Sound Issues with Recommended Setups

I am lucky enough to have 3 Mac setups that meet the specs from Aspyr.


1. Dual 2.7Ghz GeForce 6800 Ultra 30" Cinema display 3.5gb Ram.
2. MacBook Pro 2GHZ 15" Dual Core 2GB Ram
3. iMac G5 2GB Ram

All are running 10.4.7 with the very new QuickTime 7.1.2.

All have the same issue with sound.

No game sounds work except the Voice Overs and occasional music.

Sometimes Zooming in very close to towns seems to bring in the ambience (on the 2.7 ghz.)

Would be curious to hear if anyone else is seeing (or not seeing) this (I know many others have now reported it) Please mention what specs, system and QuickTime your system is under.

Thanks,

Lance

20" 2ghz iMac Coreduo, 2gb Ram, 256 VRam x1600.

Just got the game today, I'm running 10.4.7 and Quicktime 7.1.2.

Loaded up, maxed out graphics settings and started a game.

No sounds in game except from new technology (voice) and I noticed music when in conversation with another civilization.

All the graphics looked great and ran smoothly, but I'd say about 30 turns in the screen greyed over and the OSX restart sign showed up. Had to hard-restart.

I'm not sure if there's a crash log? Couldn't find one.

Anyways, about to start up again. I hope it doesn't crash me again.

Welp, it crashed me again.

Right after a new civilization found me and initiated conversation. Conversation ended and I tried to move a scout. Bam... kernel panic.

I think the first crash happened right after meeting the first AI.

Sounds like this version is buggy as all get out.

Dammit, Aspyr!

monaco27 said:

I'm not sure if there's a crash log? Couldn't find one.

Click to expand...

As this was a kernel panic then you should find a panic log in /Applications/Console. Click Logs at the top left, click the triangle next to /Library/Logs and click panic log. Scroll to the bottom to see the latest entries. Panic log entries are usually pretty unintelligible to mere mortals, but might give Aspyr a clue if you copy/paste and email to their support.

Application crashes drop reports into ~/Library/Logs, Crash Reporter under each application's name.

Looks like we're all beta testers now

Wow... this is very disappointing news. These problems seem so major that there is no way they couldn't know about them. No sound?! That's ridiculous... but Kernel panics are just scary.

That sound issue is the same type of thing that they had with civ3.

I dropped the graphics to medium even though they weren't slowing things down... and the kernel panics seem to have disappeared.

perhaps they were caused by running out of video memory?

Mumster said:

That sound issue is the same type of thing that they had with civ3.

Click to expand...

Not exactly - Civ4 has more sounds that don't play than C3C. At this rate, Civ5 will be entirely silent. So far, it's running OK on my MacBook with graphics set to medium, except for the sounds, of course.

Let's not jump to too many conclusions.

I've only seen one report of kernel panics, so let's not .... panic!

The Civ3 sound issues were specifically because Civ3 Complete was not programmed to handle one of the sound file formats used in Civ3. There *could* be a similar case again here, but it's unlikely to be related.

I still don't have my transatlantic copy of Civ4, so I am not is a strong position to assist with these problems. However, I'm told there are two kinds of sound file in Civ4 (at least on Windose and so probably also on the Mac version). They are .wav and .mp3 files. And, the mp3 files do things like Mr Spock's voice-overs and music, while .wav files provide the unit sound effects. Sooo, based on the reports so far it sounds like the .wav files are not playing and the .mp3 ones are.

Maybe somone who has the sound problems could be a hero and check if a .wav file plays Ok when double clicked or otherwise opened in iTunes or Quicktime ...? If the files are OK then maybe the file names are incorrect - wrong case? wrong names? The names are defined in the file /XML/Audio/AudioDefines.xml, but I don't think they include the file extension .wav. So the software could be looking for xxx.WAV .. maybe. If so you could try changing the extension to .WAV on one of the sounds you expect to hear, and see if that brings it to life.

You may need to empty caches (not sure how you do that) and relaunch Civ4 as well, so this is not a trivial exercise. But if anyone with a bit of technical savvy and curiosity wants to try something, these are some things to try

The sound files play fine in QT.

So the software is just not picking them up. Sounds like a file name issue to me. ... Windows is totally careless about upper/lower case on file names. The Mac tries to be at the user level, but under the skin it's as case sensitive as any Unix system. However, I'm sure Brad'll be along soon to tell me to stop speculating and leave it to the professionals

If it's any consolation, the PC-side had to wait for the first patch before Civ4 was playable for a lot of folks. Maybe Aspyr just wanted to give us the complete Civ4 experience!

Me, I'm just counting the days until I can order my Macbook and then still not have a system capable of playing Civ4.

AlanH said:

...However, I'm sure Brad'll be along soon to tell me to stop speculating and leave it to the professionals

Click to expand...

At this point, I'd bet Brad is washing Xanax down with a bottle of Gran Patrón.

Clearly, their beta-testing program has suffered...

Got my copy today, and am having the same sound issues as everyone else. The bg music plays sometimes, but then will just shut off... and no ambient, or unit sounds.

Gameplay is choppy and slow even on small maps...
(g5 tower duo 1.8ghz 1gig ram geforce 5200 - with my system i was expecting more)

This makes me wonder about the person who reviewed the game in that macworld article

Here's a possible diagnostic option fo rthe sound issue:

1. Enable logging. In Windows that means editing the Civ4.ini file - probably somewhere in your ~/Library/Preferences/ folder. Civ3 Complete keeps it in ~/Library/Preferences/Civilization 3 Complete/. Change LoggingEnabled to 1. You should then have the following line in the .ini file:

LoggingEnabled=1

2. Play a few turns when unit movement sounds should have been heard.

3. Go into the Civ4 Logs and look for the file audio.log. That might have error messages like:

ERR: FSharedSoundData::Load: Could not read file Sounds/DeclareWar

... but related to the sounds you didn't hear. These *may* give some clues about what's going wrong.

Thanks go to Gyathaar, BTW, who is feeding me with these gems about the files and structures in Civ4 Windows.

PS. The GeForce 5200 seems to be a common factor across a lot of G5 systems that are having problems. It's on the list of supported cards, so it ought to have been tested, I guess. Wonder what's going on

I cant find the ini file in any folder. however in assets/python/_debugtools there is a file called AudioLogParser.py when I double click on it it decompresses an app called AudioLogParser When I try to launch that is doesn't launch. any ideas?? Also I moved the sound files out of the Sounds/units folder and played a turn and it said in the game that it couldn't find the sound "RifleCock." There are 3 rifle cock sounds and they are named RifleCock-000.wav RifleCock-001 etc

How the heck does an issue as big as "no sound" get by beta testers and whatnot? I mean, these aren't "lab" computers they're using ... they're "real life" computers.

Gatekeeper