At least it's very quiet on my iMac.

I just received the game, promptly loaded and followed all the instructions for installation, then sat back to enjoy several hours of initial exploration. That last part never happened. Once Atrus finished his introductory oral journal, I started moving around the environment (beautiful and rich). It must have taken about 10 minutes before I realized that I was not hearing anything ... no music, no ambient sounds, nada.

I looked at all the options, fiddled with the settings, cleared everything out and reloaded (because I had noticed a prompt that briefly flashed then disappeared saying something to the effect that "sound files decompressing"). Same thing second time around.

I reported this to the UBIsoft support site and got an answer that seemed very PC and no help (largely because I love my computer but do not understand its workings). I use an iMac (specs below) and have had no trouble with any Myst games, including Myst IV: Revelation...another terrific Ubisoft game.

My system is:
Mac OS X
Version 10.2.8 (Jaguar)
256MB
700 MHz PowerPC G4

Any help to switch on the sound would be greatly appreciated.

How frustrating....I've read many, many pages in the forum and there were a few Mac users available for comment. Have they vanished? I'm being told that I need to update my sound card, but I have no computer science credits and have no idea where to find what runs multimedia sound. By reading the descriptions of various extensions, it seems to involve:

OpenGL 1.2.4.10.0

ATIRadeon 1.2.26.32 (1679)
ATIRadeon8500
ATIRadeon9700.kext
ATIRage128
ATI RagePro

I went to the ATI site and had "No Permission to Download" (or some similar prompt), this even after going through their registration process. I cannot believe that Ubisoft's MYST IV could run so smoothly and MYST V has a problem. I will not continue to post if there are no Mac users here, but I thought I'd give it one more try. Thanks.

Hi, Fallzone,

I saw your post earlier but couldn't respond to it as I didn't experience that problem.
I'm a Mac user (Mac addict! sometimes difficult... ) and I had major installation problems as I stated earlier on another thread. Well, when I finally installed it manually my Mac gave me several times error messages on sound, video and everything. I also went to ATI, thinking it was a problem with the graphics card, but didn't figure out what to download; the size of the download was also impossible for my modem connection. So I just tried things out, turning on or off extensions, checked my Java, also Quick Time (enabled the Mac to convert and play everything with Quick Time 6.5); somehow it worked and the gameplay went smooth. My sound output though was average and sometimes it was hard to understand Esher, but I learned from another thread that it might have to do with having only two speakers built-in.

My system is
MacOsX 10.3.4
768 mb
1,25 Ghz PowerPC G4
ATIRadeon 9200

I really hope you will be able to fix that problem; I heard that others with your system specs (even if they are not even the required one) did just fine with the game. Maybe Heimdall could help you?

Thanks. I hate fidgeting around in a void. Right now I'm going to download the QuickTime update (should only take until dinner time), then think about the Radeon update again. I read a few horror stories about it messing up other aps. I don't really need all the extra bells and whistles of "Panther" and "Tiger" so I hope there is an easier update path. My hope is to find exactly WHAT I need to update so I'm not downloading until Christmas.

Well, for those Mac users running OS X 10.2.8 (Jaguar), the solution is pathetically simple and needed no additional downloads (although I did go ahead and upgrade my Quick Time).

The problem was the installation itself and the fact that "Wizard" HID the box showing that sound decompression was still going on AFTER pushing the "Finish" button. I never noticed the Folder open in the dock that said "Sound Decompression". When I clicked on it, a status bar appeared showing a very slow-moving installation.

Apparently I tried playing the game before the files had been decompressed. That process took almost as long as loading the game files themselves. Once the decompression finished I closed the screen, launched the game and found myself surrounded by wonderful sounds of earthquakes and flying things!

Hope this saves the next person a little time and angst.