[RESOLVED] No sound in games after hard reboot!!

**Damon** · March 27, 2013

Hi guys,

I think this is more of a MAME question, but hoping you guys can answer:

I had to hard reboot my system after an unrelated program froze on me. When I restared Gameex, I noticed that the sound in my games no longer works. The sound in GameEx (menu sounds etc) work fine though.

I went through configuration editor and made sure the volume was set to 100, but no luck.

Anyone know why this would have happened? The sounds were fine before the reboot, but now, not a peep.

It's also possible I hit some kind of keyboard combo that muted them??? I guess??? Not sure about that.

Anyway, any insight would be appreciated. Any ideas how I can fix this?

-D

**Damon** · March 27, 2013

Updated info: Within a mame game, i can get to the config screen and go to SLIDER CONTROLS. Each game now has the default volume as "-32db"

I can adjust that and get the sound working, but it only lasts for that one game session. If i exit the game, it goes back to no sound.

SOOOoo I am guessing mame (I am using mamep / mameplus) has has a Master Volume control that I can set someplace..... where can I do that???? I am sure I am on to something here.

**Tempest** · March 27, 2013

It would be difficult to say if it was a Mame issue, or a GameEx issue. GameEx does have the option to run mame without sound in the AUDIO options. That has to do wwith the jukebox, which I don't know if you are using or not.

Open your Mame.ini file, and see what your settings are in this section.

#
# CORE SOUND OPTIONS
#
sound 1
samplerate 48000
samples 1
volume 0

If you click on my signature and then the topic 'How to ask for help' you will find a section on troubleshooting using the 'runitgame.bat' method. If you would try that, at the minimum you will be able to possibly eliminate GameEx as the cause of the problem. As far as I'm concerned runitgame.bat is severely under utilized when it comes to trouble shooting, and should always be the first step if having a problem running an emulator from GameEX.

**Damon** · March 28, 2013

Tempest, will do.

I'm fairly sure this is not a GameEx issue. When I run MamePlus! on its own, the same problem happens. Unless GameEx can somehow alter the generic Mame configuration files?

When I run an actual rom, I am able to use the ~ key to get to the config menu for that rom. IN THERE I can go to the SLIDE CONTROLS menu and actually bring the volume up. The default is -32b. But it doesn't stick. If I restart the game, the sound is gone again.

Does anyone happen to know in what support file for Mame (or mamePlus) I can mess around with default volume settings? I'm sure it's in there someplace! I don't want to have to do it for each game individually, so I'm hoping I wouldn't have to.

**Tempest** · March 28, 2013

Open your Mame.ini file, and see what your settings are in this section.
#
# CORE SOUND OPTIONS
#
sound 1
samplerate 48000
samples 1
volume 0

**Damon** · March 28, 2013

Hi Tempest.

In the mame.ini, volume is set to 0

There is also a line beneath it that reads "volume adjustment" which is also set to 0.

Ny ideas???

**fRequEnCy** · March 28, 2013

Check the cfg files in the your cfg directory of your mame directory. Open one of those files with a file editor and see if those files have anything related. These files could be overriding the default value.

**Damon** · March 28, 2013

Hm, i have a ton of cfg files int there, most seem game related. The ones I am opening up don't have any volume or sound info. What am I looking for as far as files go?

SOOO FRUSTRATING!!! Thank you for the help.

**DazzleHP** · March 28, 2013

Hi, out of interest do you have more than one soundcard installed? Particularly if you have an ATI card with the HDMI rear-out drivers? I've had a similar problem before and only a complete removal (using third party tools) of CCC resolved it.

Just throwing my usual curveballs

**Draco1962** · March 28, 2013

I use SoundSwitch to toggle outputs between the HDMI sound and sound card to external speakers. Works really well.

**Damon** · March 29, 2013

Hi all,

So I confirmed that there was only one sound card, so that's not the problem.

Here's the weirdness: I started going through all the ini files for all the roms, and sure enough, in each one, the volume was set to -32 (which is functional zero).

Now, I have NO idea how they got that way. I can certainly update them one by one and bring the volume to 0 (functional full volume) but I would love to know if there's a way to do that simultaneously for all my roms.

Second, I'd love to know how that even happened. The roms were -fine- before, playing at full sound through mame, mameplus, and gameex (with mameplus backend). Then, the hard reboot, and now everything is set to volume -32. I mean. how does that happen??? Does anyone know what could have done that?? And how to prevent it? And again, how to batch fix all those roms? I'm sure glad I only have about 40!

-D

**fRequEnCy** · March 29, 2013

Perhaps those are generated during attractmode. Those were the files I meant for you to look for before. If you don't have any particular settings in them then simply delete them all and they will be rebuilt.

**DazzleHP** · March 29, 2013

Hi all,
So I confirmed that there was only one sound card, so that's not the problem.
Here's the weirdness: I started going through all the ini files for all the roms, and sure enough, in each one, the volume was set to -32 (which is functional zero).
Now, I have NO idea how they got that way. I can certainly update them one by one and bring the volume to 0 (functional full volume) but I would love to know if there's a way to do that simultaneously for all my roms.
Second, I'd love to know how that even happened. The roms were -fine- before, playing at full sound through mame, mameplus, and gameex (with mameplus backend). Then, the hard reboot, and now everything is set to volume -32. I mean. how does that happen??? Does anyone know what could have done that?? And how to prevent it? And again, how to batch fix all those roms? I'm sure glad I only have about 40!
-D

You mentioned that this happened after a hard reset, many things could have happened to a) cause your PC to freeze in the first place (i assume this is why you hit the reset switch) and b ) any number of things could have been happening when you did. I'm sure you are aware, as you seem like a guy who is tech savvy, that everyone's system is unique for the most part so trying to solve this anomaly could end up in an endless loop of "who's, why's and what if's". In this circumstance i would suggest you re-compile/re-install MAME first, as it seems from a third person point of view, this is where the fault lies. Then if you get the same results the staff will know to look into it further. You may find that a brand new MAME solves it - it may have become corrupt somehow, these things happen - especially after a hard reset, not just with emus/GE but all programs in general

**headkaze** · March 29, 2013

I use SoundSwitch to toggle outputs between the HDMI sound and sound card to external speakers. Works really well.

Would have been great except it just crashed for me. I had a look around for something else and found Quick Sound Switch which does the same thing but doesn't crash. Sweet

**Draco1962** · March 29, 2013

Would be cool to be able to togle such an application via GameEx somehow to where a toggle key could be assigned.

I tried Vista Audio Changer was recommended by the site you referenced. It crashes on Win 7 x64 whereas SoundSwitch works flawlessly.

**Tempest** · March 29, 2013

Hi all,
So I confirmed that there was only one sound card, so that's not the problem.
Here's the weirdness: I started going through all the ini files for all the roms, and sure enough, in each one, the volume was set to -32 (which is functional zero).
Now, I have NO idea how they got that way. I can certainly update them one by one and bring the volume to 0 (functional full volume) but I would love to know if there's a way to do that simultaneously for all my roms.
Second, I'd love to know how that even happened. The roms were -fine- before, playing at full sound through mame, mameplus, and gameex (with mameplus backend). Then, the hard reboot, and now everything is set to volume -32. I mean. how does that happen??? Does anyone know what could have done that?? And how to prevent it? And again, how to batch fix all those roms? I'm sure glad I only have about 40!
-D

PSPad has the feature to do a search and replace in a folder of files.

**headkaze** · March 29, 2013

Or just delete all the files in the ini folder.

**Damon** · March 29, 2013

Ah so deleting them will just get them recreated automatically, right? Thanks!

**fRequEnCy** · March 29, 2013

Perhaps those are generated during attractmode. Those were the files I meant for you to look for before. If you don't have any particular settings in them then simply delete them all and they will be rebuilt.

Ah so deleting them will just get them recreated automatically, right? Thanks!

Correct as mentioned above.

**Damon** · April 1, 2013

Ok, I'm going to back them up just in case. This thing has bitten me in the butt too many times!

**Damon** · April 2, 2013

UPDATE++++++++++

Ok so I deleted the .ini files (thank you for the advice!) and it worked. The ini files were recreated and the sound came back. BUT....

TRAGIC FLAW:

It's happening again. For whatever reason, after some time the default volume in the ini files is going back to -32, which again means no sound. I have no idea why this is happening. I have not touched the settings etc.

The only guess I have is that since the screensaver / attract mode is set to no volume, that somehow when the system goes into screensaver mode, it is rewriting all the ini files with -32. Does that sound plausible??? Does that mean I need to turn off the no volume option in attract mode?

Slowly losing my mind, but thankful for the help.

-D

**Tempest** · April 3, 2013

Just to help us to determine if the screen saver is causing the problem, could you try having the games run with sound in the screen saver, and let us know if that makes a difference?

**Damon** · April 4, 2013

UPDATE+++++

So I set Attract Mode to use sound. After one day of having attract mode running with sound, the games no longer have -32 as their volume. So I think I can confirm that YES, attract mode seems to override the default MAME rom volume settings.

WEIRD TWIST+++++

Even though I set attract mode sound to being on, sometimes attract mode uses NO sound at all. Nothing straightforward here.

**Tempest** · April 4, 2013

I will make Tom aware of this thread.

**fRequEnCy** · April 5, 2013

Do you have a mame.ini file in your main MAME directory?

[RESOLVED] No sound in games after hard reboot!!

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