When I wrote the post about DX8 fixing Redbook audio issues, I was also successfully using 2 sound cards in parallel:
-An ISA CMI8330 (all bug-free & flawless OPL3 clone, with good support for SBpro, SB16, WSS)
-A PCI Audigy2 ZS (best EAX experience possible for Win98 + very nice integrated MIDI for DOS)
For both of these I used their latest VXD drivers.

As this thread progressed, I did start wondering if maybe not all drivers/cards are equal.
And now @Duffman pretty much confirms this.

Duffman wrote on 2025-06-20, 05:03:

Something that worked to get GTA1 CD audio working in a win98 DOS window for me was to use a cheap USB Audio dongle. […]
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Something that worked to get GTA1 CD audio working in a win98 DOS window for me was to use a cheap USB Audio dongle.

I told daemon tools to output CD Audio to the USB audio dongle and then routed it's output back through the line-in of my ISA sound card.

For those wondering I'm using VXD drivers.

I'm curious if anyone else has had success with this method?

What kind of cheap USB dongle are you using? Might it work with USB 1.0 on a windows 98 computer?

I am using an ISA Vibra 16 in Win 98 with VXD drivers. I run a lot of dos games so I am keen to use VXD drivers to keep supporting dos audio correctly. I'm not really sure there even is a legitimate WDM driver for ISA SB16 cards... In my experience, redbook CD audio from disc images works for some games and not others via alcohol 120% or daemon tools, generally games from 1995-1997 work (Raiden 2, Sega Rally, Panzer Dragoon, Virtua Fighter 1 and 2, Wipeout 2097), whereas later games from 1998-2000 do not (Motorhead, DethKarz, Ultimate Race Pro). If I turn off sound effects in those games, sometimes the music plays instead, so it is related to trying to simultaneously play audio from two sources. I have also tried other things like changing the drive letter, and ensuring that options to emulate analogue audio are turned on. Since playing music and sound works with earlier games, perhaps it is related to the version of direct x used by the game as theorized earlier in the thread (though in my case, I'm having more luck with older games than more recent ones, which seems to be the opposite from what was reported earlier).

I had also tried to initially store and run my disc images off a USB drive in my PC, but the transfer speed of the USB port is too low to support CD audio, resulting in the audio repeating or skipping in odd ways, or jerkiness in the games. Copying the disc image to the HDD, and also setting DMA mode on the HDD seems to be a good fix for that.

@dukeofurl

I just grabbed a cheap Chinese USB audio dongle off of ebay. https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/287273696719

I didn't use the USB ports on my motherboard though, I used a PCI USB 2.0 card with the nusb 3.6 driver to avoid stuttery CD audio.

Is it actually a USB 2.0 device though? Most audio chips only use USB 1.x (which has plenty of bandwidth for audio). The product description says:

Interface: USB2.0 full speed

Which is typically ambiguous; "full speed" is USB 1.x, USB 2.0 is high speed.

I installed dx8 and it fixed simultaneous CD audio and sfx in some games, however it broke it in others where it was working previously, so it seems it was a trade-off.

dukeofurl wrote on 2026-04-28, 11:12:

I installed dx8 and it fixed simultaneous CD audio and sfx in some games, however it broke it in others where it was working previously, so it seems it was a trade-off.

In what games did simultaneous sound+audio work before DX8, but broke after?
Also, what DirectX were you using before?

And has your virtual CD drive been set as the letter "D:\" all throughout the experiment??

B24Fox wrote on 2026-04-28, 15:13:

In what games did simultaneous sound+audio work before DX8, but broke after? Also, what DirectX were you using before? […]
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dukeofurl wrote on 2026-04-28, 11:12:

I installed dx8 and it fixed simultaneous CD audio and sfx in some games, however it broke it in others where it was working previously, so it seems it was a trade-off.

In what games did simultaneous sound+audio work before DX8, but broke after?
Also, what DirectX were you using before?

And has your virtual CD drive been set as the letter "D:\" all throughout the experiment??

I was using DX7 previously. Daytona USA and Daytona USA Championship Edition were games where the CD audio worked before under DX7 but stopped working after the update.

My CD drive has been set to E:, the earliest letter for a CD drive. D: is used by another HDD in my system. I removed that drive to shuffle things around today but somehow my system didn't like that and got into a loop of getting stuck each time I booted up even though there have never been any system files or files related to startup on the D: drive.. I've reverted to an earlier copy of the registry now, DXDiag says I have DX7 installed, but the cd audio still works in Motorhead, a directsound game, which was an example of a game where the audio did not play prior to the DX8 install. The Daytona USA cd audio now works too (though Daytona USA Championship Edition does not, I'll try to reinstall this later, I might have switched the CD drive letter since I installed it). I've muddled things up so much tweaking all these variables I'm not sure my examples are useful anymore 😜

dukeofurl wrote on 2026-04-28, 19:02:

B24Fox wrote on 2026-04-28, 15:13:

In what games did simultaneous sound+audio work before DX8, but broke after? Also, what DirectX were you using before? […]
Show full quote

dukeofurl wrote on 2026-04-28, 11:12:

I installed dx8 and it fixed simultaneous CD audio and sfx in some games, however it broke it in others where it was working previously, so it seems it was a trade-off.

In what games did simultaneous sound+audio work before DX8, but broke after?
Also, what DirectX were you using before?

And has your virtual CD drive been set as the letter "D:\" all throughout the experiment??

I was using DX7 previously. Daytona USA and Daytona USA Championship Edition were games where the CD audio worked before under DX7 but stopped working after the update.

My CD drive has been set to E:, the earliest letter for a CD drive. D: is used by another HDD in my system. I removed that drive to shuffle things around today but somehow my system didn't like that and got into a loop of getting stuck each time I booted up even though there have never been any system files or files related to startup on the D: drive.. I've reverted to an earlier copy of the registry now, DXDiag says I have DX7 installed, but the cd audio still works in Motorhead, a directsound game, which was an example of a game where the audio did not play prior to the DX8 install. The Daytona USA cd audio now works too (though Daytona USA Championship Edition does not, I'll try to reinstall this later, I might have switched the CD drive letter since I installed it). I've muddled things up so much tweaking all these variables I'm not sure my examples are useful anymore 😜

This utility will let you change HDD letters in Win98:
Re: Do you play games off of their CDs? [DOWNLOAD Letter Assigner v1.2.0]
I have the windows partition set as C:, and the 2nd partition, set as E: .. While D:\ is always reserved for the Daemon Tools CD Drive, or the real CD Drive (I sometimes switch them depending on the game).
P.S. I just use this utility for HDDs, never for CD Drives, as those can actually be changed from device manager, or from the Virtual CD Software.