Duke Nukem 3D stuttering with Dreamblaster X1 \ VOGONS (2025)

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clueless1 wrote:

Have you tried lowering the number of voices? How about dropping the mixing rate? At least as troubleshooting steps.

Playing with 8-bit/16-bit mix rate and # of voices didn't seem to help much. Lowering the quality did - 22 KHz occasional stutter, 16 KHz almost gone, 11 KHz smooth.

Of course it sounds like crap the lower I go.

gerwin wrote:

The SB16 MPU interface is probably causing these stutters.

Anything I can do to help without reducing the quality of the digital audio?

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Try configuring the game without digital sound, just General MIDI. Do you still get issues?

Is there anything connected to the MIDI / Joystick port?

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PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Try configuring the game without digital sound, just General MIDI. Do you still get issues?

Is there anything connected to the MIDI / Joystick port?

Selected no Sound FX, but left it at General MIDI - no problems (have music, no sound FX).

Removed the daughterboard, but still left it at General MIDI - stutters (no music, have sound FX).

There's nothing connected to the Joystick port.

BIOS stuff I tried - still no go:
Disabled COM ports and LPT port.
Reserved IRQ 5, DMA 1 for ISA

Just tried out Mortal Kombat (floppy version). Set to Roland & SB - seems to work fine at first, then it started slowing down. Sound and music seem to cut out, then hard lock. -- Strike that - not hard lock - extremely slow! I can quit the fight and go into settings in this state, but it takes forever.

Thanks for chiming in, guys. Really appreciate the input. I'm worried there's something wrong with my SB16 card since it's happening even when the DB was removed. Might be the MPU401 interface?

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clueless1 wrote:

If you remove the X1 and set your music to FM, the stuttering goes away? Have you tried other SB drivers? I had some issues once with an SB16 Vibra (I was using drivers from Vogons archive), and when I tried drives downloaded straight from Creative Labs (they still post them), my problems went away.

I don't really have to physically remove the X1 - just set the game to use the FM synth (usually "Sound Blaster") instead of General MIDI. That would fix the problem.

I'll have to give that a try. I used the ones in the Vogons archive because I could just unzip them. The ones on Creative's site requires an install, and wouldn't let me install because it detected Windows 9x. This was before I learned I could use SETVER. I'm still not exactly familiar with that process though.

EDIT: And in case someone was about to ask, yes I'm in Real DOS Mode.

New game: Mortal Kombat II - set it to use Roland SCC1 + SB (the only setting I see that would use the X1) - works fine for a good while - no stuttering. Then it just straight up hard locks.

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clueless1 wrote:

I can zip up my c:\sb16 directory and send it to you if you want. It's from the Creative Labs site and already installed. You should just be able to drop it into your C drive and point your startup files to it.

That'd be great! I'll give it a go. Thanks!

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Does the machine have another game-port? Look in the BIOS to disable any on-board sound and MIDI options.

The Asus P3B-F doesn't have built in audio, MIDI options, or game port.

Also on another note, I am noticing both FM synth and GM are very quiet compared to the digital audio. GM (X1) is actually a lot quieter than FM synth. And this is even after playing in the MIXERSET.EXE. The difference to too large.

If I lower the volume for digital audio to match with the FM audio/GM audio, I have to crank my speaker volume up (which has an amp) and it's still not loud enough. Also because the CT2230 is a noisy card, I can hear the hiss.

UPDATE - more games tried:
Heretic is fine. I was expecting this to act like Duke since it's also a Build game.

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clueless1 wrote:

I emailed you through the forum. Please reply to the address I gave you and I'll send the driver folder.

Thanks. I emailed you back. I appreciate the help.

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GuyTechie wrote:

Also on another note, I am noticing both FM synth and GM are very quiet compared to the digital audio. GM (X1) is actually a lot quieter than FM synth. And this is even after playing in the MIXERSET.EXE. The difference to too large.

UPDATE - more games tried:
Heretic is fine. I was expecting this to act like Duke since it's also a Build game.

I have the same issue with my Aztech DB. It has to be turned up significantly to match digital audio.

Nitpick: Heretic is not Build. Did you try Hexen level 2?

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Weird - when I was in Windows (and selected the MIDI Out), it was working fine and sounding good. After all this experimentation, I exited out of DOS mode and now some of the instrument notes are all off key.

What the?

EDIT: Rebooted the PC and Win98 MIDI playback is fine again.

What the heck is going on here?

gdjacobs wrote:

GuyTechie wrote:

Also on another note, I am noticing both FM synth and GM are very quiet compared to the digital audio. GM (X1) is actually a lot quieter than FM synth. And this is even after playing in the MIXERSET.EXE. The difference to too large.

UPDATE - more games tried:
Heretic is fine. I was expecting this to act like Duke since it's also a Build game.

I have the same issue with my Aztech DB. It has to be turned up significantly to match digital audio.

Nitpick: Heretic is not Build. Did you try Hexen level 2?

I can't my copy of Hexen. Are you asking to test the hanging note issue? I'd actually like to test that, too. I don't know the command to do it though (I'll Google it when I find the install disks).

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clueless1 wrote:

I emailed you through the forum. Please reply to the address I gave you and I'll send the driver folder.

Thanks for taking your time to assist me with this, but the situation is the same. 🙁

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gdjacobs wrote:

This sounds a lot like hanging note, so it'd be smart to test for it. You can use the Hexen demo if you want. Run it with hexen -warp 2 from the command line.

Hexen doesn't seem to have a problem. Also, not having played Hexen before, I'm not familar with how the music is suppose to sound like. I don't think I would be able to pick out stray or hanging notes.

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^Don't worry, when it happens it will be quite obvious. Haven't checked but there may be some examples on youtube.

P.S. OK, this is from DOOM, but the effect/bug is similar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KglBIcDUlMc