Broken Radio, anyone?

[anillee]

My radio at times does not play music while it's on.  My sim will go over to the radio and turn it on.  I see the animation it shows when turned on, but there is no sound at all. 

This is something I've experienced in my game from time to time.  It had been functioning well for a while but all of a sudden, it started back up again.  I do not believe it's an issue involving mods or anything because I've had this happen during the fresh install, nothing added period.  Am I missing something or is it broken as intended?

[Edootjuh]

That happens to me too.
It appears to be random, I haven't found any pattern in it and reloading the game doesn't seem to work (I think)

[Lorelei]

I believe that another player (Nec?) discovered that if your neighbors have a stereo on, it can keep you from playing anything but Custom music on your own.

To zorch this, one way is start with the stereo at the Gazebo (if you have Riverview), remove it,  and then check each household to remove the stereos from your non-playable family homes.

A pain in the ass.

My game, incidentally, doesn't have this issue. Yet.

[anillee]

I believe that another player (Nec?) discovered that if your neighbors have a stereo on, it can keep you from playing anything but Custom music on your own.

To zorch this, one way is start with the stereo at the Gazebo (if you have Riverview), remove it,  and then check each household to remove the stereos from your non-playable family homes.

A pain in the ass.

My game, incidentally, doesn't have this issue. Yet.

Wow, that's some bug.  I'm going to try your tip though and see what happens.  I'll report back with my findings.

[GnatGoSplat]

I had this issue from the beginning.  I don't know if it's related to neighbor's stereos or not, but I know their stereos all work.

[anillee]

So far, removing the radios from nearby households seems to do the trick. 

[anillee]

I didn't have any problems with the sound until I bought the game. I played the pirated one for about 9 days. But three days after getting the hard copy my radios and buy/build music stopped working. I uninstalled the EADM and magically all my music is back now. Not sure if it's just a coincidence or not.

I don't think that is it, as I uninstalled EADM a few days ago and it still happened.  I think you're just lucky. 

[GnatGoSplat]

I never installed EADM to begin with.  I was able to fix this problem ONCE by going into audio options and clicking "Reset defaults".  Although it broke quickly thereafter and that never worked again.

[McCrea]

Yep, the radio's suck somehow massive.

The radio upgrade "wire house" is more a downgrade, imo.  My sims used to be able to sleep in their bedrooms with the living room radio playing.  I'd think I would prefer putting a desktop radio in every room, keeps it realistic, offers more variety, isn't unfairly expensive.

I had a graphical bug yesterday which ceased after restarting game.  The right speakers sound wave was twice as large as the normal left.  (or 4 times as large, depending on your dimentional perspective.)  Just wierd that an effect (particularly one that isn't a 'unique instance') would blow up.

I think I have a broken mp3.  One custom song always stop at the same point about 75% complete.  I'll start investigating now.  Edit: Yeah, there's a skip when I play it in another player.  Too bad the game just drops it though.  At least it tries, I guess.

[anillee]

Sound just died again.  Hmph.

[Janyses]

All of my music stopped working shortly after it was installed.  No buy/build mode or even the little tunes that play when a big event happens.  

I read that someone fixed theirs by starting a new game.  Since I hadn't played very long, I packaged up my home, started a new 'hood and plopped my family into it.  Have had no problems since.  

I also read somewhere that this was caused by the music being paused while alt-tabbing.  Try unchecking "defocus mute" in the options menu and restart the game.

[witch]

Yeah, it's great, my music is mostly broken. Very occasionally the music will randomly kick in, whether in live mode or build/buy. I merely have to turn the speakers off and in about 10 minutes the music will have broken again. Short of actually being able to turn the build/buy music off, I am happy it is so broken. As for live mode I guess I'll just have to make sure every household I am not playing has a radio.

[McCrea]

I had a thought (my first of the day!) and figured I might as well post it here.

Whereas I do appreciate realism, I know a game is a game, and I appreciate that computer resources are not infinite.  I was shocked when I realized that if you have, say, four radios in your house, and they're all on the same station, they are not synchronized!  That would be so much ... "easier" on the comp, no?  Not to mention on re-think, I figured it is most realistic to be the same songs if it's supposed to emulate a "radio station".

Retarded programmers

I mean the builtin custom mp3s are about 3.5 meg each. So,  if there are 8 different stations, then ok, we can track, what, 28 megs?  I mean, you could have all the current radio audio resident if each station played the same song.  (Yes, that is not a techy approach, I'm just pseudo-brain 4-instancing.)  Just be friggin easier, and more realistic seems to me.

Friggin Chicken

[Edit:  I can't believe I misspelled "whereas"]

[Nimrod]

Okay, you can exhale now 

Seems to me that a global player always scanning for X stereo objects on what station would be more taxing than a simple object based player.  Then you'd need a global player for each station, always scanning to see if it was time to stream itself.

[McCrea]

Seems to me that a global player always scanning for X stereo objects on what station would be more taxing than a simple object based player.  Then you'd need a global player for each station, always scanning to see if it was time to stream itself.

Wow.  What an elegant way to remind me I am nothing of a modern programmer  


EDIT:  I just happened to notice that it seems you can only have 4 radios going on the same lot... which is probably a good thing since the app locked up for 5 seconds turning on (or changing the channel) of the 4th one.  Piss poor, imo.

[Nimrod]

*runs off to check that out!

Turns out that you suffer from a local problem.  See for yourself if you wish.

Here.

[Malapietra]

Yep, the radio's suck somehow massive.

The radio upgrade "wire house" is more a downgrade, imo.  My sims used to be able to sleep in their bedrooms with the living room radio playing.  I'd think I would prefer putting a desktop radio in every room, keeps it realistic, offers more variety, isn't unfairly expensive.

I had a graphical bug yesterday which ceased after restarting game.  The right speakers sound wave was twice as large as the normal left.  (or 4 times as large, depending on your dimentional perspective.)  Just wierd that an effect (particularly one that isn't a 'unique instance') would blow up.

I think I have a broken mp3.  One custom song always stop at the same point about 75% complete.  I'll start investigating now.  Edit: Yeah, there's a skip when I play it in another player.  Too bad the game just drops it though.  At least it tries, I guess.

My Sims have the Heavy Sleeper trait so they get the benefit of having the radio on while they sleep.  Very handy!

[McCrea]

Turns out that you suffer from a local problem.

Eek!  Some EADYOT put my radio on a Nearly-Perfect Pedestal!  Don't they know you can't play them there?
(ty, i like your hardcore proof vm)

The radio upgrade "wire house" is more a downgrade, imo.  My sims used to be able to sleep in their bedrooms with the living room radio playing.  I'd think I would prefer putting a desktop radio in every room, keeps it realistic, offers more variety, isn't unfairly expensive.

My Sims have the Heavy Sleeper trait so they get the benefit of having the radio on while they sleep.  Very handy!

Good tip.

[Nec]

It was me, Lorelei

I have taken to turning off the stereo and throwing it in the family inventory before changing lots for now, and that has been working fine.

Other little tidbits:

Custom music playlists can be swapped in the custom music folder in-game, and will automatically notice the new mp3s. If you can't delete any of your old mp3s (file in use), just wait a few minutes since it is being played on another stereo. Yes, this means if you get sick of the current songs, you can change them without having to exit the game! This is a great feature, IMO.

If you delete all music from the custom music folder, the game will auto-generate the default songs so the custom station actually has music. Boring, but useful.

[snowbawl]

Bump!

OK, so I recently started having the silence problems.  No build/buy tunes, no stereo tunes.  Am I correctly understanding that this is due to stereos on lots of unplayed families?  I never realized that this would even be a big deal, but somehow it is.  The silence irks me.
So the fix is to delete stereos or place them in family inventories?  For the entire hood? 

[chaos]

Stupidest. Bug. Evar.

[Erry]

Stupidest. Bug. Evar.

No shit!