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First post, by VirtuaIceMan

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I've just been Process Monitor-ing a few games where the CD audio fails to play, in particular:
- Sentinel Returns
- Mad Trax
- NASCAR Racers
- Nelson Piquet's Grand Prix Evolution

All of these share the same method of trying to call the CD audio, looking for both of the following:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\MCI32\cdaudio (in Process Monitor you get BUFFER OVERFLOW then SUCCESS)

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\MediaResources\mci\cdaudio\unit 0 (in Process Monitor you get REPARSE then NAME NOT FOUND)

This latter path doesn't exist in Windows XP, you have to go back to Win98 to find it. The registry key it has, back in Windows98 is:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\MediaResources\mci\cdaudio]
"Description"="CD Audio Device (Media Control)"
"Driver"="mcicda.drv"
"Disabled"="0"

I tried moving (optimistically) mcicda.drv over to Win8.1, and even installing that Registry path, but still not much happened. The .drv file might even be 16bit, so may just not work in later Windows, I'm not sure about that, either!

Anyone else can have a look into this too, if they want. I may have a play with _inmm.dll, to see if that helps, but I'm not sure it will, as the error for these might be different (or it might not be?!).

Anyway, that's my starter for now. More research is needed...

Last edited by VirtuaIceMan on 2016-09-29, 00:11. Edited 1 time in total.

My PC spec: Win10 64bit, i7-4970K (not overclocked), KFA2 GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, Creative Soundblaster ZXr, 16GB RAM, Asus Z97-A motherboard, NZXT 410 case, ROG Swift GSYNC monitor

Reply 1 of 40, by DosFreak

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If it's in the SYSTEM directory then it's 16bit and I think I remember putting that in win.ini so yeah 16bit.

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Reply 2 of 40, by VirtuaIceMan

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So, the question is, whether there's a workaround and/or if _inmm.dll does anything for these sort of issues, or not.

My PC spec: Win10 64bit, i7-4970K (not overclocked), KFA2 GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, Creative Soundblaster ZXr, 16GB RAM, Asus Z97-A motherboard, NZXT 410 case, ROG Swift GSYNC monitor

Reply 3 of 40, by VirtuaIceMan

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Actually, the last 3 all had CD audio in WinXP, so I think I need to check how they did that on that...

My PC spec: Win10 64bit, i7-4970K (not overclocked), KFA2 GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, Creative Soundblaster ZXr, 16GB RAM, Asus Z97-A motherboard, NZXT 410 case, ROG Swift GSYNC monitor

Reply 5 of 40, by ZellSF

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My research:

Sentinel Returns (btw, Google string "sentinel returns cdda"):
http://www.old-games.ru/forum/showthread.php?t=51778

Mad Trax:
http://punkrockhacker.blogspot.no/2014_06_01_archive.html
Shadows of the Empire works the same as Mad Trax, Mad Trax has broken looping with this though. Suppose a nasty workaround if you don't have the skills to modify ogg-winmm would be to just modify the ogg files themselves to loop.

Haven't looked into the two others. Really need a more complete winmm wrapper 🙁

Reply 6 of 40, by ZellSF

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Further research:

Nelson Piquet's Grand Prix Evolution
NASCAR Racers

Both work with the ogg-winmm with mci_close commented out made for SOTE. No looping issues either.

Random note: using the latest version of _inmm isn't always optimal. LayerSection requires 2.37 or less or it has really annoying pauses when switching music tracks.

I don't think I've found any game I want to play with unsolvable CDDA issues in Vista+.

Reply 7 of 40, by Gamecollector

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You need more game names with killed CDA in WinXp/Vista?
Beast Wars: Transformers
Deathtrap Dungeon
Frogger
Hardcore 4x4
Metal Fatique

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Reply 8 of 40, by ZellSF

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Not sure about the rest, but Frogger works fine with the SOTE fix for ogg-winmm.

Metal Fatigue works fine in _inmm, but I heard there was some delay in switching tracks, I need to try that as I want to play that game someday.

Reply 9 of 40, by collector

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I know someone with XP that gets no CDA with Hunter Hunted. No problem on my Win7, but _inmm does not seem to work with it for ripped tracks.

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Reply 10 of 40, by ZellSF

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Isn't Deathtrap Dungeon on GoG? Shouldn't that have proper CDDA? I don't care about the game so I'm not investing the money to find out.

collector wrote:

I know someone with XP that gets no CDA with Hunter Hunted. No problem on my Win7, but _inmm does not seem to work with it for ripped tracks.

Probably just either not using the first drive letter or a warez copy without the CDDA tracks. Or the CDDA volume mixer is set to 0, maybe the game even does it.

Reply 11 of 40, by collector

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Knowing this guy it is definitely a legit copy. Can't say about the drive assignment letters, but I would doubt that he would know how to do so. Though I suppose he might have more than one CD drive and is using the 2nd one.

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Reply 12 of 40, by ZellSF

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So. Metal Fatigue. Interesting case. CDDA track switching is broken as hell. So I boot it in DOSBox-daum and it's STILL broken as hell.

I wonder if it never worked properly. Anyone ever got it to? I don't mean just music working, but the title screen starting music playback instantly, the game starting music playback instantly, combat music kicking in instantly whenever there's combat, main theme starts instantly when exiting to menu...

Should try PCem next.

Reply 13 of 40, by VirtuaIceMan

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Cool, that Sentinel Returns fix works a treat!

However someone should tell that Russian site/person there's a much easier fix for the music in Boss Rally; it's actually detailed in the game's ReadMe.txt file - the line in bold is needed in the ini file:

BossRally.ini
-------------

You can change the behavior of Boss Rally by using a text editor to add lines
to the BossRally.ini file.

Don't interpolate display (reduce input lag):
Interpolate=0

Smooth out display using interpolation (default):
Interpolate=1

Don't play music:
PlayMusic=0

Play music using Windows MCI:
PlayMusic=1

Play music using EAR (default):
PlayMusic=2

Don't play sound effects:
PlaySFX=0

Play sound effects (default):
PlaySFX=1

My PC spec: Win10 64bit, i7-4970K (not overclocked), KFA2 GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, Creative Soundblaster ZXr, 16GB RAM, Asus Z97-A motherboard, NZXT 410 case, ROG Swift GSYNC monitor

Reply 14 of 40, by VirtuaIceMan

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ZellSF wrote:
Further research: […]
Show full quote

Further research:

Nelson Piquet's Grand Prix Evolution
NASCAR Racers

Both work with the ogg-winmm with mci_close commented out made for SOTE. No looping issues either.

Random note: using the latest version of _inmm isn't always optimal. LayerSection requires 2.37 or less or it has really annoying pauses when switching music tracks.

I don't think I've found any game I want to play with unsolvable CDDA issues in Vista+.

This might be the longest-time-to-reply-to-this that I've yet done...

So it is possible to get CD audio in Mad Trax, Nelson Piquet and NASCAR Racers? I DO have CD audio in Shadows Of The Empire, which is a bit of a mess of patches etc, as I'm running Windows 10 now (which I believe causes some versions of the modified winmm.dll files to not work properly?).

Anyway, long story short, as I'm not skilled enough to modify and compile the GIT sources, can someone explain in simple terms how I can return CD audio to those games, whether I use the OGG or WAV versions; where can I get pre-compiled binaries that work?

p.s. Beam Breakers also has no CD audio; that on even Play-Old-PC-Games.com couldn't solve yet: http://www.play-old-pc-games.com/2014/07/06/beam-breakers/

My PC spec: Win10 64bit, i7-4970K (not overclocked), KFA2 GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, Creative Soundblaster ZXr, 16GB RAM, Asus Z97-A motherboard, NZXT 410 case, ROG Swift GSYNC monitor

Reply 15 of 40, by VirtuaIceMan

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Really not having much luck; I tried transferring the files that make up the SOTE winmm variant (which works) into the other games folders (Mad Trax or Piquet) along with the MUSIC folder of ogg files (Star Wars music, but for testing it shouldn't matter, right?), and... nothing, not a peep. No music.

Note: this is using the updated Win10 compatible version of WINM0.dll for SOTE, not the original one.

Help me ZellSF! Or anyone else!

My PC spec: Win10 64bit, i7-4970K (not overclocked), KFA2 GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, Creative Soundblaster ZXr, 16GB RAM, Asus Z97-A motherboard, NZXT 410 case, ROG Swift GSYNC monitor

Reply 16 of 40, by Myloch

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I'll add another game to the list: Asuka 120% burning fest return, cdda not working on xp or newer (mute music), unless you use _inmm tool.
I wonder how many methods existed to play cdda tracks.
This game has a fade out effect when you skip scenes or when you win matches, it's the first time I notice this in a cdda game.

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Reply 17 of 40, by VirtuaIceMan

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Okay I tried various versions from some of the following links on my Win10 64bit, and nothing works (for example in Mad Trax). I've ripped the soundtrack to .ogg files (starting with track02.ogg) and put them in a "music" sub-directory, but none of these variants do anything:

https://www.gog.com/forum/battle_isle/w ... game/page2
https://www.gog.com/forum/star_wars_xwi ... windows_10
https://steamcommunity.com/app/355250/discuss … 23938438656713/
https://github.com/bangstk/ogg-winmm - I don't have the skills to compile this version!

Now I don't know if, in threory, you can just drop the updated winmm.dll into the game folder, along with the various OGG dll files and a "music" sub-folder and it works, or whether the game's executable needs editing too? I don't think there was much done in that area for the original (NON Win10 version) for SOTE here: http://punkrockhacker.blogspot.co.uk/2014_06_01_archive.html

SOTE does work fine for me though with ogg music, using the files from the final link above (before they went away) along with the updated Win10 specific winm0.dll updated file.

My PC spec: Win10 64bit, i7-4970K (not overclocked), KFA2 GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, Creative Soundblaster ZXr, 16GB RAM, Asus Z97-A motherboard, NZXT 410 case, ROG Swift GSYNC monitor

Reply 18 of 40, by Jorpho

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You've been poking around with Process Monitor, right? Can you see the applications trying to access the winmm.dll in the game folder?

If editing is required, it should just be a fairly trivial matter of replacing every instance of "winmm" with "winm0".

Reply 19 of 40, by VirtuaIceMan

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So far I tried renaming winm0 to winmm with no success, and have tried various other versions that are supposed to work with Win10. I'd be keen to know how ZellSF got the Shadows Of The Empire winmm implementation to work for other games, as he mentions above, but I'm not sure he visits these parts so often...

If I did need to edit an executable to search for winm0 instead of winmm, what sort of program might you advise would be useful?

My PC spec: Win10 64bit, i7-4970K (not overclocked), KFA2 GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, Creative Soundblaster ZXr, 16GB RAM, Asus Z97-A motherboard, NZXT 410 case, ROG Swift GSYNC monitor