Problem with Sound

[DJViking]

Anyone having problems with the sound. I am running MOO2 in dosbox and the sound is there, but sometimes there is some noice (not sure how to describe it, static crackling). Its a bit annoying.

Output from Dosbox
CONFIG:Loading primary settings from config file dosboxMOO2.conf
CONFIG:Loading additional settings from config file dosboxMOO2_single.conf
MIXER:Got different values from SDL: freq 44100, blocksize 1024
ALSA:Can't subscribe to MIDI port (65:0) nor (17:0)
MIDI:Opened device:none
DOSBox switched to max cycles, because of the setting: cycles=auto. If the game runs too fast try a fixed cycles amount in DOSBox's options.

[Hatman]

Publicado originalmente por DJViking:

DOSBox switched to max cycles, because of the setting: cycles=auto. If the game runs too fast try a fixed cycles amount in DOSBox's options.

That is the reason probably. max cycles can cause stuttering and instability.
Open the file dosboxMOO2.conf in the game folder.
Find the cycles=... line and set it to: cycles=fixed 50000
Should help. Otherwise experiment with values.

[Shneekey]

This also fixes a rather unpleasant memory leak which happens when cycles=max that will slowly start making the game lag more and more until it becomes nearly unplayable.

[wizardovoz]

Thank you, worked for me!

[orange808]

FWIW, the sound cracked and sometimes glitched out running it in DOS. That was running a patched version, retail disk, on a 486dx/Sound Blaster. I remember it happening on my Pentium 90 as well.

Accurate DosBox emulation would reproduce that.

[Nighty]

Similar issue here, except for me the sound just pops in and out... Shot a video of it to illustrate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2jOD5XJAbs

[Hatman]

Publicado originalmente por Nighty:

Similar issue here, except for me the sound just pops in and out... Shot a video of it to illustrate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2jOD5XJAbs

Can you post your dosbox.cfg?

[Nighty]

Publicado originalmente por Hatman:

Can you post your dosbox.cfg?

Here ya go: http://pastebin.com/HcFA7jf3

Already tried the suggestion above, but that didn't work. To be honest, I haven't really dug into the Dosbox configuration options yet. I'll install dosbox and check the man pages as well.

[Hatman]

Try these changes:

output=surface
core=normal
cputype=pentium_slow
cycles=fixed 25000

Try and play around with cycles if it's too slow/fast for your taste.

[Nighty]

Publicado originalmente por Hatman:

Try these changes:

output=surface
core=normal
cputype=pentium_slow
cycles=fixed 25000

Try and play around with cycles if it's too slow/fast for your taste.

Doesn't help. I even tried setting it to a known working hardware configuration of the time, a 486 DX100 (cputype=486_slow, cycles=fixed 100000) to no avail. Mucked around some more in the settings, setting stuff like the audio bitrate from 44100 to 22050, tried replacing the contents of the file with the contents of the Gog release's config file (found in this thread: https://www.gog.com/forum/master_of_orion_series/moo2_dosbox_config), nothing works.

The odd thing with the sound is, it stays perfectly in sync as far as I can tell with what's going on on-screen, as you can see in the intro. It just pops in and out at semi regular intervals.

[EDIT] Oh, why the output=surface? That means you can't play around with scalers from what I can tell from the documentation.

[EDIT 2] Even tried various other sound card configurations, both in the dosbox config and for the game through setsound.exe, still no luck.

[Hatman]

Publicado originalmente por Nighty:

Oh, why the output=surface? That means you can't play around with scalers from what I can tell from the documentation.

I usually get the best results in terms of screen orientation and aspect ratio using a combination of output=surface and fullresolution=original.

Scalers work just fine. I prefer hq2x or hq3x usually. But not for MOO1 and MOO2. It kinda makes the GUI harder to read.

No clue about your sound issue atm, sorry.

[DJViking]

For the record (which should have come sooner).
Setting "cycles=fixed 50000" helped in my case.

[Nighty]

Publicado originalmente por DJViking:

For the record (which should have come sooner).
Setting "cycles=fixed 50000" helped in my case.

Don't do diddly squat here though. ;)

But thanks everyone for the advice. I'll muck around with it some more, or play soundless instead. Apart from the intro (which is irrelevant for the rest of the gameplay) and perhaps some ending sequence (don't recall if MOO2 had one), sound is not necessary for this game anyway.

[Nighty]

The same settings on another computer work fine, go figure... Seems it's an issue specific to my homemade Steam Machine.

[lahtis]

I also have a sound problem. Game musics and all sound begin to crackle at some point. About 30min or 1 hour in playing. When im restarting game sounds are normal in about same time and begin to crackles at some point.

[AstralEnlightenment7]

Publicado originalmente por Nighty:

Publicado originalmente por DJViking:

For the record (which should have come sooner).
Setting "cycles=fixed 50000" helped in my case.

Don't do diddly squat here though. ;)

But thanks everyone for the advice. I'll muck around with it some more, or play soundless instead. Apart from the intro (which is irrelevant for the rest of the gameplay) and perhaps some ending sequence (don't recall if MOO2 had one), sound is not necessary for this game anyway.

TRY THIS:
Either increase or decrease your blocksize, I recommend decreasing it to start, maybe your sound is being delayed. If that makes it more crackle increase it, this may increase the delay between the action and sound but it could fix it.