CD-DA / Redbook audio not working in DOS

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DrakeEdgewater
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CD-DA / Redbook audio not working in DOS

Post by DrakeEdgewater »

When I play a DOS game like Worms which has CD audio, there is no music in the game.

However if I boot into Windows 98 and play the same CD image with the CD player, it plays the music. Also a Windows game such as Civilization II with CD-DA works fine.

This only seems to be a problem in DOS. If I launch Worms from Windows 98 (which runs under DOS shell) it doesn't work there either.

Is there anything special I need to do to set this up?

I seem to remember from back in the day, you have to connect a cable from the CD-ROM drive to the soundcard. Perhaps this is not emulated in PCem yet?

Thanks.
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ruben_balea
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Re: CD-DA / Redbook audio not working in DOS

Post by ruben_balea »

Do you have the DOS drivers for your sound card installed?
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ruben_balea
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Re: CD-DA / Redbook audio not working in DOS

Post by ruben_balea »

I've searched through my CD games and found one with audio tracks that works on Windows and MS-DOS, on Windows 95 it had sound but on DOS it didn't, even with the DOS drivers installed.
The problem was that the volume of the CD seems to be at minimum by default in the DOS drivers, I had to use the MIXERSET utility to adjust the volume from DOS.

Also I made a list of Sound Blaster drivers with their download links: https://www.pcem-emulator.co.uk/phpBB3/ ... php?t=3785
To set the volume under DOS/Windows 3.1 you need "Sound Blaster 16/SB32/AWE32 Basic Disk for DOS/Windows 3.1 Installation" https://support.creative.com/downloads/ ... loadId=273
For Windows 9x in DOS mode use "Basic DOS-level utilties for use in Windows95 MS-DOS mode or a Windows 95 Command Prompt only boot" https://support.creative.com/downloads/ ... loadId=379
DrakeEdgewater
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Re: CD-DA / Redbook audio not working in DOS

Post by DrakeEdgewater »

ruben_balea wrote: Mon 09 May, 2022 1:02 am I've searched through my CD games and found one with audio tracks that works on Windows and MS-DOS, on Windows 95 it had sound but on DOS it didn't, even with the DOS drivers installed.
The problem was that the volume of the CD seems to be at minimum by default in the DOS drivers, I had to use the MIXERSET utility to adjust the volume from DOS.

Also I made a list of Sound Blaster drivers with their download links: https://www.pcem-emulator.co.uk/phpBB3/ ... php?t=3785
To set the volume under DOS/Windows 3.1 you need "Sound Blaster 16/SB32/AWE32 Basic Disk for DOS/Windows 3.1 Installation" https://support.creative.com/downloads/ ... loadId=273
For Windows 9x in DOS mode use "Basic DOS-level utilties for use in Windows95 MS-DOS mode or a Windows 95 Command Prompt only boot" https://support.creative.com/downloads/ ... loadId=379
Thanks for the info ruben. I tried your suggestion, but unfortunately it has not resolved my issue. I'm still not getting CD audio.

Running MIXERSET from DOS shows that my CD volume is at max.

I found another issue though, the Windows CD player doesn't always work. Sometimes it plays the music, sometimes its just silent!

Something seems to be cutting CD audio off, and for DOS doesn't work at all.

Any help would be appreciated!
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ruben_balea
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Re: CD-DA / Redbook audio not working in DOS

Post by ruben_balea »

Then I don't know, I've little idea of how audio is extracted from data+audio CDs, but I remember about 15 years ago I was trying to set up an old 486 to use for old games and one game was missing a few bytes of conventional memory if it had the driver loaded from the CD drive, searching through driver repositories I found one that used much less base memory than the typical OAKCDROM.SYS and even less than the also usual VIDE-CDD.SYS but it wasn't able to read multi-session CD-ROMs, although I can't remember now if it didn't read them at all or if they were missing the audio, more recently I was trying drivers from various manufacturers and with one of them I was able to access the Windows 95 installation CD and view the files by doing DIR but couldn't open or copy them to another drive, MS-DOS said that there were no files with those names :roll: :?: :!:
DrakeEdgewater
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Re: CD-DA / Redbook audio not working in DOS

Post by DrakeEdgewater »

ruben_balea wrote: Mon 09 May, 2022 1:02 am To set the volume under DOS/Windows 3.1 you need "Sound Blaster 16/SB32/AWE32 Basic Disk for DOS/Windows 3.1 Installation" https://support.creative.com/downloads/ ... loadId=273
So I have a separate machine setup which is pure DOS 6.22. I installed the above drivers and CD music works!!

Therefore any DOS games with CD audio I won't use my Windows 98 build but my pure DOS one instead.

So happy this is working now, thanks for your help!
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ruben_balea
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Re: CD-DA / Redbook audio not working in DOS

Post by ruben_balea »

Interesting that Windows 98 caused that incompatibility or whatever :roll:
DrakeEdgewater
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Re: CD-DA / Redbook audio not working in DOS

Post by DrakeEdgewater »

Yeah it would be nice if everything was working under one system.

The DOS drivers had an installer while the Windows method was more manual. I may have got a step wrong. Will try it again and report back.
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Arjen42
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Re: CD-DA / Redbook audio not working in DOS

Post by Arjen42 »

DrakeEdgewater wrote: Thu 12 May, 2022 3:13 pm Yeah it would be nice if everything was working under one system.
Why would that be? What's wrong with having separate systems for games designed for different operating systems? (When you're emulating anyway.)
DrakeEdgewater
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Re: CD-DA / Redbook audio not working in DOS

Post by DrakeEdgewater »

Arjen42 wrote: Fri 13 May, 2022 1:06 pm
DrakeEdgewater wrote: Thu 12 May, 2022 3:13 pm Yeah it would be nice if everything was working under one system.
Why would that be? What's wrong with having separate systems for games designed for different operating systems? (When you're emulating anyway.)
:D Its not a major hassle of anything switching machines. It takes like 30 seconds to boot up (I love how realistic it is ;) )

Its more about the experience, like how I used run everything off a single Windows 98 box back in the old days.
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Arjen42
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Re: CD-DA / Redbook audio not working in DOS

Post by Arjen42 »

Ok, I guess it matters what kind of experience you're looking for. :D

I started in 1987 with a Amstrad PC1512 with two floppy drives and monochrome monitor. Now I can emulate this with a hard drive, the memory expansion, and a color monitor. I don't think PCem actually emulates the speed of the hard drive, so the I/O speed is actually limited by the emulated CPU. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

By the time I ran Windows 98 I wasn't interested anymore in playing DOS games. Currently there are only a few games from that era that I may want to play.

I really like DOS for its simplicity. You only need 3 files and the rest is optional. A big contrast to the all the operating systems that came after that.
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