0.0 Disclaimer: […]
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0.0 Disclaimer:
This guide is provided "as is" and free of charge. There is no warranty or support of any kind. By using this guide, you acknowledge and agree that you do so at your sole risk. The author is not liable for any damages and claims arising from the use of this guide.
0.1 Introduction:
This guide will help you install VxD drivers for Sound Blaster Live! cards under Windows 98SE or Windows ME, including proper support for DOS gaming. I have personally tested this method with a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 (model SB0100). Later on, other people have tested it with additional SBLive models as well, and all information about that has been summarized in this post. For reference, by using this guide, you get the following features from your SBLive card under Win9x:
- EAX 1 and 2 support for Win9x games
- Sound Blaster 16 emulation for DOS games
- FM Synthesis emulation for DOS games
- General MIDI emulation for DOS games
- Soundfont support for DOS games running under Windows 98SE
Note that soundfonts only work when DOS games are running from within Windows 98/ME. If you go to pure DOS (by choosing Start > Shutdown > Restart in MS-DOS mode) then the card will use the (worse sounding) ECW sets instead. To my knowledge, there is no way to use .SF2 based soundfonts in pure DOS with an SBLive card.
Lastly, this guide and the modified driver pack that it uses are tailored to the US English version of Windows 98SE or Windows ME. Installing these drivers on a non-English system may cause the volume control screen (and possibly other aspects of the OS) to appear in English.
1.Hardware and software requirements:
Before proceeding to the next section of this guide, make sure that the following hardware and software requirements are met. If they are not, the driver installation may fail.
1.1 Certain chipsets have compatibility issues with VxD drivers and Creative's SB16 emulation. If you have a motherboard based on an Nvidia nForce chipset or an Intel ICH10+ chipset, then your system might not be compatible with this guide. Additionally, certain motherboards based on VIA chipsets may have compatibility issues with SBLive cards. For better stability on VIA systems, I recommend using an Audigy 2 or ZS card instead of a SBLive, and following this guide
1.2 Upon booting up your system, enter the BIOS and disable all COM and LPT ports in order to free up additional resources. If your motherboard has an integrated sound card, network card or any other integrated device that you are not using, disable it in the BIOS as well. Lastly, if you are not using USB, disable that too
1.3 During the driver installation process, the SBLive should be the only sound card in your system. Using a second sound card may cause the driver installation to fail
1.4 This guide has only been tested on Windows 98SE and Windows ME. A clean install of Windows must be performed before attempting the driver installation procedure. Do not use any "unofficial service packs". Only install the drivers for your motherboard and graphics card until you complete all the steps in this guide
1.5 A Sound Blaster Live! requires one free IRQ for the card itself. The value assigned to this IRQ varies from system to system, but it should not be the same as the IRQ assigned to the SB16 emulation device. Additionally, the SB16 emulation device requires three I/O ports, one IRQ and two DMA channels. The default values are: I/O ports 220, 330 and 388, IRQ 5, DMA 1 and DMA 5. If any of those resources are not free, the driver installation may fail. To determine if your system has enough free resources, under Windows 98SE click Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Information > Hardware Resources and check the IRQ, DMA and I/O sections
2. Preparation:
2.1 Download the modified SBLive driver CD image, and burn it to a disc
2.2 Place the disc in the CD-ROM drive on your Win98SE/ME machine, and cancel the autorun installer in case it starts
2.3 This guide assumes that your CD-ROM drive resides at D: (default location). If it's using a different letter, simply substitute that letter each time you come across D: in this guide
3. Windows Driver Installation
3.1 Run D:\CTShared\LaunchApp\SysInfo\Setup.exe which will install the Creative System Information utility and update the InstallShield Engine (important later)
3.2 Run D:\DirectX\dxsetup.exe which will install DirectX 9.0a and restart your computer (if you already have a newer version installed, skip this step)
3.3 Run D:\Audio\Drivers\CTZAPXX.exe and select "Driver Installation" and "VXD Drivers" then click Ok
3.4 Driver installation will take several minutes, don't interrupt the process until you are prompted to Restart then click Ok
3.5 After the restart, wait until the installer finishes, then go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Multimedia > Audio > Playback > Advanced Properties > Performance > Sample Rate Conversion Quality > move the slider to "Best"
3.6 Start > Run > sndvol32.exe > Ok. Note that all the volume sliders are currently at 50% which is fairly quiet. You might want to move the sliders to a higher value and also mute any unused inputs
4. Installing Creative Utilities
4.1 Run D:\Audio\AudioHQ\Setup.exe and install Creative AudioHQ (if you get an InstallShield Engine error here, repeat step 3.1)
4.2 Run D:\Audio\Diagnose\Setup.exe and install Creative Diagnostics
4.3 Run D:\Audio\Restore\Setup.exe and install Creative Restore Defaults
4.4 Run D:\Audio\SurMix2\Setup.exe and install Creative Surround Mixer
4.5 Start > Programs > Creative > Creative AudioHQ > Speaker and select the speaker setup that you are using, then click "Test" (in the screenshot below I'm using 5.1 speakers)
The attachment Speakers.jpg is no longer available
5. DOS Driver Installation
5.1 Run D:\DOSDRV\Setup.exe and restart when prompted
5.2 Wait until the Creative SB16 Emulation drivers are fully installed (this may take a few minutes)
5.3 During the boot process you might see a "Config file incomplete" error. Restart your computer one more time and it should disappear
If the installation was successful, you should now have the following under Device Manager:
The attachment 002.png is no longer available
6. Using a higher quality soundfont
6.1 Go to the D:\DOSDRV\SF2 folder and copy all the .SF2 files from there to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM
6.2 Go to the D:\DOSDRV\ECW folder and copy all the .ECW files from there to C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM
6.3 Start > Programs > Creative > Creative AudioHQ > SoundFont
6.4 Click on "Configure Bank" then click on the default soundfont (2GMGSMT Rev N++) to select it, then click Replace, select C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\CT8MGM.SF2 wait a few seconds until it loads then click Ok > Close
6.5 Open C:\WINDOWS\CTSYN.INI in Notepad and change this line: Waveset=C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\default.ecw to this: Waveset=C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\EAPCI8M.ECW
6.6 Save the changes you just made to CTSYN.INI then restart your computer
6.7 Run your favorite DOS game and in setup choose General MIDI for music
The attachment AudioHQ_SoundFont.jpg is no longer available
For reference, here's how your games will sound with Creative's CT8MGM soundfont. Essentially, with this step complete, you can now select any soundfont that you like for General MIDI playback in DOS games. For example, if you want to use a soundfont which more closely resembles a Roland Sound Canvas see this post. Alternatively, if you want to play games which use GS instruments, see this post.
7. Getting MT-32 compatibility in pure DOS (optional for Win98SE, not applicable for WinME)
7.1 Start > Shutdown > Restart in MS-DOS mode
7.2 C:\Progra~1\Creative\DOSDrv\sbemixer.exe
7.3 Make sure that the MT-32 option is checked, then click Save and press ESC to exit
7.4 Run your favorite DOS game that supports MT-32 (like Monkey Island for example)
Note that MT-32 emulation doesn't sound too great on this card, but I'm including it for completeness sake.
That said, these drivers also allow your SBLive to emulate FM Synthesis, should you want that. Of course, this sounds different from a genuine OPL3 chip, but it may still be somewhat usable, depending on the game that you're playing.
