Frustrating Sound Bug - Sound Files not working on certain units.

[RealistKilla]

I am seeing a recurring issue with a lot of sound files just not working on custom models i have had in use for 15 years, this is incredibly frustrating as it is almost map destroying for me. (In HD/ Reforged Only)

For example i have a custom hero who has used the IllidanMorphed voice file for the last decade, now since playing it in reforged it no longer works. I tested this by opening a fresh map up, importing a new model from here i downloaded last night, and put it on a footman. Sure enough, the footmans voice no longer works. As soon as you reset the model to defult, the footmans voice works again. I cant describe how frustrating this is, please tell me somebody has answers on how to fix this.

A quick google search results in this post made a year ago about the same issue:

--"When applying certain sound sets to units with certain model files, there is no sound responses altogether.
For example if the Rifleman sound set is applied to all Night Elf melee units in the Editor the following will have no sound responses: Wisp, Faerie Dragon, Hippogryph (Unmounted), Chimaera, Mountain Giant, Glaive Thrower, Treant, Owl Scout (All levels), all buildings and all uprooted ancients.
However if I also change the model file of the aforementioned units to Rifleman they have sound again.
All of the aforementioned units/model files also seem to be able to play other sound sets of other units facing the same problem.
For example I can get a unit using the Chimaera or Moonwell model to play the Chicken or Skink (Neutral Passive) soundset, and incidentally the Skink and Chicken models have the same problem as the aforementioned Night Elf models as neither can play the Rifleman Soundset and a bunch of others." --

 

[Nevo]

Although this isn't the best solution, it might do the trick for you.

Try exporting and then re-importing the sound files. With using custom soundsets, hopefully all the issues listed above have no chances of occurring. Since Reforged map size is massive, it might not be a super expensive workaround all things considered.

 

[BogdanW3]

I'll bring over what I've discovered on this topic for now in the form of a link to the thread that's referenced in the original post.
Unit Sound Sets not working for certain models
I still think it's caused by soundsets for units with FAFX requiring the FAFX to be present as I haven't seen counter-examples yet.

Since this aren't the Blizzard forums, we can talk about how and why FAFX are a thing in HD. I don't think there's many threads that go into the technical side and I don't feel like it's very necessary, but FaceFX is a system for doing Lipsync, audio-based facial animation.

What's important here is that you can make them speak with any audio file so the files themselves aren't causing the issue.

The next part is the implementation of this system in Warcraft 3. The FaceFX baked data is stored in files with the extension of facefx_ingame which models reference from the string field of the MDXv1000 FAFX chunk. This is nothing out of the ordinary too, with the models themselves being used to store the path to the correct fafx file for each of them.
Here we can start to see a possible problem, what happens when a model doesn't have the FAFX chunk, be it just missing or be the model's version 800 instead? You can't do facial animation on these models, that's for sure, but should the sound play? It would seem Blizzard either thinks the answer to that is no or that it's not been considered (with the latter being more likely as moddability seems to be less prioritised in all HD systems).
The hackiest possible solution would be to attach a neutral (content-wise empty) fafx file to all the models that don't have one, but this isn't reasonable for v800 models (although these subjectively shouldn't be used in HD regardless) as it would require converting them to v1000, and is also a tiring process for v1000 models even with the modelling tools we already have (or maybe someone could ping Retera to make a script for it). The real solution would be on Blizzard's end - making the game play the sound regardless OR at least attach an neutral FAFX file to all models that do not have it.
Another thing Hive could do is make a list of all the models without an FAFX chunk so people would be careful around them, which could be done in an afternoon of running code to make that list. More reminders to anyone who'd be writing such a thing is that all chunks technically don't depend on any other chunks even though that is not true in practice and that all chunks unneeded chunks can be skipped by just reading the int value after their 4char code and skipping the appropriate amount of bytes.

No matter what happens, these are the possible steps for helping others not fall for this again until/unless it's fixed.