TgamesFR wrote on 2026-03-18, 09:14:

- 1:1 authentic Yamaha OPL3 (very very very close to it) (it's so close that most won't notice any difference, huge step from th […]
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- 1:1 authentic Yamaha OPL3 (very very very close to it) (it's so close that most won't notice any difference, huge step from the one from Ensoniq).
- General Midi / Sound canvas support for all .SF2 (no longuer need .ECW bad soundfonts), we can now load any .SF2 file including big ones (require at minimum a Pentium III 1Ghz - Pentium IV for that).
- No longuer need any Creative/Ensoniq drivers or program
- Support volume levels adjustement for the Audigy 1/2/ZS cards !
- SPDIF Digital output support under DOS ! Yes now we hear sound from the SPDIF =)
- Reverse Stereo fixed for Sound Blaster Pro (was a flaws in the Creative driver)
- No longuer need EMS to be loaded ! (huge step too)

I've compared to a real Sound Blaster 16 we are really close now. Minus the ISA support ofc but it sounds great !

So since VDMSound for Windows 98 full support of MPU401 and VSBHDA for pure MS-DOS the Audigy 2 ZS show fully shows his capabilities for DOS.
It's strange nobody ever did a tutorial or a video about that, because it's really a huge step forward for DOS support on this card.

Is this some modified driver that you are working on? The EMS thing is very interesting and might allow it to work on my AM3+ board with 4GB+ ram, I wasn't able to get it to initialize the driver but I have no idea how to set up memory managers so it's probably something I'm doing wrong. Works flawlessly under 98SE otherwise.

EDIT: Nevermind, I missed the part where you mention VSBHDA and yeah, its working great for me now, not sure why but even with Jemmex the Creative DOS driver never worked, but this does and like you said, soundfonts and volume levels all work.

Six years later, this thread still delivers.... A++++

Hi Joseph, first of all thanks a lot for the great guide! Is there an option of downmixing a 5.1 audio stream to stereo (e.g. for a movie I'm playing) with Audigy 2 ZS in Windows 98? I've noticed that with such a movie, the volume will kind of increase / decrease and show significant variation. I'm not very knowledgeable in multimedia, but I guess this may be due to 5.1 audio being played out of regular stereo speakers? The significant volume variation could be an artifact of that. If so, I'd love to know a method so that the movie audio can be downmixed in realtime during playback. I'm not able to find such an option in the creative settings (in fact I'm not sure if this downmixing is supposed to be enabled in creative settings or ffdshow audio decoder settings).

Would appreciate any help!

PCGamingTimeMachine wrote on 2026-05-23, 20:42:

Hi Joseph, first of all thanks a lot for the great guide! Is there an option of downmixing a 5.1 audio stream to stereo (e.g. for a movie I'm playing) with Audigy 2 ZS in Windows 98? I've noticed that with such a movie, the volume will kind of increase / decrease and show significant variation. I'm not very knowledgeable in multimedia, but I guess this may be due to 5.1 audio being played out of regular stereo speakers? The significant volume variation could be an artifact of that. If so, I'd love to know a method so that the movie audio can be downmixed in realtime during playback. I'm not able to find such an option in the creative settings (in fact I'm not sure if this downmixing is supposed to be enabled in creative settings or ffdshow audio decoder settings).

Would appreciate any help!

Try the following: make sure that your speaker configuration both in Windows Control Panel and in the Creative Speaker Settings is set to Stereo (or 2.1). After that, go to the EAX Console, enable CMSS-3D and then select CMSS2, which is intended for DVD playback. Not sure if/how much that will help, but it's the only thing that comes to mind. I don't use my retro rigs for multimedia purposes, so I have no personal experience with that.

PCGamingTimeMachine wrote on 2026-05-23, 20:42:

Hi Joseph, first of all thanks a lot for the great guide! Is there an option of downmixing a 5.1 audio stream to stereo (e.g. for a movie I'm playing) with Audigy 2 ZS in Windows 98? I've noticed that with such a movie, the volume will kind of increase / decrease and show significant variation. I'm not very knowledgeable in multimedia, but I guess this may be due to 5.1 audio being played out of regular stereo speakers? The significant volume variation could be an artifact of that. If so, I'd love to know a method so that the movie audio can be downmixed in realtime during playback. I'm not able to find such an option in the creative settings (in fact I'm not sure if this downmixing is supposed to be enabled in creative settings or ffdshow audio decoder settings).

Would appreciate any help!

PowerDVD or WinDVD should be able to down-mix the audio stream.

AaronS wrote on 2026-04-08, 16:02:

Is this some modified driver that you are working on? The EMS thing is very interesting and might allow it to work on my AM3+ board with 4GB+ ram, I wasn't able to get it to initialize the driver but I have no idea how to set up memory managers so it's probably something I'm doing wrong. Works flawlessly under 98SE otherwise.

EDIT: Nevermind, I missed the part where you mention VSBHDA and yeah, its working great for me now, not sure why but even with Jemmex the Creative DOS driver never worked, but this does and like you said, soundfonts and volume levels all work.

No, it's just a recent open source project and yes it completely replace official Creative DOS driver making them now pretty much useless.

There is still there and there some games who have some issues but for the most part it's night and day. And having soundfonts (.SF2), Coax S/PDIF and volume levels under DOS is a huge step up.
Let's hope one day someone will find a way to also enable gameport.

TgamesFR wrote on 2026-06-15, 10:52:

No, it's just a recent open source project and yes it completely replace official Creative DOS driver making them now pretty much useless.

There is still there and there some games who have some issues but for the most part it's night and day. And having soundfonts (.SF2), Coax S/PDIF and volume levels under DOS is a huge step up.
Let's hope one day someone will find a way to also enable gameport.

Yeah I've been using it since making that post 🤣 I hadn't heard of it (I heard of SBEMU but didn't know of VSBHDA), it works well and I've played a number of games under DOS with it. There's also a fork that lets you use redbook audio, also working with a lot of games, only a small handful have issues.

The only problem I have had with VSBHDA (probably same with SBEMU, I haven't tested it since) is that I bought one of those S/PDIF brackets from ebay to use for optical audio into my retrotink upscaler, and occasionally there will be hissing in either the left or right channel and its totally random, most of the time its fine, and its always fine under Windows so definitely a VSBHDA issue. I made a post on the github about it.

Guide from first post working for me. Audigy SB0230, ASUS P4S800D-X and WIndows 98SE standard iso, DX8.1 installed. I had big issues get this card to work under W98. Now it working under windows, DOS under windows and also in "restart ms dos mode" Dont know what was wrong. Card working fine under Windows XP without issues standard audigy CD also DanielK Audigi pack
Happy now. Thank you 😘

dudulinek wrote on 2026-06-23, 22:36:

Guide from first post working for me. Audigy SB0230, ASUS P4S800D-X and WIndows 98SE standard iso, DX8.1 installed. I had big issues get this card to work under W98. Now it working under windows, DOS under windows and also in "restart ms dos mode" Dont know what was wrong. Card working fine under Windows XP without issues standard audigy CD also DanielK Audigi pack
Happy now. Thank you 😘

Cheers!

I've added the SB0230 to the list of working models, citing your post as reference.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-06-24, 05:18:

dudulinek wrote on 2026-06-23, 22:36:

Guide from first post working for me. Audigy SB0230, ASUS P4S800D-X and WIndows 98SE standard iso, DX8.1 installed. I had big issues get this card to work under W98. Now it working under windows, DOS under windows and also in "restart ms dos mode" Dont know what was wrong. Card working fine under Windows XP without issues standard audigy CD also DanielK Audigi pack
Happy now. Thank you 😘

Cheers!

I've added the SB0230 to the list of working models, citing your post as reference.

🤗❤️👉 https://youtu.be/c3W1xg6tRsA

Will try also my Audigy 2 ZS SB0350 i had many issues with drivers also under Windows XP. No matter installer used, everytime happen "no creative hardware found". Had to install card manual in device manager, Firewire port not installed at all - working driver not found🤔

dudulinek wrote on 2026-06-24, 19:26:

Will try also my Audigy 2 ZS SB0350 i had many issues with drivers also under Windows XP. No matter installer used, everytime happen "no creative hardware found". Had to install card manual in device manager, Firewire port not installed at all - working driver not found🤔

The SB0350 should work fine under WinXP using the WDM drivers from the official installation CD. If it doesn't, you might have an OEM model, and some of those need specific drivers from the relevant manufacturer. Either that, or the card could possibly be damaged.

BTW, this guide is only intended for Win98SE and WinME. It's not suitable for WinXP.

AaronS wrote on 2026-06-15, 14:35:

Yeah I've been using it since making that post 🤣 I hadn't heard of it (I heard of SBEMU but didn't know of VSBHDA), it works well and I've played a number of games under DOS with it. There's also a fork that lets you use redbook audio, also working with a lot of games, only a small handful have issues.

The only problem I have had with VSBHDA (probably same with SBEMU, I haven't tested it since) is that I bought one of those S/PDIF brackets from ebay to use for optical audio into my retrotink upscaler, and occasionally there will be hissing in either the left or right channel and its totally random, most of the time its fine, and its always fine under Windows so definitely a VSBHDA issue. I made a post on the github about it.

I've not heard a hissing yet on the S/PDIF output, i'm using the original bracket from Asus (not a chinese clone).

Btw @AaronS, do you know if it's possible to run games like Rayman using that Redbook audio fork of VSBHDA ? As far i've tried i get black screen on the game.

TgamesFR wrote on 2026-07-14, 11:28:

I've not heard a hissing yet on the S/PDIF output, i'm using the original bracket from Asus (not a chinese clone).

Yeah I tried the cheap ones with black PCB and then an Asus one which has same problem, it might be something to do with my motherboard and it not initializing fully sometimes unlike when booting Windows and it fully initializes with Creatives drivers, not sure what would cause it. I just use stereo jacks from the line out for DOS / VSBHDA for now.

AaronS wrote on 2026-07-14, 16:01:

TgamesFR wrote on 2026-07-14, 11:28:

I've not heard a hissing yet on the S/PDIF output, i'm using the original bracket from Asus (not a chinese clone).

Yeah I tried the cheap ones with black PCB and then an Asus one which has same problem, it might be something to do with my motherboard and it not initializing fully sometimes unlike when booting Windows and it fully initializes with Creatives drivers, not sure what would cause it. I just use stereo jacks from the line out for DOS / VSBHDA for now.

Do you have a capacitor on your PCB Bracket ? Thoses models without the capacitor tends to be noisy as i heard.

Also do you know the "tricks" to runs CD games who use XMS only ? (Like Rayman, Atlantis The Lost Tales, Privateer and many others).

Yes they both do (the black PCB one has small capacitors whereas the Asus one has a larger type), it only happens randomly upon startup of VSBHDA so I have no idea, never happens in Windows.

It's been a little while but I did get Rayman and Flight of the Amazon Queen to work, I think I used SETPVI.EXE included with VSBHDA and JEMMEX NOEMS in config.sys, if not I'll have a look at them again.

AaronS wrote on 2026-07-14, 20:17:

Yes they both do (the black PCB one has small capacitors whereas the Asus one has a larger type), it only happens randomly upon startup of VSBHDA so I have no idea, never happens in Windows.

It's been a little while but I did get Rayman and Flight of the Amazon Queen to work, I think I used SETPVI.EXE included with VSBHDA and JEMMEX NOEMS in config.sys, if not I'll have a look at them again.

Thanks i will try that.
Edit: Tested it not works, the EMS memory is still visible with "NOEMS" flag (like the old EMM386) and all games who require XMS only are crashing instantly.

Can you share your config.sys and autoexec.bat ? Like this i will check which settings you using.

Also i've tested around 35 games last night using SPDIF with my P4i65 motherboard, no hissing on my side at all.

TgamesFR wrote on 2026-07-14, 21:18:

Also i've tested around 35 games last night using SPDIF with my P4i65 motherboard, no hissing on my side at all.

I got my hands on a second Audigy 2 ZS, I still get random hiss on this one too, so yeah, motherboard and/or bios problem with VSBHDA.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-01-14, 22:39:

I don't think I've ever encountered that issue.

In which game are you seeing this exactly? And have you tested other games and gotten the same result?

I've now made my own DOS Mixer for the Audigy 2 ZS, as far i'm aware it's the first ever made for the official Creative SB16 DOS Driver.
Before we just had a small program to enable few ports, mine unlock them all and you can control volumes.

SBEZS V1.0a - DOS Mixer for Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS

I've also made a .SF2 to .ECW SoundFont convertor, now you can use better SoundFont under DOS with Creative PCI Cards !

SF2ECW V1.0a - Convert any SF2 Soundfont to ECW - (Creative Ensoniq Sound Blaster Soundfonts)

Thanks a lot for this!

With my audigy 2 on A7N8X-E Deluxe (NForce2!!) and windows 98 everything works 😀

SB16 Emulation on dos in win 98
And
GeneralMidi with my sc-55 on dos in win 98

AMAZING!

If anyone's interested, this guide can be converted into an inf file.

What's needed:
1) A zip of all the files added and a list of their locations.
2) All the reg keys added/updated
3) A list of all the ini/configsys/autoexec changes

It might take a few revisions, but it should be relatively straightforward to turn it all into a single zip file with a single inf that you right-click > install.

Previous examples of messing with infs:
Windows 9x Boot Settings Edit inf (msdos.sys)
Re: Misadventures in Windows 98 Slipstreaming / Remastering