Try to lower the cycles. I have music with 0.62 / 0.63 only up to 4200 cycles. (You must have low cycles before starting the game, decreasing during playing will not help.)

Sorry, yes, this can be understandably confusing if you don't understand all the OPL jazz.

oplmode when 'auto' is chosen depending on the type of Sound Blaster specified.
sb1,sb2 = opl2 (AdLib)
sbpro1 = dualopl2 (IIRC, this may be wrong)
sbpro2,sb16 = opl3 (AdLib Gold?)
All OPL are "AdLib" (actually it's the other way around; AdLib really just means FM synthesis), except 'cms' which is Creative Music System.

Try forcing 'oplmode' to something else.

Jiri wrote:

Try to lower the cycles. I have music with 0.62 / 0.63 only up to 4200 cycles. (You must have low cycles before starting the game, decreasing during playing will not help.)

Well I'll be. Lower CPU cycles to 3000, and the sound works fine. 😀 There must be some weird, crappy way PoP1 initializes the sound that relies on a really slow computer.

I'm still a bit confused by the 'Adlib' issue though. Why do I actually get a different kind of (non-PC speaker) music when I run prince, with OPL2 emulation, at 8000 cycles, and 3000 cycles? At 3000, I get the music I remember, which seems to be standard Adlib. But at 8000, there's this weird music in a higher key - what on Earth is that? Try it and see. 😀

So any OPL apart from CMS is Adlib? Then I have a few questions. Why does almost every game setup that uses OPL say that it's Adlib? And why was there a soundcard released called an 'Adlib Gold'? Did it just have an OPL chip in it and nothing else? Isn't that obsolete compared to the SoundBlaster, which supported OPL *and* SB sound effects?

In addition, where do I submit an RFE? Please put a comment line in the .conf file of the next DOSBox version clarifying that where a game/program specifies 'Adlib', it means any OPL other than CMS - as Snover said, this issue is confusing and there seems to be little to no documentation about it that I can find online.

ADLIB cards were one of the first ones featuring FM Synthesis to produce sound (mostly using OPL chips developed by Yamaha). When ADLIB came out, it used a Yamaha OPL-2 chip (which had just mono capabilities for FM music, I think). Later (and modern) cards like the ADLIB GOLD you mention (and newer SoundBlaster cards, -SBPRO2 and above-) used a newer Yamaha chip known as the OPL3, that featured FM STEREO music using two independent channels.

eL_PuSHeR wrote:

ADLIB cards were one of the first ones featuring FM Synthesis to produce sound (mostly using OPL chips developed by Yamaha). When ADLIB came out, it used a Yamaha OPL-2 chip (which had just mono capabilities for FM music, I think). Later (and modern) cards like the ADLIB GOLD you mention (and newer SoundBlaster cards, -SBPRO2 and above-) used a newer Yamaha chip known as the OPL3, that featured FM STEREO music using two independent channels.

So are you saying the Adlib and Adlib Gold cards were rendered 100% obsolete by the SoundBlaster cards, or did they have some kind of sound support that the SoundBlasters did not?

Sound blaster cards took the market by storm and buried the then obsolete ADLIB cards (which were older and had less capabilities). Anyway, ADLIB gold was a fairly decent card but came out too late and didn't catch up with market status.

So jez, with your new-found knowledge, how about rewriting it into a nice summary for the rest of us?

Perhaps by starting here:
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?page=Adlib

Instructions here:
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?page=Sandbox

jez wrote:

I'm still a bit confused by the 'Adlib' issue though. Why do I actually get a different kind of (non-PC speaker) music when I run prince, with OPL2 emulation, at 8000 cycles, and 3000 cycles? At 3000, I get the music I remember, which seems to be standard Adlib. But at 8000, there's this weird music in a higher key - what on Earth is that? Try it and see. 😀

sb1 and sb2 had both opl2 and cms. That's why opl2 setting in dosbox has both too. You hear cms with 8000 cycles.

you can read about sound cards here
http://www.crossfire-designs.de/index.php?lan … icle=soundcards

Robertmo:
But when I force OPL mode to cms, I don't get any music from PoP1...?
And why would it pick different OPL modes when the emulation is set to different speeds...? 😕

Robertmo:
By the way, thanks for that link - fascinating, especially being able to directly listen to samples from all the different cards and eras of PC sound development. 😀 However my above two questions still stand; it appears PoP1 is exhibiting some very weird behaviour.

Sorry to keep adding to this thread, but I've yet more questions after investigating sound in Simcity 2000. Why does the installer program give me a choice for music between AdLib, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro and Sound Blaster 16? Aren't these *all* either OPL2 or OPL3? Also, why does the music sound different (and better, in my opinion) when I choose AdLib for the music source, as opposed to Sound Blaster 16? If SB16 music is just OPL3, it shouldn't sound different to AdLib... should it? *shakes head*

jez wrote:

But when I force OPL mode to cms, I don't get any music from PoP1...?

You do something wrong? Cause i hear cms music with 8000 cycles when i set
oplmode=cms
are you sure you use dosbox 0.63 and configure everything right?

The game somehow doesn't detect FM card when cycles are too high, but it detects other cards: pc speaker and cms. so it choose the best of those - cms.

robertmo wrote:

You do something wrong? Cause i hear cms music with 8000 cycles when i set
oplmode=cms
are you sure you use dosbox 0.63 and configure everything right?

Ah yes, it works with CMS now.

robertmo wrote:

The game somehow doesn't detect FM card when cycles are too high, but it detects other cards: pc speaker and cms. so it choose the best of those - cms.

Yes, so this is the weirdness going on with PoP1. Not detecting an FM card when the machine is too fast. Hmm.

jez wrote:

Yes, so this is the weirdness going on with PoP1.

Yes, it is. I put an info about it some time ago to the DOSBox games database. It is always useful to read the games entries there. 😉

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/comp_list.php?letter=a

AdLib cards have a severe problem if data is sent to them too quickly. CMS cards have a severe problem if data is sent to them too slowly. (The second is conjecture, the first is fact; AdLib cards freaked out if they were given data too fast; this is a major cause of headache for many games; as computers got faster AdLib changed their programming guide to have the programmers add wait operations.)

jez wrote:

Sorry to keep adding to this thread, but I've yet more questions after investigating sound in Simcity 2000. Why does the installer program give me a choice for music between AdLib, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro and Sound Blaster 16? Aren't these *all* either OPL2 or OPL3? Also, why does the music sound different (and better, in my opinion) when I choose AdLib for the music source, as opposed to Sound Blaster 16? If SB16 music is just OPL3, it shouldn't sound different to AdLib... should it? *shakes head*

I'm still interested in why this is... anyone know the answer to these questions?

Its because Creative Labs changed some of the specifics regarding the interface for the Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro and Sound Blaster 16 between versions.

Some more background info, off the top of my head:

The OPLx chips were FM synthesis chips made by Yamaha. Variants can also be found in old arcade machines and video game consoles (I think the Sega Genesis uses an OPL4). I don't know what OPL stands for (Google would probably know!)

The Sound Blaster, SB 2.0, and Adlib all used an OPL2, which was used in many old games to produce music. The Sound Blaster cards also have separate hardware for playing 8-bit monophonic digitized (PCM) sound samples (e.g. WAV file sounds) that the Adlib did not have - this is what makes the SB better than the Adlib.

The SB Pro has two OPL2 chips so that it can produce stereo music (kind of a silly idea, but at least Creative was thinking of new ideas back then to try to keep an edge over the competition, which was stronger back then). It could also do stereo 8-bit PCM digitial sounds.

The SB 16 had an OPL3 chip, which was a single chip capable of producing stereo music - although apparently in a different enough way from the SB Pro that games using stereo music had to specifically support it. It was still backwards-compatable with a single OPL2 chip though, so the SB16 works with all the old games that use Adlib/SB music.

The OPL chips stopped appearing on Creative cards with the AWE series, which use a sample-based synthesizer (just like all modern hardware and software MIDI synthesizers for the PC).

About DOSBox: I've been playing with 0.63 a little since it was released, and I've noticed that if you leave the OPL mode set to "auto" it sometimes doesn't do OPL sound - I have to force it to a specific mode (sometimes trying several different ones) before it will work. I've always been able to get it to work though.

About CMS: I vaguely remember seeing the Game Blaster (with the Creative Music System chip) on store shelves back in the day (I was just a kid back then!). Never had one, nor knew anyone that did. I just tested some games with DOSBox's CMS emulation last night and found it interesting. Definitely and improvment over the PC internal speaker, but not as good as the Adlib! For example, it doesn't seem to be able to do percussion sounds (which the OPL chips are actually decent at)

EDIT: I'm also pretty sure that the SB 2.0 that was my first sound card had a socket and jumper for a CMS chip, but I never saw CMS chips for sale anywhere. I was always curious about how they sounded (until yesterday 😀)

jez wrote:

jez wrote:

Sorry to keep adding to this thread, but I've yet more questions after investigating sound in Simcity 2000. Why does the installer program give me a choice for music between AdLib, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro and Sound Blaster 16? Aren't these *all* either OPL2 or OPL3? Also, why does the music sound different (and better, in my opinion) when I choose AdLib for the music source, as opposed to Sound Blaster 16? If SB16 music is just OPL3, it shouldn't sound different to AdLib... should it? *shakes head*

I'm still interested in why this is... anyone know the answer to these questions?

AdLib was capable of only OPL2 music, it did not have digitized sound (speech, etc.). The Sound Blaster series of cards all do have digitized sound capabilities. SB and SBPro only 8 bit (although SBPro stereo and at a higher sample rate, IIRC), SB16 16 bit. Low-level programming (needed in DOS, since DOS never had a soundcard API, like Windows) required knowledge of each specific card, since each card had a different low-level register layout, etc. For example, the original AdLib card registers were accessed at addresses 0x388 an 0x389 (IIRC), while the SB series of cards used ranges in the 2x0 series (0x220, 0x240 etc.).

As for OPL3, it does sound slightly better than OPL2, when the game uses the OPL3 features (either better instruments or more instruments). However, not many games used these features, as OPL3 still doesn't sound to good.

JAL