No DirectSound with AWE64 gold \ VOGONS

No DirectSound with AWE64 gold

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First post, by sepp

Posted on 2021-04-22, 18:11

sepp Offline

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Rank: Newbie
Posts: 23
Joined: 2020-02-19, 14:41
Location: Germany

Dear Vogons,

This is my system:
Windows 98 SE
DirectX 8.1
I am using these drivers:
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/drivers-for-awe64-gold.html
Tualatin 1.26Ghz
128MB RAM
Mainboard with VIA Apollo Pro 133

When starting dxdiag and when performing the DirectSound Test I cant hear anything. There is no error message, I just cant hear playing the sounds via dxdiag DirectSound test. Windows sounds are playing flawlessly. I also tried playing Half-Life 1. The menu sounds are hearable, but right after starting a Level the sound has gone.
So I tried moving the acceleration slider within dxdiag DirectSound to different settings. But only when disabling hardware acceleration totally DirectSound is hearable.

Is this normal when using an AWE64 under Windows 98?

Thanks for your advice.

Reply 1 of 4, by sepp

Posted on 2021-04-23, 12:14

sepp Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 23
Joined: 2020-02-19, 14:41
Location: Germany

Okay, I think I can answer the question of the DirectSound support of the AWE64: yes she has DirectSound support and its full asccelerated. There is no need for disabling hardware acceleration in dxdiag.
So I think there is some minor/major driver mess here. I will try removing directX and removing the current AWE driver and then combine them again. Maybe I am lucky and it works.

Reply 2 of 4, by sepp

Posted on 2021-04-26, 10:18

sepp Offline

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Rank: Newbie
Posts: 23
Joined: 2020-02-19, 14:41
Location: Germany

It works again, but the way of solving this was pretty strange.
I manually completely removed directX and the sound card driver from the system (as best as I could). Reinstalled the driver and reinstalled directX and voila: It worked again.
Perhaps I'm too spoiled because of the ease with which drivers are nower days installed. In future I will create some backups points before I update the drivers so that I can always return to certain points of the way of my installation.

Reply 3 of 4, by swaaye

Posted on 2021-04-26, 20:49

swaaye Offline

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Rank: l33t++
Posts: 8138
Joined: 2002-07-22, 21:24
Location: WI, USA

The cards have basic Directsound support. The most interesting thing is they can use installed synthesizer RAM for DirectSound static buffers (storing sound samples for repeated use). I'm not sure if that was something that game developers bothered with. It's actually similar to X-FI X-RAM, which few games did anything with.

Reply 4 of 4, by sepp

Posted on 2021-04-27, 07:16

sepp Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 23
Joined: 2020-02-19, 14:41
Location: Germany

swaaye wrote on 2021-04-26, 20:49:

The cards have basic Directsound support. The most interesting thing is they can use installed synthesizer RAM for DirectSound static buffers (storing sound samples for repeated use). I'm not sure if that was something that game developers bothered with. It's actually similar to X-FI X-RAM, which few games did anything with.

Hmm, could it be that my Soundfont "unison" occupied the AWE RAM totally so that the DirectSound test failed?
I should verify this!
Thank you for that hint!

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