I'm getting a problem on my PC where the music on the radio plays so loud that it drowns out all other sounds in the game. I have to quickly turn down the volume on my stereo in order to avoid blowing my ear drums. The volume controls don't seem to have any affect on the volume that the music plays at either. I can put the volume at max or at 0 and the volume doesn't change.

This affects both the radio music and the music that plays in the opening menu. I also have the exact same problem in Fallout 3 when I run it on the same computer(and in fallout 3, as soon as I open the game, you can see my stereo switch between 7.1 audio and stereo right before the opening music starts playing)

I am running an ATI 5450 that is connected via HDMI to my stereo then connected to my Sharp 52" LCD TV. I'm running Windows 7.

I don't have any problems in any other games. I've played Borderlands, Bad Company 2, and Aliens vs Predator with no sound issues.

If I turn off the MPEG-I Stream Splitter codec then the music shuts off in both games and I can play them(and it allows Fallout 3 to stay in 7.1 audio if the music never starts playing). However, both games crash after a couple of minutes of playing them with the sound disabled in this way.

Although both games work fine on my laptop and my other PC, which leads me to believe there is something I can do to fix it on this PC. I just can't figure out what.

have you tried updating your sound drivers?

Yeah, I was using the ATI HDMI out drivers that come with the Catalyst Drivers for my video card. However, when that didn't work correctly I installed the Realtek HDMI drivers. When that didn't work, I installed the Realtek drivers for anolog connections to see if it would help. All of these were the newest drivers as of 2 days ago.

I can only guess that it is detecting that I have a digital connection to my stereo and bypassing all sound processing and instead allowing the stereo to process the sound. Unfortunately, it is outputting it at absolutely maximum volume.

I'm thinking of disabling the HDMI out entirely and seeing if I plug in anolog speakers if they have the same issue, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Still, I shouldn't have to work around this issue.

Oh, I'm also tried disabling ALL codecs and DirectShow filters except MPEG-I Stream Splitter, but I have the same issue. I've tried disabling all codecs except Microsoft ones. I've tried uninstalling ffdshow(didn't work) and reinstalling it(didn't work either). I've tried installing the k-lite codec pack and the cccp pack since both have been suggested to fix other problems with the music, neither of those worked. Lastly, I've uninstalled all programs on the PC that installed codecs of any kind. None of this has changed anything.

you'll need to make sure that either MAD or the Fraunhoffer IIS filters are handling MP3. I have no idea what else it could be.

I suggest you use MAD, as this was the fix for the old FO3 radio-stutter bug.