Does this happen with all of the QfG games or any other games? Have you applied any patches? How did you install the game?

I don't run Linux, so I could be totally wrong, but maybe the problem is related to the SDL install on your PC? I don't know if DOSBox on Linux comes with its own copy of SDL, or if it relies on a system-wide install. If so, where did your copy of SDL come from? Self-compiled? Packaged? Repository? Tried updating SDL?

And where did you get DOSBox from? Self-compiled or??

Try changing all those 22050s to 48000s in your dosbox config

Thanks, leileilol. That change has solved the sound problem! Just for a complete post, I'll list what I changed in my config file:

[mixer]
rate=48000
[sblaster]
oplrate=48000
[gus]
gusrate=48000
[speaker]
pcrate=48000

Thank you all for the speedy help!

Even though the issue seems to be resolved, I'll answer the other questions asked, just so that anyone else who might stumble upon this later can have as much information as they can.

The games were installed within dosbox by running the dos installer on the game discs. The sound issue happens to all the English Quest for Glory games (I haven't tried any of the different language games of QfG3 or 4). I have applied patches to QfG3 and 4 from this site:
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Arcade/7 … s/Downloads.htm
I ran into an error on QfG4, so I installed the patch. I don't get the error anymore, which definitely makes me happy! After the original post, I tried another game, and it had the same sound issue (the original post was done late at night, and such an obvious troubleshooting step didn't occur to me!).

I installed dosbox from the fedora repository. SDL was installed with the OS, and is kept updated by repository versions. It looks like I have the latest version (1.2.13).

Hm maybe you have some time/fun to do some testing? I don't know much
about the linux part of the SDL audio routines, but maybe it would be possible
to detect if the default output value (mixer 22050) is "bad" (non-hardware
accelerated or something). I'll try to look a bit through the sdl sources.

This does not occur in the Windows build of DOSBox with the Glory games. At least I have never encountered it, nor have ever heard anyone on Windows complain about it.

@ david6477, Don't forget to apply the NewRisingSun patches.

Hey collector,

Thanks for the link. It has some patches for some other sierra games that I was going to load up after the QfG series, so I'm glad that those have a pretty good shot at working well again!

wd,
I wouldn't mind doing some testing. Do you have something specific in mind? I don't know much about SDL, either, but I'm willing to give it my best shot! I can at least see if a mixture of 22050's and 48000's works, doesn't work for now. I just changed them all to 48000 on this first attempt.

I can at least see if a mixture of 22050's and 48000's works

Yes that would be nice, especially try leaving all values at their original 22050
except for the mixer rate.
Can you compile dosbox from sources?

wd,

Sorry for taking so long. Yesterday was really busy at work.

I commented out all of the lines in my .dosboxrc file that had 48000, including the mixer (just to make sure I still can get the messed up sound). I got the static after 10 min. of play.
I then uncommented the mixer line to set the rate to 48000:
[mixer]
rate=48000

I didn't get the static after a half an hour of play.

I did download the source code from sourceforge, and I can easily compile it (I love automake!). I ran it with mixer rate=22050, and got the sound issue, then changed the mixer rate to 48000, and didn't run into the sound issue even after an hour of play. I did this testing of the source compiled binary just to be sure I would see the same behavior as the fedora repository version.

Does this tell you anything?

The mixer frequency is the one that is output to the sound device.
So the emulation part is not relevant, but don't know what to conclude.

Maybe you can check if there's something odd with the returned frequency
and sample size when the sound is initialized. In mixer.cpp, at the bottom
there's a call to SDL_OpenAudio() where the else part is when it succeeds.
There you can check the actual settings, something like

1	} else {
2		LOG_MSG("specfreq %d, obtained %d, specsamples %d, obtained %d",
3			spec.freq,obtained.freq,spec.samples,obtained.samples);
4		mixer.freq=obtained.freq;
5		mixer.blocksize=obtained.samples;
6		mixer.tick_add=(mixer.freq << MIXER_SHIFT)/1000;
7		TIMER_AddTickHandler(MIXER_Mix);
8		SDL_PauseAudio(0);
9	}

(watch the console window for the output during dosbox startup.

I added the LOG_MSG line that's in your last post to mixer.cpp, and here is the output when I don't set the mixer rate:
[david@raiyuu checkFreq_build]$ src/dosbox
DOSBox version 0.72
Copyright 2002-2007 DOSBox Team, published under GNU GPL.
---
CONFIG:Loading primary settings from config file /home/david/.dosboxrc
specfreq 22050, obtained 22050, specsamples 2048, obtained 2048
ALSA:Client initialised [128:0]
MIDI:Opened device:alsa

Here's the output when I set mixer rate=48000:
[david@raiyuu checkFreq_build]$ src/dosbox
DOSBox version 0.72
Copyright 2002-2007 DOSBox Team, published under GNU GPL.
---
CONFIG:Loading primary settings from config file /home/david/.dosboxrc
specfreq 48000, obtained 48000, specsamples 2048, obtained 2048
ALSA:Client initialised [128:0]
MIDI:Opened device:alsa

It looks like it is getting what it requests for.