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Win98SE + Audigy 2 ZS = Missing sounds in Moto Racer and Total Annihilation

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First post, by halfmoon

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I'm trying to put together a Win98SE rig, but for some reason, I'm missing particular sounds in certain games using the Audigy 2 ZS.
Like the title says, the two problematic games I encountered so far are:
Moto Racer - after the intro logo and name enter, it's missing sounds in the menu, but then most sounds work while in game. It's always the same sounds that are missing.
Similar issue in Total Annihilation with units not making a sound when they fire, but the projectiles make sounds when they land.
Reducing sound hardware acceleration from "Full" to "Basic" fixes this issue for both, but sound quality really takes a nosedive, so it's not really a solution.
Also, I tried adding a Yamaha YMF-744 sound card, and that card has no issues with these two games, but for some reason, Win98SE takes a reaaallllyyyy long time to boot with it installed. Like several minutes, instead of roughly a minute or so before adding the Yamaha card.

Specs:
ASRock ConRoe865PE (Intel 865PE)
Intel Pentium E5800 3.2GHz (LGA775, Wolfdale), also tried with a Celeron D 3.06GHz (LGA775, Prescott) - same issue
Creative Audigy 2 ZS (PCI)
Yamaha YMF-744 (PCI)
Leadtek FX 5900 Ultra 256MB (AGP)
512MB (2x256MB) DDR1 400MHz
120GB Toshiba 2.5" SATA drive
LG DVD Writer (IDE)

Win98SE
DirectX9.0c installed
Audigy 2 ZS driver CD - Driver only installation, then switched to VXD drivers
Using Daemon tools to mount the CD images, but I tried disabling the CD audio to see if it makes a difference - it does not.
Onboard Realtek audio disabled in BIOS

I tried disabling everything that could possibly use resources in the BIOS and in the Device Manager, but nothing changes the behavior except when installing the dreadful WDM drivers for the Audigy 2 ZS, it changes /which/ sounds are missing in Moto Racer - there's actually more missing with the WDM. Switching back to VXD drivers I get the exact same sounds missing as before. This was a fairly clean windows install and I just started testing and very quickly found this issue. I tried several other games and they all sound fine. Any ideas on what else I could try for these problematic games?

Reply 1 of 2, by khyypio

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I doubt the sound card or the drivers would be the problem. Are you playing original physical versions of these games? If so, the first thing I´d do is to find the latest official patches for them.

Reply 2 of 2, by halfmoon

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khyypio wrote on 2022-09-17, 09:02:

I doubt the sound card or the drivers would be the problem. Are you playing original physical versions of these games? If so, the first thing I´d do is to find the latest official patches for them.

I'm using CloneCD images for these two with Daemon Tools, though I have the physical CDs if I really have to pull those out. Total Annihilation is patched to the latest official v3.1. When I tried patching Moto Racer to 3.22, I got an issue with the motorcycles/riders having no textures/being completely white and I don't remember what the sound situation was but I can do some more testing to see how the patches affect sound as well. Some other thing I tested earlier was switching the Audigy 2 ZS to a different PCI slot but that didn't change anything. I'll soon also try WinXP on the same machine to see if it has the issue and I might try taking the Audigy 2 ZS and putting it in a different Win98SE machine to see how it behaves. Any other suggestions are very welcome.

Edit: tried WinXP SP3 on the same machine and the sounds work fine in those games using the Audigy 2 ZS - tried both Daniel K and Creative CD drivers, and the YMF-744 works as well. (Unfortunately Moto Racer has some weird speed issues on WinXP on this PC, and jitter even @ 60Hz)

Seems like the original missing sounds issue is specific to Win98SE and this particular setup. Would be interested to know if Audigy 2 ZS + Win98SE is giving anyone else these issues.

Edit2: I figured out why Win98SE was taking so long to boot with the YMF-744. Apparently the Legacy Audio portion of the card had some sort of resource conflict, though it didn't show this until I set it to manual configuration. I changed the IRQ from 5 (used by the onboard USB hub) to IRQ 7 which was being used by Firewire, but I never plan to use, so I just disabled the Firewire device in device manager, and now Win98SE can boot in a reasonable amount of time, though still much slower than WinME or WinXP.

Anyway, I tried reinstalling Win98SE and right after I finished with the drivers, I installed Moto Racer and it was still missing the exact same sounds. Tried both unpatched and the 3.22 patch (which breaks a whole bunch of other stuff for me) but the audio is no different. Same deal with Total Annihilation: unpatched and patched to 3.1c, it's still missing unit sounds. So it seems like the Audigy 2 ZS is just a no-go with this motherboard and Win98SE, which is a shame. I will have to take it out and maybe use it in some other system if I can get it to run smoothly elsewhere. I'll probably have to buy some other card if I want decent 3D sound acceleration in Win98SE.

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