VOGONS


First post, by MaxWar

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It seems that sound card incompatibility in games mostly manifests itself in the same games.

I know that Comanche maximum overkill is really picky and the sound or music (mostly music ) will not work most of the times on SB clones, at least with the latest ( speed lock ) patch.

Xwing also likes being difficult apparently

Doom/hexen etc sometime gives some difficulty for digital audio but not too bad.

The secret of monkey island is totally allergic to OPL2 sound blaster clones ( there does not seem to be much problem with OPL3 clones though )

I am sure there are a lot more out there.

I would like To further improve the compatibility testing of my sound cards in the Grand Opl3 Comparison run.

FM sound card comparison on a Grand Scale!!
The Grand OPL3 Comparison Run.

Reply 1 of 9, by leileilol

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I've never had trouble with Doom engine sound (DMX) but for sure it doesn't like OPL clones like CQM very much. Most songs actually lose polyphony

Space Quest III is picky for digital sound even though it BARELY uses it.

I never got digital sound working in any Sierra DOS game on a PCI sound card be it Sound Blaster 128, Sound Blaster Live or Sound Blaster Live 5.1. (ok I know SB's aren't the only pci sound card in the world, those are just the only ones I have that are)

X-Wing distorts like hell on a CS4232. Also Tyrian's digital sound screws up on other crystal semiconductor chipsets

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 2 of 9, by NamelessPlayer

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Tyrian 2000 refused to play nicely with this ESS AudioDrive card I had lying around, which usually works in Sound Blaster emulation mode in other games. However, it does get along with my AWE64 Gold.

Reply 3 of 9, by mills26

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The Vibra 16 (a sound blaster clone) was unable to play digital PCM sounds inside games properly, it was always distorted if you use its original drivers.
I think I once used another drivers and the problem was solved, but I don't remember well.
MIDI -OPL2 or OPL3 sounded perfect

Reply 5 of 9, by mills26

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TheMAN wrote:

the vibra16 is NOT a sound blaster clone.... IT IS a sound blaster, just a stripped down sound blaster 16!

😅 I thought it was a clone! it had so many bugs... 😀. Now I remember, the sound blaster logo was on the box... 😅

Reply 6 of 9, by Ace

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MaxWar wrote:

Xwing also likes being difficult apparently

X-Wing isn't just difficult about the sound card, it's also EXTREMELY difficult about the speed of your computer. The floppy disk edition, especially, is a nightmare to get working correctly with any of the SoundBlaster sound options, in particular on SoundBlaster clones, but I even used to have problems getting the game to work using the SoundBlaster sound options on real SoundBlasters (AWE64 CT4500 and Pro 2.0 CT1600)! Lately, I even had problems with the game on the ESS Maestro-2 with the floppy disk edition of X-Wing as the game would only work with the SoundBlaster sound options under Windows 95 whereas in DOS, all I got was complete silence.

If you use the AdLib, Roland or General MIDI sound options with the floppy disk edition of X-Wing, you will generally get sound, but as soon as you use either the SoundBlaster, SoundBlaster Pro, Roland with SoundBlaster or General MIDI with SoundBlaster sound options, on certain cards, you'll get complete silence.

Then you have to worry about the speed of your computer's CPU. This isn't as much of a problem with the Collector's CD-ROM edition as with the floppy disk edition, but it's pretty bad on the floppy disk edition. Sound cards with true OPL2 and OPL3 especially are affected by this as the faster your CPU, the greater the risk the game outputs a jumbled mess of garbage notes out of the YM3812 or YMF262. There is a small in-between area where the game will start missing notes or outputting notes incorrectly, though (if I were to estimate this area, it would be between a Pentium MMX and possibly an AMD K6-II). The best CPU I've used for X-Wing is a Pentium 120MHz, both for the floppy disk edition and Collector's CD-ROM edition, as that too may output incorrect notes when using 4-Op FM music (using AdLib music on a fast computer will result in VERY slow music and gameplay that's just as slow - nasty).

leileilol wrote:

X-Wing distorts like hell on a CS4232.

Distorted like this? That's what I got with the floppy disk edition using a CS4235 integrated on an IBM Personal Computer 300PL. Worst sound card I've ever used. I haven't had any distortion issues like this on a CX4236 or even a CS4232.

As for other games, I have had problems with Doom and Duke Nukem 3D on some PCI sound cards where the game would either fail to load or output absolutely no digital audio if I were to set that card to output sound effects. Plus, I've had MAJOR problems with using a Roland CM-300 on any SoundBlaster 16 or my SoundBlaster 32 PnP CT3600 on either game where the music was skipping notes, would just stay on the same note forever and would cause severe speed issues on both of those games (DSP version doesn't matter; I've had DSP version 4.16 on my SoundBlaster 16 WavEffects CT4170 do the same thing). Descent even caused issues on my OPTi 82C929A where it was absolutely impossible to get any Stereo sound out of the card.

Creator of The Many Sounds of:, a collection of various DOS games played using different sound cards.

Reply 7 of 9, by kool kitty89

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Ace wrote:

Then you have to worry about the speed of your computer's CPU. This isn't as much of a problem with the Collector's CD-ROM edition as with the floppy disk edition, but it's pretty bad on the floppy disk edition. Sound cards with true OPL2 and OPL3 especially are affected by this as the faster your CPU, the greater the risk the game outputs a jumbled mess of garbage notes out of the YM3812 or YMF262. There is a small in-between area where the game will start missing notes or outputting notes incorrectly, though (if I were to estimate this area, it would be between a Pentium MMX and possibly an AMD K6-II). The best CPU I've used for X-Wing is a Pentium 120MHz, both for the floppy disk edition and Collector's CD-ROM edition, as that too may output incorrect notes when using 4-Op FM music (using AdLib music on a fast computer will result in VERY slow music and gameplay that's just as slow - nasty).

Have you tried FD X-Wing with underclocked P55C (MMX) or K6 (or K6-2) CPUs?

I'd assumed it was just the clock speed that was the issue, but testing a Pentium MMX 200 at 125 MHz (2.5x50) on Apollowboy's PC, we still got garbage notes played back. (this particular P55C appears to be multiplier locked and only supports 2.5 and 3.0, with other jumper settings remapping to one of those 2)
I wonder if the larger L1 cache is to blame, or something else entirely. We were using a downloaded disk image for testing rather than an actual copy of the game, so that may have been a problem. (FM sound worked OK in DOSbox with that image though, but no PCM and the volume was very low)

We didn't want to bother with swapping his P133 back in for comparison, so we left it at that. We probably should have tried it with the L1 cache disabled though, or de-turbo mode. (but I think that slows things down much more, possibly reducing the FSB below 50 MHz and probably disabling both caches as the manual describes it as 24 MHz 286 emulation -though all the Pentium features are still enabled)

I've never had problems getting sound working in the Collector's CD-ROM version, at least in DOS/win9x, though I have had problems getting it to run at all, usually due to XMS errors which Win98 seems to avoid entirely. (probably need to change from the default EMS/XMS drivers in DOS/95)

Reply 8 of 9, by AdamP

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Solar Winds doesn't like playing sound on my AWE64 Gold. The music plays fine, but the computer hangs during battle if sound is enabled. I have yet to find a fix. The irony is that the readme says it only supports genuine Sound Blasters, yet it works better on an ESS Audiodrive, which has no problems with this game. Both music and sound sounded god awful on an Aureal Vortex and I've had difficulty getting it to work with a SB Live!.

Reply 9 of 9, by Ace

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kool kitty89 wrote:

I'd assumed it was just the clock speed that was the issue, but testing a Pentium MMX 200 at 125 MHz (2.5x50) on Apollowboy's PC, we still got garbage notes played back. (this particular P55C appears to be multiplier locked and only supports 2.5 and 3.0, with other jumper settings remapping to one of those 2)
I wonder if the larger L1 cache is to blame, or something else entirely. We were using a downloaded disk image for testing rather than an actual copy of the game, so that may have been a problem. (FM sound worked OK in DOSbox with that image though, but no PCM and the volume was very low)

We didn't want to bother with swapping his P133 back in for comparison, so we left it at that. We probably should have tried it with the L1 cache disabled though, or de-turbo mode. (but I think that slows things down much more, possibly reducing the FSB below 50 MHz and probably disabling both caches as the manual describes it as 24 MHz 286 emulation -though all the Pentium features are still enabled)

It is a clock speed issue as I have a Panasonic laptop running on a Pentium MMX (not sure what clock speed, though) and the BIOS has options to underclock the Pentium MMX. If I underclock the CPU to half of its rated speed, X-Wing sounds perfect and runs at full speed. However, I've had no such luck with desktop PCs running Pentium MMX or AMD K5 CPUs unless I disable L1 cache, which causes a pretty drastic drop in performance to the point where the game runs at half the framerate most of the time. It's happened on a Pentium MMX, AMD K5 and Cyrix C3 (even when overclocked past the 933MHz it's rated for).

Those images you find of the floppy disk edition of X-Wing online are trash. I used to have those loaded onto my DOS PCs and all but one was bad. The first gave "File errors" on a real DOS PC (but not on DOSBox) and would always mute the sound in its entirety (happened only the first time I ran this in DOSBox, but never happened again), the second one had all audio and still gave "File errors," while the third one was perfect. I eventually got myself the original 5 floppy disks so as not to deal with this (though I did keep a file from those images as it eliminates the copy protection since it's a pain to always have to input what the game asks for, not to mention, my instruction booklet is missing a page).

kool kitty89 wrote:

I've never had problems getting sound working in the Collector's CD-ROM version, at least in DOS/win9x, though I have had problems getting it to run at all, usually due to XMS errors which Win98 seems to avoid entirely. (probably need to change from the default EMS/XMS drivers in DOS/95)

The problems are more subtle with the Collector's CD-ROM edition of X-Wing, but I do notice them. On faster computers, some notes are slightly off when using 4-Op FM music, but if you use AdLib music, the problems immediately become apparent. If your computer's CPU is too fast, the music will be in slow-motion and slow down the game to the slower pacing of the music.

Creator of The Many Sounds of:, a collection of various DOS games played using different sound cards.