Ahoy!
This might as well be my first post, so hello there!
To add to this thread, I have conducted a simple test with the different audio settings.
In a relative note, I have seen the game to crash around 2GB of memory when just playing normally, with or without sound/music.
I recorded different results of memory usage with the sound/music on and off.
I only did 3 tests consisting of:
- No Sound No Music
- No Music
- Sound & Music On
It's not perfect test, or a complicated one at the very least, but I hope these results may be useful to some.
I have also uploaded my test footage:
The original recording is almost 25mins long, so I sped up the video. I also had a take that spawned me at a different spot from the start, so I restarted the game. You may see an edit in the video before the 3rd test.
The Test:
I have included a window capture of task manager in the video.
Take a look at tlopo.exe (32 bit), the second column is what the current memory usage is.
The steps I repeated throughout the video:
1. Change setting.
2. Restart the game.
3. Logged in at Padres Del Fuego, & turned around facing boats.
4. Board my ship.
5. Sailed up until Port Royal, facing the right side.
6. Sailed around Port Royal heading to Outcast Isle.
7. Ported at Outcast Isle.
8. Looked around, then teleported to Padres Del Fuego.
9. Looked around again.
The Results:
No Sound No Music - ~985.3 MB
No Music - ~999.8 MB
Sound & Music On - ~970.6 MB
So yeah... The results are within a ~30MB difference, but staying bellow 1GB. Yes this test didn't go all the way until the game crashes at 2GB, but hopefully this is long enough to determine the idea of sound/music settings having an effect. The crashes/memory leaks could be because of different reasons. In which, that is up to the devs to find. Take this information as you will!
tl;dr - My conclusion, looking at the results, I don't think the sound or music has anything to do with crashes in regards to memory leaks.