That's not possible in Win98, unless you use a soundcard that can bypass the limitations:

In Windows 95/ME, MME lacks mixing multiple audio streams during playback and device sharing, so only one audio stream can be rendered at a time. But some sound card drivers can emulate more than one MME device (or support more than a single streaming client) so it could work with MME too.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_l ... ions_(MME))

derSammler wrote on 2020-02-01, 16:05:

That's not possible in Win98, unless you use a soundcard that can bypass the limitations:

Thanks; I found and read that page earlier today after posting and I had a feeling that was what was going on here, although the other audio applications tested (where sharing is supported) must be using one of the other methods described that DO support mixing, even if it's being done at a software/driver level. I wish I could find a way to just force MMJB to render its audio using a shareable method as well. In lieu of that, I don't suppose anyone here can suggest a particular ISA sound card that we know IS capable of mixing the streams at a hardware level, or a sound chipset to look for or some criteria like that? Only limitation is it must be an ISA card for this build.

I think my workaround for this in the AWE days was when I used WinAMP to play music, i'd do it with the DirectSound output, in which another game that may use DirectSound will also get the audio.

I'm speaking under correction, but the issue might be related to kernel mixing also.
Maybe exchanging the card's VXD sound driver with a WDM type or vice versa solves the issue.
Or maybe not. Windows XP was much more reliable in this respect, IMHO.
What I always had trouble with was the "full-duplex" setting in Win 9x, for example, which allows playback/record simultanously.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hard … udio-components

WDM drivers will mix as many sound streams as wanted, VXD are at the mercy of what driver allows and on most cards there's only one stream possible.

leileilol wrote on 2020-02-02, 02:17:

I think my workaround for this in the AWE days was when I used WinAMP to play music, i'd do it with the DirectSound output, in which another game that may use DirectSound will also get the audio.

I actually tried WinAMP 3.0 and was NOT impressed. CPU usage while playing an MP3 was ~25% versus ~5% with MMJB and moreover I couldn't get it to behave how I wanted. I'm looking for a Win98-compatible MP3 player with the following behavior:

• If I click an MP3 file from the Windows shell and the player is NOT already open, it should launch and create a new playlist containing only the file I've just clicked on. It should also begin playing that file immediately.
• While the player remains open, any subsequent MP3 files launched from the Windows shell should be added to the end of the existing playlist and playback should continue un-interrupted.
• A lightweight interface and low usage of system resources is a big plus!

DON'T USE WINAMP 3 THAT'S THE BAD VERSION EVERYONE HATES!!!

Use 2 OR 5!!! 5 should still work on Win9x and should still have 2's interface.

leileilol wrote on 2020-02-02, 02:17:

I think my workaround for this in the AWE days was when I used WinAMP to play music, i'd do it with the DirectSound output, in which another game that may use DirectSound will also get the audio.

You can also use the AWEamp plugin for Winamp to route the audio through the EMU8000 synth.

I thought I remember enabling full duplex on my SB16 allowed me to play MP3's in Winamp 2.9x while playing Age of Empires back in the day?
But maybe it was a PCI64 and maybe I did mess around with Direct sound Output.

Out of Winamp 2.95 is definitely the version of you want . It was the most widely used at the time so contemporary (well 2.x was) has loads of plugings already mentioned and you can have it start to play a file if not open and end queue if already open. Even back in the day when 3 came out everyone went nope and went back to 2

Only thing I didn't like 2 it is it lacks any real media catalog. looks like 5 has that for but I never made the jump so don't know later versions

chinny22 wrote on 2020-02-04, 09:39:

... Winamp 2.95 is definitely the version of you want . It was the most widely used at the time so contemporary (well 2.x was) has loads of plugings already mentioned and you can have it start to play a file if not open and end queue if already open. Even back in the day when 3 came out everyone went nope and went back to 2 ...

Okay, I went back and installed Winamp 2.95 and also the plug-in mentioned earlier (the ability to play MP3's through the EMU8000 chip is freakin' cool) but I still cannot get the interface to behave as I want. I see the "enqueue by default" option in Winamp's preferences, and selecting this option DOES add songs launched from file explorer to the end of the playlist but launching a song without the player open DOES NOT cause the player to start with a fresh new playlist and more importantly, the player DOES NOT immediately start playing the song I just launched UNLESS I had manually cleared the playlist before the last time I closed Winamp. If there's any pre-existing playlist already there within Winamp when it opens, it instead starts playing the last song that it had played the last time it had been open. It will eventually get to the song I clicked, but it doesn't jump to it immediately.

Perhaps there's a launch switch I could pass to Winamp that would change this behavior? Or maybe an earlier version does what I want? So far I've tried 3.0, 2.95, 2.92, 2.91, and 2.90.

This is actually becoming rather confusing! This page from 2001: https://web.archive.org/web/20010330183123/ht … v/sdk/api.jhtml claims that Winamp does exactly what I want when the /ADD switch is used:
C:\path\to\winamp\winamp.exe /ADD C:\mp3\whatever.mp3
(Adds C:\mp3\whatever.mp3 to the playlist of a running Winamp, if Winamp is running, otherwise it opens Winamp and plays it outright)
but in my case it picks up playing at the beginning of whatever song was last played instead of "playing it outright."

UPDATE: The best workaround I've found so far is to start with an empty Winamp playlist (using version 2.95 still) and to write-protect both winamp.m3u and winamp.ini (Winamp's default playlist file and its config file.) This forces it to start with a blank playlist whenever it's loaded from disk, but while it's open I can enqueue files to it by launching them from the shell. A drawback is that I had to uninstall the AweAmp plugin because write-protecting winamp.ini while that plugin was still installed would cause Winamp to crash upon launch... but Winamp still works with the DirectSound plugin, which still allows for audio mixing with games, which was the original goal of this journey.