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Classic Games with CD Audio

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First post, by fsmith2003

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I was curious. Are there any list out there that show which classic windows/dos games had cd audio? I know that a list may be very large but I am not sure how many there are out there that would require a CD for the full experience as opposed to ripping the image and using an image mounter. And on that note, are there techniques that exist to get the cd audio using an image instead of the physical cd?

Reply 1 of 36, by firage

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CD audio was a fairly big mid to late-90's thing, so the list would be quite long. Just insert the disc and see if you can find audio tracks using a media player's CD player functionality.

You get audio tracks using most formats, ISO is the big one that doesn't support CD audio. DaemonTools and equivalents can play the tracks back just fine, except on Win9x systems with VxD audio drivers. BIN/CUE is an open format, CloneCD's CCD is very popular, but Alcohol 52%/120%'s MDF/MDS is my preferred format for anything more complex than a bog standard ISO.

My big-red-switch 486

Reply 2 of 36, by mrau

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why? whats the difference between cue and mdf?
ripping is always possible i think, sometimes only the hardware gets stressed a ton; for windows game You can always have the CD on disk, with DOS i'm not sure

Reply 4 of 36, by dr.zeissler

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firage wrote:

CD audio was a fairly big mid to late-90's thing, so the list would be quite long. Just insert the disc and see if you can find audio tracks using a media player's CD player functionality.

You get audio tracks using most formats, ISO is the big one that doesn't support CD audio. DaemonTools and equivalents can play the tracks back just fine, except on Win9x systems with VxD audio drivers. BIN/CUE is an open format, CloneCD's CCD is very popular, but Alcohol 52%/120%'s MDF/MDS is my preferred format for anything more complex than a bog standard ISO.

Has anyone technically checked out, why the VXD-Drivers under win9x do produce this issue with cd-images?

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 5 of 36, by aop

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firage wrote:

CD audio was a fairly big mid to late-90's thing, so the list would be quite long. Just insert the disc and see if you can find audio tracks using a media player's CD player functionality.

You get audio tracks using most formats, ISO is the big one that doesn't support CD audio. DaemonTools and equivalents can play the tracks back just fine, except on Win9x systems with VxD audio drivers. BIN/CUE is an open format, CloneCD's CCD is very popular, but Alcohol 52%/120%'s MDF/MDS is my preferred format for anything more complex than a bog standard ISO.

What is the reason that when using Daemon Tools 3.47 the audio tracks play just fine in the inbuilt CD player of Windows 98SE but games can't play them? I have tested with SB Live! and AWE64 and get the same result.

Reply 7 of 36, by firage

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dr.zeissler wrote:

Has anyone technically checked out, why the VXD-Drivers under win9x do produce this issue with cd-images?

aop wrote:

What is the reason that when using Daemon Tools 3.47 the audio tracks play just fine in the inbuilt CD player of Windows 98SE but games can't play them? I have tested with SB Live! and AWE64 and get the same result.

You need WDM drivers and a compatible OS (98SE+) to do kernel streaming. Without that, you're relying on each individual piece of software (such as Media Player) to implement their own workaround.

My big-red-switch 486

Reply 8 of 36, by elianda

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Daemon Tools 3.47 plays CD-Audio fine in games if you put the CD-Audio from Daemon Tools on a separate Wave device. Better sound cards bring up to 8 wave devices.

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Reply 9 of 36, by fsmith2003

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Thanks everyone. SO far I have been having good results just by making my Daemon Tools drive the D: drive. Haven't had to make any other changes yet.

Reply 11 of 36, by aop

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elianda wrote:

Daemon Tools 3.47 plays CD-Audio fine in games if you put the CD-Audio from Daemon Tools on a separate Wave device. Better sound cards bring up to 8 wave devices.

How do you do that and what kind of soundcard is needed for that?

I'm really noob with 90's computer audio since all I had back then was an integrated audio chip on a Compaq Presario (I think it was ESS something) and in early 00's I got SB Live! in my first own computer.

Reply 12 of 36, by Cga.8086

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there is a ton of games from that era

there are even LARRY games and Space Quest games that were released on floppy but then where released in CD with actual voice audio.
I wish i kept the images of those games because those editions were very available on the eMule or edonkey era.

but to give you an example, games with cd audio tracks that come to my mind were

-battle chess (i remember this one because its one of the games that came with my cd-rom media vision ssound card combo)
-mortal kombat 3
-warcraft2
-command and conquer
-red alert
-diablo
-xmen children of the atom

but there is a ton of games

Reply 13 of 36, by elianda

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aop wrote:
elianda wrote:

Daemon Tools 3.47 plays CD-Audio fine in games if you put the CD-Audio from Daemon Tools on a separate Wave device. Better sound cards bring up to 8 wave devices.

How do you do that and what kind of soundcard is needed for that?

I'm really noob with 90's computer audio since all I had back then was an integrated audio chip on a Compaq Presario (I think it was ESS something) and in early 00's I got SB Live! in my first own computer.

With SB Live! and kxDrivers you have 4 wave devices. With Maxi Sound 64 series you typically get 4 and EWS64 as well.
Low end cards usually provide only a single wave playback device. The option there is to have a second sound card.

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Reply 14 of 36, by dr.zeissler

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- Changing the drive-letter does not help for outcast, but it's a cracked executable so the problem can be elsewhere. Putting the CD in drive is OK though.
- It does help for some other games that did not have worked before like raiden2, gdarious.
- for a win3x-game with an iso image under win95 like battle chess enhanced it does not work. first the audio-track is played, but the track that should beplayed while the character is movin leads to a os-freeze.

I'll have to check if only the drive-lette for cd-audio in the multimedia-setup of win9x should do the job (e.g. changing that from D to E and not changing the deamon-tools drive letter from E to D)

Using later PCI Soundcards are not my favorite, because they have lots of compatibility issues and playback quality issues with oder dos-games and a PCI soundcard is better fitted in an w98se system and then wdm-drivers should be the deal.

Greetings
Doc

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 15 of 36, by aop

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elianda wrote:
aop wrote:
elianda wrote:

Daemon Tools 3.47 plays CD-Audio fine in games if you put the CD-Audio from Daemon Tools on a separate Wave device. Better sound cards bring up to 8 wave devices.

How do you do that and what kind of soundcard is needed for that?

I'm really noob with 90's computer audio since all I had back then was an integrated audio chip on a Compaq Presario (I think it was ESS something) and in early 00's I got SB Live! in my first own computer.

With SB Live! and kxDrivers you have 4 wave devices. With Maxi Sound 64 series you typically get 4 and EWS64 as well.
Low end cards usually provide only a single wave playback device. The option there is to have a second sound card.

kxDrivers are out of question since my CPU dog slow. I have 4 different SB Live! cards and found a EWS64 XL + Yamaha DB50GX from a dumpster yesterday. Do default VxD drivers of SB Live! allow for multiple wave devices? How do I setup the D-tools audio if they do?

The EWS64 + Yamaha combo seems to be a real pain in the ass to setup for a audio noob. Is there even a point in using the Yamaha if you chuck a 64MB SIMM on the EWS64?

Reply 16 of 36, by zirkoni

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fsmith2003 wrote:

Are there any list out there that show which classic windows/dos games had cd audio?

http://redump.org/discs/system/pc/ has a huge database where you can see what kind of tracks a game CD has. Although, I don't think you can easily search for and list specifically games that have CD-audio.

https://youtube.com/@zirkoni42

Reply 17 of 36, by Maleckii

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The first game I remember playing that on a mixed-mode was the CD version of LOOM in 1992. The speech tracks and orchestral accompaniment were all different tracks - I also remember not understanding why it didn't work when my CD drive didn't have the analog audio connector to my Sound Blaster. I'm sure there's plenty of other games though.

Reply 18 of 36, by clueless1

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There's a couple of interesting games that support both General MIDI *and* CD Audio recording of General MIDI:
Betrayal at Krondor
Heroes of Might and Magic II

There are probably more, but these are the only two I'm aware of. Kind of cool that if you don't have a Sound Canvas you can still get Sound Canvas audio via CD-DA.
Wait...I want to say that either Shadow Warrior or Blood also offer this...? Can't remember for sure.

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