This is also happening to me with Win98 SE and Forsaken. If i turn CD audio off in the game, it's smooth as butter. Herky jerky when I enable it again. I haven't tried other sound cards besides my other SB16 PnP and it does the same thing. All of these are with the VxD drivers. I've tried a few other processors as well: P166mmx , 200mmx, 233mmx all with the same results. I just disabled CD audio in game and got on with things - I never liked CD audio in game anyway 😀

Motherboard: MSI-5169
Chipset: Aladdin V
CPU: K6-3-400
GPU: Matrox G400 Max
Sound: SB32 non-PnP (CT3930)

Is DMA enabled for the hard drive? Daemon tools attempting to stream CD audio from a cd image over PIO would cause that kind of jerkiness

Just install DirectX 8 (I only tried 8.1b) and all your Daemon Tools virtual CD Audio gremlins will go away!!
DirectX 6/6.1 might also work according to another member here (I haven't tried it yet). L.E.: I tried it. Doesn't work.

DirectX7 (and 6) WILL NOT under any circumstance give you In-Game Audio with Daemon Tools, in "Carmageddon 2" & "Disney's Hercules", and most likely others too..
So steer clear of Dx7 if you don't want to be burning physical CDs for these types of games.

I have not tested other DirectX versions.

Also, WDM vs. VXD drivers don't do diddly-squat.. So you can stick to VXD.
L.E.: Upon some experimentation by @DustyShinigami, it came to light that audio WDM drivers may fix some in-game slowdowns that happen when the (next) Audio-track is loading from the CD image.

If you need a program to change the HDD/Partition letter in Win98, get "Letter Assigner".
You can download it from this post: Re: Do you play games off of their CDs?

B24Fox wrote on 2024-02-02, 19:28:

Just install DirectX 8.1 and all your Daemon Tools virtual CD Audio gremlins will go away!! DirectX 6/6.1 might also work accor […]
Show full quote

Just install DirectX 8.1 and all your Daemon Tools virtual CD Audio gremlins will go away!!
DirectX 6/6.1 might also work according to another member here (I haven't tried it yet).

DirectX7 WILL NOT under any circumstance give you In-Game Audio with Daemon Tools, in "Carmageddon 2" & "Disney's Hercules", and most likely others too..
So steer clear of Dx7 if you don't want to be burning physical CDs for these types of games.

I have not tested other DirectX versions.

Also, WDM vs. VXD drivers don't do diddly-squat.. So you can stick to VXD.

If you need a program to change the HDD/Partition letter in Win98, get "Letter Assigner".
You can download it from this post: Re: Do you play games off of their CDs?

This is an interesting point. I am running Windows 98 SE and DirectX 7 and have this problem only for certain games like Dark Reign, Dungeon Keeper and other earlier Windows games. Unreal or Blood 2 work.

What I found out, at least on my side, the same Daemon Tools version on a Windows XP 32 Bit system allows CD Audio when mounting the Dungeon Keeper CD there. So the image works and it must be something between OS and the way the CD Audio is implemented.

I am currently struggling to install DirectX 8 on the Windows 98 SE system because I am afraid it might cause other issues. The system is only a Pentium 2 and cannot run DirectX 8 games performance-wise.

Was DirectX 7 really so bad compared to 6 and 8?

mombarak wrote on 2025-01-20, 07:28:

This is an interesting point. I am running Windows 98 SE and DirectX 7 and have this problem only for certain games like Dark Re […]
Show full quote

This is an interesting point. I am running Windows 98 SE and DirectX 7 and have this problem only for certain games like Dark Reign, Dungeon Keeper and other earlier Windows games. Unreal or Blood 2 work.

What I found out, at least on my side, the same Daemon Tools version on a Windows XP 32 Bit system allows CD Audio when mounting the Dungeon Keeper CD there. So the image works and it must be something between OS and the way the CD Audio is implemented.

I am currently struggling to install DirectX 8 on the Windows 98 SE system because I am afraid it might cause other issues. The system is only a Pentium 2 and cannot run DirectX 8 games performance-wise.

Was DirectX 7 really so bad compared to 6 and 8?

Yes on WinXP, it works fine. But you also have tot take into consideration that XP came shipped with DX8, not 7.

I also very much liked DX7.0a... as it was period correct, and also was the last version to have built-in RGB Software-Renderer tests. But also, if you think about it, the first version of DX8, came out at the end of 2000, only @12 months after DX7... So it's not THAT far off.
But I did some benchmarks before and after upgrading to DX8.1b, and it didn't affect performance at all on my K6/2+ Win98SE system; and everything seemed to work as it should.

P.S. I've also edited my previous post, in light of some recent discoveries, regarding WDM drivers, and also DX6.

mombarak wrote on 2025-01-20, 07:28:

This is an interesting point. I am running Windows 98 SE and DirectX 7 and have this problem only for certain games like Dark Re […]
Show full quote

This is an interesting point. I am running Windows 98 SE and DirectX 7 and have this problem only for certain games like Dark Reign, Dungeon Keeper and other earlier Windows games. Unreal or Blood 2 work.

What I found out, at least on my side, the same Daemon Tools version on a Windows XP 32 Bit system allows CD Audio when mounting the Dungeon Keeper CD there. So the image works and it must be something between OS and the way the CD Audio is implemented.

I am currently struggling to install DirectX 8 on the Windows 98 SE system because I am afraid it might cause other issues. The system is only a Pentium 2 and cannot run DirectX 8 games performance-wise.

Was DirectX 7 really so bad compared to 6 and 8?

There is no "bad" directx. There is a lot of inaccurate information regarding directx floating around. A newer DX package does not remove older DX dll files. A game that is coded to use, say, Direct3D 6, will access the appropriate older dll file (d3dim.dll in this case). It won't be upgraded to use Direct3D 7 (d3dim700.dll), or 8 (d3d8.dll), etc. Same with sound and other APIs. If you open up a much later DirectX package (say Dec 2006 redist), you'd see it still contains the older DX dll files.

Regarding the CD audio issues and daemon tools; I just tested this with Carmageddon 2 running on 98 SE using an ISA SB16 (so vxd). Using DX7 or the built-in DX6 there is no music in-game, however it plays when I alt-tab to the desktop. After switching back to the game it again goes silent.

I installed DX8 and it did in fact fix the issue. Still, this seems to be a daemon tools problem. I suspect it needs a certain audio interface/feature that is only available with DX8 and higher.

eddman wrote on 2025-01-20, 10:24:

There is no "bad" directx. There is a lot of inaccurate information regarding directx floating around.

it's not necessarily inaccurate, it just stems from the early days. you refer to dx6 at the earliest, of course it goes back years before that. this old usenet thread serves as a good roundup of reported issues with dx3.0 and various drivers at the time: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.ibm.pc.g … c/c/GG4I9L6Y1Fs

from my own testing literally the other day, fallout ran fine on dx3.0 or 3.0a with the standard win95 osr2 matrox millennium drivers, but updating to dx5 from the game disc (which the readme somewhat cautioned against) resulted in garbled output, requiring to install the driver from the dx5 update. and compared to 5.0, every directx version after that had measurably worse performance in direct3d or glide games.

Great. This is exactly what I needed... another reason to build (yet) another dedicated rig; specifically for DX3.0 this time 🤕

auron wrote on 2025-01-20, 21:20:

it's not necessarily inaccurate, it just stems from the early days. you refer to dx6 at the earliest, of course it goes back years before that. this old usenet thread serves as a good roundup of reported issues with dx3.0 and various drivers at the time: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.ibm.pc.g … c/c/GG4I9L6Y1Fs

In that thread they talk about the drivers getting messed up and a bit lower it's pointed out that when installing DX the driver updating option should be ignored. Basically it's not the DX files that are causing problems but the drivers, but it's understandable that less inclined users would've thought it's the whole thing causing it. Looking back, it was probably not a good idea from MS to even try to touch the drivers.

auron wrote on 2025-01-20, 21:20:

from my own testing literally the other day, fallout ran fine on dx3.0 or 3.0a with the standard win95 osr2 matrox millennium drivers, but updating to dx5 from the game disc (which the readme somewhat cautioned against) resulted in garbled output, requiring to install the driver from the dx5 update.

If it changed the video driver that would explain it. If it didn't, that result wouldn't be normal behavior. Maybe the driver had a bug in detecting the interfaces which surfaced when a newer DX got installed.

auron wrote on 2025-01-20, 21:20:

and compared to 5.0, every directx version after that had measurably worse performance in direct3d or glide games.

How much of a difference? If you were updating the driver then the performance difference can be explained by that. If not, then it could be similar to the case I mentioned above.
I don't see why it would impact glide. AFAIK it doesn't use DX dlls.

B24Fox wrote on 2025-01-20, 22:11:

Great. This is exactly what I needed... another reason to build (yet) another dedicated rig; specifically for DX3.0 this time 🤕

You don't really. Read that google thread.

EDIT: Replied in the Voodoo thread.

not to derail this thread too much, but this is the thread where i benchmarked various drivers and dx versions: Voodoo Graphics driver comparison

obviously, the lower performance refers to using the same drivers under different dx versions - also, for the fallout issue i didn't touch anything other than updating to DX5 from the disc and refused all the driver updates at first.
also,

eddman wrote on 2025-01-20, 22:15:

In that thread they talk about the drivers getting messed up and a bit lower it's pointed out that when installing DX the driver updating option should be ignored. Basically it's not the DX files that are causing problems but the drivers, but it's understandable that less inclined users would've thought it's the whole thing causing it. Looking back, it was probably not a good idea from MS to even try to touch the drivers.

i understand the very first post in that thread as the existing drivers not supporting an updated DX version (i.e. the case with fallout i described), not installing drivers that come with DX, because that quoted readme suggests to request updated drivers from the vendor that work with DX3.0. or would microsoft ship drivers with DX3 that don't support DX3? in the same vein, later in that thread there is a post referencing homm2 and updating to dx3 from that disc, which resulted in no sound in the game with the then-newest creative drivers, requiring the install of sound drivers that DX3 came with.

but anyway, feel free to set up win95 and test early dx versions for yourself, the more data points the better.

edit:

eddman wrote on 2025-01-20, 22:15:

I don't see why it would impact glide. AFAIK it doesn't use DX dlls.

a game can still use other DX APIs even when not using D3D for rendering and later glide games can require 6.1 for instance. i thought maybe post-5.0 they introduced something using P6 or MMX instructions that's running a slow code path on a vanilla P5, but that would need testing to see if the same performance difference is present on a pentium ii or not. or maybe some old DX SDK docs have a hint at what is going on here.

B24Fox wrote on 2024-02-02, 19:28:

Just install DirectX 8 (I only tried 8.1b) and all your Daemon Tools virtual CD Audio gremlins will go away!! DirectX 6/6.1 mig […]
Show full quote

Just install DirectX 8 (I only tried 8.1b) and all your Daemon Tools virtual CD Audio gremlins will go away!!
DirectX 6/6.1 might also work according to another member here (I haven't tried it yet). L.E.: I tried it. Doesn't work.

DirectX7 (and 6) WILL NOT under any circumstance give you In-Game Audio with Daemon Tools, in "Carmageddon 2" & "Disney's Hercules", and most likely others too..
So steer clear of Dx7 if you don't want to be burning physical CDs for these types of games.

I have not tested other DirectX versions.

Also, WDM vs. VXD drivers don't do diddly-squat.. So you can stick to VXD.
L.E.: Upon some experimentation by @DustyShinigami, it came to light that audio WDM drivers may fix some in-game slowdowns that happen when the (next) Audio-track is loading from the CD image.

If you need a program to change the HDD/Partition letter in Win98, get "Letter Assigner".
You can download it from this post: Re: Do you play games off of their CDs?

Does this help with the jerkiness when CD audio is working or is the dx8 tip just to get CD audio working altogether?

I've got CD audio working via daemon tools with the win9x games I'm trying, but game performance is very jerky as soon as the CD audio starts. I was hopeful when I saw your post, but I installed dx8 (in Windows 98 on a p233mmx machine) and there was no difference with the jerkiness. I think it's v8.0 instead of 8.1b for what it's worth.

Someone else mentioned enabling dma mode for the HDD. I guess that's not an option in my case. The option simply does not exist under the control panel HDD settings on my machine.

"Jerking" or low game performane during audio playback form the HDD, might be because of VERY low HDD speads.
You need to test this with a HDD benchmark.

Otherwise, WDM audio drivers might help in this situation.

For the DMA settings, make sure you check in here

People usually make a mistake and check "Hard disk controllers" instead, but it should be in "Disk drives".
If it's still not here, maybe you need to install your board's chipset drivers.

Tbf I've had jerkyness in games with CD audio ... with a real cd rom drive in windows 9x (i don't know why, but it seems like everything pauses until the CD-Rom drive can play the music, which I just find silly ...), it shouldn't happen on DT tho in my opinion.

I made images of most of my games for the case if a CD stops working at some point. When I ran into the Daemon Tools audio issue I did not upgrade DirectX. I went for burning the image to CD. What I found out was that the burned CD can also cause stutter issues with CD audio.

Example Dark Reign:
- CD image burned to CD from discounter with Nero 6 and success -> stuttering
- original CD -> all fine
- CD image burned to CD from Verbatim with Nero and same success -> all fine

For both burn processes I used slow 16x burn speed.

mombarak wrote on 2025-01-31, 19:29:

I made images of most of my games for the case if a CD stops working at some point. When I ran into the Daemon Tools audio issue […]
Show full quote

I made images of most of my games for the case if a CD stops working at some point. When I ran into the Daemon Tools audio issue I did not upgrade DirectX. I went for burning the image to CD. What I found out was that the burned CD can also cause stutter issues with CD audio.

Example Dark Reign:
- CD image burned to CD from discounter with Nero 6 and success -> stuttering
- original CD -> all fine
- CD image burned to CD from Verbatim with Nero and same success -> all fine

For both burn processes I used slow 16x burn speed.

This audio stuttering you describe, sounds more like the inability of the drive to read a poor-quality disc.
Especially since you say it happens with cheap/no-name blanks; but not with good name-brand ones.

🤔
I would be curious to check with a different CD-rom drive in your retro pc (perhaps a more modern drive)
Or burn the same cheap discs with 8x speed or even 4x... if anything changes.

I know but its hard to find a good black cd rom or cd burner on ebay. I know I could buy a DVD ROM but I wanted to stay close to the setup and color of my tower.

Its a home made problem. Also I know Verbatim works fine so I just use the cheap CDs for other stuff.

I am looking for some Plextor or Teac drive but this will take patience.