Hello friends. I have a windows 98 machine with a SBlive! I play games like Blood and DukeNukem and have to select General MIDI for music. Its the only option that seems to work. The other options just say " you should hear bla bla music playing" but I don't. Only General MIDI works, am I missing something here? I remember back in the day selecting sound blaster for the music. Is General midi better sound option?
I think you asked a similar question before:
Strange sound issues with SBlive and win95
I assume you're running those games in a DOS window under Win98 (as opposed to booting into pure DOS 7). "General MIDI" emulates an MPU-401 interface and sends the MIDI data back to the MIDI Mapper in Win98, which ultimately uses the SB Live's wavetable synthesis. This is usually the better option for newer games anyway, like Blood and Duke Nukem 3D, as the instruments sound more realistic. The "Sound Blaster" option for music tries to use OPL2 synthesis, which the SB Live lacks in hardware and the driver has to emulate in software. Are you using the VxD or WDM drivers? Usually the former is more compatible with DOS games.
That troubled me too. I managed to resolve it using the WDM drivers and added the set blaster variant along with loading the sbinit.com program in the autoexec. bat. That combination gave me a new device in the device manager. The sb16 compatible. You can change the IRQ ADDRESS and DMA in the properties.
jtchip wrote on 2020-02-04, 23:04:I think you asked a similar question before:
Strange sound issues with SBlive and win95
I assume you're running those games in a DOS window under Win98 (as opposed to booting into pure DOS 7). "General MIDI" emulates an MPU-401 interface and sends the MIDI data back to the MIDI Mapper in Win98, which ultimately uses the SB Live's wavetable synthesis. This is usually the better option for newer games anyway, like Blood and Duke Nukem 3D, as the instruments sound more realistic. The "Sound Blaster" option for music tries to use OPL2 synthesis, which the SB Live lacks in hardware and the driver has to emulate in software. Are you using the VxD or WDM drivers? Usually the former is more compatible with DOS games.
thats a different machine. Im using the WDM drivers. Ill try the VxD and see if i can select the other options. thanks.
