Reply 100 of 298, by NY00123
wrote:- better PC speaker emulation - I've been playing some PC speaker games lately and the sound really is nowhere near as cool as it sounded on a real PC speaker. Real PC speaker would use the computer case as a kind of hall - the sound would bounce off the insides causing a warmer, more vibrant sound. The emulated PC speaker sounds rather flat and dull compared to it. Even ignoring the effect of the reverberation inside the case, I got a feeling the emulation isn't quite right either?
I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing, but I also encountered a difference between DOSBox and the "real thing" in terms of PC Speaker emulation. Basically, while on a vintage PC you may be able to hear multiple distinct beeps of the same frequency in a row, they're basically fused to a single beep in DOSBox. Even if the frequencies aren't all the same, similar differences can be heard.
This can be spotted in various early Softdisk+Apogee titles, although it's especially clear at times in certain games, like Dangerous Dave, Catacomb, The Catacomb (Catacomb II) and Commander Keen 1-3.
I once had an attempt with a (possibly) surprisingly simple patch to DOSBox, aiming to fix the issue for Keen 1-3, although it does some unintended changes in other games: Experimental patch: An attempt to improve PC Speaker emulation accuracy
About a couple of months later, ripa worked on an unrelated patch improving digitized sound playback, although he also incorporated a similar (and better) fix for the games above (should apply to revision 2 of the patch and later): Re: Want to use PC Speaker and not Sound Blaster in StarControl 1