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There is no background music in AoE II and AoE II Expansion.
I have tried just about anything and have looked through the internet for persons with the same problem.
Apparently the problem is somewhat common for the collectors edition, since the background music for AoE II stays on the cd, after installation, for streaming while the game is playing.
I have tried some different things, but none were succesful.
Yes, i have turned up the computer volume and it has nothing to do with a not-existing "Music On/Off" button.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
I believe my friend has the collectors edition and it play music just fine. I think the problem is that either the user is using a No-CD patch that does not support in-game music, his audio settings are wrong for disk-to-game streaming, or that perhaps he may have a download version of the game that had the music stripped out to conserve disk space.
This may help for future reference. If the DVD media does not contain the files to begin with, then you are out of luck. If it does, it is probably compressed in a archive format, similar to what Activision does with their game development.Tthere may be a compatibility problem with CD/DVD drives and this game. Originally, If I am not mistaken, an audio cable was required to be plugged into the user's sound card and CD/DVD drive to transmit data to the audio chipset. Newer drives do not use the technology.
You could give this a shot:
Click Start, click Control Panel, click Performance and Maintenance, and then click System.
Click the Hardware tab, and then click Device Manager.
Click the + (plus sign) next to DVD/CD-ROM drives, right-click your CD-ROM drive, and then click Properties.
Click to check the Enable digital CD audio for this CD-ROM device check box, and then click OK.
On the File menu, click Exit to close the Device Manager window.
ALSO! Take a look at this:
http://sharkyforums.com/showthread.php?p=100456
It would be odd if the collectors edition was missing the OST and then the original edition had it.
Thanks!
I had the same problem too.
Here's how I fixed it; Just so you know, It sounds complicated but it's actually pretty simple...
First - I deleted the quotations around -midimusic
Second - I tried playing the midi files on Windows Media Player.
I found out that they weren't playing.
This is pretty much the most important part of this whole process because you know that the game will be able to play the midi files if Windows Media Player can.
Third - I went to Control Panel then Sounds, Speech, and Audio Devices (this was on Windows XP; the set up is probably a little different on Windows 7 and 8).
Fourth - I went to Sounds and Audio Devices (it's a little confusing, I know...) then on the window that pops up with Volume, Sounds, Voice, Audio, and Hardware, I clicked on Audio.
Fifth - I went to MIDI music playback and changed the Default Device to Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth
Sixth - I clicked the Volume button under the Default Device; and found out that the MIDI portion was on mute, so I raised the volume bar on that portion to the max.
Seventh - I hit the Apply button (I find it's easy to forget to do that)
Eighth - I made sure that all of the midi files from the demo were in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires II\Sound folder inside a special folder named midi (you can just copy and paste the midi folder from the demo right into the Age of Empires II\Sound folder).
Nineth - I made sure that all of the files had their original file names from the demo (music1, music2, etc.). One time I renamed them and I couldn't get them to play on the game.
Anyways, the two biggest things are deleting the quotes around -midimusic and, as I said before, making sure that Windows Media Player can play the midi files.
Hope this helps. You'll probably have to keep playing around with this. It took me a couple of days to figure all of this out...
This is even older, but I'm having a small problem.
I'm trying to put the music on, and I want it to play the midi tracks, but when I get in game it doesn't work. My AOE .exe file is not the same, it's called EMPIRES2.EXE instead. When I put "-midimusic" on the target of the shortcut, I get nothing. I'm not sure what I've done wrong, and I'd much rather have the music playing ingame than to have to run windows media player with it. I don't have the best computer.
Please help?
I know this is old but I'll give an answer that should help.
1.Download the age of empires 2 demo.
2.Install then locate C:Programs Files/age of empires trial/Sound/midi folder.
3.Convert midi songs to mp3 with a midi-to-mp3 converter.
4.Burn to cd.
5.Launch the game with cd in DVD/CD Drive.
The music should play when you start a game!
I found it by accident when I left a cd of music in my dvd drive
it started playing and I was like where this music coming from cause I didn't have any media player open. lol
