VOGONS

Sound Blaster Live MIDI Out Issue

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First post, by Inkblot123

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Hi All,

Long time forum reader, now a member and making a first time post.

I have setup a Sound Blaster Live! and Live! Drive 2 in my Acer T135 which has a GA-K8VM800MAE motherboard. The video card is a FX5500.

The idea is to have a very powerful Windows 98 and Dos machine, inspired by Phils Computer Lab.

I originally had the Sound Blaster Live! CD WDM drivers installed. When only them were installed I could, via the Creative Audio HQ, choose the MIDI out on the Live! Drive 2. This let me process MT32 and General MIDI via Munt and Midi Player respectively, then send the sound back to mix with the Sound Blaster for Dos games.

The issue with the above was the Dos game Sound Blaster effects where muffled and low quality.

So my next step was to install the Sound Blaster VXD drivers and Dos drivers via the Phils Computer Lab/Vogons instructions.

This added SB 16 Emulator as a device and the Dos Sound Blaster effects as clearer now but I can’t get MIDI to go out via the Live! Drive 2. No matter what I do, MIDI processes on the Sound Blaster now when I choose 330.

I can still get MIDI to go out of the Live! Drive 2 via the Creative player but every Dos game now only does the on boars MIDI.

I have via Audio HQ removed all the MIDI emulation options to only leave the MIDI out IO. I have gone to device manager and setup a profile for SB 16 Emulation to not have 330. Plus tried a couple of other items, including going to Dos mode but when I go there the PC resets when trying to run sound to the card.

Has anyone had success run the VXD drivers, SB 16 Emulation with MIDI out via Windows 98? If, so can you please share how you achieved it?

I am missing the MIDI processing but don’t want to go back to the muffled WDM Dos sounds.

Thank You

Reply 1 of 3, by kmeaw

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Due to software limitations of the driver, you can't do that - it will only play using onboard synth in DOS.

With some programming you could have the following options:
1) patch your game to use SBLive-specific registers to make SBLive use UART (it is base_port+0x18);
2) trap writes to port 330h (like SBEMU does) and use sBLive UART;
3) make the MIDI flow out of your retro PC (softmpu can do that over serial for compatible games, or you can find patches for popular game sound libraries) and process it elsewhere. Some synths already have a serial input (Roland SC55 or later, some Yamaha and MT32 RPi-based simulators) or you can use another PC to do that.

Reply 2 of 3, by Inkblot123

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Thanks @kmeaw

Reply 3 of 3, by SScorpio

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The fix I use for this is having a Vortex 2 card. The drivers for that has a drop down for which MIDI device handles DOS windows MIDI output. So I've quickly switched between the synth on my SB Audigy, Windows built-in General MIDI, Vortex 2 synth, and physical MIDI out port on a Live Drive.

I haven't found another option that does the same, and being able to play around with A3D 2.0 brings back some fond memories.

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