Well, now there's good and there's bad news. The good news is that I found the reason why there's no CD Audio which is actually stated in the "Read Me". It's rather obscure and doesn't make any sense whatsoever but one can only take a wild guess what made the game developers tick about 13 years ago.

Read Me wrote:

RED BOOK AUDIO -------------- CD audio is only available on the maximum install. The reason for this is due to the amount of CD […]
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RED BOOK AUDIO
--------------
CD audio is only available on the maximum install. The reason for this is
due to the amount of CD access for data the audio would continuously stop
start.

Now the bad news, it only works randomly. What I mean is that you usually have music in the main menu and the game itself but for some reason it only works sometimes. I started the game like 5 times and only at the 6th try I had music playing in the main menu. Other times I have music in the main menu but as soon I start a race the music is gone and vice versa.

There can only be two reasons for this:

1.) It's simply a bug with DOSBox
2.) I need a special configuration which I don't of know yet

I really hope it's #2 but I can only guess here. If anyone has an idea or even a solution to this problem I would be curious to hear it. Thanks in advance!

Try a current development build, such as from here. It may not help, but there have been a few improvements in mscdex emulation, and it can't hurt to check.

Yeah, I'm aware of emucr.com. I get my PCSX2 builds from there 😉

Haven't tested Carmageddon with the latest DOSBox SNV but I'll try and report back later this day.

Hmmmmm ...

Same result with the developer version. Sometimes the music plays, sometimes not. As before, totally random whether it works or fails. Though I'm beginning to think it maybe it's the game itself. Since the cd tracks for the menu and game are chosen randomly it could be possible that "playing no music" is actually a valid option.

I will try to test some other games that use CDA for music maybe it's really only Carmageddon.

Now the bad news, it only works randomly. What I mean is that you usually have music in the main menu and the game itself but for some reason it only works sometimes. I started the game like 5 times and only at the 6th try I had music playing in the main menu. Other times I have music in the main menu but as soon I start a race the music is gone and vice versa.

I played Carmageddon a while ago with VDMsound and dgVoodoo (so no Dosbox involved) and it did the same thing.

Hear, hear! Thanks for that feedback. So that would somehow underline my theory of the "null track" option to be valid. Now I just need to find some other games with CDA to be sure. In the meantime I'm gonna play some Star Wars - Dark Forces 😁

I'm hearing the audio *every* time I start the game: a random track plays at the menu, and then a different track when I start a race. The music for the race actually starts at the "loading" screen and continues playing as the race begins. Tried with 0.74 and current source using default config with a BIN/CUE image. One thing that is certainly different in SVN is that the music volume control in the sound option menu works (with IMGMOUNT).

It's strange that you're only hearing audio maybe one time in six, if I'm understanding what you wrote. Are you using any patches, or just the plain maximum install from the CD?

No patches at all, just maximum install from the CD.

Maybe my cuesheet is corrupt?

1FILE "Carmageddon.bin" BINARY
2  TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
3    INDEX 01 00:00:00
4  TRACK 02 AUDIO
5    INDEX 01 34:02:33
6  TRACK 03 AUDIO
7    INDEX 01 38:17:21
8  TRACK 04 AUDIO
9    INDEX 01 43:57:66
10  TRACK 05 AUDIO
11    INDEX 01 49:43:65
12  TRACK 06 AUDIO
13    INDEX 01 55:17:12
14  TRACK 07 AUDIO
15    INDEX 01 60:59:07
16  TRACK 08 AUDIO
17    INDEX 01 66:39:63
18  TRACK 09 AUDIO
19    INDEX 01 71:47:32

I am using default settings for everything ...

[EDIT]
Since I'm using D-Fend Reloaded I just downloaded a fresh install of DOSBox 0.74 to be sure. I did nothing but typing these two lines:

mount c: c:\games\ms-dos\
imgmount d: c:\games\ms-dos\iso\carma.cue -t iso

Well, your cuesheet is a bit different than the one I made, and lacks the standard 2 second pregap usually seen on hybrid data/audio discs, but don't know if it's really wrong. I used CDRWin to make a BIN/CUE image; what software did you use?

1FILE "CARMA.BIN" BINARY
2  TRACK 01 MODE1/2352
3    INDEX 01 00:00:00
4  TRACK 02 AUDIO
5    PREGAP 00:02:00
6    INDEX 01 34:50:72
7  TRACK 03 AUDIO
8    INDEX 01 39:05:72
9  TRACK 04 AUDIO
10    INDEX 01 44:46:72
11  TRACK 05 AUDIO
12    INDEX 01 50:33:72
13  TRACK 06 AUDIO
14    INDEX 01 56:08:72
15  TRACK 07 AUDIO
16    INDEX 01 61:50:72
17  TRACK 08 AUDIO
18    INDEX 01 67:32:72

I have the US version of the game, but maybe you have the UK or German release, which might be different. The US version is easy to spot because it displays the Interplay (publisher) logo at startup.

Well, I used Alcohol 120 to create the image and there's actually no Interplay logo

And yeah, I'm from Germany, good guess 😉

Do not use .cue/.bin format with Alcohol. Known A120 bug - all CDA tracks are shifted in the .cue.
Use .ccd or .mds.

I used Alcohol and converted it with UltraISO to BIN/CUE. But seriously, the image is correct as well as the cuesheet. The CD audio tracks start and end where they are supposed to be. In WMP/Winamp and in the game itself. Also simply proven because I used ripsaw8080's cuesheet just for fun and the music started right in the middle of a track.

Anyway, the image is fine. It seems DOSBox is having trouble with CD audio in general. Well, at least on my PC.
I just tested it with another game ("CHASM - The Rift") and although it always plays the music during the start screen and when you start a new game or load a save state it doesn't loop the audio.

Can't really say if the image is "bad", but it is strange that a hybrid disc does not have a pregap. Can't hurt to try some other image making software.

Are you sure the audio tracks in Chasm: The Rift should loop? It's not polling the status of playing tracks, so it would have to restart them on a timer. However, it's possible that the game decides ahead of time not to loop tracks due to some deficiency of emulation, but that doesn't seem likely.

Can't hurt to try some other image making software.

Indeed it can't but what would you suggest? CDRWin? Nero?

Are you sure the audio tracks in Chasm: The Rift should loop?

No, I'm not. It's been a decade since I played this under a real DOS environment. So maybe I'm wrong but usually the levels aren't that short that the music won't repeat. Also I stumbled across another thread regarding the CD audio "Blood" which actually was a bug related to DOSBox: Blood CD Audio Help

I've found CDRWin to be very reliable in making images that work; the company that makes it more-or-less created the cuesheet format. However, I think it does not allow for a trial period, and requires paid registration from the start.

But before possibly investing in more software, does the audio play reliably when you mount the real CD? If you don't hear audio with "MOUNT d <drive> -t cdrom", try adding the -ioctl_dx switch for audio extraction.

The non-looping audio in Blood was due to a missing piece of status information (part of the reason I suggested trying a development build), but that information came from polling, which Chasm is not doing. But as I mentioned, it is possible that it decides not to loop because of something DOSBox is (or is not) doing.

Chasm: The Rift does indeed decide not to loop audio tracks, and ultimately it is an issue of timing. When using an image, the game concludes that playing has failed because the current frame appears not to advance over three successive checks. DOSBox processes the checks so quickly that the frame doesn't have time to advance. I haven't tested this, but playing audio from a physical CD might loop because of delay in reading the device.

On real DOS systems there would be code overhead in MSCDEX and the CDROM device driver, but in DOSBox there is practically none. The attached TSR program adds overhead to the MSCDEX function that reads the current frame, ensuring that the frame counter will have advanced between checks. This workaround could be useful for anyone who is using an image and would like the CD audio to loop; simply run the program before running the game. Assembler source is included in the archive.

Oh ripsaw, you are awesome! 😎

That little tool actually fixed the looping CD audio issue. Can't thank you enough, it's really appreciated.

Now, could this help with Carmageddon too? Would be more than great.

PS: How can I automate the process of first executing "CTRLOOP.COM" and then "CHASM.EXE"? Make a .BAT file or is there some option in D-Fend Reloaded?

A batch file would be the usual way, but I'm not that versed in frontends.

Don't know if it will help with Carmageddon since I'm not reproducing any problem here. Have you tried the physical CD as suggested?

The first thing I tired but unfortunately didn't work as well. What I'll try though now is installing Windows 98 on a virtual machine and see if it fixes the problem. If this fails as well I have to give up ...