What happened to the in-game music in Tomb Raider 1 on Steam?

Question

I've recently bought Tomb Raider 1 on Steam, more for the nostalgia than anything else, to find back that feeling of when I spent countless hours playing this game when I was a kid.

After a few minutes playing, one thing that shocked me is that there is no sound ! I mean there are all the little noises, enemy noises, steps, water, but no music at all !

What happened to these awesome musics which went a long way in adding atmosphere to the game? I still remember some parts of the game of when I was a kid solely thanks to the music (T-Rex...)

Do you know a way (even a hacky one, I don't mind, I just can't play this game without the music) to put back the original music?

Answer 1

If I recall correctly, early Tomb Raider titles used "Red Book" audio for music—that is, they played tracks straight off a music CD partition on the game disc and had no built-in music code at all. The game simply triggered the CD drive and trusted that the right disc was there and that the drive's audio-out cable was hooked up to the sound card.

(A common practice in those days was to swap out the disc after the game had started so that it would play a music CD of your choice instead of the music it came with—the game couldn't tell the difference.)

If TR1 on Steam is a straight port, then the ability to play non-CD music simply isn't a part of the game engine.

Answer 2

With a little internet research, I came across Glidos, which seems to be what you'd want (although it may have side effects like graphics enhancements, hopefully that wouldn't ruin the nostalgia). Note that some users appear to have had issues, so check this forum thread particularly related to audio files.

Answer 3

The game (now?) has ambient audio, if this guide from 2017 to change it is any indication:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2256294456

02 is the main menu theme, the rest excluding 07 through 10 are ambient tracks. DO NOT change 07-10, these are for cutscenes so unless you have some quirky audio to replace it with such as your own voice acting, do not touch them.

So, 03 to 06, that is, 4 MP3 files should be in your installation and be the music you're hearing in the game? Check your sound settings if you're not hearing it?

If you're missing those files, then revalidate your installation? It seems the Steam version changed in 2020 or something?

Answer 4

Well, computers these days can do a lot more concurrently than in the old Win95 full-screen one program-at-a-time days. If you were to acquire the sound-tracks as files, you could play them in the background while playing the game with no side-effects whatsoever.

Note: This post does not condone piracy.