Use SPEEDSET to attempt to resolve the problem.

Check on the GLIDOS forum re. the quality of the sound in TR. It may be due to crappy drivers or some other problem. If you are referring to the "in-game" music (played off the CD), then it is not handled by VDMSound but by Windows, so it's something you should be able to tweak from Control Panel (just like for regular CD-play). If it isn't the CD music then it's weird that you'd still hear the broken music even when MIDI and Joystick were disabled (unless it's AdLib music you're hearing, in which case I'd recommend to enable MIDI emulation and reconfigure the game for MIDI).

V.

Thanks so far for you help!
I tried SPEEDSET, but with the parameter -2 nothing happens and with -3 it's way too fast.
The CD music plays great, it's the digitized SFX that skip, you don't notice it in short sounds such as shots, but in melodys (e.g. during the Core Intro in TR) it is very annoying.
Other games like Indiana Jones IV run fine!

I'm using an Athlon 1000, 512 MB RAM, GeForce 2 MX 400 with 32 MB and a SB Live! Value by the way...

The *sound effects* skip? That's weird.
I've been meaning to reduce granularity in SPEEDSET. I'll try to get the code from the CVS and work on it tonight.

Unregistered wrote:

I experienced my problem both with "Gods" and "Tomb Raider", theme melodies (SoundBlaster) etc. are just played too slow and they skip.

I thought Tomb Raider streamed all it's music from the CD. Are you talking about a version that had MIDI or AdLib/SoundBlaster as a music option?

Maybe he has a severely scratched CD or something? It wouldn't explain the slowness, but it would explain the skipping...😉

i have a similar problem with Tyrian 2000. Speedset makes utterly no difference to the sound except that if i set it to -60, midi music stops working entirely.

It seems every game i run suffers from the music being about 2/3 of the speed it should be. i've messed with all the options, changed dma timings, turned everything off and on, and still the music is too slow.

Tyrian's setup program seems to eventually fix the problem in jukebox mode (when its showing a sort of Technicolor starfield and playing music), the speed wavers a little and then evens out to a constant rate, which is still slower than it should be.

I tried increasing the priority of the process in win2k's task manager but to no avail.

In other games (e.g. supaplex, which i tried because it's said to use unorthodox timing loops to detect audio hardware), speedset has made a difference, although much too much of one. at -3 the music is at least twice as fast as it should be, and at -2 it seemed no different to what it was like without speedset.

*in all cases* the first second or two of the music is played at *exactly* the right speed, then it gets sloooowweerrr. Maybe this is something to do with Windows automatically lowering the priority of a thread or process? thats what it looks like to an uneducated observer (me).

Athlon 1.4ghz, win2k (all service packs), sblive, ati radeon 8500, directx 8.1b

If speed is OK for the first few seconds in the game (or for the first few seconds after you switch out of the game, wait a while, then switch back in again with ALT+TAB) then yes, it is Windows' timer emulation eating crap. SPEEDSET shoudl make a difference with non-protected mode (e.g. don't use DOS4GW and so on) games.

V.

anything i can do to stop windows timer emulation eating crap? Other people don't seem to be having a problem so do you know of anything i can do that might fix it?

Other people have the problem, they just don't recognise it. 😜
In any case, I'm not sure if anyone has managed to overcome this problem. I could be wrong, though.

i seem to have the same problem also.
it is weird, when i play jagged alliance 1, the sounds are perfect, speech is perfect also, game works beautifully as if i was playing it in an old rig. the only problem is the tempo is like really low, like 1/3 from what it should be. a lot of the other games i play does have the problem but it isnt as apparent and as slow as it is in jagged alliance 1. the tempo is really slow. what i found out that if i run setup and set it to roland/general midi the tempo goes up but it butchers the music itself. i am not sure what ja does sooo different to everything else which ends up making the music to go sooo slow. unfortunately ja has dos4gw which could be the problem...

EDIT: dont worry bout it i got it fixed, after roaming the forums a bit i found out theres a update for it, well when i updated the sound blaster is still slow and crappy, but the adlib version works much better. quality on the adlib version is good and the speed is much closer to the original (sure its not exactly the same but its close enuf) great work on vdms, its awesome

GM butchers the music? It sounds like you're using a bad GLS/soundfont, then. What kind of a sound card do you have? Depending on what it is, there are some simple ways to make it sound much better. *eg*

snover:

im using a sound blaster live xgamer, i think its the midi instruments that comes with the sound card are different fomr those jagged alliance has in thei midi files, as aresult it choses thw rong instruments, and it sounds horrible.

i would like to hear your suggestions on the simple solutions you had in mind tho, midi has the fastest tempo out of them all, altho i am very pleased with the adlib setting introduced in the patch.

Don't use the SB MIDI. instead configure JA for Gneeral MIDI (not Roland MT-32) and set Microsoft's GS soft-synth as the default MIDI device on your system. This should be extremely close to what the music authors had in mind (since I bet they didn't use a Creative soundfont when they wrote the music, but more likely a SoundCanvas which the GS softsynth resembles adequately since its DLS comes from Roland).

V.

vladr:

thnx for the advice, i tried out the microsoft softsynth, but the instruments are wayy off on it. i find the vdms adlib is the closest i ever came to the original sblaster 16. its as if sir-tech used the cons of the old sound blaster in a way that makes the music sound really nice. its kinda hard to explain it. now if only i can try to speed the tempo on it, then it would be exact.

whatd be cool is if there were an patch or somethign that puts a new synthesizer in windows that used the instruments that was used back then.

also, the ja setup joins roland and general midi, in other words there is adlib, sound blaster, sb16/pro, awe32 and then it says "Roland MPU401/General MIDI" it desont separate them 🙁

excellent job on vdms tho, i have gotten soo many other games to work on it perfectly that i would never be able to run before.

Try using the MT2GM.map in the "General MIDI" section of the LaunchPad. Does this fix the problem?

Roland MPU401 is just the interafce to the synthesizer, not the synthesizer itself (i.e. MPU401 is not "MT-32"). So you're dealing with GM. Just make sure you are using IDENTITY.MAP (not MT2GM!), or that you tell LaunchPad to use GM, and the music should be OK with the M$ softsynth.

V.

MPU-401 is the interface, yes, but from what I'm reading, it's assumed that it's going to a Roland device. I suppose that they may have developed MPU-401, and probably did, but it seems weird to put that there. *shrug*

SoundCanvas is also Roland, but it's GM/GS, not MT-32. 😀
It's not the "Roland" that makes the difference in "Roland MT-32", but the "MT-32", that's what I'm trying to say.
V.