Try something that uses CT-VOICE.DRV, like, say, Traffic Department 2192.

I seem to recall Bio Menace and Halloween Harry/Alien Carnage could be a bit ornery, too.

The really old games. Anything from Sierra but also Lucasarts games like Fate of Atlantis CD with speech.

The late games have much better drivers and work with pretty much anything, including PCI.

The really old games

A list of games would help a lot. They may be old but it still feels like yesterday.

I'm pretty sure that Little Big Adventure/Relentless didn't like me using an ESS Audio Drive instead of a SoundBlaster 16.

Fate of Atlantis with speech, Space Quest 4 with speech. These are the games I found struggle to run on many PCI sound cards.

Oh you were talking about PCI cards, come to think of it I specifically remember not being able to use a PCI Sound Blaster 128 with LBA (this was quite some time ago though separate from the more recent with ESS Audio drive ).

My guess though is that it only likes the correct SB cards.

Cant think of anything else problematic from my experience but I'm sure lots of games are out there that are picky with sound devices

@Jorpho
Bio Menace, Halloween Harry/Alien Carnage, All work great music + digital
Traffic Department 2192, music is fine, digital gets "stuck" looping explosions

@Mau1wurf1977
Fate of Atlantis CD, music + digital work great.
Space Quest 4, can't find a disc for this online

@awergh
Little Big Adventure, don't have a cd to burn this. 🙁

Space Quest 4 is available on GOG.com or Steam 😀

Yes but I need a version that works in DOS. 😐

The GOG/Steam version is just the ordinary DOS version packed with DOSBox. After installation, you should be able to copy it over to your DOS machine without any problems.

I didn't have issues with sound with SQ4 on WSS-based cards.

Kahenraz wrote:

Yes but I need a version that works in DOS. 😐

You're new to this, aren't you. 😈

SQ4 gave me lots of problems, even with a SB16 (CT2940). Basically the game would lock up playing digital sound.

Haven't tried it since I moved to an AWE64 Gold.

This was the version from the Space Quest Collection CD. They run in Dosbox by default but include the DOS executables as well.

SQ4 is extremely CPU speed sensitive out of the box, as far as causing digital sounds to either not play, end prematurely, or indeed freeze/crash the game. And that's not even to mention the impact on in-game sequences.

Was using P233MMX with L1 & L2 disabled, comes out around a 386 DX-40 in Speedsys.

I can well imagine that other parts of the system will still be too fast though.

Little Big Adventure / Relentless is a piece of shit concerning any sound card, really (despite being a really-really good game otherwise). It also has multiple issues with many DOS4GW versions, and other DOS4GW-compatible extenders. The best result I had was with DOS4GW 2.0a and GUS ACE (ISA ESS688 is a no-go).

SQ4 CD works perfectly with any ISA SB-compatible card, just like every DOS Sierra game. Note that I don't use "PNP" Blasters and PCI soundcards. You shouldn't either. Never go above SB Pro 2.

Tongue of the Fatman. AFAIK, it only plays digitized speech on the SB 1.0 or 1.5. Otherwise it uses the PC Speaker for speech. It certainly did play speech on the speaker on my 386, but I added a junk OPTi soundcard to it, so it was not probably fully SB compatible either.

Gabucino wrote:

SQ4 CD works perfectly with any ISA SB-compatible card, just like every DOS Sierra game.

I.e. not very well. 😜

Nah, I kid, once patched up it's pretty good.

I have an ASus Xonar in my XP system and can't play The Simpsons Hit and Run for more than a couple minutes before all but the soundtrack stops playing. People talk endlessly saying nothing and there are no driving sounds or anything.