This is the exact card btw: Diamond monster sound mx300 pci sound card (p/n 23010123-004) with aureal vortex2 (au8830a2) chip

Okay I looked into it, the mixer util contains a batch file which does the AU30MIX reset command. This resets the CODEC and writes a new VDB routing table for rear channel and S/PDIF output. It's probably whats causing the MPU output to fault for some reason.
Don't use the reset command, it's not essential in your case.
Just adjust the gains like normal to what you like.

Let me know if this helped or not.
Also welcome, and thanks for checking out the mixer util.

My retro coding is currently on hiatus due to poor health reasons, I have neck issues which make sitting at a PC for any period of time extremely uncomfortable to the point I start to feel like passing out. I hope to have this corrected sometime soon as it's ruining my life and enjoyment of my retro hobbies.

I will still try and answer any PM's or replies I get on my topics, but I'm not active like I used to be.

Hi ZanQuance, sorry for the very, very late reply.
I very much appreciate your efforts, given your struggles. I also hope you will recover soon.

Regarding the issue, thanks for the update. I will try with him to see if that would help 😀

ZanQuance wrote on 2021-04-28, 17:09:

Just adjust the gains like normal to what you like.

Let me know if this helped or not.
Also welcome, and thanks for checking out the mixer util.

Can you please advise which one I should set for the MPU and to which value?
I see several outputs indeed, but not sure which one is for the MPU (joystick port).. Thanks again!

[VIDEO] should be the MPU/Midi/WaveTable volume controls

I'm having a similar issue to MaTi where the line in volume is so low in real mode DOS that it's unfortunately unusable. I'm using an SQ2500 Vortex 2 card with external Roland / Yamaha synths. None of the AU30MIX parameters seem to have any effect, but this post earlier in the topic from badmojo about Vortmix seems to work on my PIII system as well.

badmojo wrote on 2016-08-18, 22:47:

Ooh la la looking forward to trying this out.

Yes I found Vortmix to be a mixed bag - ha me so funny! It did work but was unreliable; I had to write a batch file that called it ~6 times in quick succession for the mixer changes to "stick" on my PIII.

It's not ideal...in fact it's pretty dumb and I have many questions, but it's better than buying an expensive preamp or something. I just made my own .bat file (example below) and stuck it at the end of my autoexec.bat (CALL batpath\batfilename) of my DOS shortcut. Sometimes it needs to be run again before starting a game.

That said, thanks for your work on this ZanQuance. Seems like a good solution for most cases - I don't imagine there are too many people trying to run external MIDI synths and a Vortex 2 in tandem in real mode native (as in not within Win98 without restarting) DOS mode. Hopefully you'll be feeling better in the future and will be able to return to the project.

Example .bat file:

1@echo off
2echo SETTING UP VORTMIX LINE IN VOLUME
3c:\vortmix\vortmix line 28
4c:\vortmix\vortmix line 28
5c:\vortmix\vortmix line 28
6c:\vortmix\vortmix line 28
7c:\vortmix\vortmix line 28
8c:\vortmix\vortmix line 28

I see, if it's the line input you want to adjust then a couple things have to be set in the codec. This gets muted by default in this mixer tool to minimize card playback noise.

I can make an update to this tool to setup line in as the default recording input and then expose an adjustment setting for it if that's all you need.

I'll look into it for you all.

ZanQuance wrote on 2021-05-26, 05:22:

I see, if it's the line input you want to adjust then a couple things have to be set in the codec. This gets muted by default in this mixer tool to minimize card playback noise.

I can make an update to this tool to setup line in as the default recording input and then expose an adjustment setting for it if that's all you need.

I'll look into it for you all.

Yeah I think that'd take care of the issue. Happy to test it out when you're able to do the update.

Nice to see you ZanQuance, I hope your health is improving 👍

Thanks all for the feedback and ZanQuance, thanks for looking into this, but please do prioritize your health over and old sound card.... 😉

rojovision wrote on 2021-05-26, 05:07:

I'm having a similar issue to MaTi where the line in volume is so low in real mode DOS that it's unfortunately unusable. I'm using an SQ2500 Vortex 2 card with external Roland / Yamaha synths. None of the AU30MIX parameters seem to have any effect, but this post earlier in the topic from badmojo about Vortmix seems to work on my PIII system as well.

Thanks! However the links to vortmix seem to have died. Would you please be so kind to share it somewhere? This seems to be the solution for now (as ugly as it may be 😀 ), while he is working on a fix 😀
Thanks in advance!

MaTi wrote on 2021-06-03, 09:53:

rojovision wrote on 2021-05-26, 05:07:

I'm having a similar issue to MaTi where the line in volume is so low in real mode DOS that it's unfortunately unusable. I'm using an SQ2500 Vortex 2 card with external Roland / Yamaha synths. None of the AU30MIX parameters seem to have any effect, but this post earlier in the topic from badmojo about Vortmix seems to work on my PIII system as well.

Thanks! However the links to vortmix seem to have died. Would you please be so kind to share it somewhere? This seems to be the solution for now (as ugly as it may be 😀 ), while he is working on a fix 😀
Thanks in advance!

Phil has it on his site here.

You'll need to scroll down a bit. He calls it "vertmix" and suggests not to use it because it's buggy, which seems to be accurate.

Thank you everyone, my health is improving and I've been trying to find time to get back to these projects of mine, I have some other projects which aren't PC related which have much higher priority at the moment, but once those are done I can give these 100% of my focus again.

I seem to have discarded the source to this old mixer project since it was just a temporary tool, and I had started working on the new mixer interface that's built into the new DOS driver.
So I wrote up a new one which works better than this version and I'll post it once I fix a few more things in it.

[edit] I found the older source code but had already rewritten it, so it wasn't completely lost.

Okay the new version is up and posted.
Let me know if there are any outstanding issues present.
I've only tested the Line-in to make sure it was working properly, but cannot test the MPU-401/midi/Wavetable to see if those work.

ZanQuance wrote on 2021-07-03, 23:02:

Okay the new version is up and posted.
Let me know if there are any outstanding issues present.
I've only tested the Line-in to make sure it was working properly, but cannot test the MPU-401/midi/Wavetable to see if those work.

Awesome! Looking forward to checking it out later this week. I don't have any daughterboards so hopefully someone else can test that feature out.

Awesome, thanks for all the efforts and update!
I have tried my friend to try it (can/will help him if needed) and share our findings with you 😀

Thankyou for your continued work on this @ZanQuance, hopefully I'll be reunited with my favourite retro system soon to try this out.

I just tested it out briefly with a little System Shock (GOG release) in DOS mode, and it seems like everything is working as expected! Thanks, Zan.

Basic system info in case it matters:
Win 98 SE (4.10.2222 and whatever version of DOS that comes with it)
Vortex 2 SQ2500 (2041 driver)
Roland SC55 via SQ2500 joystick port / line in

Sorry for the very late reply, but I too can confirm it working very smoothly, incl MPU output to a Roland MT32 😀

Does this not work with the Vortex 1 AU8820? My Turtle Beach Aureal card mutes the wavetable header in DOS. I can use Vortmix to unmute it but it's unstable.

Why I try using au30mix, I get an error:

*** ASP403 card not detected ***