Ambient music problem with original Baldur's Gate 1 on modern PCs

[Guest s997863]

I wanted to ask if anyone can help to troubleshoot an issue with the original Baldur's Gate 1 (not the new enhanced edition). The game runs fine on WinXP and Win7, on Core-2-Duo or even a Core-i7 2nd gen, but the ambient environment music doesn't initialize or loop the way it should, not even on my Pentium-3 800MHz win98 PC. I tried GemRB .90 and I think it has the same behaior / problem. Anyway here is the issue with the CD retail version of baldur's gate 1:

 

Noboy on the whole internet seems to notice this, but I could swear it was different when I originally played it back on my 200Mhz pentium 1. I can reproduce the original music experience if I reduce the game speed so much that the graphics become choppy & stuttery, (by using the game's own frame-rate option setting, or with cpu slowdown utilitities ... etc.), but I remember the music played fine on the old pentium 200 without sacrificing smooth gameplay & graphics.

 

I recently found that if I run the game on WinXP (i.e. on a core-2-duo) and set sound acceleration to the lowest setting in dxdiag, then the music is ALMOST fixed regardless of the cpu speed: e.g. if you start the game and walk in/out of the candlekeep tavern behind you repeatedly, then the tavern music starts playing almost every single time. Normally the tavern music almost never starts playing when entering this tavern on a fast modern PC. Only the combat music starts if you start attacking NPCs.

 

I thought the game was fixed! But after some gameplay you notice some glitches still remain:

1. in the first in-game cutscene when you are walking with Gorion, the forest ambient night-time music should play before the combat music starts. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. You can listen if you leave the dialogs without pressing enter for a while.

2. After the combat cutscene where Gorion dies, when the story narration screen comes, the chapter music should play everytime. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

2. after the narartion screen, when you are in gameplay again, the forest ambient daytime music should start to play. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

3. if you are walking around in the same forest area and not getting into any combat, then the forest music track should loop & restart after it finishes. It doesn't.

 

The ambient music always starts/restarts if I switch from fullscreen to windowed-mode & vice versa, or by quicksaving. But this is not a reliable or fun way to play the game.

 

Thanks for taking the time to read through all this.

[lynx]

It's not too clear which parts refer to gemrb, but I tried entering and leaving the Candlekeep tavern 5 times in a row and the ambiet music switched as expected every time. Also, 0.9.0 is already one release behind, so better grab the latest.