Sound bug with the game Salt

[Higgins]

Hello everyone!
I'm not sure this is the right place to post this, I didn't find a section for technical problems other than the one for developers.

Anyway, the game causing me trouble is called Salt. I don't believe it's available on the AGS site, at least not anymore.
Here's a video of it. It has a link to the game in the description :
https://youtu.be/IDqOr63PyZs?si=aQDSqeLMqD62GFGs

Whenever I run the game, the sound is just blips, blops, and parasitic noises.
I've tried with different sound settings, on two different PCs.

I tried contacting the developers, but they didn't know and told me to ask here.

I wonder what could cause the bug, and if anybody has encountered it while playing Salt or another AGS game.
I'd be very grateful if someone could give me some assistance. Cheers!

[heltenjon]

@selmiak He's linking to your video and your download links. I downloaded it and got the same issue with music. Sound effects are ok, though. In your video the sound works, so did you do anything special? (The game prompts for an ms-gaming overlay. Is that relevant?)

[Crimson Wizard]

I do not experience any trouble with the sound when running this on my machine. Which operating system are you running on? If that matters, I still use Windows 7. The sound settings are at defaults: Default DirectSound Device.

I noticed that the game was made with AGS 3.3.0, which is rather old. In AGS 3.6.0 we have completely replaced the sound processing part in the engine. If you won't be able to solve this with the original files, you might try downloading the latest version of AGS (dl: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/releases/finals/AGS-3.6.1P9/AGS-3.6.1.31-P9.zip), pickout two files from there:
- acwin.exe
- SDL2.dll
place them into the game's folder and run acwin.exe instead of the game's original exe. And see if that resolves the issue.
(EDIT: the above are instructions for Windows, if you are running on Linux, for example, then you will need a different set of files...)

[Higgins]

When I tried to download the files, it gave me a network error. Weird.
But I had dowloaded the P8 previously so I was able to try, and...

...it worked! Thanks a lot!!

[BHIOU]

Hello!
I had a similar problem with another AGS game, and for me, it came from the compatibility mode or the audio driver.
You can try to launch the game in Windows XP or 7 compatibility mode, it solved a lot of sound bugs for me.
If not, try changing the default audio output in Windows before launching the game.
Maybe also test with headphones instead of speakers (or vice versa).
It's super frustrating this kind of bug, I sympathize.
Let us know if you find a solution!

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