Windows 10 Steam Diplomacy Screeching Bug

[Mastermaul]

Hello. I've recently tried to get back into Civ3. However, I'm being plagued by this nerve-wracking bug that seems to not have been offered any solutions as of yet. There seems to be very few threads dedicated to it and they're all short and inconclusive.

If you're not aware what I'm talking about, upon entering the diplomacy screen with an AI civ there is a very, very loud and sudden screeching noise on my left audio channel and all other sound cuts out while you are in that diplomacy screen. I've not played very far, but so far the sound resumes when you close that screen.

As it stands, every turn brings the possibility of being horribly startled by the AI with no warning, making the game basically unplayable. As the title stands, I'm using the Steam version and playing on Windows 10.

 

[fuad]

I'm not using steam version I have a regular one and I have the same problem too , this started in one of windows 10 updates and no solutions came out so far before the windows 10 update I had no problems at all the game was running just fine

 

[Mastermaul]

Well, disabling the in-game music will fix the issue... at the cost of no in-game music. I've tried messing around with the files in the "diplomusic" folder. Deleting them outright will make the game encounter a fatal error when you enter diplomacy, and replacing them with different MP3s has no effect other than changing the exact screeching noise made. It's like the game is playing the entire MP3 file super fast or something.

Sounds like maybe the best solution is just to have the soundtrack looping on youtube or something, or listen to your own music. The game has great music though, would like to get to the bottom of this.

 

[Mastermaul]

Alright, the above post actually gave me an idea. I've found a very ghetto work around. I replaced every file in the "diplomusic" folder with a 1 second long, completely silent .mp3. This removes the screeching noise and still allows you to have music turned on. There's no diplomatic music, so it's a middle ground solution at best, but it's the best thing i've found so far. The regular BGM still plays shortly after starting diplomacy for some reason, so it doesn't even become completely silent. Not sure why that is.

I've still yet to play into the late game to see if there's any other major sound glitches though.

Is anyone interested in me uploading a folder with all the diplomusic files converted to the silent MP3? I used the 1-second long track at this website if you want to do it yourself.

http://duramecho.com/Misc/SilentCd/index.html

 

[Theov]

I found the same problem. Highly annoying.

 

[Civinator]

Nathiri had a very good solution for this problem.

You can find it here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/fix-for-no-sound-during-diplomacy-under-windows-10.623735/
and here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/no-sound-during-diplomacy.615825/#post-14900887

 

[Theov]

Thanks.
But now I have no sound at all.

 

[Civinator]

On my pc the solution posted by Nathiri not only eliminated the 'Screeching Bug' but also restored all diplomacy sounds that were vanished after that win 10 update - and all is working well even today.

 

[Theov]

Am I missing something? I put the 2 files in my Conquest folder, but now I have no sound at all.
Removing the files brings the sound back.

 

[Civinator]

May be that solution is not working for all sound cards.