as I don't remember any crackling when I last tried this game, my take is that your onboard sound is just crack.. uh, crap...
Anyway, try to get latest drivers for this.

I dunno if the computer stores in your area let you do this, but most here in the US let you return a soundcard for a full refund even if it's opened, as long as it's within the certain amount of time the store's policy has for refunds. Try-And-Buy. Go buy an Audigy2 or some other gaming card and try it out.

Stiletto wrote:

I dunno if the computer stores in your area let you do this, but most here in the US let you return a soundcard for a full refund

Remember he's using the onboard sound, so the only alternative here is to buy a new card. Anyway, I would not recommed a new card before some extra testing.

DirectX 9.0 can be a problem, but you should also look for the usual suspects: hardware monitoring programs that check CPU temperature, fan speeds, etc, since thay usually present a problem to VDMSound. Do you have any programs like these running?

There's also a chance that you are using the default SB emulation provided by Windows XP. A simple way to be sure is to always set VDMSound to use IRQ 7 for the sound card (in the SoundBlaster properties tab) and then setting the game to use IRQ 7 too. Since the built-in SB emulation always uses IRQ5, if the game works with IRQ7 you know that VMDSound is working.

Another question: have you tried another DOS game that uses SB-16 for audio? Does it sound ok? We need to know if the problem occurs only in WC3 or if it happens with all games under VMDSound.

Regards,

So far no success 🙁

This is what I have tried:

• Fresh install of WinXP Home + Service Pack 1.
  OBS: This install came with DirectX 8.1.
• Installed NVIDIA nForce2 Unified Driver Package (UDP) 2.45 for sound, graphics, network, ...
• Installed VDMSound 2.1.0 beta, and created LaunchPad-shortcut for Wing Commander III.
• Configured for SB-16 and ran - got crackling.

Except for DirectX 8.1, this is essential the same as my current production setup (which has DX 9.0b).

• Installed the latest offical NVIDIA UDP 3.13 on top of UDP 2.45.
• Ran game - got crackling.

I had hoped that 3.13 would fix the crackling, but then again, NVIDIA has not been that succesfull with neither their audio drivers nor their IDE drivers. This has resulted in enthusiasts creating various "remixes", where hand-picked drivers from motherboard manufacturers has been combined into UDP's.

• Installed "Morpheusware Remix International" with audio driver 4.08.
• Ran game - got crackling.

Will try finding another game with either SB-16 or Pro support...
--
MiniMax - "Testing ... 1, 2, 3 ... testing ... crack, hiss, brrrrr"

Tried a couple of games. Most of them, using either SB-16 or SB Pro, worked fine: AfterLife by LucasArts, Battle Isle 2 by Blue Byte, and X-Wing by LucasArts.

But another game, Privateer 2: The Darkening by Origin (the same company that proceduced Wing Commander) also had major problems with the SB-16. It was not just crackling - it sounded more like a dentists drill hard at work - it was terrible. Switching to SB Pro gave excellent sound.

So, my hypothesis so far is that the engine used by Origin has major problems with VDMSound and the SB-16 emulation.

I do not know, if the problems could be solved by directing the game to use a different set of drivers? I do not quite understand what robertmo is doing with the drivers here. Anyone care to guess?
--
MiniMax
_________________
Athlon XP 2600+ Tbred B (@ 166 MHz/100%) | GF4 MX IGP (@ 128 MB) | AOpen DVD 1648/LKY | Philips JR12CDRW | Win XP Home (SP1)/UDP 2.45/ITB IDE | DOSBox 0.60 | Bochs 2.1

MiniMax wrote:

So, my hypothesis so far is that the engine used by Origin has major problems with VDMSound and the SB-16 emulation.

Or at least some major problems with VDMSound, SB-16 and your sound chip. From some reports in this site it seems that a few combinations of games and hardware eventually have problems, even I had problems before that nobody else had reported.

MiniMax wrote:

I do not know, if the problems could be solved by directing the game to use a different set of drivers? I do not quite understand what robertmo is doing with the drivers here. Anyone care to guess?

Must check the game first, but I believe robertmo was trying different driver s from Creative itself that are used by a few games. I'm not sure if WC3 uses some sort of "standard" driver (manufaturer-provided), but I'll check it later at home.

Finally, can you borrow another sound card from a friend and give it a try?

Regards,

Thanks for your continued interest Major G.

My problems with understanding robertmo solution is how the drivers enter into the equation of game/sound driver/virtual sound card/VDMS and the host sound system. I thought that VDMSound was a complete replacement for the driver/card combination, a replacement that in no way uses whatever drivers Creative orginally provided with their hardware. Or am I mistaken here? Can the game be statically linked with sound drivers for the supported cards, drivers that in turn accesses the I/O ports being virtualised by VDMSound? And will a SOUND variable, pointing to a directory with a different set of drivers and mixers override the statically linked drivers???

I don't fancy taking the PC apart for testing a different sound card. I would much more prefer to get a friend to install VDMSound and have him test the game.

I have a second option though. Instead of installing the NVIDIA drivers for their Audio Processing Unit (APU), I will install RealTek's ALC-650 drivers. They should provide basic AC-97 sound for Windows XP, ruling out the NVIDIA drivers. This approach has been used by others when the NVIDIA drivers refused to cooperate...
--
MiniMax

Bummer - Using the RealTek ALC-650/AC-97 drivers did nothing to improve the sound. It still crackles in "Wing Command III", and "Privateer 2: The Darkening" still sounds like a mad woodpecker.

MiniMax wrote:

My problems with understanding robertmo solution is how the drivers enter into the equation of game/sound driver/virtual sound card/VDMS and the host sound system. I thought that VDMSound was a complete replacement for the driver/card combination, a replacement that in no way uses whatever drivers Creative orginally provided with their hardware. Or am I mistaken here?

VDMSound emulates the original hardware of the SB sound cards, so you can make sounds sending commands to the emulated card the same way you did with a real one: reading and writing to I/O ports and sending data thru DMA. However, Creative presented developers with a set of drivers that would take care of these functions and present a more tradicional software API. In this case, using these drivers with VDMSound should have the same effect as using them with a real SB card.

Remember: drivers are only pieces of software to present an easy and standard way to talk to hardware, but in the end it's all about I/O ports, memory and interrupts.

MiniMax wrote:

Can the game be statically linked with sound drivers for the supported cards, drivers that in turn accesses the I/O ports being virtualised by VDMSound? And will a SOUND variable, pointing to a directory with a different set of drivers and mixers override the statically linked drivers???

In theory, yes, if the programmers that wrote the game decided to go this way. In the real world a few games did this, like robertmo discovered, but I believe the vast majority of games have built-in sound libraries/drivers that could not be easily replaced. From a quick look at WC3, I think there is no option to replace it's internal libs.

MiniMax wrote:

I don't fancy taking the PC apart for testing a different sound card. I would much more prefer to get a friend to installe VDMSound and have him test the game.

Looks like a good idea, too. Good luck.

Regards,

MajorGrubert wrote:

..., Creative presented developers with a set of drivers that would take care of these functions and present a more tradicional software API. In this case, using these drivers with VDMSound should have the same effect as using them with a real SB card.

Ah - makes sense 😀 I guess then, that only if the game's installation instructions talk about the SOUND variable (and where the Creative drivers are located), there would be a chance of the game using that API.

If not, the game drives the hardware (real or emulated) directly, using information about base address, IRQ, and DMA derived from the BLASTER variable, or from a game/setup-specific configuration file.
--
MiniMax

Looked at the .wav file (thanks). Short pieces of the wave are periodically zeroed out (16 or less samples out of 1000 or more - not inserted, but virutally written over), which explains the crackling - very likely the game "racing" with VDMS on the audio buffer. Any way in the game's setup of altering the buffer size? I know it's hacking, but when the data comes like this into VDMSound there isn't much else to do. What puzzles me is that the same problem would occur with DosBox, but not with SoundFX.

V.

vladr wrote:

Looked at the .wav file (thanks).

You are welcome. For reference, I am attaching a copy of the troubleshooting/diagnostics log. I spotted only one anormality in the log:

1@E - 07:13:32.839 - SBController
2	Attempted to write to an unknown mixer register (register = 0x83,
3	value = 0x0b)

vladr wrote:

Any way in the game's setup of altering the buffer size?

No, just the usual: Base address, IRQ's and DMA's.

I have searched high and low for anything that resembles this problem, but I haven't really found anything. The only thing worth mentioning, is a little note in an official Electric Arts help text:

7.5 Crackling sounds in SVGA […]
Show full quote

7.5 Crackling sounds in SVGA

In SVGA, you hear crackling/static/popping sounds from the sound card. First, make sure you do not an IRQ or DMA conflict.

7.5.1 Cirrus Logic GD-542x

If the you have the Cirrus Logic GD-542x video card, you may download 542XVGA.EXE from the Cirrus Logic BBS. It upgrades the video BIOS to 1.41.

7.5.2 Orchid Kelvin 64

If you have the Orchid Kelvin 64 there is currently no solution for this problem. We are in contact with Orchid working on a solution.

I tried running the game in VGA mode (argh - looks horrible!), but it made no difference at all.
--
MiniMax

vladr wrote:

... - very likely the game "racing" with VDMS on the audio buffer.

Is there a tool I can use to slow down the game, without affecting the speed of VDMSound (allowing it to finish/empty the audio buffer well ahead of the game)?

SpeedSet from the VDMSound package seems like a natural candidate. I also saw something called Turbo mentioned in the Windows forum.

Recommandations anyone? If not, I will just go ahead and try them out 😅
--
MiniMax

Sorry, but it doesn't work like that. Slowing down the game (or speeding it up) won't make a difference.

Cheers,
V.

Confirmed! Tried SpeedSet and Mo'Slo. No effect whatsoever.

Also tried using the WinXP Task Manager to set the priority of the NTVDM process. Tried lowest, highest and real-time. No difference.

Oh well...
--
MiniMax

Not being deterred by the lack of succes so far, I tried to lower my Front Side Bus (FSB) from its normal 166/333 MHz to just 66/133 MHz - no joy 🙁

Edit: I will update the initial post with the extra (failed) steps taken so far.

As I said, altering your game speed (through whatever means, be they software, hardware, DOS-level, Windows-level) will most, most, *most* likely not help a single teeny-weeny bit.

V.

I never really doubted you, vladr, but it was easy and painless to try.

... kind of old thread... but I believe it's still not resolved... and I have news.

... I too have the onboard nforce sound card... (A7N8X Deluxe motherboard) and I got the crackling (in pretty much every game I play... but especially in WC3).

anyway...
Yesterday I disabled the onboard nForce card, and installed my old trusty SBLive! Value in it's stead... still got crackling.

I tried the DSP 1.05 / "soundblaster Compatible" you mentioned and yeah, didn't get any crackling... but on the flipside, I also didn't get stereo... soo... eff... also when I tried that with Mech2, I still got crackling there.

that's all.

- Eleriel