EDIT: I might be wrong with the assumption of a special version. It seems the Audio and Music is just working with AdLib if the CPU/Cycles is slow enough. With faster CPUs it won't find Adlib cards and the Note Symbol (F3) in the Main menu is missing.

I know I'm late to the party, but I recently stumbled on the same SOUND and/or MUSIC problem with Lemmings 1 while trying it with a fresh PCem build.

I played it back in the early 90s on a 286/386 machine and I also remember having BOTH, sound AND music playing in L1 with AdLib only - and definitely without CDROM and CD-Audio because it had only floppy disks.

while installing the PCem build I got the original Lemmings CD from archive.org and witnessed the same sound/music issues. I was wondering if my SB16/AWE32 was misconfigured and not being able to play AdLib music.. or the AWE32 mixer is having silent volumes etc.. but the AdLib SOUND works, the opening Door sound works etc, just not the music.

Now I found this thread again and it brought to my attention that there might be different versions of the game, where some may or may not support sound blaster sound and music directly.

luckily I lately digged deep in my hardware archive and found the disk with lemmings 1 installed from somewhere around 1992-1993.

I fired it up on my virtual 386 dosbox instance and see... there is adlib sound and music at the same time. no cd-audio used.

Turns out it was a cracked release from "The Humble Guys" (TMG) and their .nfo explicitely mentions "adlib/soundblaster" as feature.

130.04.1991  11:21            12.988 ADLIB.DAT
210.05.1991  17:47             2.188 AUTODET.EXE
330.12.1991  13:24               350 AUTOEXEC.LEM
431.03.1991  19:19            20.901 CGAGR0.DAT
531.03.1991  19:19            25.696 CGAGR1.DAT
631.03.1991  19:19            15.113 CGAGR2.DAT
731.03.1991  19:19            15.427 CGAGR3.DAT
831.03.1991  19:19            20.851 CGAGR4.DAT
922.04.1991  16:28            22.111 CGAMAIN.DAT
1031.03.1991  19:19            17.992 CGASPEC0.DAT
1131.03.1991  19:19            11.442 CGASPEC1.DAT
1231.03.1991  19:19            13.129 CGASPEC2.DAT
1331.03.1991  19:19            23.838 CGASPEC3.DAT
1421.05.1991  21:30            13.798 FLR.EXE
1530.04.1991  12:03             1.056 GROUND0O.DAT
1630.04.1991  12:03             1.056 GROUND1O.DAT
1730.04.1991  12:03             1.056 GROUND2O.DAT
1830.04.1991  12:03             1.056 GROUND3O.DAT
1930.04.1991  12:03             1.056 GROUND4O.DAT
2023.04.1991  19:18               114 HELP.BAT
2123.04.1991  19:16               403 LEM1.DOC
2223.04.1991  19:20               384 LEM2.DOC
2323.04.1991  19:20               530 LEM3.DOC
2403.05.1991  14:17               688 LEM4.DOC
2520.09.1991  20:21                31 LEMMI.BAK
2620.09.1991  20:24                21 LEMMI.BAT
2701.02.1992  14:35               641 LEMMINGS.BAT
2820.05.1991  15:03             4.867 LEMMINGS.NFO
2930.04.1991  12:13             3.722 LEVEL000.DAT
3030.04.1991  12:14             4.519 LEVEL001.DAT
3130.04.1991  12:14             4.819 LEVEL002.DAT
3230.04.1991  12:15             6.827 LEVEL003.DAT
3330.04.1991  12:15             3.889 LEVEL004.DAT
3430.04.1991  12:16             7.255 LEVEL005.DAT
3530.04.1991  12:16             7.149 LEVEL006.DAT
3630.04.1991  12:17             5.253 LEVEL007.DAT
3730.04.1991  12:17             7.037 LEVEL008.DAT
3830.04.1991  12:18             4.932 LEVEL009.DAT
3922.04.1991  16:18            56.472 MAIN.DAT
4031.03.1991  19:19             4.480 ODDTABLE.DAT
4120.05.1991  17:07                66 RUNME.BAT
4206.06.2023  00:38               256 RUSSELL.DAT
4330.04.1991  12:03             1.056 RUSSELL.SAV
4412.04.1991  19:53            12.399 TANDYSND.DAT
4522.04.1991  16:31            14.733 TGAMAIN.DAT
4629.05.1991  17:40                 1 TZ
4731.03.1991  19:19            24.464 VGAGR0.DAT
4831.03.1991  19:19            32.966 VGAGR1.DAT
4931.03.1991  19:19            22.290 VGAGR2.DAT
5031.03.1991  19:19            22.775 VGAGR3.DAT
5131.03.1991  19:19            28.692 VGAGR4.DAT
5210.05.1991  17:46            32.749 VGALEMMI.EXE
5331.03.1991  19:19            28.655 VGASPEC0.DAT
5431.03.1991  19:19            18.567 VGASPEC1.DAT
5531.03.1991  19:19            23.284 VGASPEC2.DAT
5631.03.1991  19:19            34.827 VGASPEC3.DAT
57              57 File(s),        642.917 Bytes

1                                 Lemmings
2                                 Psygnosis
3
4
5Supplier: Eddie Haskel (Thanks for ALL the help!)
6Cracking: Sorta Odd way to protect the game
7Graphics: Tandy/CGA/EGA/VGA
8Controls: Mouse (Suggested)/Joystick/Keyboard
9Sound: Adlib/Soundblaster
10
11Cracking/Game Notes: The file Russell.dat is the key to everything..
12
13Greets: EDDIE HASKEL (Thanks for the Game!), JROK (Where did you go?), Neil
14(I hate it when THG doea that!)
15Some quick greetz go to Sauron (Welcome Aboard!)
16
17
18The Humble Guys are: The Candyman, Fabulous Furlough, NightWriter, Magnetic
19The Slavelord, Predator, Mr. Plato, Fletcher Christian, Lord Blix, Barimor,
20The Viper, BamBam, Lord Zombie, The Guch, Eddie Haskel, Funakoshi, Wico,
21The Humble Sysop, Drool Master Rick, JROK, Mr.M, Mace Mandella, Belgarion,
22The Humble Babe, Harry Lime, Black Plague, Sauron, and our HUMBLE leader,
23Gods Gift to the IBM !
24
25                               +-----------------+
26                               |The Humble Boards|

it remains unclear which version this release is based on and whether it has been modified to work like that.

Argh I feel terrible about the wild goose chase I caused here, based on decades-old memories... I think it's more than fair to assume I'm just misremembering and/or delusional at this point about the digital effects in DOS - apologies! 🙁

Best guess: I heard the Amiga (or SNES etc.) version somewhere - even just on TV - and my childhood imagination plus blurring of memories over time did the rest... Still bugs me though; this is my own personal Berenstain Bears. 😁

AllTinker wrote on 2023-06-06, 02:52:

Argh I feel terrible about the wild goose chase I caused here, based on decades-old memories... I think it's more than fair to assume I'm just misremembering and/or delusional at this point about the digital effects in DOS - apologies! 🙁

Best guess: I heard the Amiga (or SNES etc.) version somewhere - even just on TV - and my childhood imagination plus blurring of memories over time did the rest... Still bugs me though; this is my own personal Berenstain Bears. 😁

No problem at all, I came across the sound problem myself and was looking for reasons and solutions.

As I red the thread the first time I was actually about to ask if you didn't mean the worm sounds from WORMS, because they say "Oh No" and "Oh dear!" all the time and well, they look very similar to lemmings and in retrospective who knows, maybe mistook one for the other.

I'm pretty sure now there doesn't seem to be a version with rendered lemming sounds, at least for PC.. it was all about the AdLib problem of having either sound or music and I remembered from my time as a teenager that I had both, sound and music while playing lemmings..
in my PCem configuration with AWE32 and P166MMX it seems the CPU was too fast and it didn't detect the adlib correctly (or I misconfigured the AWE32 idk). anyway, all I could hear was either AdLib soundfx (opening door, etc.), PC Speaker, or silence.. only after I slowed down the machine in a dosbox instance I could get both, adlib sound and music.
so as it seems it's possible with emulation if the machine is slow enough for lemmings to detect the adlib card correctly. in either case, I don't remember lemmings having said real words ever. it was just some adlib synthesis that might have sounded like words, but it never was something like the WORMS "oh no/oh dear" sounds.