Sound issues

from Stardock Forums
I've got the "no sound during movie" issue as some folks have reported here. I had sound with v1.00 but it was pausing frequently ("blah *pause* blah *pause* blah") but lost sound with the v1.04 standalone patch. (Music played fine.) A check with the debug.err file showed an error message along the lines of "Unable to initiate DirectSound object" or words to that effect. I then launched the game through Stardock Central and got both sound and music ... but with the frequent pausing for sound during the movies. Turning off Background loading didn't help. Would you like my Dxdiag and debug.err file to help you troubleshoot this?
~SDC~
[Message Edited]
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Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Newbie here. Can I ask a sound question as well? I am having the sound issue in movies as well. I installed the CD, directx 9 from the CD, (I have been playing Pharoah for the last year and a half) and downloaded and installed the latest patch before I started the game the first time. This is at work (lunch time) and have not had a chance to look at the error logs. Is there a generic fix?

Thanks!
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Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
The "blah *pause* blah *pause*" is most likely caused by some kind of buffer underrun in your system. I have an AMD 450 Mhz processor and I have that issue in this game and just about any other newer game that uses the .bik type files. I can't say whether its my slow processor or a sound card that doesn't support hardware buffering or both.
:notsure:
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Sorry to not be more specific, I have no sound at all in the movies. I have a XP1700 on a K7S5A ECS board. Been so long since I put it together I forget what the sound card is. Will check when I get home.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Sorry to not be more specific, I have no sound at all in the movies. I have a XP1700 on a K7S5A ECS board. Been so long since I put it together I forget what the sound card is. Will check when I get home. Also have 384 MB of DDR.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top

You can try running this link:

http://www.stardock.com/files/ms_mp3codec.exe

If it's just a problem of mp3 codecs being taken over by another program, that may fix it.  Sometimes WinDVD is too stubborn though, and has to be removed.

For the people who still have this problem and don't have WinDVD or anything else taking over their codecs, we're still working on it.  Unfortunately, the only person here who knows how the sound code works is working on another project right now, so he's not immediately availble to help.

Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
Didn't work, no WinDVD installed. Is it possible it might be the media center that came with my ATI AIW 7500?
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top

Hmm...I haven't had any people report problems with that.  But I've also run WinDVD and had no problems with Gal Civ. 

I've had people tell me that if they run the exe directly, rather than through the CD, the problem goes away.