can't hear synchronized music from fellowship

[Mirar4]

This seems to be a random bug:

Most of the time we can't hear the music played by fellowship members.

This seems to be random. Sometimes a member can hear music from all members.

To provoke this:

1. join a fellowship
2. synchronized playing - ie /play song.abc 1 sync
3. /playstart
4. you can only hear yourself (with random exceptions)
- also you can only see notes above yourself, so it's not a volume issue.

Anyone else experienced this?

This problem seem to have started about a month ago. The years before that I didn't have any issues.

The bug is highly annoying to me - I mainly play in a group like this.

/Firefern
(http://fefeconv.mirar.org/)

[Phede]

Oh yes Firefern!

I have also encountered this bug in various music group situations recently, and yes it's SUPER annoying.

Pls fix Turbine, pls pls ...

(I was thinking if it was something that got introduced with the new "focus loss behaviour" options for sound, it's pretty recent like you say).

I also think group playback of music of "high statistical density" has become more flaky, with parts dropping out/clipping more than they used to. This may just be me though, and probably not related directly.

[Shaeliana]

Yes, very annoying bug and makes things difficult when you can't hear what your fellow band members are doing.

Friends figured out the following workaround that has worked every time we've tried it (though it has only been a few days since they came up with it).

1. Person plays while not in fellowship to make sure everyone can hear them. If not, relog and try again.
2. While the person is playing, invite to fellowship.
3. Rinse and repeat until all members are in the fellowship.

We have not checked to see if it worked after porting to another area and that might mess things up again. We always wait to form once we get where we want to play.

[Summer_Beor]

We often have this happen and keep /bug ging it. It's terrible.

I try to let an extra 15 minutes at the end of rehearsals now so that everyone can port to the concert location and reboot if necessary.

[Siegfriedpf]

Definitely /bug it. I think every member of GHMS has by now.

And the more generalized work-around is to be sure your group is all physically together--same layer, same zone, etc before inviting them to the group. (Invites across zones/layers also leads to the issue where you won't see everyone's dot on your radar).

[Keli]

Definitely /bug it. I think every member of GHMS has by now.

And the more generalized work-around is to be sure your group is all physically together--same layer, same zone, etc before inviting them to the group. (Invites across zones/layers also leads to the issue where you won't see everyone's dot on your radar).

This.

It does seem to be related to players joining you from another zone.

[Fionnuala]

This.

It does seem to be related to players joining you from another zone.

Actually, I've encountered this bug several times when the group was formed AFTER all being together in the same location. We also had an instance recently when one of our members had to relog 3 or 4 times before it went away for him. So *shrug*. This is really annoying. The only thing to do is to make sure you test the sound of everyone in the group before you start playing.

[Mirar4]

Oh, I /bug'ed it as soon as it appeared.

I thought I'd check to see I wasn't alone here on the forums.
I was a bit confused that the thread wasn't started already...

I think it's tied to the emote and say bugs. How, I'm not sure...

[Bolderbrook]

I run a Band on Crickhollow Server, and this is what I've found so far:

The bug can happen with any size group, but the larger the group, the more likely it will happen.
Sometimes a soft log out will fix it, but often you need to restart, and even then, it may not completely disappear.
Audience members are not affected, only people in the Fellowship/Raid.
Rain (or other ambient sounds) MAY play a role in the intensity of the bug.
Once parts start to disappear, the situation generally continues to deteriorate, until you may only hear 2 out of 10 performers, and those you can still hear may be spotty.
It is hard to pinpoint the start of this issue, but U9 seems to be the cause, somehow.

For people that only want to get together and play for their own enjoyment, this is an annoying problem, but can usually be worked around. But for those who participate in performing groups, this issue is nearly a killer. It CAN be done, but what fun is performing for people (who will hear the music just fine) if you yourself cannot hear what you sound like?

This is a "known issue" from Turbine's point of view, so I do not know whether submitting more bug reports will affect their priorities, but it seems unlikely. Unfortunately, the Music system is only used intensively by a very small percentage of players, making it a low priority for attention.

However. I submit that there are only two things that substantially differentiate LOTRO from any other MMO on the market, and they are, 1.) the existence of a large, extremely well-known common reality/storyline which makes this game unlike any other with the exception of the Star Wars franchise, and 2.) the music system, which is unique in the MMO world. I think Turbine was brilliant in instituting it, and I hope like mad that they will not let it wither away to a mere fraction of what it has been in Middle-earth.

The biggest player-sponsored Event in just about any MMO is the Weatherstock Festival every Summer. I cannot imagine how bands will be wanting to compete there this year, if this bug is still in place. In the meantime, I will continue to try to build our Band, but it seems I must focus now on smaller ensembles, not the 7-, 8-, and 9-part numbers we have worked so hard to prepare...

[IAmWillowing]

I've plagiarised a bit (well, okay, a lot) from this thread and posted a plea on Bullroarer. We need to hang in there and keep up a steady stream of reminders and requests to fix this. Please keep this thread active if possible. We want our music back.

[Mirar4]

Any answer at all from any dev?

[Orivien]

this is very much annoying indeed. we were so happy with guys from band to create a band at all and when we made all the songs and prepared them for first concert, and started to train, we realized that we don't hear each other and so we can't say if the song is really well 'programmed' and if some instruments shouldn't be changed, or rather not used at all. you can't say if its synchronized well and this really isnt leading towards any band success no matter trying to reinvite/relog all over, there still would be someone who doesnt hear someone and we never got whole picture of how the song sounds. so we got some people from kinship listening to us telling us if it sounds well enough to consider it as a 'song done'... the concert was played, and yes we were saying to each other 'we do it for them, the main thing is that they are enjoying it' but we still felt disappointed that what we were so much looking forward to was after all broken.

i love this game for all the events and ideas people can come up with at the first place = if bugs are touching the social part, it can make me very mad.

[Cordonan]

Yeah, went to have band practice one night and wasn't able to hear the other person. We tried everything to get around it, with just the two of us, and nothing worked. That was quite a while back and we have since disbanded. Past few days I've been thinking of starting a new band, but I guess that's not currently feasible. Darn, back to playing with my ABC player ... all by myself ...

[Earinlin]

Have seen this bug since November last year and reported several times but heard nothing back

Its very frustrating as you have all said

[Amburlee]

This seemed to go dormant, started to re-appear shortly before update 11, and is back with a vengeance since update 11 was released. It took nearly half an hour of logging in and out in order to get 7 people to be able to play together, and destroyed any hope of public performance for the evening.

[lalula]

Does anyone know if there is a fix for this yet? I thought one of the recent patches said the music system bug was getting fixed, but my fellowship and I still can't hear eachother's instruments whey we try to sync a song.

[Kept]

Does anyone know if there is a fix for this yet? I thought one of the recent patches said the music system bug was getting fixed, but my fellowship and I still can't hear eachother's instruments whey we try to sync a song.

The only thing recently "fixed" with the LotRO Music System, was *some of* Turbine's Update 11 complete buggering of the music system, which brought about far more vicious bugs, which included not being able to play string instruments in some areas (Breetown for example), while Wind instruments played fine, to some areas where music didn't work at all, Volume Dynamics not being recognized, etc., etc.

The *ONLY* thing they fixed in that recent Patch that said they were "Fixing" the music system, was to undo *most of* the "Update 11" bugs, so we can once more perform where we want, rather than the few limited areas the Update 11 bug, left us to play (The Eriador Music Society had to change from our regular locations on Elendilmir at the Bree Town Stage, and on Landroval at The Shire Founders Statue, to Thorin's Hall, which was one of the few places left to us to still be able to perform as a group and have all our instruments heard), while the remainder of the previous music system bugs still persist.

A "Bug Work-Around" (LotRO, is fast becoming the land of "Bug Work-Arounds", because Turbine will just not invest the time and effort to address these mounting number of bugs, in many systems and areas) to the particular problem you are having is taking these steps:

1) Do not form the Fellowship/Raid until you are all in the same map AND within "Say" channel distance (you can see the chat bubbles above their heads or in the chat box) of each other. To be sure, you can hear everyone in your Musical group, once Queued/Sync'ed to play a song, have your members hit some "Number" keys to "pluck" some notes, to make sure you can hear each member's instrument.

2) Once the group is formed....Don't leave the area. Often (and this is not *everytime*) when I leave our Concert locations to do a round of /regional advertising, and return, I can not hear one or more of the folks in our Musical Fellowship/Raid and I have to relog to clear the bug (which can be a real PITA when we're trying to get the show started).

And though this may not be directly related to the specific problem you're experiencing, it is somewhat related:

3) If you come upon a group playing music, and it's clear everyone else can hear the music, but you can't (folks are dancing, etc).....Simply wait until the start of the next song and you should be able to hear the music for the next song that starts while you are in that location. (This is a left over bug from the Update 11 Musical Bugs Debacle. ) If not, *then* it's time for a relog.

Hopefully, these steps will help you and your group....check back and let us know.

[lalula]

Thanks, I'll try those. This is distressing, cause it used to be one of our favorite activities.

[Siltharan]

I've been playing music with a group of players for the last few weeks and haven't experienced any sort of problems like this until tonight. My connection died and I restarted my PC, then relogged. We attempted to play several times, disbanded and rejoined the fellowship, etc. and no matter what we tried, all I could hear was myself. Others complained that certain parts couldn't be heard, yet they could hear me. We weren't sticking around long enough to try a cycle of relogs, but this was the first I'd ever seen (or heard of) this problem.

[voalkrynn2]

This was a facet of the game I was exposed to in open Beta. I was finally excited about trying it out with a group, the guy running the current ABC site was gracious enough to do a bagpipe-intensive song @ my request. Sadly this "working as intended" bug ruined it for the group of people I game with - we had plans of playing the song throughout Bree - and this glitch/bug/BS literally crushed our interest in pursuing an endeavor that we were extremely excited about undertaking.

Just another one to add to the list of disappointments.

[AvalonMists]

I had connection issues recently (that have been fixed now, yay) and I had the same thing. If I logged back in and was still part of the fellowship/raid group I wasn't able to hear the music. I tried a few different things, but the only thing that seemed to work was logging out and back in again, then get re-invited to the group. One thing I didn't try, though I'm not sure it would work, is waiting longer to restart the launcher and logging in again. Neither option is great when you're in the middle of a concert and hastily trying to pick up where the band left off from!

[robbie1435]

Yes, very annoying bug and makes things difficult when you can't hear what your fellow band members are doing.

Friends figured out the following workaround that has worked every time we've tried it (though it has only been a few days since they came up with it).

1. Person plays while not in fellowship to make sure everyone can hear them. If not, relog and try again.
2. While the person is playing, invite to fellowship.
3. Rinse and repeat until all members are in the fellowship.

We have not checked to see if it worked after porting to another area and that might mess things up again. We always wait to form once we get where we want to play.

You can also leave the group,
Run into a nearby building,
Run back out,
The bug should be fixed. It's what my band mates and I tend to do!

Quicker way to fix the bug, if anyone is interested

[Visionseer]

One thing we didn't test, Siltharan... I was thinking of this today, and I wonder if people *not* in the fellowship can hear all parts?

In other words, is this bug just killing music streams within the fellowship? Or would an audience still be able to get all the parts?