I have no sound!

[brotherramon]

Over the years I've had no problem with Oblivion, but now there's no sound! The start-up music works fine, but when the game starts, there is only silence. Can anyone help?

 

The reason I'm asking: My Oblivion disc cracked late July or early August, so I bought the Steam version. That worked fine until now. I checked the integrity, and Steam downloaded one file but that hasn't made a difference. I still have no sound.

 

I asked about it on the Steam forum but got no answer.

 

My experience with Steam staff has been that they never answer the question you ask, their mental level only allows them to answer the question they think you asked (or hope you asked) but didn't. They don't read the question carefully. I had a long correspondence back and forth with them about my account with them, and in the end they still didn't get what I was asking! I gave up. I'm reluctant to ask them for help because I know I'll never get any real help from them. But I see by the questions and answers in this group that the staff and the members here are right on the ball.

 

BR

[Striker879]

Did you make any changes, either with Oblivion mods or things like drivers etc. between when it worked and when it didn't? I'm going to assume you've already confirmed that the in-game sound menu is as it should be (i.e. you don't have sliders at the bottom etc.).

 

You could try letting Oblivion re-detect your hardware. Rename your Oblivion.ini file to Oblivionini.old (Oblivion.ini is found in Users\[username]\Documents\My Games\Oblivion for Win 7 and Vista or Documents and Settings\[username]\My Documents\My Games\Oblivion for Win XP NOT the file Oblivion_default.ini found in your game's install directory). Start the game as far as the menu and then exit to the desktop. You may need to reset some of your video settings afterwards as the game has trouble recognizing modern hardware that wasn't even dreamed of back when the game was developed.

Edited February 4, 2012 by Striker879

[Lazuri]

Could also try extracting the .bsa containing voice, sound and music to the data folder.

[bben46]

First, check the obvious - Does your sound card or integrated audio meet the game minimum requirements? Is your sound setting on mute? Is the volume up? Are your external speakers hooked up? If they have a powered amplifier is it plugged in? Does music work in another game?

 

Have you made any changes to your audio settings outside of the game ?

On my system, I must set the sound card settings differently to use Skype - then to use the audio out to my A/V amp for watching TV. If I forget to make the change, the computer freezes when I try to use Skype. :rolleyes:

 

Along with the sliders, there is a setting in the ini files that controls various volume settings. Have you changed any of your ini settings - or used a mod that did since your sound worked?

 

From the TweakGuides.com Skyrim section - (TweakGuides.com)

 

</h3>

<h3>Audio

fAudioMasterVolume=1.0000 - This variable in SkyrimPrefs.ini is equivalent to the Master volume slider in the in-game settings. However here it can be adjusted above the 1.0000 limit which is imposed on the in-game slider, allowing people who find the sound in Skyrim to be too low to raise it. For example, try a value of 1.5000 or 2.0000. You can subsequently adjust the other volume sliders in-game as required, however adjusting the Master volume slider in-game will reset this variable back to the default maximum of 1.0000.

 

bEnableAudio=1.0 - If this variable is added to the [Audio] section of Skyrim.ini and set to 0, it will disable all audio in the game. This is best used in troubleshooting to determine whether audio is the source of a problem with the game, such as stuttering or slowdowns.