The tracks are played by the CD drive, regardless of what sound settings you set. Do you have an audio cable running from the CD drive to the sound card? It will play it through that. And if you do, check mixer settings for whatever software your sound card uses to make sure it isn't muted.

Agent of the BSoD wrote on 2024-12-06, 18:16:

The tracks are played by the CD drive, regardless of what sound settings you set. Do you have an audio cable running from the CD drive to the sound card? It will play it through that. And if you do, check mixer settings for whatever software your sound card uses to make sure it isn't muted.

I don’t believe I do. I’ve not had to use one so far. It hasn’t been an issue for Quake, for instance. I just have the speaker jack plugged into the sound card and the IDE and molex connectors plugged into the CD drive.
For some reason, the drivers I’ve installed for my sound card haven’t put on any mixer utility or anything. One of them did, which I’m trying to find. Then I can see what the different levels are at.

EDIT: Also, I tried testing the game under Windows and the settings didn’t produce any sound at all during the test as well as in game.

Unfortunately, I’m not able to test the game properly under Windows. I can play the game, but there’s no audio at all. If I try and configure the sound, nothing works. Not even Soundblaster or Soundblaster Pro. Not sure if I need to install some generic Soundblaster driver for Windows…?

The drivers for my sound card are installed. The mixer utility doesn’t recognise the disc at all to play any of the audio tracks. And yet it recognised my Quake CD image. I suppose I could always try making a CD image of it and try that, but the fact I can’t even get audio at all, or configure any, is the main problem. Playing it under DOS is definitely the preferred method, but, no ambient tracks. 😕

Ah-haaah... Managed to find this thread over on the Tomb Raider Forums - https://www.tombraiderforums.com/showpost.php … 391&postcount=5 - with some useful information and workarounds. Including why I'm not getting audio when trying to set up the audio in Windows. But also the particular issue with no ambient tracks working looks to be due the drive letter being higher than D (big surprise). I'm not sure if it is an SCSI device...

No music in any animations and the Main Title Screen: This problem has been found in computers using SCSI devices (SCSI cdroms) or the drive letter is greater than D. Right now, the only solution is to plug an RCA audio cable from the cdrom headset jack to the audio input of sound card. This is the same with the PnP and second sound daughterboards.

The problem is, I'm not sure how I could get that solution to work. I have an RCA audio cable spare I think, but there is no headphone jack input on my CD-ROM.

EDIT: Ahh, wait, an internal connection. Hmm.

EDIT: So yeah, Agent of the BSOD - your suggestion looks to be bang on. 😀

Yes you need the internal four pin cable from the cd drive to the sound card. On the cd drive it should be labled as analoge out. And on the sound card it will be cd in.

tannerstevo wrote on 2024-12-06, 23:51:

Yes you need the internal four pin cable from the cd drive to the sound card. On the cd drive it should be labled as analoge out. And on the sound card it will be cd in.

Okay, thanks. I'll take a look at what's what tomorrow. Though I suspect I'll have to order a cable off eBay. At the very least, that should solve any future problems I have with CD audio not playing during gameplay. 😀

Took a lookie inside and remembered there is a four pin cable connected to the Audio Out on the CD drive. It was plugged in, what I presume to be, the audio connector on the motherboard for the onboard audio…? I’ve connected it into the sound card. Sadly, no difference. I’ve tried plugging them in different ways, but no difference. No music plays in the main menu. 😕 I understand the right wire is for the right channel…? Though the back of the CD drive lists it as being on the left. 🤔

Also, ironically, commenting the SET BLASTER line in the autoexec and restarting doesn’t appear to have helped in the slightest. 🙄 Selecting Auto Select causes it to crash, and setting up the Soundblaster during setup and testing also causes it to lockup.

The mystery continues…

May I recommend that you post the motherboard and sound card manufacturers and models?
Also, the contents of your config.sys and autoexec.bat files?

EduBat wrote on 2024-12-07, 19:47:

May I recommend that you post the motherboard and sound card manufacturers and models?
Also, the contents of your config.sys and autoexec.bat files?

Sure. I'm going to try asking on the official Tomb Raider forum, too.

This is the motherboard: https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/msi-ms-6156-bx11

Sound card: Yamaha YMF715E-S ISA.

I sometimes use the MS-DOS shortcut for games, which enables the extra memory with XMS and EMMS. Though it looks like the game will run fine just regularly booting into DOS from Shutdown > Restart

My current autoexec.bat does have a number of commands that are only remarks now from using the onboard sound. The files have changed a lot since I last set them up, so I can't remember them 100%. But I believe they're as follows:

Autoexec.bat:

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H1 P330
C:\UNISOUND.COM /V80
C:\WINDOWS\SMARTDRV.EXE
C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX /D:MSCD001
LH C:\DOSDRV\MOUSE.COM /P4

CONFIG.SYS:

LASTDRIVE=Z
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS NOVCPI
DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\VIDECDD.SYS (or OAKCDROM.SYS) /D:MSCD001
DOS=HIGH, UMB

It's something like that. Once I'm back on the PC, I'll have to backup/check what it's actually set to, but that's the gist of it.

May I recommend some better drivers and TSRs to better your system's memory setup? I like settings and tweaking. 😀

Harry Potter wrote on 2024-12-07, 20:30:

May I recommend some better drivers and TSRs to better your system's memory setup? I like settings and tweaking. 😀

What would you suggest? And what are TSRs exactly? ^^; And agreed - I like adjusting settings and tweaking. Providing I know what I'm doing and adjusting. And it makes a difference and I haven't gone and wasted a boat load of time. ^^;

In the DOS world, a TSR is a program that, when run, stays in memory upon exit. There are some more efficient drivers than the standard ones available at https://dosprograms.info.tt/indexall.htm#utils. Also, adding "I=B000-B7FF" and "HIGHSCAN" to EMM386's command line should add to available UMB memory: the former makes the mono buffer available as UMBs giving you 32k extra, and the latter performs an extra check for more memory but doesn't always work. Decreasing the LASTDRIVE= setting can buy a few bytes. Finally, if you're low on memory, QEMM can buy a lot more memory. Have fun!

Harry Potter wrote on 2024-12-07, 21:08:

In the DOS world, a TSR is a program that, when run, stays in memory upon exit. There are some more efficient drivers than the standard ones available at https://dosprograms.info.tt/indexall.htm#utils. Also, adding "I=B000-B7FF" and "HIGHSCAN" to EMM386's command line should add to available UMB memory: the former makes the mono buffer available as UMBs giving you 32k extra, and the latter performs an extra check for more memory but doesn't always work. Decreasing the LASTDRIVE= setting can buy a few bytes. Finally, if you're low on memory, QEMM can buy a lot more memory. Have fun!

Wow. Okay. There are certainly some tweaks and adjustments I want to look into. I wasn't even aware there was another memory manager apart from EMMS and XMS. Thanks for the suggestions. 😀

UNISOUND - Universal ISA PnP Sound Card Driver for DOS v0.82a

/VCnn Set CD Volume level to 'nn' (00-99)

Try to setup the CD Volume in unisound. By default it's probably muted.

EduBat wrote on 2024-12-09, 20:58:

UNISOUND - Universal ISA PnP Sound Card Driver for DOS v0.82a

/VCnn Set CD Volume level to 'nn' (00-99)

Try to setup the CD Volume in unisound. By default it's probably muted.

I did manage to solve it in the end. But you're right - the CD audio is muted with UNISOUND, which led to my confusion. I ended up trying SETYMF and that had the CD unmuted by default and the problem was resolved. 😁