VOGONS


better Sound Blaster support

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First post, by robertmo

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Finally I have managed to run "Innocent Until Caught" with sound blaster and I do hear sound effects 😀

I just had to use ct-voice.drv from this driver update "Updated DOS Drivers for SBPro 2 (CT-1600) (v1.0) (OLD)" from creative labs downlad page.
It works with DosBox 0.60 and with CVS

Those drivers doesn't work:
"Updated DOS Drivers for SB 2.0 (v1.0) (OLD)"
"Updated DOS Drivers for SB 1.5 (v1.0)"
Just for you to know that you cannot just grab any driver pack 😉

Now I wonder whether it could be usefull to add this working ct-voice.drv and a line "SET SOUND=place where DRV folder is located" to the new version of DosBox
for example:
when driver is in c:\sound\drv\ct-voice.drv
it looks like these:
SET SOUND=C:\SOUND
(without an ending backslash)

Reply 1 of 30, by Qbix

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although it's good to know and a workaround.
Best would be to get all drivers pack supported in the first place.
I know harekiet has spend a big deal analyzing them. but got demotivated by it's complexity.

Water flows down the stream
How to ask questions the smart way!

Reply 2 of 30, by Srecko

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OT: Anyone knows format specs for 2-bit and 3-bit Creative ADPCM format ?
(or conversion-to-PCM routines?)
Formats are used in Duke Nukem 2 with SB.
I could find something only for 4-bit ADPCM which is already implemented in DosBox.

Reply 3 of 30, by taiken7

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You could use something like this to detect type;

http://getid3.sourceforge.net/module.audio.voc.phps

As for detect & playback (Pascal sources 😁 ):

http://www.bsdg.org/swag/SOUND/0057.PAS.html

Or CT-VOICE driver version:

http://www.bsdg.org/swag/SOUND/0022.PAS.html

Hmm.. looks simple enough .. I might have a go a bit later.

Reply 4 of 30, by Srecko

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Don't bother. Without format specs we can't go anywhere.
Best thing at the moment is to route DSP commands for 2/3-bit ADPCM to
conversion function for 4-bit ADPCM but this gives distorted sound.
Duke Nukem 2 gives up after trying to play sound if that's not done.

Reply 5 of 30, by Harekiet

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If you want to find out how the 2/3-bit adpcm is done you shoudl get an old soundblaster dev kit that had tools to convert regular vocs to adpcm-ed vocs 😀

Reply 6 of 30, by taiken7

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Please compile a collection of "not working" samples, so I can test
a few ideas/programs.
(ie Any VOCs that are known to be compressed would be an excellent start)
Thanks.

Reply 7 of 30, by Srecko

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I know only of Duke Nukem 2. VOC's are packed into a bigger file. But, you should also have same samples in 8-bit PCM format for comparation.
You can detect if program is using 2/3-bit ADPCM if you put LOG messages at
DSP commands in DSP_DoCommand function:
0x16, 0x17 for 2-bit ADPCM
0x76, 0x77 for 3-bit ADPCM

I'm not sure how 3-bit is working, probably 8 samples in 3 bytes:)
Short explanation about AdaptivePulseCodeModulation:
Reference byte is a starting point and you calculate a difference for next sample, etc.
Here's also a diff about getting DN2 to produce any sound, better than nothing.

Reply 8 of 30, by taiken7

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Oddly DN2 sounds just .. er like commander keen actually
on the DosboxCVS I have built...
(wonder if either I've always heard distorted sound or if dosbox
is currently doing type 3 falls-through to type 4 ).
Are you sure DN2 uses compressed .VOC's ?

(I'll check it out with the patches anyhow, thanks!)

[Not sure why problems with ADPCM, but I'll see if my source(s) are correct]

Reply 9 of 30, by Srecko

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Heh, here's a new patch. Now, it sound's very similar to what I get on my
VIA motherboard with integrated SB legacy support while playing DN2.😀

It's a complete 2/3 bit ADPCM implementation except i'm not sure yet about

conversion routines (but game sound OK). I wasn't able to find SB SDK.
Didn't check very thouroughly, but i hope there aren't errors.

Last edited by Srecko on 2004-01-27, 21:40. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 10 of 30, by taiken7

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5am gloss over looks good .. thats pretty much what I had in mind,
excellent work! (Now if only I could find something broken to fix..)

Reply 11 of 30, by eL_PuSHeR

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I can only say you guys ROCK! Your knowledge is impressive. Good work.

Reply 12 of 30, by icemann

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So soundblaster is 100% perfected with the above patch?

Two stones, two crosses, the rest is just icing. - 7th Guest

Reply 13 of 30, by Srecko

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No. This is only improvement for a few games that use these special
sound files.

Reply 14 of 30, by tkcmd

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Hmmmm wanted to play some Armored Fist with the latest cvs build and it wouldnt work when i tried using SB (but it did work when turning sound of / pc speaker)
Armored Fist worked great in previous CVS's with SB so maybe something broke when working on the SB thing ?

Reply 15 of 30, by Snover

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Still waiting for that SB16 emulation 😉

Yes, it’s my fault.

Reply 16 of 30, by Darkfalz

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SB16 would be good, but I'd be happy with stereo SBP 2.0 for now 😉

Reply 17 of 30, by robertmo

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Armored Fist still doesn't work with sound blaster in dosbox 0.61

Reply 18 of 30, by Srecko

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I doubt it has to do with 2/3bit ADPCM, but if you want to check, download patch, reverse changes from it and you'll see.

Reply 19 of 30, by tkcmd

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was fixed 2 days later in the CVS 😀