had weird sound problems, too, playing the game. At start the sound was just fine, later on (couple minutes or longer, I don't remember), the sound became wirring, and the only thing I could do about it, was to quit and restart the game. I am using a Soundblaster Audigy 2 on Windows 7, and there are still no good official drivers available from Creative. Back in the days, a Creative supporter released driver packs on his own for older Creative Soundblaster cards to work with Windows 7. It turned out, that the NEWEST pack of this driver caused the sound problem. So I went back to Support Pack 3.8, since then I've never had a problem with the ingame sound.
Maybe this helps other peeps out here using older Creative hardware on Windows 7.

Kind regards!