You mention using a GUS UltraSound previously. Was it a GUS PnP? Or was it a different model of GUS? Not all of them have the same chipset(s) and therefore have different compatibility levels. GUS Extreme is the most compatible since it has an ESS chipset for SB Pro / Adlib compatibility.

For Jazz Jackrabbit, you need to run PREPGAME.EXE to modify the game's executable before it will be compatible with the GUS PnP.

For Tyrian, I've had the same issues. This game is notoriously incompatible with sound cards.

Can't comment on the others as I haven't tried them with a GUS.

Did you edit IW.INI to match chosen Base, IRQ, DMA settings?
I made the experience that changing settings in Ultrasound setup program doesn't write them to IW.INI.
I hade to edit this file by hand.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-03-20, 01:51:

You mention using a GUS UltraSound previously. Was it a GUS PnP? Or was it a different model of GUS? Not all of them have the […]
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You mention using a GUS UltraSound previously. Was it a GUS PnP? Or was it a different model of GUS? Not all of them have the same chipset(s) and therefore have different compatibility levels. GUS Extreme is the most compatible since it has an ESS chipset for SB Pro / Adlib compatibility.

For Jazz Jackrabbit, you need to run PREPGAME.EXE to modify the game's executable before it will be compatible with the GUS PnP.

For Tyrian, I've had the same issues. This game is notoriously incompatible with sound cards.

Can't comment on the others as I haven't tried them with a GUS.

Interesting. I was previously using a gravis ultrasound max with the PC, which is a different model of the ultrasound. I figure they must be highly similar to each other but maybe not. 🤔. I haven't tried prepgame yet, didn't need to use it bitd and only recently learned about it. Will give it a shot, though as I understand it, that's only for ultrasound compatibility and won't effect the games that support only soundblaster/adlib that are locking up on boot.

dukeofurl wrote on 2024-03-20, 12:19:

Interesting. I was previously using a gravis ultrasound max with the PC, which is a different model of the ultrasound. I figure they must be highly similar to each other but maybe not. 🤔. I haven't tried prepgame yet, didn't need to use it bitd and only recently learned about it. Will give it a shot.

Yeah, the GUS PnP uses the Interwave chip which is notoriously less compatible and more finnicky to get working with games than the original GUS or GUS Max. The latter cards used the original GF1 chip.

Ok! I changed no settings but got some stuff to work.

If I run ultramid (not megaem), and I patch all the Epic games with prepgame, then they all work with ultrasound! Yay! Tyrian doesn't seem to be one of the games that prepgame fixes, but it seemed to play music today, too... however I noticed it wasn't playing all of the music channels, there were obvious notes that were not playing in the songs... Hm, not sure why. Other games with official ultrasound support (Jazz, OMF 2097, Doom, all seemed to work fine).

My issue now is the 80% of games that don't have ultrasound settings and require soundblaster emulation. If I run megaem, games seem to "see" a soundblaster, but I get the following spotty results:
-Wolfenstien 3D - soundblaster SFX will play but music does not play
-Commander Keen 4-6 will allow me to choose adlib/SB for SFX and music (it doesn't if you don't run megaem) but it is still silent while in game and plays no sfx/music
-Xargon, it allows me to choose soundblaster for sound and music, but it only plays the SFX in game and not the music
-Jill of the Jungle, the configuration menu says it cannot detect a soundcard...

My soundblaster emulation properties seem pretty standard. Base 220, IRQ 7, DMA 1. Not sure what's going on here.

dukeofurl wrote on 2024-03-22, 00:48:

My issue now is the 80% of games that don't have ultrasound settings and require soundblaster emulation. If I run megaem, games […]
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My issue now is the 80% of games that don't have ultrasound settings and require soundblaster emulation. If I run megaem, games seem to "see" a soundblaster, but I get the following spotty results:
-Wolfenstien 3D - soundblaster SFX will play but music does not play
-Commander Keen 4-6 will allow me to choose adlib/SB for SFX and music (it doesn't if you don't run megaem) but it is still silent while in game and plays no sfx/music
-Xargon, it allows me to choose soundblaster for sound and music, but it only plays the SFX in game and not the music
-Jill of the Jungle, the configuration menu says it cannot detect a soundcard...

My soundblaster emulation properties seem pretty standard. Base 220, IRQ 7, DMA 1. Not sure what's going on here.

All of those games are using adlib for music (or sound effects) which megaem doesn't handle. It only emulates the sound blaster's DAC (playback of digital audio samples, not FM synthesis) along with redirecting MPU401/port 330 access to internal wavetable synthesis.

I thought megaem included sbos, which I thought emulated adlib as well as soundblaster? Is there a different program I should run to emulate adlib? I know the Gus gets a bad rap for the result, but it can do it, no?

If an InterWave-based card is appropriately configured via IWINIT, the included IWSBOS will usually enable the features that you seek.

Some things that use the original Ad Lib instrument definitions don't sound altogether terrible; for most things, the result is either laughably bad or unapologetic ear torture.

Should there be a separate executable for iwsbos in my ultrasound directory? I don't seem to have that. Will try to hunt it down.

Ordinarily, IWSBOS is a separate executable, and is installed as part of the standard UltraSound PnP installation. This was the InterWave replacement for the older SBOS, and the tools were usually installed under C:\GRAVIS\ULTRASND by default.

Will try to reinstall. Previously I grabbed a drivers and utilities pack for the Gus pnp that someone had prepared and was working off that, but I do have the CD, just no CD-ROM drive on the PC I'm installing it to 😄.

I did scan the CDs contents previously for it and didn't see it just hanging out in a directory for me to copy over so I Guess it gets unpacked during the install.

The erratic behaviour and hit-or-miss sound while trying to run SB compatible titles with the GUS is why I always ran my GUS Max alongside a SB (originally a 2.0 and then a SB16) back when the cards originally came out.

I think if you want to run just a GUS exclusively, of any type, you pretty much have to accept a less than great level of compatibility with non GUS native titles.

It was never good enough for me to ditch an SB card.

I suspect the same is true for most others of the period, which is why it didn't exactly conquer the market.

I'm totally ok with "not great" Gus SB and opl emulation. As weird as it sounds, this was how I remember the games sounding (exclusively used a Gus Max for years in the 90s) so I'm very interested in getting that opl emulation going.
But where the experience differs, is that in the 90s, compatibility was great. simply running sbos would make the SB and opl emulation work and then there was no issue with a game detecting and playing sb/adlib music. Today with my guspnp and megaem, or the version of sbos that existed before the guspnp, I'm not getting any adlib playback, just silence. Will try to set it all up from scratch again and see if it comes out differently.

Ok, reinstalled and reconfigured everything. Another interesting situation:

Ultrasound works in all fixed epic games.

Ultrasound does not work in Doom at all and Raptor newly friezes on startup, so it effectively doesn't work there either. I think I need to configure some EMS. Epic Pinball and a handful of other games won't start and/or give an insufficient free memory error.

IWSBOS was the magic bullet to get soundblaster and adlib emulation going. Seems to work fine in most games. Traffic Department 2192 gradually gets sound glitches as you play until the sfx turn into a distorted staticky mess. That ones kind of weird but the symptom seems to be a one off.

It may be rose tinted glasses, but I swear the Gus Max did the adlib emulation a little bit better back in the day. Maybe it is the patch set the MAX uses versus the PNP, but I was testing stuff out tonight like Biomanace and Jill of the Jungle and certain of the shrill high pitched instruments seemed to be hitting wrong and discordant notes when played through the PNP.

Fixed my ultrasound mode compatibility issues by going to a lower IQ (7). This fixed Doom, Raptor, and some glitches I had with audio in Boppin and Tyrian. At this point the ultrasound mode seems fully functional and just works for games that support it 🙂. The sound blaster/adlib emulation is also working for the vast majority of games that need that, so the card seems appropriately installed and configured. (Yay!)

Nevertheless there are still a couple idiosyncratic incompatibilities. For example, SB emulation worked fine in Jill of the jungle when my ultrasound irq was 11, but dropping it to a lower irq causes an incompatibility with this particular game where it does not detect any soundcard at all. This seems to be documented in ultrasound faqs and the fix is to move the ultrasound irq to 11 or higher, but of course if you do that, then you're trading compatibility with this one game for many incompatibilitiea with several others (at least on my PC). I'll have to look around to see if there's a specific patch somewhere for Jill.

Jill, Xargon, traffic department 2192 and threat from space play sour notes during the adlib music emulation, just really obviously not the intended notes in the music at all. I absolutely don't remember having this issue with sour notes back with sbos and the Gus Max in the 90s. I'm really interested to see if I can troubleshoot this. Maybe an issue with the particular sound driver these games used. I don't know about Threat, but the other three used a very particular sound driver https://vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=WORX_Toolkit

I've discovered that sometimes pressing keys on my keyboard can result in glitches with the sound blaster emulation. The most notorious example I've encountered so far is that the opening/main menu music of Lamborghini American challenge (a game I played often with Gus adlib emulation in the 90s). The music plays perfectly until I press a button such as an arrow key to move the menu cursor (an event which would not trigger a sound effect), at which point, a loud repeating synth eighth note will repeatedly play until I get into the gameplay when this music would ordinary shut off. I'm wondering if some kind of conflict between my SB irq/Dma (currently 7 and 1 respectively) and my keyboard may be behind the sour notes and occasional glitches I have had in other games that use the gravis SB emulation. Will play around with that but open to ideas about why my regular average keyboard would glitch things out.

I played with the GUS soundblaster emulation IRQs and DMAs and it made no difference with any of my issues. So now I'd like to post some examples and ask of anyone else who has a GUS PNP whether they have the same audio issues on their system, at which point I can stop trying to mess with configuring things and just chalk my issues up to Gravis doing a very poor job with their adlib emulation with the PNP. I'd also like to ask if anyone with a non-interwave GUS card such as the GUS Max has the same audio on their system, as I'm fairly certain I didn't have either of these issues with the GUS Max in the 90s.

Issue 1, weird audio glitch occurs when I press the keyboard
Game: Lamborghini American Challenge
Music: opening/menu music
Audio glitch starts at 11 seconds into the clip when I press an arrow key to move the menu cursor

Issue 2, some games play wrong/sour notes compared to the piano roll of the original track
Game: Jill of the Jungle Ep. 3 (one of the more obvious examples, but it happens in several games)
Music: opening/menu music
I have included short snippets of the adlib music from youtube immediately followed by short snippets of my GUS adlib emulation with the sour notes