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Classic Games with CD Audio

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Reply 20 of 36, by clueless1

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@leileilol - thanks. I looked it up and it is Blood. Although, I don't think the CD-Audio music is just a recording of the GM, but you can use GM or FM for music instead of CD-DA.

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
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Reply 22 of 36, by aop

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elianda wrote:

Daemon Tools 3.47 plays CD-Audio fine in games if you put the CD-Audio from Daemon Tools on a separate Wave device.

Like I asked before: how do I do that?

I have the EWS64 currently installed on my retro PC but can't figure out how to put the CD-audio from Daemon Tools to separate wave device.

Reply 25 of 36, by aop

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dr.zeissler wrote:

The is an option to allow analoge audio.

Yes, I have turned on the analog audio emulation in Daemon Tools 3.47 but I'm not getting any CD-audio in my games yet because there are additional steps elianda mentioned but didn't elaborate:

elianda wrote:

Daemon Tools 3.47 plays CD-Audio fine in games if you put the CD-Audio from Daemon Tools on a separate Wave device. Better sound cards bring up to 8 wave devices.

I have no idea how to do that.

Reply 26 of 36, by dr.zeissler

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Change digital audio from the real cd-drive to the deamon-drive, or swap the assignments.
e.g. (D) CD-Drive/ (E) Deamontools => (D) Deamontools/ (E) CD-Drive

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 27 of 36, by aop

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dr.zeissler wrote:

Change digital audio from the real cd-drive to the deamon-drive, or swap the assignments.
e.g. (D) CD-Drive/ (E) Deamontools => (D) Deamontools/ (E) CD-Drive

That's not what I'm after and not what elianda was talking about. That requires WDM drivers to allow kernel streaming but WDM drivers are very slow and not really an option unless you are running a fast CPU (for example in PhilsComputerLab tests they caused up to 40% perf loss on Super Socket 7 rig: https://youtu.be/TC01uiyuJxI?t=327). elianda talked about setting Daemon Tools analog audio emulation on separate Wave device but I can't find anything about that from google or this forum.

My setup already was C/D being harddrives and E being Daemon-Tools and F the real CD-ROM drive.

Reply 29 of 36, by aop

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BLockOUT wrote:

would love to see a goket cdrom emulator with bin cue support. many of my cdrom drives are just dying

This.

It would also help with reducing the CPU load of emulation if the emulation is done with dedicated hardware. It would also allow for proper CD-audio for older PCs without using an actual CD-ROM.

I really dislike using CD-ROM drives because they are slow and loud and the original media doesn't alst forever.

Reply 30 of 36, by Duffman

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I too would like to know what elianda meant by using a separate wave device.

I'd like to have CD Audio in GTA1 using daemon tools and the VXD drivers for my Crystal CS4237 sound chip. But it freezes when playing a sound and CD Audio at the same time.

Using WDM drivers switches over to Win98's sbemul.sys and defeats the point of using an ISA sound card.

Anyone know what elianda was talking about?

MB: ASRock B550 Steel Legend
CPU: Ryzen 9 5950X
RAM: Corsair 64GB Kit (4x16GB) DDR4 Veng LPX C18 4000MHz
SSDs: 2x Crucial MX500 1TB SATA + 1x Samsung 980 (non-pro) 1TB NVMe SSD
OSs: Win 11 Pro (NVMe) + WinXP Pro SP3 (SATA)
GPU: RTX2070 (11) GT730 (XP)

Reply 31 of 36, by stanwebber

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i managed to hold onto a couple 16x dvd burners that still output analog audio so i get redbook audio in both dos and windows with vxd drivers natively; however, someone mentioned using a second soundcard as a workaround in lieu of wdm drivers which feed everything thru directsound and the virtual kernel mixer.

i wonder if this is related to the same vxd driver exclusivity issue i tackled before. if that's the case then i can offer up another workaround that doesn't require a second soundcard: Re: OPTi 82C930 review

btw, my system now has 2 sound devices and vxd and wdm drivers coexist just fine if you disable the wdm dos/mpu401 compatibility components under device manager.

Reply 32 of 36, by johnyept

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Duffman wrote on 2023-12-11, 20:12:
I too would like to know what elianda meant by using a separate wave device. […]
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I too would like to know what elianda meant by using a separate wave device.

I'd like to have CD Audio in GTA1 using daemon tools and the VXD drivers for my Crystal CS4237 sound chip. But it freezes when playing a sound and CD Audio at the same time.

Using WDM drivers switches over to Win98's sbemul.sys and defeats the point of using an ISA sound card.

Anyone know what elianda was talking about?

Since I was not the one digging up this topic, I might as well reply to this question to what I think is the answer.

I was trying to set up my RETRO-W95 machine to run early DOS and Windows 3DFx games, and the first game I tried was Tomb Raider. I'm using BIN/CUE images so obviously I also had the no in-game CD audio problem. The solution I found involves:
- a 1st sound card for the game (ISA AWE64 CT5400, 220/5/1)
- a 2nd sound card for the audio from Daemon Tools ( PCI Sound Blaster 128 CT4810)
- an external 3.5mm audio cable connecting the 2nd sound card output to the 1st sound card input

I replaced Windows 95 OSR2 with Windows 98SE since I couldn't even get any audio from Daemon Tool's audio tracks with the included CD player. At first I thought it was due to Windows 95 using VXD drivers, but Windows 98SE also seems to be using VXD drivers by default (auto-detected and installed), so I don't know exactly why it wasn't working. I hadn't installed any DirectX yet so that could be related, so I might try it with DirectX 6.1 sometime later.

To enable audio in Daemon Tools with the 2nd sound card, enable "Options" -> "Analog audio", then go to "Virtual CD/DVD-ROM" -> "Device 0" -> "Set device parameters" and change the Analog Audio's "DirectSound device" to the 2nd card.

If the game requires the Audio CD to be in the first drive but you also have a physical drive, use Letter Assigner 1.2.0 to change the physical drive's letter to AFTER the emulated drive.

Tomb Raider now runs at 30 fps on a P3 550Mhz, with CD audio from Daemon Tools, and a Voodoo 3 2000 AGP using a Voodoo Rush patch.

RETRO-W95/NT4: ASUS P3B-F, P3 550, 192MB, GF2+VD2 PCI, AWE64+VIBRA128, 80GB IDE
RETRO-W98/2K: ASUS A7N8X-E, Sempron 2.8+, 512MB, FX 5700LE 256MB, SB Live! CT4830, 320GB IDE
RETRO-WXP/7: ASUS P5KPL-AM EPU, XEON E5450, 4GB, GTS 450 1GB, 120GB SSD, 1TB sATA

Reply 33 of 36, by Duffman

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@johnyept

Were both cards using VXD drivers? or WDM?

MB: ASRock B550 Steel Legend
CPU: Ryzen 9 5950X
RAM: Corsair 64GB Kit (4x16GB) DDR4 Veng LPX C18 4000MHz
SSDs: 2x Crucial MX500 1TB SATA + 1x Samsung 980 (non-pro) 1TB NVMe SSD
OSs: Win 11 Pro (NVMe) + WinXP Pro SP3 (SATA)
GPU: RTX2070 (11) GT730 (XP)

Reply 34 of 36, by johnyept

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Duffman wrote on 2024-01-02, 04:59:

@johnyept

Were both cards using VXD drivers? or WDM?

According to the files listed in the cards' device driver properties, it shows .VXD on both.

RETRO-W95/NT4: ASUS P3B-F, P3 550, 192MB, GF2+VD2 PCI, AWE64+VIBRA128, 80GB IDE
RETRO-W98/2K: ASUS A7N8X-E, Sempron 2.8+, 512MB, FX 5700LE 256MB, SB Live! CT4830, 320GB IDE
RETRO-WXP/7: ASUS P5KPL-AM EPU, XEON E5450, 4GB, GTS 450 1GB, 120GB SSD, 1TB sATA

Reply 35 of 36, by Duffman

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@johnyept

Cool, I'll have to try this myself at some point.

MB: ASRock B550 Steel Legend
CPU: Ryzen 9 5950X
RAM: Corsair 64GB Kit (4x16GB) DDR4 Veng LPX C18 4000MHz
SSDs: 2x Crucial MX500 1TB SATA + 1x Samsung 980 (non-pro) 1TB NVMe SSD
OSs: Win 11 Pro (NVMe) + WinXP Pro SP3 (SATA)
GPU: RTX2070 (11) GT730 (XP)

Reply 36 of 36, by johnyept

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Ok, it's now working with Windows 95 OSR2 too, all it needed was DirectX 6.1, and the rest is configured as in Windows 98 SE. This means I'm going back to my original setup with Windows 95 OSR2 and NT4 , they may be a pain to configure but that's also part of the fun 😀

Unfortunately since I'm using a Voodoo 3, Lara Croft has no shadow and game is darker than usual, there's nothing I can do other than crank up the monitor brightness, since PowerStrip doesn't work with DOS Glide games and GAMMA variables only work with a Voodoo 1 (and maybe Voodoo 2). I finished it in software mode back in the days before I bought a 3Dfx so I'm fine with it running as it is, I'm just glad CD audio is now working, hopefully it works for all other games too!

RETRO-W95/NT4: ASUS P3B-F, P3 550, 192MB, GF2+VD2 PCI, AWE64+VIBRA128, 80GB IDE
RETRO-W98/2K: ASUS A7N8X-E, Sempron 2.8+, 512MB, FX 5700LE 256MB, SB Live! CT4830, 320GB IDE
RETRO-WXP/7: ASUS P5KPL-AM EPU, XEON E5450, 4GB, GTS 450 1GB, 120GB SSD, 1TB sATA