Bad Sound Quality At Dos Games (especially Doom Engine)

[knechtodawas]

Hi!

What I want to do:
Playing DOS games on my Compaq Armada 1750 (eg. Heretic, Hexen and Build engine games).

My system:
Pentium II 233, 192 MB RAM, ESS1860 onboard sound or Speedlink USB sound, Ati Rage Pro, Windows Me

My problem:
The digital sound effects of the games, especially all DOOM engine games, are really poor. They are dull and rustling all the time.

What I tried:
- playing the games under Windows Me with the onboard sound
- playing the games under Windows Me with the Speedlink USB sound
- playing the games under DOS (via patch) wit the onboard sound

All results sound identically.

What I ask:
What initiates this bad sound quality? My last hope was poor DOS, but it didn't help in any way. Probably my memory is so bad, that I have forgotten how poor the sound quality of Heretic and Co really was ;-). Has anyone an idea?

Another question which bothered me for years:
Does anyone know, how to start Redneck Rampage (Rides Again) without any stuttering? This game needs 32 MB RAM, but even whith 128 MB or more it frequently loads data from the HD. I recognized this on each PC i owned.

[Scatty]

About the sound - the soundcards on your computer are probably simply not compatible with any old standards that Ms-Dos had back then for the soundcards, probably also just lacking the Dos drivers for the soundcards you have, which would result in at least bad soundquality if a not-recognized soundcard at all. As for Windows ME - don't even try to run the Dos games in it just like that. Download VDMSound here (http://www.abandonia.com/main.php?nav=programs) and see if that helps.
About Redneck Rampage - forget it. I had all kinds of problems with that game myself, crashing every once in a time being the more harmless one.

[knechtodawas]

Compatible sound cards:
Mh, I read that the ES1869 is a sound chip with a good DOS compatibility, although it is onboard.

Windows Me:
I know, that it is not the best way, to run DOS games diretly under Win Me. But some years ago I used ME on my desktop PC and didn't have any problems with my DOS games. Question: Are there any advantages of Win 98 compared to Win Me concerning DOS games (apart from the hidden DOS mode)?

VDMSound:
Does VDMSound work with Windows Me? It thought, it is only designed for NT/2000/XP.

[The Fifth Horseman]

ESS soundcards are compatibile with DOS software - but only if you have proper drivers for them.

Try using a DOS bootdisk coupled with appropriate drivers.
Worst case solution, set up a second partition and configure your machine for a dual-system boot (the second OS being MS-DOS).

[Guest]

I use the DOS drivers, you can download from ESSTECH.com. What would be the difference between starting DOS from a boot disk and starting DOS 8.0 (without booting Windows ME)?

[The Fifth Horseman]

Try using the standalone version of DOS 7.1 and the sound drivers pre-included with the setup.
That worked for me, at least.

[tikbalang]

where did you get dos 7.1?

[Guest]

Okay, I got closer to the problem. If I increase the ingame sound volume, the sound issues begin to disappear. With high volume the sound is almost fine, but my eardrum revolts as I use earphones ;-). Probably I get a satisfying result by decreasing the volume in the Windos/DOS mixer and increasing the volume in the games to the max. I have later...


Strange: The messy sound occurs at Heretic, Doom and Quake, but not at Redneck Rampage.

[knechtodawas]

This was me...

[The Fifth Horseman]

Can't tell you - it's a secret.
Besides, that place isn't there anymore.

[_r.u.s.s.]

maybe you have your soundcard misconfigured in doom, quake, heretic, etc? i d try different sound cards and iqr/dma

[Guest]

Okay, the following works fine:
I have to reduce the sound volume of my notebook via the corresponding hardware buttons. Then I pump up the volume in Heretic. So long so good.

But a completely different problem with Heretic and other Doom engine games bothers me now:
The games often access the hard disk, which results in a stuttering. In Doom the little floppy icon appears in this situation. It is like playing the games on a system with 4MB RAM, but I have 196 MB. I even installed Windows 98 instead of ME and used the pure DOS mode, but it made no difference. I also played the games without memory managers.

[knechtodawas]

Sorry, me again...

[The Fifth Horseman]

Probably the games can't cope with your hardware.
Nothing can be done about that, I'm afraid.

Maybe - just maybe - FreeDOS could solve that, but there is no guarantee.

[Scatty]

Play the games with at least XMS (EMS is good too, speeds them up) on, and try using an utility called EATXMS (scroll more down until you see it) - here (http://www.oldskool.org/guides/oldonnew/resources).
Using this utility (which is a Dos program using the command-line parameters), shrink your memory down to 16MB and see if that eventually helps.

Don't forget to reboot your computer after using this utility if you're in plain Dos mode as the memory stays shrunken. Don't need to reboot though if you just run the games from a Dos prompt in Win98 or with VDMSound in WinXP.

[knechtodawas]

Thank you. Mhhh, I will try EATXMS after work, although I already ran the games on a PC with 512MB without having problems.