Hello all!

I've recently gotten hold of CoTS (a medieval adventure game created by Psygnosis in 1996) and I was hoping to be able to play it flawlessly. However, I have run into a quite significant issue and despite a lengthy search and troubleshooting, I have still not been able to get closer to solving the problem.

THe problem is with the speech, when the speech begins, two *different* phrases are heard simultaneously through the speakers. This is more than a little distracting. After reading through the READ.ME, I was able to locate the following:

"Doubled Up Speech
=================
Due to the way that the speech is stored on the CD, it's possible that you
may experience problems where two different speech phrases play at the same
time through each speaker.
Although this should be solved in most cases by the Speaker test in the
installation program, some manufacturers do not fully implement the standards
for CDROM/soundcard interface suggested by Microsoft, to which the game
conforms. As yet the only drives that we know have problems are the
Sound Galaxy IDE CDROM drive, and the Wearnes CDD-110.
The problem should be rectified by obtaining the latest CDROM software
driver version from your PC or CDROM drive supplier.
It's also worth changing the game's sound configuration manually.
Type EDIT COTS.INI from the COTS directory and change MAPPING=1
to MAPPING=0 or vice versa. If you make a mistake, delete the
COTS directory and re-install the game."

However, despite trying the developer's suggestions, I have still not been able to correct the problem.

The developer mentions that the problem may be caused by some manufacturers not following the "CDROM/soundcard interface standards" suggested by Microsoft; however I have no idea what these standards may be; keep in mind the game was released in 1996. Furthermore, I've tested this on 3 different CD-ROM drives and the problem still persists. I've also tried DOSBox and VDMSound, to no avail.

THe developer also mentions that the problem is caused by the way the digital speech is stored on the CD. Specifically, the digital speech is not stored in a single file like most games, but instead, it is stored as audio tracks which can be extracted as wavs. After further investigation, I've discovered (by extracting the tracks as wavs) that each audio track contains a different phrase of speech - one from left channel and one from right channel and so when the game plays the digital speech from the cd, two different phrases are heard simultaneously...its strange to see digital speech stored this way...Any one familiar with this storage technique??
(I've included one of the audio tracks as an example of how the digital speech is stored).

IF there was a way to set the soundcard/speakers so that I only hear single channel (e.g. left channel ONLY or right channel ONLY) it may help with the problem; however, I have not been able to figure out how to do that either.

Any assistance/guidance in any way whatsoever will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!!