Sound disappearing

[bacchant]

For me, anytime I try to adjust the audio in Preferences, all sound disappears. Simply reloading doesn't fix it. I have to Quit and restart for the audio to work again. Even if adjust the audio in Preferences before loading the game (at the start screen), the audio drops completely. I checked the Known Bugs thread but didn't see anything similar. Has anyone else encountered this or is this particular to my setup?

A couple of Notes:
- If I switch to Desktop, my volume isn't muted and Window's audio works.
- My game is from GOG.
- I'm using Flintlock's c3X patch (v. 19).

If there aren't any others who've experienced this issue, similar or not to my setup, I'll check out the appropriate venues in the Notes section above.

Edit:
A little more experimenting has revealed that the audio preferences aren't working at all. I tried turning it to max, restarting Civ3, and volume was the same as before. Lowering gives the same result. IOW, it's only window's volume that matters. So the only thing Preferences is good for in this regard is for the game to lose all sound (independent of widows).

** Also should've mentioned (doh!) it's a few years old laptop running Win11. And the audio prefs used to work. I don't know when it 'broke' though as it's been awhile since I tried changing it.

Edit (2):
Just discovered that simply opening/closing Prefs (no alterations) is enough to blank the sound. I wonder if there was some Win11 update that fubared the audio, or even the Prefs altogether.

 

[Quintillus]

I'm not sure I've heard of that specific variant, but sound in Windows 10 and later can definitely behave rather oddly.

The one silver bullet seems to be Indirect Sound. Quite a few of us have had sound issues on 10 or 11, tried Indirect Sound, and had it fix it, myself included on my previous laptop.

If that doesn't fix it, hopefully someone else will have another idea1

 

[bacchant]

Okay, this is what I installed/changed in the order I performed them. Unfortunately, no joy as far as fixing my issue.

DirectX (web-installer):

Download DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer from Official Microsoft Download Center

The Microsoft DirectX® End-User Runtime installs a number of runtime libraries from the legacy DirectX SDK for some games that use D3DX9, D3DX10, D3DX11, XAudio 2.7, XInput 1.3, XACT, and/or Managed DirectX 1.1. Note that this package does not modify the DirectX Runtime installed on your Windows...

www.microsoft.com

--
VisualStudio-10:

Latest supported Visual C++ Redistributable downloads

This article lists the download links for the latest versions of Visual C++ Redistributable packages.

learn.microsoft.com

--
.NET Framework 3.5:

Install .NET Framework 3.5 on Windows 11, 10, 8.1, 8 - .NET Framework

Learn how to install the .NET Framework 3.5 on Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8.1, and Windows 8.

learn.microsoft.com

--
IndirectSound:

IndirectSound - 3D Audio in Older Games

DirectSound Wrapper: Restore 3D positional audio (surround sound) in older games on modern Windows operating systems

www.indirectsound.com

--
Registry changes indicated @ above link.
****
<shrug> This thing has me tossed. I mean, simply opening prefs is enough to nerf game audio. BTW, that MS-link for VisualStudio-10 was tough to track down. MS does like to pretend that something doesn't exist if they no longer support it.

 

[Civinator]

Civ 3 was developed under conditions, when microsoft had not reduced the sound channels of windows. The problem of missing sound in Civ 3 due to reduced sound channels, as far as I remember, was first noticed by missing sound in the diplomacy menues of Civ 3: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/fix-for-no-sound-during-diplomacy-under-windows-10.623735/

After using the patch for the diplomacy sound, I always adjust the sound volume for playing Civ 3 by the sound volume for the pc and not by Civ 3.

 

[bacchant]

Civ 3 was developed under conditions, when microsoft had not reduced the sound channels of windows. The problem of missing sound in Civ 3 due to reduced sound channels, as far as I remember, was first noticed by missing sound in the diplomacy menues of Civ 3: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/fix-for-no-sound-during-diplomacy-under-windows-10.623735/

After using the patch for the diplomacy sound, I always adjust the sound volume for playing Civ 3 by the sound volume for the pc and not by Civ 3.

Yeah, it's not a crippling issue. Except, independent of window's volume, it'll still inalterably mute if I open Preferences for any reason. But with a little foresight and maybe the occasional game restart, it's fairly easy to contend with it. BTW, I don't seem to have any issues with sound in diplomacy; go figure, huh.