Amigaz wrote:

It's suppose to be the DSP version that causes the hanging notes

btw. I played Heretic for circa 20mins today without getting any hanging notes with my CT2800

Was that using the "megamid method"? If so, I think this could apply to all Creative ISA soundcards, and not just the CT2800, but much more testing is needed from the "Creative ISA soundcard owning community" to check this theory out.

retro games 100 wrote:

Amigaz wrote:

It's suppose to be the DSP version that causes the hanging notes

btw. I played Heretic for circa 20mins today without getting any hanging notes with my CT2800

Was that using the "megamid method"? If so, I think this could apply to all Creative ISA soundcards, and not just the CT2800, but much more testing is needed from the "Creative ISA soundcard owning community" to check this theory out.

Nope, just running the game without any hocus pocus
Using creatives crappy mixerset.exe instead of Mr Gun's Mastermixer which I usually use

Tried the "Megamid-method" on my CT3900, but I got stuck notes after five minutes playing DOOM.

5u3 wrote:

Tried the "Megamid-method" on my CT3900, but I got stuck notes after five minutes playing DOOM.

🙁 ... but thanks a lot for trying though!

Haven't tried Doom yet with my CT2800...maybe I'll get stuck notes there 😕

Played Doom 1 for 20-25min now...no hanging notes
Is my CT2800 blessed by somr higher power hehe

Edit:

Played another 5-10 mins and got a high sqeeky hanging note 😵

Yeah, the annoying thing about this bug is that sometimes it takes just a few minutes to show up, and sometimes it strikes after several hours play time. It depends on the card though.
For example, my CT2960 Vibra16C usually breaks out in polyphonic yammering after a few moments, whereas only once I actually heard a hanging note from my CT3980 (and I've been using that card for more than two years).

This unpredictability makes the bug so frustrating. Here is something to cheer retro games 100 up a bit:
Once I was really convinced that stepping through the DIAGNOSE.EXE tests got rid the problem until the next reboot. I had DOOM playing the E1M1 song for more than two hours without incidents and was about to post about it on VOGONS, when suddenly the card got stuck on two notes in a row. 😠
But I was glad I hadn't finished that post yet... 🤣

I have learnt a valuable lesson with this "stuck note" problem, and the key word in this lesson appears to be "unpredictability".

...But that's great news about the CT3980 though! All hope is not lost! 😁

try this SB util: mm511.zip (89kb)

1╔═══════.\\rGun proudly presents══════╗
2╟ The Ultimate Util for SoundBlasters ╢
3╙─────────────────────────────────────╜
4           MASTER MIXER v5.11
5╔═Features════════════════════════════╗
6║-Full range SB mixer (All functions) ║
7║ Undocumented controls enabled !     ║
8║ Automatic "clicks" removal.         ║
9║ Can save 6 different mixing configs ║
10║-Can replace ALL SB drivers at BOOT  ║
11║ Boots your PC (DOS) in ½ a second.  ║
12║-Unlimited number of Special Effects ║
13║ User definable Chorus/Reverb+editor ║
14║█v5.1:Fix OPL3, AWE32, PC Spk level.█║
15║-Does DSP Reset, EMU Reset. Win95 Ok!║
16║ Can enable/disable any function.    ║
17║-Command-line "QuickLoading" (tm)    ║
18║ Sets your mixer in 1/4th a second ! ║
19└─────────────────────────────────────┘
20 Version 5.11 fixes errors in the docs

supposedly, it can enable SB cards even without official drivers.

tikbalang wrote:

try this SB util: mm511.zip (89kb) […]
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try this SB util: mm511.zip (89kb)

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1╔═══════.\\rGun proudly presents══════╗
2╟ The Ultimate Util for SoundBlasters ╢
3╙─────────────────────────────────────╜
4           MASTER MIXER v5.11
5╔═Features════════════════════════════╗
6║-Full range SB mixer (All functions) ║
7║ Undocumented controls enabled !     ║
8║ Automatic "clicks" removal.         ║
9║ Can save 6 different mixing configs ║
10║-Can replace ALL SB drivers at BOOT  ║
11║ Boots your PC (DOS) in ½ a second.  ║
12║-Unlimited number of Special Effects ║
13║ User definable Chorus/Reverb+editor ║
14║█v5.1:Fix OPL3, AWE32, PC Spk level.█║
15║-Does DSP Reset, EMU Reset. Win95 Ok!║
16║ Can enable/disable any function.    ║
17║-Command-line "QuickLoading" (tm)    ║
18║ Sets your mixer in 1/4th a second ! ║
19└─────────────────────────────────────┘
20 Version 5.11 fixes errors in the docs

supposedly, it can enable SB cards even without official drivers.

Doesn't help us but it's a good mixer util.....waay better than Creative's crap mixerset.exe

Just DL'd a copy! Thanks! 😁

Some time ago I started Tie-Fighter collectors CD with a ct-2800 for sound fitted with a a midi daughterboard. I did the same thing on another system a few days ago. Both configurations behave the same: there was this hanging note as soon as I entered the 'combat-chamber', but in addition the game also stops running for several seconds whenever the midi-track changes (it changes very often), making you think your computer has locked up, only to resume each time...

Amigaz wrote:

Doesn't help us but it's a good mixer util.....waay better than Creative's crap mixerset.exe

does it indeed enable the card without SB drivers? it doesn't work on my sb clone (via ac97/sbpro).

here is another SB enabler:
http://www.multimediaware.com/qv/sbdetect.zip
http://www.multimediaware.com/qv/qvfaq.html

re: hanging tone
- yes there is the "evil" dsp, but maybe increasing DMA buffers in emm386.exe settings will help? add "D=64" or higher value to emm386 line (32 is default).

tikbalang wrote:

does it indeed enable the card without SB drivers? it doesn't work on my sb clone (via ac97/sbpro). […]
Show full quote

Amigaz wrote:

Doesn't help us but it's a good mixer util.....waay better than Creative's crap mixerset.exe

does it indeed enable the card without SB drivers? it doesn't work on my sb clone (via ac97/sbpro).

here is another SB enabler:
http://www.multimediaware.com/qv/sbdetect.zip
http://www.multimediaware.com/qv/qvfaq.html

re: hanging tone
- yes there is the "evil" dsp, but maybe increasing DMA buffers in emm386.exe settings will help? add "D=64" or higher value to emm386 line (32 is default).

It relies on the drivers in the folder SET SOUND points to but it doesn't rely on any TSR loaded drivers

retro games 100 wrote:

...But that's great news about the CT3980 though! All hope is not lost!

Don't expect too much, several people encountered them more often on their CT3980 cards. 🙄
This damn bug is inconsistent even within the same card model. I once compared the chip printings of my CT3980 with those of a "more buggy" CT3980, and I found that both cards were identical.

gerwin wrote:

Some time ago I started Tie-Fighter collectors CD with a ct-2800 for sound fitted with a a midi daughterboard. I did the same thing on another system a few days ago. Both configurations behave the same: there was this hanging note as soon as I entered the 'combat-chamber', but in addition the game also stops running for several seconds whenever the midi-track changes (it changes very often), making you think your computer has locked up, only to resume each time...

To make things even more confusing: The hanging notes in some LucasArts games are an entirely different problem, they also appear on cards without the bug (i.e. CT17xx with 4.05 DSP) 😜
It is caused by a buggy MIDI driver in the game, it gets out of whack when the CPU speed is too fast. I don't know if there is a software fix for that, but slowing down the machine should help.

tikbalang wrote:

does it indeed enable the card without SB drivers? it doesn't work on my sb clone (via ac97/sbpro).

MasterMixer won't work with SB Pro or compatible cards, because their mixer chip is different from the one on SB16/AWE models. Actually SB Pro cards don't need any initialisation at all, only some clones have their own drivers to switch to "SB Pro mode".
The MasterMixer card initialisation feature is only intended for those "half-PnP" SB16 cards which normally need DIAGNOSE.EXE /S to set their hardware resources.

5u3:
To make things even more confusing: The hanging notes in some LucasArts games are an entirely different problem, they also appear on cards without the bug (i.e. CT17xx with 4.05 DSP) Sticking Tongue Out
It is caused by a buggy MIDI driver in the game, it gets out of whack when the CPU speed is too fast. I don't know if there is a software fix for that, but slowing down the machine should help.

I doubt part of that explanation. I know that the imuse system from Tie-Fighter could be quite troublesome, and this has been officialy confirmed by lucasarts. But that was said to be caused by lack of system speed. I never had much trouble with Tie-Fighter myself, even on systems up to 866 MHz, until I used this SB-16. (admitted, it also did not work well with a vortex-2 soundcard in a windows dosbox.)

I reckon that "legacy gaming hardware" could be made in to a (very interesting) university degree! 😀

gerwin wrote:

I doubt part of that explanation. I know that the imuse system from Tie-Fighter could be quite troublesome, and this has been officialy confirmed by lucasarts. But that was said to be caused by lack of system speed. I never had much trouble with Tie-Fighter myself, even on systems up to 866 MHz, until I used this SB-16. (admitted, it also did not work well with a vortex-2 soundcard in a windows dosbox.)

I just wanted to point out that the hanging notes appearing in LucasArts games are not necessarily caused by Creative's buggy MPU401 interface alone.
The hardware hanging notes bug usually doesn't occur at specific points in a game but appears randomly. Also, it doesn't make a game lag or stutter, this has to be a different issue.

I've not tried Tie Fighter yet, but I've seen similar problems than you described (hanging notes in menu screens, laggy game when the music changes interactively) in X-Wing and Sam&Max. In my case they didn't only occur on SB cards, but on real Roland MPU401 interfaces as well! Playing it on real 486 hardware reduced the hanging notes, so I assumed this was a system speed problem.

Turns out I was wrong. Here is an interesting snippet pulled from Usenet, where LucasArts tech support admits that their iMuse interface routines were written for AdLib and perform crappy when applied to MIDI:

LucasArts tech support wrote:

I'm sorry to hear that you are experiencing problems with the MIDI music on Tie Fighter CD. We are aware of some problems that h […]
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I'm sorry to hear that you are experiencing problems with the MIDI music on Tie Fighter CD. We are aware of some problems that have occurred relating to the MIDI music option on Tie Fighter (this has most commonly been seen on systems that use MIDI daughter-boards.) The most common problem that has been reported is the occurrence of hanging notes. We have spent a great deal of time researching this problem, and unfortunately have come to the conclusion that the problem cannot be fixed. Here is a detailed explanation of what we have discovered to be the nature of the problem:

The standard adlib-compatible FM synthesizer (also known as the OPL2 or OPL3 chip) is the de facto music standard for computer games. The FM synth chip is located on the sound card and it's registers are directly accessible to our programmers. They program the chip to have nine channels of FM synthesis. When a music note plays, IMUSE (our sound engine) finds an open channel, downloads the appropriate instrument (11 bytes), and flips a status bit in the FM chip to un-mute the channel.
This process takes around 275 microseconds to complete. Turning the note off takes under 30 microseconds. Since the instrument is included in the note-on command, there is no extra time taken to switch instruments. These timings are small enough that we haven't encountered any stuck notes or other problems when playing Tie Fighter using the FM synth option for the music. As long as you select FM synth, you should be able to play the game without experiencing any hanging notes.

The General MIDI daughterboards (that most commonly attach to the Sound Blaster 16) can improve the quality of the game's music significantly.
However, because the chips driving the music are no longer on the sound card, the programmer is forced to access these chips indirectly through a serial interface on the card (running at around 32 kbaud, or 4000 bytes/sec.) The card then interprets the standard MIDI note information. To turn a note on, you must send 3 bytes to the card, and then wait for each to be sent to the daughterboard (at 4000 bytes/sec, this process takes 750 microseconds.) Turning a note off is another 3 byte message (which takes another 750 microseconds). Changing an instrument, is a 2 byte message (another 500 microseconds). In addition to the time that it takes to send a byte to the daughterboard, there is a delay that is caused by the wait for an acknowledgment signal to be returned.

The high density of the notes in our Star Wars music, and the delay caused by routing the information through the MIDI daughterboards, combined with the high-resolution SVGA graphics, presented quite a challenge to both our programmers, and to computer systems that were trying to simultaneously process all of the game's data.

In some cases, systems processing all of this information during gameplay can experience temporary pauses (caused by such things as waiting for data from the CD-ROM.) This causes the music engine to starve and then suddenly become inundated with MIDI messages. When this happens, the system literally hangs for 2-3 seconds as the computer attempts to process the CD-ROM reads and the MIDI messages at the same time.

We attempted to correct this problem by changing the setup so that the system did not have to wait for the "busy-wait" acknowledgment that was being sent out through the MIDI messages. This did manage to get rid of the pausing problem, but there were still difficulties because occasionally a MIDI message was lost. When the lost MIDI message was a "note-on" message, the note simply didn't play. When the lost message was a "note-off" message, the musical note didn't stop playing--This is what causes the "hanging note" problem.. Our various other attempts to remedy stuck notes either recreated the pauses, or didn't work 100% of the time.

Another thing that we tried to do to eliminate the pauses, was to internally buffer the MIDI messages and wait for the "busy-wait" acknowledgment, so that when the system is very busy, no MIDI messages are sent out. Then, when the system has extra time for music, the buffer unloads as much as possible. This worked well, but since the "time-out" period was shortened, stuck notes still occurred (but fewer than normally would have). This is the solution that was shipped with Tie Fighter CD.

We spent an extensive amount of time researching this problem, with the hope of coming up with a solution, but we have determined that there just isn't any way that a patch can be produced that will fix the problem (specifically because the problem is hardware related). The best thing to do would be to use the FM Synth option when playing the game. This will allow you to play without experiencing any of the "hanging-note" problems.

I appreciate your patience in this matter. We wanted to be sure that we had exhausted every possibility before we reached the conclusion that the problem could not be resolved.

I hope this helps.
Natalia / LucasArts Technical Support

So, just select the FM synth and don't complain any more! 🤣

Interesting!
But what about soundcards with onboard midi synths?

Aww, nothing like a nice working hardware interrupt scheme 😉