Hi there! It's been years ago, but I vaguely remember that not all Creative SB16 drivers supported the ASP.
Maybe the version you use is simply too old or too new (dropped support for it)?
If the diagnose utility finds the chip, things are likely fine hardware-wise.

Jo22 wrote on 2022-10-13, 08:40:

Hi there! It's been years ago, but I vaguely remember that not all Creative SB16 drivers supported the ASP.
Maybe the version you use is simply too old or too new (dropped support for it)?
If the diagnose utility finds the chip, things are likely fine hardware-wise.

Yeah the Diagnose utility seems to have found the chip , do you happen to know what the latest driver that supports the csp chip is?

Okay I ended up using an older driver and that did the trick , but how does the qalign utility work?

Well the Demo works as well.
As far as I can tell its being detected in TFX but I cant tell much of a difference sound wise , so I'm not sure if its working or not.

This may be a better test of the CSP - "Accelerating" Windows 95 with Creative's Advanced Signal Processor (CSP)

Grzyb wrote on 2022-10-13, 22:34:

This may be a better test of the CSP - "Accelerating" Windows 95 with Creative's Advanced Signal Processor (CSP)

Yeah I might look into that if I can stop my AWE64 having conflicts with my sb16.
I still am pretty determined to get TFX working though.

AppleSauce wrote on 2022-10-15, 01:47:

I still am pretty determined to get TFX working though.

I have a post in the following thread that may provide some direction:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140905151351/ht … pic,1778.0.html

Specifically, the v1.0 diskette release of TFX needs to be used (although, now may be a good time to revisit that...), and CSP.SYS needs to be loaded.

Cloudschatze wrote on 2022-10-15, 02:20:

I have a post in the following thread that may provide some direction: […]
Show full quote

AppleSauce wrote on 2022-10-15, 01:47:

I still am pretty determined to get TFX working though.

I have a post in the following thread that may provide some direction:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140905151351/ht … pic,1778.0.html

Specifically, the v1.0 diskette release of TFX needs to be used (although, now may be a good time to revisit that...), and CSP.SYS needs to be loaded.

Believe it or not I already went though different TFX exe's with a hexeditor in order to investigate what made the game tick to find out what's wrong and found that anything after patch 1.0 for the floppy version removed references to qsound so that was something to keep in mind , still thanks for the help I do appreciate it.

It turns out the actual issue was that I had my speakers too far apart , after putting them next to my monitor and comparing the CD and 1.0 floppy version I can hear some panning in the floppy version , its a bit disappointing tbh , nowhere near as fancy as A3D.

I guess I'm not sure what I expected with this being 1993 not to mention the rebadged SGS Thompson chip being implemented by Creative Labs who was known for half assing things.
Still it does make the chip slightly less than useless , I might also give using it for audio decompression in win95 a go.
Although this pc uses a Pentium 233MMX so I'm not sure how much of a boost using the ASP chip would be.

AppleSauce wrote on 2022-10-15, 09:54:

It turns out the actual issue was that I had my speakers too far apart , after putting them next to my monitor and comparing the CD and 1.0 floppy version I can hear some panning in the floppy version , its a bit disappointing tbh , nowhere near as fancy as A3D.

QSound as provided by Creative Labs is a very simple technique. The idea is that with a normal stereo speaker setup, a part of the signal from the left speaker goes to your right ear, and a part of the signal from the right speaker goes to your left ear. This applies especially to low frequency content, as your head (the obstacle preventing the sound to reach the "wrong" ear) is small compared to the wavelength of bass sound (and thus doesn't really block it), but large compared to the wavelength of treble sound.

QSound tries to make sound appear to be even more from the left than just "hard left pan" by adding an inverted low-pass filtered version of the left channel to the right channel. The same can happen for the right channel. The Soundblaster 16 still stays a two-channel sound card. With QSound, you get two individually pannable channels. Both channels can be panned anywhere from hyper-left (full left + anti-sound on the right) over left (full left), center (left + right), right (fully panned right) or hyper-right (full right + anti-sound on the left speaker). The CSP can't provide extra channels, so no way of getting sound from more than 2 directions, except if you do the effect in software anyway (and then you don't need the CSP for that.

QSound can improve perceived wideness of stereo sound by panning the left channel slightly hyper-left and the right channel slightly hyper-right, but QSound is in no way any kind of 3D sound engine. Games supporting QSound can get real-time panning of up to two monaureal sources without CPU overhead. But that's about what QSound can do.

AppleSauce wrote on 2022-10-15, 09:54:

I might also give using it for audio decompression in win95 a go.
Although this pc uses a Pentium 233MMX so I'm not sure how much of a boost using the ASP chip would be.

I wouldn't expect any kind of boost in that system. CSP decompression provides an objective benefit to 286 and 386-class systems, but beyond that, even a mid-range 486 is capable of driving the corresponding software CODEC modules, or even just raw PCM playback, with near-inconsequential penalty.

Cloudschatze wrote on 2022-10-16, 01:51:

AppleSauce wrote on 2022-10-15, 09:54:

I might also give using it for audio decompression in win95 a go.
Although this pc uses a Pentium 233MMX so I'm not sure how much of a boost using the ASP chip would be.

I wouldn't expect any kind of boost in that system. CSP decompression provides an objective benefit to 286 and 386-class systems, but beyond that, even a mid-range 486 is capable of driving the corresponding software CODEC modules, or even just raw PCM playback, with near-inconsequential penalty.

I second that. My 80286-12 PC with 4MB RAM and a PAS16 was capable playing back 44,1 KHz in 16-Bit Stereo (in Windows 3.1 Standard-Mode).
That was normal PCM most if the time, I assume.
Still, I think it proves that a fast 80286 is very close to decompress WAVE audio on its own, at least.

That being said, it's favorable if the CPU is freed from this task.
Personally, I've retrofitted a few of my first-gen SB16s (CT17x0) with an ASP for such an use case in mind, too.
Without damaging the PnP SB16s I found these chips on, btw. I disabled their ASP setting via jumper and sold them years ago (after testing).

with P233 switching to pci sound card would give you more boost

Jo22 wrote on 2022-10-16, 09:14:

I second that. My 80286-12 PC with 4MB RAM and a PAS16 was capable playing back 44,1 KHz in 16-Bit Stereo (in Windows 3.1 Standard-Mode).
That was normal PCM most if the time, I assume.
Still, I think it proves that a fast 80286 is very close to decompress WAVE audio on its own, at least.

wave is not compressed, did you mean adpcm? The only source of adpcm content on PC would be you the user converting something manually.
In 80s to early 90s every Arcade board + SNES supported adpcm in hardware so most games were build with it in mind. ADPCM was a no brainer and obvious thing to ship on PC. Problem was Creative was shit company and didnt implement it in the first Sound Blaster. This created Atari STE Blitter type of problem where huge user base of initial product doesnt support the good way of doing things so developers dont bother ever touching that enhancement, making it useless and irrelevant. Chicken and egg.

AppleSauce wrote on 2022-10-15, 09:54:

Believe it or not I already went though different TFX exe's with a hexeditor in order to investigate what made the game tick to […]
Show full quote

Believe it or not I already went though different TFX exe's with a hexeditor in order to investigate what made the game tick to find out what's wrong and found that anything after patch 1.0 for the floppy version removed references to qsound so that was something to keep in mind , still thanks for the help I do appreciate it.

It turns out the actual issue was that I had my speakers too far apart , after putting them next to my monitor and comparing the CD and 1.0 floppy version I can hear some panning in the floppy version , its a bit disappointing tbh , nowhere near as fancy as A3D.

I guess I'm not sure what I expected with this being 1993 not to mention the rebadged SGS Thompson chip being implemented by Creative Labs who was known for half assing things.
Still it does make the chip slightly less than useless , I might also give using it for audio decompression in win95 a go.
Although this pc uses a Pentium 233MMX so I'm not sure how much of a boost using the ASP chip would be.

If I understand you correctly, your saying that ASP in TFX only works for the floppy version, and then only if you stick with the original 1.0 release of the game?

So do not apply any game patches, and don't bother with the CD-ROM release?

FYI, I found on a Spanish language forum some links to sound samples of TFX with and without ASP.
https://www.zonadepruebas.com/viewtopic.php?f … start=10#p33225

http://www.symphoniae.com/misc/TFX.mp3
http://www.symphoniae.com/misc/TFX_QSound.mp3

_Rob wrote on 2023-01-15, 09:15:

If I understand you correctly, your saying that ASP in TFX only works for the floppy version, and then only if you stick with th […]
Show full quote

AppleSauce wrote on 2022-10-15, 09:54:

Believe it or not I already went though different TFX exe's with a hexeditor in order to investigate what made the game tick to […]
Show full quote

Believe it or not I already went though different TFX exe's with a hexeditor in order to investigate what made the game tick to find out what's wrong and found that anything after patch 1.0 for the floppy version removed references to qsound so that was something to keep in mind , still thanks for the help I do appreciate it.

It turns out the actual issue was that I had my speakers too far apart , after putting them next to my monitor and comparing the CD and 1.0 floppy version I can hear some panning in the floppy version , its a bit disappointing tbh , nowhere near as fancy as A3D.

I guess I'm not sure what I expected with this being 1993 not to mention the rebadged SGS Thompson chip being implemented by Creative Labs who was known for half assing things.
Still it does make the chip slightly less than useless , I might also give using it for audio decompression in win95 a go.
Although this pc uses a Pentium 233MMX so I'm not sure how much of a boost using the ASP chip would be.

If I understand you correctly, your saying that ASP in TFX only works for the floppy version, and then only if you stick with the original 1.0 release of the game?

So do not apply any game patches, and don't bother with the CD-ROM release?

FYI, I found on a Spanish language forum some links to sound samples of TFX with and without ASP.
https://www.zonadepruebas.com/viewtopic.php?f … start=10#p33225

http://www.symphoniae.com/misc/TFX.mp3
http://www.symphoniae.com/misc/TFX_QSound.mp3

As far as I can tell that seems to be the case.
I could be wrong though.
Thanks for the links btw.