Strange custom music issue

[leonfei]

I'm just wondering if anyone else has the same issue as I have with custom music. For a long time, I was able to add custom music fine, it played in the game and everything was lovely. But then after a certain point, no new music that I added would play. All the old stuff that was already in there played fine, but the new stuff was silent (stereo shows playing animation, sims get moodlet from listening to music, just no sound). The tracks appear in the music menu under options, but when I play them in there they're silent too. I've done something of a test tonight, took all the songs that would play out and just left in the ones that wouldn't - these didn't play even after removing everything else. Then I added the old stuff back in - voila, back to normal, old music playing, new music not playing. The really odd thing is that I've bought a song on Amazon tonight that I previously only had ripped from CD - this CD version was in the old set of music that would play - I deleted this old track from the custom music folder, added the new amazon track, and the track still plays in game. Maybe the files are identical so it can still recognise it, but this seems massively odd to me.

Basically every track I've added after a certain point won't play. I plan to go through the list in the menu, make a note of what does and doesn't play sometime, then check the dates on the files so I can try and figure out exactly when it was this problem first occurred. It's not massively detrimental, just means that I can't add new music, and if a new song does play the stereo needs to be switched on and off to get an old song playing again (I've never got skip to work - maybe I haven't skipped far enough to get through the 'new' stuff, but I've never got the stereo from silent to playing using skip).

Has anyone else experienced this issue? And (fingers crossed) has anyone managed to fix it? My last resort will be a full reinstall (which I don't relish the thought of with 11 EPs and tons of custom content to reinstall), see if that will fix it, maybe to an SSD (since Sims load times have ever been terrible). If anyone could offer any advice here I'd appreciate it.

Thanks
Leon

[grimsoul]

I've had certain songs that wouldn't play for me also. The problem I had with the ones that wouldn't play was the bit rate was wrong. Check the properties of the songs that are not playing and make sure the bit rate is 128kbps and the file type is MP3.

[sdhoey]

I had the same problem. I have a mp4 to mp3 converter that use to be able to play my custom music right.

[Saltypaws]

I've had certain songs that wouldn't play for me also. The problem I had with the ones that wouldn't play was the bit rate was wrong. Check the properties of the songs that are not playing and make sure the bit rate is 128kbps and the file type is MP3.

I just checked properties and bit rate is 184kbps, it is MP3.  Not sure how to change it, but my custom music plays when I let the radio play, but if I try to change songs skipping forward or backward, when it comes to a custom song, there is no sound.  It has been doing that for a long time, so I just let it play.

[grimsoul]

I just checked properties and bit rate is 184kbps, it is MP3.  Not sure how to change it, but my custom music plays when I let the radio play, but if I try to change songs skipping forward or backward, when it comes to a custom song, there is no sound.  It has been doing that for a long time, so I just let it play.

There are programs that can change the bit rate of a MP3 file but I haven't used any of them to be able to recommend one over another one. A search for mp3 bit rate changer will get you several options, many of them free.
I've usually just search around for the same song  in a 128 bit rate and used that in my custom song folder.

[symphonicanima]

If you have iTunes, you can convert music rather easily. Go to Edit > Preferences (or just do Ctrl+,), click "Import Settings" and that should bring up a menu to decide which file format and bit rate to convert it to. Then just right-click the song you want to convert and choose "Create [file type you chose] Version".

Hopefully this helps!

[Pam]

I'm moving this to the Technical Help board.