Sound issue with 1.2

The fact that this bug has persisted so long is a terrible sign -- their coding infrastructure must be rotten if it allows a fundamental flaw like this to remained unfixed for so long. This is supremely embarrassing from a technical viewpoint, and Bioware should be ashamed of itself.

In ops again last night, no sound after about an hour. Coolies.

It has actually become a bit better for me after latest patches when playing on my desktop, can often play several hours now with at least most of the sounds working. There's one thing taht often bugs though: Opening the galaxy map (on my sage if it matters). That often brings the electric noise back.

My laptop is another story then, sound bugs super fast just standing on fleet putting stuff to GTN heh. Glad I dont have to play much on that.

Sometimes after a very long playing session, say 6 hours, certain audio files will stop playing. Sometimes its a sound effect for an attack. Sometimes its part of the voiced dialog. Sometimes its the music.

I had a similar problem back when I played Rift, which also uses the Hero Engine. In Rift this problem was caused by a "Memory Leak." For non computer science majors a memory leak is caused when a file allocated to RAM, but cannot be retrieved by the Operating System. So in other words the sound files are loaded into RAM but they can no longer be accessed, causing them not to play. The problem is not that RAM is getting filled up, but that certain files stored in RAM can no longer be accessed.

To those people complaining, this is necessarily a simple problem to fix.

I suspect that this is the same culprit at work.

To fix the issue in Rift I needed to exit the progam completely, which would flush all the RAM currently being used by the Rift. I could then open Rift again, log back in, and play normally with the sound files in tact.

The same fix works here.

If your experiencing problems with the game, closing the game completely, re-opening it, and logging back in, will fix your sound issue.

Sometimes after a very long playing session, say 6 hours, certain audio files will stop playing. Sometimes its a sound effect for an attack. Sometimes its part of the voiced dialog. Sometimes its the music.

I had a similar problem back when I played Rift, which also uses the Hero Engine. In Rift this problem was caused by a "Memory Leak." For non computer science majors a memory leak is caused when a file allocated to RAM, but cannot be retrieved by the Operating System. So in other words the sound files are loaded into RAM but they can no longer be accessed, causing them not to play. The problem is not that RAM is getting filled up, but that certain files stored in RAM can no longer be accessed.

To those people complaining, this is necessarily a simple problem to fix.

I suspect that this is the same culprit at work.

To fix the issue in Rift I needed to exit the progam completely, which would flush all the RAM currently being used by the Rift. I could then open Rift again, log back in, and play normally with the sound files in tact.

The same fix works here.

If your experiencing problems with the game, closing the game completely, re-opening it, and logging back in, will fix your sound issue.

Yeah, we know how to fix it (temporarily at best), but if it's not something we can permanently fix client-side, then the "how" or "why" is a bit irrelevant. I mean I personally think knowledge is power, so I for one appreciate you explaining memory leaks. But the fact that it CONTINUES to happen at all is exactly why the sound issue so irritating and causing people to unsub. We wanna log in and play until we're done. No one wants to have to keep restarting their game over and over.

VERY BAD PROGRAMMING IS THE CAUSE!
When you have memory leaks this is a sign of bad programming and lack of memory management.

I have said this since starting this game that the game DOES NOT USE THE OS MEMORY MANAGERS but instead uses some goofy version that just does not work. You have to remember this game is based off of the Hero engine that is 7 years old and is Windows XP 32 bit and 9 years behind the tech of Windows 7. This is why most of the people having problems are using NEW COMPUTERS not people using older XP computers. The game runs like a charm on old XP systems but has all kinds of problems on Windows 7 64 bit.

Will say it again to clarify: BAD PROGRAMMING IS THE PROBLEM!