Surround Sound In DOSBox \ VOGONS

Surround Sound In DOSBox

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First post, by mikeabson

Posted on 2012-05-28, 03:34

mikeabson Offline

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Hopefully this is the right place here.

I was wondering, does DOSBox support Surround Sound? I've got a few demoscene demos (Second Reality and Megamix by Realtech) and a few games, (FIFA 97 in this case) that support Surround Sound when the PC is connected to a Dolby Surround encoder. I've got my PC connected to a 5.1 Surround Sound system in the living room via digital-in cable. The soundcard inside my PC is an XFi Platinum with a built-in Dolby encoder. I'm only able to get Stereo sound instead of Surround, where the demo / game permits it of course. Is this not supported in DOSbox or if it is, I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here. I do get surround sound in Windows 7 and games that support Surround, just not in DOSbox. Thank you for any help!

Mike.

Reply 1 of 3, by Zup

Posted on 2012-05-28, 06:28

Zup Offline

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There was no surround API in DOS; demos and games simulated surround or downsampled it to 2 channels.

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Reply 2 of 3, by gulikoza

Posted on 2012-05-28, 06:40

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I doubt that any of the DOS games or demos supported 5.1 discrete channels that your card encodes. More likely the games supported the older Dolby Pro-Logic standard that encodes 1 surround channel into normal stereo signal. In this case DOSBox supports it since stereo support is the only requirement. You would need proper hardware (Dolby Pro-Logic decoder) on your end to properly reproduce the surround effect.

edit: an interesting solution would be to have some kind of software pro-logic decoder in dosbox that would output 5.1 sound. Although this might be troublesome because of license requirements...

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Reply 3 of 3, by robertmo

Posted on 2012-05-28, 06:55

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I will just add that there is 3d sound option in Pył. This game is known for having very good sound quality, so may be an interesting case to check.

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