First post, by jez
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I think I may have noticed a regression in DOSbox. In Prince of Persia 1, my preferred combination for sound is Adlib for music and SoundBlaster for sound.
Let me state now that this issue really confuses me. I've always had trouble understanding WTF Adlib is, and any offers of clarity on this issue would be appreciated. Is it a unique soundcard, another name for the OPL chips, or something piggybacking on SoundBlaster sound cards that offered FM synthesis? 😕 So I'm apologising in advance for this rather long-winded explanation that would probably be a lot shorter if I understood it.
Anyway, in 0.61, the relevant section of my DOSBox.conf looks like this:
# sblaster -- Enable the soundblaster emulation.
# base,irq,dma -- The IO/IRQ/DMA address of the soundblaster.
# sbrate -- Sample rate of soundblaster emulation.
# adlib -- Enable the adlib emulation.
# adlibrate -- Sample rate of adlib emulation.
# cms -- Enable the Creative Music System/Gameblaster emulation.
# Enabling both the adlib and cms might give conflicts!
# cmsrate -- Sample rate of cms emulation.
sblaster=true
base=220
irq=7
dma=1
sbrate=22050
adlib=true
adlibrate=22050
adlibmode=adlib
cms=false
cmsrate=22050
'Adlib' is enabled, as is SoundBlaster. Unfortunately, this issue is also muddied by the fact that the word 'Adlib' was removed from DOSBox.conf in version 0.62. I've seen people previously claiming that 'Adlib' is the same thing as OPL, but I have no clue. As I said, clarification of this would be appreciated. If OPL is indeed the same thing as 'Adlib', It'd be nice to have a line of comment in the .conf file saying something along those lines; game setups don't tend to ask you whether you want to use OPL sound; rather Adlib sound.
The SET BLASTER env string in my 0.61 setup when the above config file is used has an argument T4, suggesting that it is emulating a Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 (which I believe has an OPL3 chip). Thus, I tried to achieve an identical setup with DOSBox 0.62 (even though I'm not sure what's going on with Adlib), and my .conf file looked like this:
# type -- Type of sblaster to emulate:none,sb1,sb2,sbpro1,sbpro2,sb16.
# base,irq,dma,hdma -- The IO/IRQ/DMA/High DMA address of the soundblaster.
# mixer -- Allow the soundblaster mixer to modify the dosbox mixer.
# oplmode -- Type of OPL emulation: auto,cms,opl2,dualopl2,opl3.
# On auto the mode is determined by sblaster type.
# oplrate -- Sample rate of OPL music emulation.
type=sbpro2
base=220
irq=7
dma=1
hdma=5
mixer=true
oplmode=auto
oplrate=22050
This produced an identical SET BLASTER env string to my 0.61 setup. Note that in both cases, all other things were identical. Core, frameskip, cycles, GUS emulation disabled, etc. It was just the SoundBlaster section that was different.
Anyway, this is where the problem is - with 0.61, Prince of Persia seems to be fine using Adlib for the music and SoundBlaster for the sound. However, with the setup in 0.62, I get no music. Just the sound. I have also tried the same thing with 0.63, as well as changing 'type' to all types of SB, but with no luck - I never get the Adlib sound and SoundBlaster FX that I got under 0.61. Is this a regression? Seems so to me.
Note that I am not using the version of PoP1 that has a setup.exe, it 'auto detects' sound setup. Yes, I've tried 'prince sblaster' and 'prince adlib', neither achieve my desired combination of Adlib sound with SB FX. I know PoP1 is a bit fussy in the way it accesses the sound, but I can get it to work in DOSBox 0.61 and I'd like to get it working the same way in later versions of DOSBox.
Comments/advice? 😀
== Jez ==