Global Kids' Digital Media Initiative

All year I have been having a problem with sound in Second Life.

Sometimes surrounding sound, like wind when flying, didn't come through. Other times it would not play streaming audio attached to a plot of land. This made it REALLY difficult when recording live events or making machinima with teens.

It came to a head this summer due to the CONSENT! project which relies on pre-cached audio from our students. It almost never worked for me. We could never figure it out.

Yesterday we tested it hard, with many people, on many machines, and learned that:
- It either worked for people all the time, or was inconsistently non-working with the same people
- It did not matter what machine the person used - they either found it working or did not
- The ones who tended to find it working were running Windows and the ones who did not were on Macs.

For a while we thought it was a Mac client problem. We also found a bunch of information about pre-cache sound problems. We figured it was one or the other, neither of which we could fix within CONSENT!

Then I remember I had been having sound problems earlier. I tried to fly and heard no sound. We put a sound file into the parcel and I heard nothing. I realized then it has to be all connected. Was it my preferences? My computer? I didn't know.

When I spoke with Concierge this afternoon they plugged in something about the wind sound not working and found a page that said to:
- Open the program Audio MIDI Setup. I've been on a mac forever and had never seen this before.
- Change the audio output from 96000 to 44100.
- Restart Second Life

I literally expected nothing to change, maybe if anything the wind sound would return.

But it all worked.

Audio on a parcel works.

All of the students sounds in CONSENT! work PERFECTLY now, after months of frustration.

And, finally, once again, I can hear myself fly.

Thank you to all the teens and Lindens (you know who you are) who helped out.