Okay, so, after a bit of experimenting, I think the switches weren't quite right to how I had them. The dash needed to be up close to 'f0'. It was difficult to tell with how it was structured in the post. ^^; It's now playing, not displaying the player, and continuing on. 😁

The autoexec file is still adding the SB16 INIT command though, so I can only hope that finishing up my custom boot menu prevents that from happening.

Custom boot menu still isn't quite working right, but I've noticed it still adds the SBEINIT at the beginning, so not sure how to get around that.

Maybe you can use SBESET before SBEINIT to set the SB16 emulation to disabled before SBEINIT is called. Hopefully the fact that SBEINIT is still in the file but now loading a disabled config means it won’t get added again at the top.

NeoG_ wrote on Yesterday, 21:18:

Maybe you can use SBESET before SBEINIT to set the SB16 emulation to disabled before SBEINIT is called. Hopefully the fact that SBEINIT is still in the file but now loading a disabled config means it won’t get added again at the top.

Hmm. It's worth a shot. Although if I try to disable it through SBESET, it says it always requires a restart, so I'm not sure it will do much for the current session. We'll see.

My understanding is that as long as you call SBESET before the card is initialised with SBEINIT, it should follow the updated settings

If it’s called after SBEINIT the settings won’t apply until the card is reset by rebooting the machine

NeoG_ wrote on Yesterday, 21:27:

My understanding is that as long as you call SBESET before the card is initialised with SBEINIT, it should follow the updated settings

If it’s called after SBEINIT the settings won’t apply until the card is reset by rebooting the machine

Just tried it and the same thing happens.

Whether it comes first or it's run with/without SBEINIT, it'll say the PC needs to restart for changes to take affect and it'll still initialise the SB anyway if it isn't commented out.

The EK1M and MPXPlayer still initialise without issue even if both sound cards are configured though. Though, how exactly can you tell if things are working correctly? That you can juggle between them?
When I tested the DOS version of Simon the Sorcerer it still wasn't playing any MT-32 music via the SB16. The setup wizard doesn't seem to allow me to change any audio device properties either. The only option it gives me is the DMA for the Sound Blaster. With Doom, despite the Yamaha being initialised on boot, and in the game's custom BAT file, the music is... 'tinny'. Really poor. Not the usual GM you get from the sound canvas. So the SB was still taking priority.

I also added 'mix' at the end of '-as' but it gave me an unauthorised error. This is what my EK1M.ini looks like:

; ekm config, ver. 106
; ------------------------------------------------------
-boot

; mix matrix
; input afront dfront rear acenter dcenter spdif2
; ------------------------------------------------------
-io ac97 0 0 0 0 0 0
-io spdif0 68 68 68 68 68 68
-io spdif1 68 68 68 68 68 68
-io spdif2 68 68 68 68 68 68
-io i2s0 68 68 68 68 68 68
-io i2s1 68 68 68 68 68 68
-io i2s2 68 68 68 68 68 68
-io wave 0 0 0 0 0 0
-io synth 0 0 0 0 0 0

; output levels
; afront dfront rear acenter dcenter spdif2
; ------------------------------------------------------
-o 100 100 100 100 100 100

; ac97
; ------------------------------------------------------
-as line
-ai line 50
aux 0
cd 50
tad 0
mic 0
beep 0

Also, I might have misunderstood regarding the 2-pin digital audio. I don't think I have or use digital audio, but analog...? Via the S/PDIF from the sound card to the CD-ROM.

I just want to clarify, do you have any use for the SB16 emulation in DOS from the SB Live! card? Do you want to use it for any music/sfx or just as a passthrough device so you can hear the yamaha card while leaving the speakers plugged into the SB Live card?

The 'tinny' music you are hearing is probably from the SBLive DOS drivers default 2MB MIDI soundfont

NeoG_ wrote on Today, 01:34:

I just want to clarify, do you have any use for the SB16 emulation in DOS from the SB Live! card? Do you want to use it for any music/sfx or just as a passthrough device so you can hear the yamaha card while leaving the speakers plugged into the SB Live card?

The 'tinny' music you are hearing is probably from the SBLive DOS drivers default 2MB MIDI soundfont

The latter - a pass through device. I mainly use the Yamaha, but there’s only a few games I’d use the SB for.

I’ve yet to deep-dive into sound fonts for the card, but I take it there’s a collection out there that’s recommended? A way of getting them working in DOS? Thanks.

Yeah, I just can't find anything regarding preventing the SBEINIT command from being added. I came across a forum post of someone wanting the SET BLASTER variables from being added, though that I don't mind, but they never found a solution. Something somewhere is triggering the SBEINIT command to be added to the autoexec.bat file, after restarting/shutting down from Windows, and I would really love for it to not be. I've checked WIN.INI, SYSTEM.INI and MSDOS.SYS but haven't seen anything in there that's calling it.

If it initialises the SB16 it seems impossible to unload it and it ends up affecting games. No amount of disabling or initialising another card works. 🙁

DustyShinigami wrote on Today, 10:54:

The latter - a pass through device. I mainly use the Yamaha, but there’s only a few games I’d use the SB for.

I'd definitely look into getting a compact mixer if this is the case. Much simpler than dealing with pass thru.

Shponglefan wrote on 47 minutes ago:

DustyShinigami wrote on Today, 10:54:

The latter - a pass through device. I mainly use the Yamaha, but there’s only a few games I’d use the SB for.

I'd definitely look into getting a compact mixer if this is the case. Much simpler than dealing with pass thru.

If that works straight out of the box with DOS, with no tinkering or driver setup, I think you're right.

DustyShinigami wrote on 33 minutes ago:

If that works straight out of the box with DOS, with no tinkering or driver setup, I think you're right.

A basic audio mixer is just going to mix audio. It doesn't care about the audio source, so there are no drivers or anything else to worry about.