Shot answer yes.

Long answer dos games from within Win98 will work fine, I cant remember if its installed by default or not but you install the legacy drivers you get an additional legacy entry in device manager that shows what IRQ and DMA your emulated SB16 is using.

The Audigy was the last card to officially support true dos mode but you can get hacked drivers for the 2 ZS
http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1383&menustate=0

I doubt it supports Win95 but not sure, the native dos drivers would get around this.
Native dos also won't support soundfonts. Win98 could be interesting but never tried.

chinny22 wrote:

Shot answer yes. […]
Show full quote

Shot answer yes.

Long answer dos games from within Win98 will work fine, I cant remember if its installed by default or not but you install the legacy drivers you get an additional legacy entry in device manager that shows what IRQ and DMA your emulated SB16 is using.

The Audigy was the last card to officially support true dos mode but you can get hacked drivers for the 2 ZS
http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1383&menustate=0

I doubt it supports Win95 but not sure, the native dos drivers would get around this.
Native dos also won't support soundfonts. Win98 could be interesting but never tried.

Thank you for the info. Will soundfonts work in windows 98 with dos apps? Say I install the 28mb soundfont, will dos apps use it?

dan86 wrote:

Thank you for the info. Will soundfonts work in windows 98 with dos apps? Say I install the 28mb soundfont, will dos apps use it?

Not with VxD drivers, it uses the .ECW soundbanks for the MPU-401 emulation instead. With WDM drivers Windows itself handles the emulation of MPU-401 and Sound Blaster Pro and uses the default synth for MIDI.

Another option is to use VDMSound for MPU-401 emulation.

Kamerat wrote:

Not with VxD drivers, it uses the .ECW soundbanks for the MPU-401 emulation instead.

This is true for pure DOS e.g. if you shutdown Windows via the "Restart in DOS mode" option and play from there.

However, if you play games from within the Windows 98 DOS prompt, you can use soundfonts for General Midi just fine with VXD drivers.

Joseph_Joestar wrote:

This is true for pure DOS e.g. if you shutdown Windows via the "Restart in DOS mode" option and play from there.

However, if you play games from within the Windows 98 DOS prompt, you can use soundfonts for General Midi just fine with VXD drivers.

No, It's still true for Win9x DOS prompt. In case of VXD drivers DOS games under Win9x use the same Ensoniq based ECW soundfonts as under pure DOS. I have just tried it. And this is also true for SB Live! and Audigy.

Falcosoft wrote:

No, It's still true for Win9x DOS prompt. In case of VXD drivers DOS games under Win9x use the same Ensoniq based ECW soundfonts as under pure DOS. I have just tried it.

It does work for me as I can easily hear the difference when I switch between the Arachno and FluidSynth soundfonts when I run Doom and Duke 3D using General Midi. Maybe your setup is different.

For reference, I followed the instructions listed here to get SB16 compatibility in Win98 on my Audigy2 ZS using VXD drivers. After that, I used Creative's SoundFont Bank Manager to replace the default soundfont with FluidR3_GM.sf2 and that's what I now hear in DOS games that are set up for General Midi. If I switch the soundfont to something else like Arachno SoundFont - Version 1.0.sf2 the music in the games changes as well.

Joseph_Joestar wrote:

It does work for me as I can easily hear the difference when I switch between the Arachno and FluidSynth soundfonts when I run Doom and Duke 3D using General Midi. Maybe your setup is different.

Just out of curiosity: What do you hear when you select Sound Blaster as music device (instead of General Midi) e.g. in Doom? In case of VXD drivers and working Sound Blaster emulation I hear the same bad FM emulation as in pure DOS, but in case of WDM drivers I hear nothing. So this test could verify that SB emulation is really working on your system or as I suspect somehow you are still using WDM drivers (at least for MIDI music).

Falcosoft wrote:

Just out of curiosity: What do you hear when you select Sound Blaster as music device (instead of General Midi) e.g. in Doom?

With the Sound Blaster option selected for music in Doom, I get something similar to OPL3, but slightly more tinny sounding (MP3 is attached). For comparison, I've also attached an MP3 of Doom in General Midi with the Arachno sound font loaded. Also, here's a picture of the card in case the model number matters.

As for the SB16 emulation, here's how I went about it. I first downloaded this Audigy 2 ZS CD image and then the 9x DOS mode support package, both from the Vogons driver library. After burning the image to a CD I installed the drivers. For reference, I chose custom install and deselected everything except Windows Driver, SondFont Bank Manager, SoundFont Banks and EAX Console. After the installation finished, I ran the Creative Driver Utility Program and selected "Install VxD Driver". When that was done, I made the registry change mentioned here, installed the 9x DOS support package and added the SB16 device a second time, as instructed in that thread.

After all that, I just run the Creative SoundFont Bank Manager and load the .sf2 file that I want. Any games running in the Win98 DOS prompt use that sound font when I choose General Midi.