Does MIDI work in other applications? Do you have other options in the Music tab of DXDIAG? How did you install your SBLive drivers?

yes it works fine in FF7 for instance, though in the case of FF7 I use the AWE64G instead since the game has native support for it, SBlive works in it too.

there is a custom configurator for FF8, which will let me choose the SBlive, but however none of the soundfonts I use sound right, probably because they simply weren't made for the game.

Try the Yamaha softsynth that is supposed to be on the disc...

I did, and turned it off after about 10 minutes since it sounded terrible , not sure if this is an issue with the computer or the softsynth itself.

Darkman wrote:

there is a custom configurator for FF8, which will let me choose the SBlive

And does the stuttering go away?

but however none of the soundfonts I use sound right, probably because they simply weren't made for the game.

I know I've seen soundfonts out there that were especially designed for use with FF8.

well , from what Ive played there was no stutter, but then like I said it seems to be random , it can happen 10 minutes into the game , or 2 hours so there is no way of knowing.

and yes there are , though the links in the websites Ive looked at all seem to be down.

There are specific soundfonts for the game floating around indeed, but all they do is rip off the PSX music; and very poorly at that.

You can either sink time into trying to fix the issue or just ditch this version. I myself did the latter when I bought it years ago, realizing how bad of a port it is. The predecessor is just fine on PC, however.

yes its quite interesting regarding FF7, visually they didn't do as good of a job imo (maybe just because its a bit light on textures, so it looks clean even at low res, also the FMVs look terrible), but the sound is fine, FF8 does a decent job with the visuals but the sound is messed up.

to be fair the default MS Synth doesn't sound bad by any means, and if it didn't have this particular problem it would be one, Im also wondering if its something to do with the EAX option being ticked, though if it is , its the first time its caused an issue with any game

Jorpho wrote:

I know I've seen soundfonts out there that were especially designed for use with FF8.

Designed for FF8 or designed for transcribed midis?

FF8 uses the DirectMusic API and just has SGT and DLS formats used only, played back in 22050hz IIRC.

Steam version is supposedly the same as that.

So soundfonts make no difference? I was not aware of that. In that case I do wonder what I saw.

Final Fantasy VIII was just released on steam and gamersgate. It contains some improvement, like the ability to run in "modern" resolutions. Have anyone tested this release and know if they have fix more issues regarding to sound/music?

Edit: Music beeing reported to still be the original MIDI. They are talking about a patch thoughh, like happened with the steam release of VII

Does FF 8 come with an sf2 or sbk soundfont or both or none at all?

It's neither of those. Directmusic uses DLS.

So the game doesn't have a separate mode for the Soundblaster AWE? or the Live? The DLS file used by the MS soft synth is part of the operating system, it doesn't come with the game.

It's not using GM.DLS.

DirectMusic is an API introduced in DirectX 6 that provides software MIDI synthesis with custom instruments strongly similar to Microsoft Synthesizer in W98. Very few games use it (Shogo, Blood 2), and FFVIII PC is among those few.

Oh, is it capable of reverb?

Yes but the reverb is not programmable. It's hardcoded completely from what I can understand from my experiments with it in the past.

A good example of the "reverb" is Hitman Codename 47. Another example is open up Winamp, use DirectMusic for MIDI file playback and tick "Reverb" in the directmusic settings on the midi input plugin. It sounds horrible but hey that's what you got apparently...

I'm not able to get reverb to work with mid files in Winamp no way no how. But it still works fine in Quicktime. I'm using Windows 8.1; I have no idea if that makes it more difficult.

It wouldn't surprise me that Windows 8.1 destroyed DirectMusic all the way, it IS a deprecated interface (because microsoft is stupid like that)

It works fine for me, worked fine for me even in 32-bit XP.

Did you do exactly this though?:

I just verified (though DirectMusic is seriously hosed on Windows 7 64-bit enough as is) that it works. You should be hearing a really cheap reverb effect that to my knowledge is hardcoded and NOT programmable.

It shouldn't REALLY matter if you make it use Winamp's output plugin or not... you should still beable to hear the reverb effect all the same.