PC Speaker crackles/skips with Sierra OnLine games \ VOGONS

PC Speaker crackles/skips with Sierra OnLine games

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First post, by kinisuruna

Posted on 2011-09-15, 16:04

kinisuruna Offline

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Location: Chicago, IL, USA

Apologies if this is duplicate to a similar post... I did some searching but never saw anything that looked like this same issue...

When playing some of my old favorite Sierra OnLine games (Police Quest 1, Gold Rush) I've noticed that the PC speaker emulation is not playing smooth sound but is rather crackled and skips... is there anything I can do about this?

I did see one posting about a patch for the PC Speaker but saw mixed results... and I wanted to ask before doing any mods.

This happens with DOSbox 0.74 and both on my MacBook Pro (OSX) and my Dell Latitude E6410 (running XP).
* Operating system: OSX and Windows XP
* Game: Police Quest 1 v2.0G, and Gold Rush v2.01; will test Space Quest tonight.
* Description of problem: PC Speaker sounds crackled and skips when playing what would otherwise be smooth tones
*Reproducibility of problem: always happens in both games I've tested.
* Sound mode used: unsure how to answer this... the games are PC Speaker
* Video mode: EGA, I believe
* Version of emulator: DOSBox, 0.74
* Yes, I read the ReadMe 😀

Reply 1 of 5, by DosFreak

Posted on 2011-09-15, 16:33

DosFreak Offline

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http://www.scummvm.org/compatibility/

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Make your games work offline

Reply 2 of 5, by kinisuruna

Posted on 2011-09-15, 16:38

kinisuruna Offline

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Joined: 2011-09-15, 13:59
Location: Chicago, IL, USA

Was hoping to stick to DOSbox... or is ScummVM the only way to go? This is my work PC (yeah, I know...) and I want to keep what I have installed on it to a minimum... I run the programs off a USB drive, even.

Reply 3 of 5, by VileR

Posted on 2011-09-15, 17:37

VileR Offline

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a few things to try:

- a low, fixed cycles setting (instead of "auto" or "max")
- run it full screen, in case you were running in a window
- decrease the sample rate, under [mixer] and/or [speaker]
- try selecting a different video output option (surface, overlay, opengl, ddraw etc) and see if that helps

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