All Game Sound Shuts Off

[wolframnhart]

I am in the middle of playing my game and suddenly all the game sound shuts off: sound effects, neighborhood music, voices, etc. Has anyone else had this problem? I have both WA and AMB, plus HEL.

[vorpal]

Yes, just one hour ago. Reloading the save did not help, reloading the game neither. I had to restart the computer and deleted that save. I've no idea, however, what it was. Has never happened before.

[Inge]

Yes same here.  Or else one sound gets stuck and very loud (usually the PC game or TV) and no other sounds play

[lordrichter]

Yeah.  Once.  Did not save, rebooted computer.

[Pyromaniac]

This happened to me when I invited a corrupt NPC over. The minute she walked onto the lot (I assume this is when the game loads her information), all sound cut off, save for loud buzzing in one of my speakers.

[Knukleur]

I had similar experience yesterday after playing for a short period; all sounds replaced with constant scratchy noise which made me first suspicious of my speakers or audio drivers. I saved and exited, as as the game was shutting down some sounds returned, as if there had been some lag in their output. I didn't have any audio problems with other applications. Rebooted and started playing again but no problem since with a couple of sessions.  I updated WinAmp recently and have uninstalled some extra plugin listed in the add/remove programs list since this problem, but I haven't played enough sessions lately to check whether the problem might still come back; I'd already disabled the WinAmp Agent that's supposed to prevent other applications from hijacking file associations. I'm running Vista 32-bit with "Realtek High Definition Audio" (some sort of built-in sound chip) and have it configured for vanilla stereo PC speakers; Sims 3 with World Adventures, latest EA patch and Awesomemod plus about 65 MB of other stuff in the new default Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3/Mods/Packages location, updated CFG file, no nested folders.

[sewinglady]

Have had sound issues off and on since installing Ambitions...suspect it's an EA thing. Waxing poetic here - I remember the old days in the first generation of this game when the sound would shut off - it was a sure sign of imminent CTD.

Anyway, elsewhere on these boards, our fearless leader had suggested using 'alt+tab' a couple times... so far, that or going to 'edit town' and back into the current played fambly has eventually restored the sound - although it makes a horrendous ruckus when it returns.

[specialtoffee]

I was having the same thing, sounds would shut off or one of the background noises would get stuck looping, the game would also lag terribly while it was happening. It seemed to be related to sims using bicycles. I deleted all the bicycles my sims owned and it hasn't happened since.

[SickLaxBro]

Happened several times to me as well. There didn't seem to be any specific event that caused it though, or maybe there was and I didn't realize/notice it.

Alt+tab didn't work for me, plus I play in Windowed mode, so it shouldn't make any difference.

[ShortyBoo]

This just happened to me the other night when I last played. I thought it was my speakers or my sound card, so I saved and quit the game and opened up MediaMonkey. My music played fine, so I just figured it was another random game bug and I forgot about it until I saw this thread. I haven't played since then so I don't know if it will work again or not. I'm kind of suspecting my neighborhood is messed up because I've had other problems so I may just start over.

[Sleepycat]

I lost sound when playing one time. I just kept playing and eventually the sound started working again.

[vorpal]

I am having this in my game now more and more often. The first instance ever was two days ago, and since then it has happened several times. I almost got it to the point of being reproducible at Simtime Sunday morning around 9 am. But, of course, the fifth reload of the same save failed in that it did not occur again.
The whole thing is like a mitigated version of the game freeze that has been reported several times where everything freezes but ambient animations (trees swaying, plumbob spinning), while this time it's only the sound that gets stuck.
In two instances the stereo was playing when it froze, i.e., it continued to play even after I had switched programs and minimised TS3 into the Mac dock. Deleting the stereo from the household did not change anything, however. The only thing that got my game finally beyond that critical point was to not switch households. In fact, the very first time that I had this happen to me was after switching to several households one morning in order to send some truant children to school. So, maybe, it is caused by some failed action that is happening outside your current household.
I also noticed that the one save file that I tried to reload several times in order to find out what's causing this freeze had grown considerably in size by around 20MB.

Edit: Just had it again. After I could work around it the first time (it was again at around 9 a.m.) the sound feeze reappeared one Sim hour later, and this time there was nothing peculiar happening that could trigger it (Sim walked into library and then - sound gone, next try Sim is IN library already teaching toddler to walk - sound gone). I give up - this is the fifth attempt at establishing the same family in Twinbrook.

[jrcaporal]

A clean install should fix that, just remember to keep your save files in a safe place, also try checking your game options, you may need to decrease the quality of sound, since it could be caused by your hardware.


If that doesn't work clean your ears well and try removing all of your mods (if you have any). Report back to tell us if you noticed anything.

[Elyasis]

I have a chronic case of this bug. I just play the game sans sound now. I usually only get about 10 minutes of sound before it cuts off anyway.

[Ennis]

I've had this happen to me once, I had not noticed the sound shut off until suddenly every single sound that SHOULD have played all played at once in a loud and startling moment. I think I did a 'fixall' before then.

[Ryslin]

I just had this happen to me.

Situation as such.. bought 2 bikes, the smooth one(apologies that I cannot remember the whole name). Set preferred on both sims for their particular bike. Sent sim to China.
Sim rode bike in china.

Sim comes home.. Wife takes bike (his!) No sound.
Reboot.
Delete bike , one missing..delete the bike holders. Send Wife off to find other bike. It was not showing in inventory for whatever reason, and the sound died again.
Delete other bike , give a car. No issues.

Silly little eco sim is going to have to live with the darn bad moodlet.

[wizard_merlin]

I haven't experienced this sound problem, but I recall some time ago someone posted about sound issues, and identified the culprit as being the duplex/half-duplex drivers usually associated with dial-up modems.  A search should reveal the thread/posts and might help.

It may be nothing, but might be worth investigating as a possible cause.  Most laptops have these modems built-in and some desktop PC's also have them.

[Ryslin]

I haven't experienced this sound problem, but I recall some time ago someone posted about sound issues, and identified the culprit as being the duplex/half-duplex drivers usually associated with dial-up modems.  A search should reveal the thread/posts and might help.

It may be nothing, but might be worth investigating as a possible cause.  Most laptops have these modems built-in and some desktop PC's also have them.

Well.. that would be interesting if I had a modem. That would be a correct situation in the case of the modem/soundcard combos of about 2003 and earlier.
I do have a sb24bit live, which in common knowledge is shit. It has as best updated drivers as one can give it for win7. (Thank goodness Creative did make some win 7 drivers) I doubt my motherboard soundcard would do much better as it does not have win7 drivers.

However the removal of bike use OF ADULTS removed the issue. I have no problems with kids running around on bikes.

[Firestarter]

I've also had this problem more often lately.  I'll just be playing randomly and all of a sudden the sound goes off.  It'll go on for less than 5 minutes, then come blaring back on again.  It seems to happen more often to me when I play large houses with big families.  I'm playing a single-person family now and I haven't had any problems so far.

Seems like a random EA bug to me - people have been complaining about sound issues since Ambitions came out.

[wizard_merlin]

Seems like a random EA bug to me - people have been complaining about sound issues since Ambitions came out.

There were complaints here before Ambitions came out about sound problems.

[bowrain]

It started happening to me since about a week ago. Weird, since I didn't install any new CC or patch when it started. Like some other people had experienced here, the sound would all gone suddenly after playing for a while and when it comes back, all the sounds will play together, as if there's a lag. Sometimes going to buy/build mode will fix it, or going to CAS with editsim cheat. I haven't tried going to edit town but going back to main menu and reloading the save wouldn't fix it.

[MiaHaglund]

I've had this problem once before, I think a month ago but I went to vacation with my sims family and the sound came back Now it happened me again and I'll restart and see what happends... But all sounds wasn't gone, when my girl-sim played at her computer there was the game-sound?

[Entgleichen]

Please try lowering sound quality in options. After a re-install it was automatically set to high in my game and I had these sound issues, too. Then I set the quality to Low, which does not mean that it sounds worse. Only less sounds are being played at the same time. This solved the problem for me.

[startspring]

I had this problem too and even asked the EA support for help  They adviced me to create a new user account on my pc and play the game from there, and it actually works.

[Blech]

I've been experiencing this bug quite often and from my learnings I think that adults using bikes exacerbates the issue, but doesn't cause it. With one family who only have the cheap car, and don't own any bikes, I had this bug occasionally, but with a bike-owning sim it happens every couple of minutes. Also, I noticed that some people are saying the sound comes back on eventually and some people say the game crashes when the sound goes. For me, it's either/or, randomly, so I just save immediatly whenever it happens and then reload. I just had my 5th crash in 30 minutes so I just sold the bike and set the the sound quality to low, as Entgleichen suggested and will see if that helps.