Frustated by paranoic 2fa i almost forgot what i liked to post.

Introduction:
I stumbled first over this on VGMPF because i was looking for a nice little program to play back .wav or/and .voc, most are not very useful in a batch proggy.
VGMPF offers the CTVED standalone i downloaded it and well it didn't worked.

Topic:
As next i moved here and downloaded the two installation disks and ran with more or less success the install program, it quits before the installation routine is finished because you won't have windows present in dosbox but the DOS related stuff is already copied but not yet proper "installed".

Similar as for the download from VGMPF it reports wrong driver version and/or wrong card.
"Wrong card" is it depends on sbpro2 any else won't work for CTVED and unfortunately even for the .voc player (i assume, it's confusing you will see).
"Wrong card" is no problem just specify sbtype=sbpro2 but the wrong version will stay.
I assume CT did this to prevent spreading of the software, the version number and blaster address in the drivers is fixed while the version # is wrong as it can be and i assume it will be altered together with the proper address and interrupt when the installation was 100% successful.

Fix:
Thus "out of the box" CTVED and VPLAY won't work and will need a small hack to run.
The drivers "CTVDSK.DRV" and "CT-VOICE.DRV" have a version # of 2.12 while CTVED shows a version # of 2.15, a quite simple fix.
At address 0x30 to 0x32 you find "h 2002" for the default blaster address and "h 07" for the interrupt (while CT claims 5 is default), right behind follows the version # "h 0c 02" which is 2.12 "h 0f 02" will reflect 2.15, if you change this in both drivers and hacked in also your actual interrupt you specified, CTVED and VPLAY will work.

I strongly assume this is only DOSBox related or on any virtual DOS machine as long as windows isn't present because the installation routine will quit and the drivers won't be updated to your systems specifications as well they will have a wrong version #.

Still it seems to be unstable, at least i got it running fine last night right today at noon they failed again - i forgot that they depend on sbpro2.
(probably this can be hacked to type 6 "sb16" to, i don't know yet).
But it still can report "wrong card", don't be surprised if it fails.
However VPLAY is the best voc player i found so far, it plays well, doesn't have this annoying click when it starts as most other, properly silences the noise for silent blocks, it's stereo capable and the stereo channels are assigned proper l/r (most voc players mirror the l & r channel never ask me why, it only gets obvious if you play a "left channel - right channel" file, this is the case for almost all players derived from the miles sound drivers).

If it runs and you still won't hear anything - the master and voice volume is at 0 if you start CTVED.
download/file.php?mode=view&id=75228

To link my hacked drivers won't make much sense i guess because they will differ as soon as the blaster interrupt or address differs.
The hack is simple, dammit simple and it should be no problem to follow this guide even for a bloody beginner.

Maybe i can write a batch and alter the content of the drivers automated and probably even depending on the result of "blaster" which returns the blaster dip switches.

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How is this related to gaming?
Just for batch proggies which run your favorite games with a little introduction like "let's play - your favorite game".
Or a shout if you leave and an applause if you enter.
A buzz sound if you selected an option.

Like this:
https://youtu.be/6_3-XU1Jw1I
For this clip is used "PLANY" (PlayAny) it's a quite nice player to playback a sample if you are satisfied with monaureal sound.
It plays back immediately and without noticeable clicking when it invokes the blaster.
With "PLANY" you can also make a standalone executable from a sample, if you like to.
Most probably i will return to the use of this player and discard stereo for the samples, it's not needed and the player is much more comfortable as most other.
I fiddled around with the developer examples by john miles for his AIL2 drivers, but they all leak in a certain point, either they click heavy often double if they invoke the blaster and produce even a click when they terminate, they are mostly wrong in channel assignment, they depend on either the .ADV .DLL or .DIG (which is already RAD game tools) drivers for AIL2 and the drivers have to be hacked to fit to your virtual machine (blaster address, interrupt), respectively i don't know yet if i can specify a config file for them like for the ".DIG" sample player i downloaded (the hack was quicker as to read a ton of instructions, which btw doesn't exist). The first release of the miles sounddrivers sdk offers a quite good working but also mono .voc player example with the drawback the it will set the sb volume to 40% in any case if it starts playing, "sbmixer = false" will prevent this but all this is complicated and uncomfortable as hell. Sure the SDK is meant to create your own specific player and the programs are just examples how to use it.
Probably an interested one could create a suitable sample player for DOSBox out of this.
(The used speech samples i created with Amiga O.S. 1.3 "say" uitility, of course there will be better solutions for this today but the robotic sound suits well to DOS even if such wasn't possible to have in early 90's on a doze, i already thught about to use "Intellivoice" to produce the speech 😉. At least the idea for this i adapted from Zbiciaks "Tag along Todd" demo game which utters i.e. "let's play Soccer" if Todd catches you. The game is btw a cool demo, fascinating how such a simple demo still can fascinate young dudes. Two of my young friends usually say "i never will play such an old tard" but well they both could let off "Tag along Todd").

Most other players i found aren't as good as plany or the miles sounddriver demos, won't play back certain frequencies or bit depths different to 8 and so on.

The Topic i just opened because the softs of the SBPRO2 installation won't work if it isn't 100% proper installed, i assume it won't be the only program which fails because of wrong interrupt setting or a simple wrong version #. To finish the install routine of SBPRO2 proper you need to have a windows present.

The CTVED could be handy to edit or create .VOC files, on the other hand it's much more comfortable to use i.e. Audacity for this.
The limitation to SBPRO2 is what makes it unsuitable if you like to use the player for different instances of DOSBox, it might be the address or interrupt has to be different or you will depend on SB16, all this will prevent the softs from working without to hack the drivers (and probably even the executable).

Also this thread can be seen as an answer to "what sample player will be the most suitable for DOSBox" which is imho PLANY, simple and effective, plays .WAV .VOC .SND almost anything (Play Any 😉 ) and won't need no maintainance.
Best of all it's PD and totally free to use, yet another example of a free software which beats anything else.

I've read in a old thread here that "Playfile" from GUS was mentioned, it isn't bad but has an extreme limitation - it can't play back samples longer as roundabout one second, respectively a limited size of bytes the duration will depend on sample rate and bit depth. Sad that it didn't re-samples the sample likewise the patches if there isn't enough space for them.
I assume the samples have to be loaded to the GUS RAM and to play a sample simultaneous to a midi the space for samples in the RAM will be limited else there is no space for the patches.