Is it a DOOM specific problem? I mean, what other GUS compatible games have you tried (like Wacky Wheels, Jazz, Duke3D, even DOOM2)?

Are you using both the GUS Classic and PicoGUS at the same time?

What version of Doom are you running?

I just tested this on my 486 DX/33 using a Primax Soundstorm (GUS clone) and the music in E1M2 played back fine. I'm using Doom v1.2.

edited to add:

Also just tested Ultimate Doom v1.9 and music for E1M2 seemed fine there as well.

I'm wondering if this could be a speed sensitive issue? CPUs that are too fast can sometimes cause weird audio/music playback issues. Have you tried disabling cache to slow down your system and see if that helps?

@Linoleum Ohhh hey, good question. I should have specified that. Just using 1 GUS at a time. When I tried Doom 2, Raptor and Cyclones they seemed to be fine as far as I could tell.

Hi again @Shponglefan . So I tried it on:
Ultimate Doom (unsure of version, plays music but missing instrument on E1M2) (I'll get the version later as I'm going to bed soon here.)
Doom Shareware 1.25 (no audio at all)
Doom Shareware 1.666 (plays music but missing instrument on E1M2)
Doom Shareware 1.9 (plays music but missing instrument on E1M2)

Interesting idea. I'm not sure if I can disable my cache on this system but I'll check. If not, I have an AMD K6-3+ on the way so maybe then I could try that. Thanks for running those tests too.

Very odd indeed. I wonder if anybody else has run into a similar issue.

If you have a GUS Classic, how much ram is installed on it?

If you have only the base ram installed, and you are using a Pro Patches instrument set configured for a 512k or 1MB card, then it is entirely possible that not all the instruments will be loaded into the card memory.

If you can, ensure that your card is upgraded to 1MB, as that will allow the entire Pro Patches (lite) to work correctly. I have a GUS Max owned from new, upgraded from 512K original to 1MB, and never had any issues with missing instruments. The Pro Patches instrument set has several config files to set which patch files are loaded - make sure yours is not set to load a 1MB patch set on a 256 or 512K card!

@Shponglefan Okay so I checked and Ultimate Doom is also 1.9. Unfortunately I don't see any settings in my BIOS that let me adjust my speeds so I think that's off the table.

Hi @megatron-uk I'm glad you mentioned that as I should have had included that in my specs. The Classic GUS has 1MB installed on it. I also ran GUSDRAM and all memory came back as good.

The Pro Patches are where things start to fall apart for me in terms of not knowing what I'm doing. The only guides I've found for using Pro Patches are for DOSBox.
Guide: How to install Gravis Ultrasound Drivers in Windows 3.11
Gravis Ultrasound Driver Package

So what I did was, one at a time, place one of the several of the different 'Ultrasnd' folders on my C:\ drive to see if any would do anything, but it made no difference trying each one individually. So for all I know, maybe I'm not implementing the Pro Patches correctly?

If you happen to know of a tutorial on using GUS patches on real hardware I'm totally down to learn all about it, I just haven't seen a single thing so I feel like I'm flying blind at the moment heh.

I also tested the ULTRASNDPPL161FIX.zip package from KARR's post on my end. I completely deleted my existing ULTRASND folder and replaced it with the one from the package—no modifications whatsoever. Aside from needing a bit of time to get used to the sound, it worked flawlessly right off the bat.

The only odd thing I noticed was that the package doesn’t include the .BNK files for MegaEM. It also uses the older Ultrinit.exe version (2.28) instead of the slightly newer 2.31 release. Still, everything worked as-is without any issues.

@Linoleum Okay, so you swapped to a new Ultrasnd folder using ULTRASNDPPL161FIX.zip. Got that.

So when you say "needing a bit of time to get used to the sound", does that mean it actually sounded different to you? If so, are we talking a pretty noticeable difference? I ask because when I tried ULTRASND411.zip, ULTRASNDPPL161.zip and ULTRASNDPPL161FIX.zip they all sounded seemingly identical. I'm just trying to figure out if I'm supposed to be hearing a whole different experience when changing the Ultrasnd folder using different zips.

Also side note, when I change the folders I wasn't rebooting because I figured it would read that folder each time the GUS is queried by a game. That seemed to be evidenced when I would just outright delete the folder and it would get stuck launching the game. Maybe my thinking is wrong though.

Paranoid_Andy wrote on Yesterday, 02:22:

@Linoleum Okay, so you swapped to a new Ultrasnd folder using ULTRASNDPPL161FIX.zip. Got that.

So when you say "needing a bit of time to get used to the sound", does that mean it actually sounded different to you? If so, are we talking a pretty noticeable difference? I ask because when I tried ULTRASND411.zip, ULTRASNDPPL161.zip and ULTRASNDPPL161FIX.zip they all sounded seemingly identical. I'm just trying to figure out if I'm supposed to be hearing a whole different experience when changing the Ultrasnd folder using different zips.

Also side note, when I change the folders I wasn't rebooting because I figured it would read that folder each time the GUS is queried by a game. That seemed to be evidenced when I would just outright delete the folder and it would get stuck launching the game. Maybe my thinking is wrong though.

Oh yeah! They sound very different!

https://youtu.be/NY2H0htq_1o?list=PL665DEC1FC883129D&t=7
VS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0mADwRlVck

Always do a full reboot when swapping drivers/patches...

@Linoleum Oh wow! That's not subtle at all 🤣. Okay, that's my next plan of attack. I'll do that in a bit here and see if a simple reboot was my mistake.

GUS patches are loaded from disk when the game starts - they are not resident in memory from game to game, so a reboot isn't needed.

That said, it's easy to visually see the difference between the standard GUS patch folder and those with the Pro Patches. IIRC the original patch folder is something like 5.5MB in size and with Pro Patches it's a couple of MB more (it's not a massive difference, but it is larger - hence the recommendation for a higher GUS ram requirement).

I'd recommend playing the GUS midi songs which come with the driver. There's a standalone player in with the drivers and you should be easily hear the difference between the original patches and the replacements.

"The Rain" is a great track to hear the changes.

@megatron-uk Can confirm, yeah I was able to swap them without a reboot. My guess is that when the game requests to use the card it then populates the RAM with whatever Ultrasnd folder is currently present.

So I have a significant update.

I finally figured out the cause/sort-of-solution to the problem, however the why is beyond me at the moment. I have some ideas, but nothing concrete.

If I play Doom using my AGP card, the audio issue is present and changing Ultrasnd folders seems to have no effect at all. It's almost like the GUS is being partially blocked or something. Bandwidth issue perhaps?

However, if I switch over to my PCI S3 Virge, I finally got it to work and it sounds great. I was able to even swap and try different patches.

I figured this out by trying all sorts of trial and error stuff like different IRQs, DMAs, disabling extra devices, etc. but in the end changing GPUs did it. Oddly, once I swap to the S3, if I swap back to the NVidia AGP, it still works! But if I reboot again, it breaks it every time.

Also, when I say changing GPU, I just mean switching to use the other one via the BIOS. They were both in the machine at the same time, the entire time.

So while I wouldn't say the issue is outright fixed, I at least know how to get around it. And since I think all my gaming using the GUS can probably be done on the S3, maybe it's not going to be an issue anyway.

If anybody knows what causes this, I'd love to know though.

Here's a video showing all of the testing I was doing to narrow down what changes I made that actually had an effect along with some other experiments. It's a long and boring video, but I hope it may help someone in the future.

https://youtu.be/HcjwDPSBZRE

Could it be a power issue? See at the bottom: https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/intel-se440bx-seattle

Perhaps removing some other cards in the system could confirm that... 4 sound cards + 2 vid cards must be very demanding