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Myst seriesRiven - Ambient Sounds don't work(32 posts)solved(32 posts)solved
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Posted December 23, 2009
Recently purchased and installed Riven off of GOG.com, and I am unable to get Ambient Sounds to work. I have gone to the Options section of the in-game menu bar and have toggled Ambient Sounds on, but the environments are silent. There still is sound in the game--audio plays perfectly fine during movie sequences, and "important" sounds like manipulating levers are still audible--but "lesser" background effects like the waves crashing on the surf are mute. The Reference Sound buttons in the in-game Setup screens also don't play anything when clicked on.
Running Riven under Win XP Home Edition Service Pack 3. I have integrated sound instead of an actual sound card--a SigmaTel High Definition Audio CODEC, to be precise--but aside from not being able to initiate sound in the FEAR 2 demo, I've never had audio troubles.
Any help would be much appreciated.
EDIT: Upon further investigation, in-game background music also isn't playing. How strange!
Post edited December 24, 2009 by MatthewG
This question / problem has been solved by MatthewGimage
Posted June 06, 2010
Problem solved!

It seems that having old modems installed on your computer can cause havoc with the sound in some games. I went to Control Panel | Sounds and Audio Devices | Hardware, then selected Unimodem Half-Duplex Audio Device and clicked the Properties button, then went to the pull-down tab and selected "Do not use this device." Lo and behold, Riven's sound issues are no more!

Unfortunately, Windows seems to get grumpy about you doing this, and blue-screened on me with an HSFHWBS2.sys error on startup. Seems like I'll have to just disable the Unimodem thing only while I'm playing the game, then re-enable after I'm done. Though probably just uninstalling the modem entirely would be the best solution.

I discovered this solution while trying to get the sound in FEAR 2 to work, funny enough. Nobody had said a word about trying this with Riven, but both games had such similar sound issues that I figured there might be a connection. Who would've guessed?

I must say, though, I'm fairly disappointed with GOG.com's customer service regarding this matter. I used their form mailer twice, several months apart, to report the issue. I received absolutely no reply in return, not even a generic "We're looking into the problem" response. It's all right if they can't come up with a solution, but don't just ignore your customer.

Hopefully this will help some other people that might be struggling with Riven's audio. Thanks for the help, everybody!
Post edited May 31, 2011 by Funke
Posted July 04, 2013
Ran into the same problem on Win 7 64bit, quicktime sounds played fine, but I was getting no ambient sounds at all.

Tried many different suggestions to no avail, including setting fEnableAudioProxy=false in Mohawk.w32 file.

Then I noticed when testing the audio in Riven set-up I could very faintly hear something. Looking around it suddenly became clear. The audio was coming through my headset that is plugged into the front 3.5mm jacks on the PC and which is only used for Skyping (headphone and Microphone set up).

I have a USB based speaker system connected to the PC and marked as the default audio device (with the front 3.5mm jacks on the PC markers as default communication device, i.e. for skype), but for some reason Riven ambient audio ignores the main speakers and routes through the headphone regardless. The quicktime/video stuff plays through the speakers fine though.

So it seems as if more advanced audio capabilities of todays PC's, maybe coupled with using a USB based speaker system, meant that the sounds are playing, but you can only hear them if you plug in some headphones into the 3.5mm jacks on your PC. Not sure if setting fEnableAudioProxy=false had any bearing on it.

Luckily the solution for me was simple, my USB speakers also include a line input, so i just set up a cable from my front headphone socket to my speakers, to finally give me full audio out of them.

So just something else for others to consider if they find no ambient sounds playing.
Post edited July 04, 2013 by noisecrime
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Myst seriesRiven - Ambient Sounds don't work(32 posts)solved(32 posts)solved
(32 posts)solved