mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-05-03, 04:58:
Ok, I think I am beginning to understand this a bit better. There looks to be three distinct generation of WSS drivers used in sierra games.
-King's Quest VI (officially supported but busted)
I experienced the same "ear rape" you described after replacing AUDMSSYS.DRV. But it only happens during speech, the other sound effects play fine. I wonder if this will get fixed. Can someone with an OPTI or CMI8330 or other WSS-compatible card please test with the DOS KQ6 CD version?
EDIT: Space Quest VI didn't work for me either. Tried the newly modded AUDMSSYS, tried the updated Sierra version from 1994, tried the newly patched DACMSSYS (forced), tried disabling L1, tried setting IRQ to 7, nothing worked. If you want WSS support, avoid the CS4237.
EDIT 2: I tested King's Quest VI on an Aztech AZT2316A with a CS4248 WSS codec on-board. I tried the original AUDMSSYS.DRV, Sierra's in-house patched version, and the one posted here... It doesn't work, all I hear is silence (after running Lion King which is glitchy with WSS but works, I get the same ear rape after exiting and running KQ6 with WSS). I'm not sure if setting the SB IRQ also changes the WSS IRQ, but I set it to 7, that didn't help. Not relevant to the Orpheus per se, but just thought I'd post it here. WSS is important for me in KQ6 because of several reasons: 1) SB crashes the computer -- this is a known issue; 2) Thunderboard works for SB but the quality is not that great at all; 3) The character face portraits in the Windows version are quite dissatisfactory to say the least compared to the DOS version. The people who worked on the DOS portraits were real artists (Before Sierra went downhill). The people who did the Windows version portraits were complete amateurs. More pixel density doesn't make a better picture -- they had absolutely no idea what they were doing.