Re: Sound support (2), using hardware directly

Re: Sound support (2), using hardware directly

[Stas Sergeev]

Hello.

Julius Schwartzenberg wrote:
> I have ran it succesfully on my AMD Athlon @ 1GHz, and I know there are 
> softsynths that need much less, although not for Linux.
As I said, you can tune timidity++
to work even on 386, just disable
some effects processing.
There are also the alternative
synthesizers, like fluidsynth,
as someone pointed out to me, but
I am not sure if they work as an
alsa sequencer backend, or have
the server interface for midid.

> running a softsynth inside Dosemu...
That is possible for FM synth, but
you really don't want to distribute
the instrument patchsets with dosemu.

> Well, the problem seemed to be at the time that the (OPL3) driver from 
> ALSA was conflicting with the OPL3 being accessed directly.
In this case simply not loading the
OPL3 driver from ALSA would help,
but IIRC it doesn't.

Re: Sound support (2), using hardware directly

[Julius Schwartzenberg]

Stas Sergeev wrote:
> Julius Schwartzenberg wrote:
> 
>> I have ran it succesfully on my AMD Athlon @ 1GHz, and I know there 
>> are softsynths that need much less, although not for Linux.
> 
> As I said, you can tune timidity++
> to work even on 386, just disable
> some effects processing.
Ah, OK. I was more thinking of i386 and compiling Timidity without 
special instructions for P4.

> There are also the alternative
> synthesizers, like fluidsynth,
> as someone pointed out to me, but
> I am not sure if they work as an
> alsa sequencer backend, or have
> the server interface for midid.

I think I'll just try Timidity :)

>> running a softsynth inside Dosemu...
> 
> That is possible for FM synth, but
> you really don't want to distribute
> the instrument patchsets with dosemu.

This wasn't meant for distribution with Dosemu. I also do not know any 
FM synths that run in Dos. I've just tried WinGroove in Dosemu (which I 
haven't been able to run for a long time) and it didn't seem to run that 
bad!
I still haven't been able to install the SB16 drivers for MS Windows 
though. (I'll probably have to get them of a real machine, since those 
annoying Creative installers think too much.) Those might improve the 
quality even more.

>> Well, the problem seemed to be at the time that the (OPL3) driver from 
>> ALSA was conflicting with the OPL3 being accessed directly.
> 
> In this case simply not loading the
> OPL3 driver from ALSA would help,
> but IIRC it doesn't.

Yes, but it would be nice to still have sequencer support for other 
Linux apps too similar to how MS Windows seems to be able to do it.
Also not loading the OPL3 driver doesn't seem to be possible, since the 
plain sounddriver seems to have a dependency on the OPL3 driver. At 
least on snd_opl3_lib. I do not know how serious this is though. Also 
what snd_opl3_synth does and what snd_opl3_lib does and why they're not 
combined, is not clear to me.
I was thinking myself of some sort of special interface for applications 
like Dosemu, but if there already is full hardware access that doesn't 
really sound like an improvement.
Maybe the OPL3 would just need some initialization first before it would 
work with most games, so it gets in the state where it is also when no 
driver has loaded. Then it might be possible to have some sort of Dos 
program that runs inside Dosemu before running the game to do it .

Thanks,
Julius

Re: Sound support (2), using hardware directly

[John R. Sowden]

On Saturday 23 July 2005 04:16, Julius Schwartzenberg wrote:
> Stas Sergeev wrote:
> > Julius Schwartzenberg wrote:
> >> I have ran it succesfully on my AMD Athlon @ 1GHz, and I know there
> >> are softsynths that need much less, although not for Linux.
> >
> > As I said, you can tune timidity++
> > to work even on 386, just disable
> > some effects processing.
>
> Ah, OK. I was more thinking of i386 and compiling Timidity without
> special instructions for P4.
>
> > There are also the alternative
> > synthesizers, like fluidsynth,
> > as someone pointed out to me, but
> > I am not sure if they work as an
> > alsa sequencer backend, or have
> > the server interface for midid.
>
> I think I'll just try Timidity :)
>
> >> running a softsynth inside Dosemu...
> >
> > That is possible for FM synth, but
> > you really don't want to distribute
> > the instrument patchsets with dosemu.
>
> This wasn't meant for distribution with Dosemu. I also do not know any
> FM synths that run in Dos. I've just tried WinGroove in Dosemu (which I
> haven't been able to run for a long time) and it didn't seem to run that
> bad!
> I still haven't been able to install the SB16 drivers for MS Windows
> though. (I'll probably have to get them of a real machine, since those
> annoying Creative installers think too much.) Those might improve the
> quality even more.
>
> >> Well, the problem seemed to be at the time that the (OPL3) driver from
> >> ALSA was conflicting with the OPL3 being accessed directly.
> >
> > In this case simply not loading the
> > OPL3 driver from ALSA would help,
> > but IIRC it doesn't.
>
> Yes, but it would be nice to still have sequencer support for other
> Linux apps too similar to how MS Windows seems to be able to do it.
> Also not loading the OPL3 driver doesn't seem to be possible, since the
> plain sounddriver seems to have a dependency on the OPL3 driver. At
> least on snd_opl3_lib. I do not know how serious this is though. Also
> what snd_opl3_synth does and what snd_opl3_lib does and why they're not
> combined, is not clear to me.
> I was thinking myself of some sort of special interface for applications
> like Dosemu, but if there already is full hardware access that doesn't
> really sound like an improvement.
> Maybe the OPL3 would just need some initialization first before it would
> work with most games, so it gets in the state where it is also when no
> driver has loaded. Then it might be possible to have some sort of Dos
> program that runs inside Dosemu before running the game to do it .

Since this thread has worked it way to "Dosemu talking directly to hardware", 
I am interested in using my linux/dosemu box to connect to a local area 
network that runs DOS only (we don't do windows).  Now I have to either boot 
into DOS on my linux box via grub or, using a kvm, switch to a different 
computer.  Neither of these options allow me to share data to/from 
Linux/Dosemu and DOS.  My net is "Little Big Lan".  It have served me well 
for about 10 years, but I will grudgingly let it go if I have to.

tia,

-- 
John R. Sowden
AMERICAN SENTRY SYSTEMS, INC.
Residential & Commercial Alarm Service
UL Listed Central Station
Serving the San Francisco Bay Area Since 1967
mail@americansentry.net
www.americansentry.net

Re: Sound support (2), using hardware directly

[Stas Sergeev]

Hello.

Julius Schwartzenberg wrote:
> Do you think it would be possible to allow complete direct access to 
> the Sound Blaster card in Dosemu, so that I could set the mixer from 
> Dosemu?
Yes, this must be possible.
You won't hear any sound in
most cases, but the mixer will
work, and so will the OPL3. Just
don't forget to tell your DOS
programs that it is the Adlib,
not SB, or the detection will fail.
Actually, even the sound will
work in some very old games like
"Another World", which do not use
the DMA.

Re: Sound support (2), using hardware directly

[Julius Schwartzenberg]

Stas Sergeev wrote:
>> Do you think it would be possible to allow complete direct access to 
>> the Sound Blaster card in Dosemu, so that I could set the mixer from 
>> Dosemu?
> 
> Yes, this must be possible.
> You won't hear any sound in
> most cases, but the mixer will
> work, and so will the OPL3. Just
> don't forget to tell your DOS
> programs that it is the Adlib,
> not SB, or the detection will fail.
> Actually, even the sound will
> work in some very old games like
> "Another World", which do not use
> the DMA.

I've been trying to get this to work, but I haven't succeded so far. 
I've added an extra $_ports line for the 0x220 range of ports and I'm 
passing IRQ 5. (At boot-up I see this one is assigned to the card.) It 
seems that the card still needs some extra initialization before it will 
work though. I've got the DOS driver working on a Dos partition, but 
loading Linux after that with linld (loadlin doesn't seems to work with 
my kernel), the sound is gone again in Dosemu. The mixer I'm using isn't 
able to detect the card anymore.
I don't know if it would be possible to do the initialization from 
within Dosemu, but I think that would require to much direct hardware 
access.

Julius

Re: Sound support (2), using hardware directly

[Stas Sergeev]

Hello.

John R. Sowden wrote:
> Since this thread has worked it way to "Dosemu talking directly to hardware", 
> I am interested in using my linux/dosemu box to connect to a local area 
> network that runs DOS only (we don't do windows).
This have nothing to do with
the direct hardware access.
Please refer to the dosemu
documentation to find out how
to set up the network access
under dosemu.

Re: Sound support (2), using hardware directly

[Stas Sergeev]

Hello.

Julius Schwartzenberg wrote:
> Also not loading the OPL3 driver doesn't seem to be possible, since the 
> plain sounddriver seems to have a dependency on the OPL3 driver.
But as a test, you can just not
load the sound drivers at all,
disable the SB emulation in dosemu,
open the Adlib ports, and see if
that works.

Re: Sound support (2), using hardware directly

[Julius Schwartzenberg]

Stas Sergeev wrote:
>> Also not loading the OPL3 driver doesn't seem to be possible, since 
>> the plain sounddriver seems to have a dependency on the OPL3 driver.
> 
> But as a test, you can just not
> load the sound drivers at all,
> disable the SB emulation in dosemu,
> open the Adlib ports, and see if
> that works.

I had already tried this on my laptop, but that didn't work, probably 
because of mixer problems. I indeed hadn't tried it yet with my AWE, but 
it seems to have the same problem. The OPL3 does get detected in Dosemu, 
but I can't hear anything at all.
I also tried moving just the OPL3 modules away and see what would happen 
then, but that caused sb-awe to have several unresolved symbols.
Do you think it would be possible to allow complete direct access to the 
Sound Blaster card in Dosemu, so that I could set the mixer from Dosemu?

Julius

Re: Sound support (2), using hardware directly

[Stas Sergeev]

Hello.

Julius Schwartzenberg wrote:
> to have both at the same time. My laptop does have hardware mixing, but 
> it isn't very fast (Pentium III 500MHz, 128MB RAM), so I don't know how 
> fast a softsynth will work.
Softsynth involves timidity++,
which requires ~P4 by default,
but can be tuned even for 386
I think.

> Yes I noticed your pc-speaker driver in ALSA :)
Yes, but the kernel interface
for it is still not in the kernel,
thats the problem.

> Is the goal really to get full sound and music from Dosemu through a 
> plain pc-speaker?
The goal is to make it compatible
with the modern sound systems like
alsa, and with the cheap soundcards
without the HW mixing and midi. The
pc-speaker, being the one of such a
cards, will work just in case, but
for me it is probably more important
than any other cards out there:)

> I understand the current OPL3 modules aren't suitable to be used in 
> this case?
Of course.

> I personally indeed do not really care about needing root access, 
> so a working solution using $_ports would work for me. Would you 
> recommend sending an e-mail to the ALSA mailing list about this?
About that the $_ports doesn't work
very well for the native OPL3? I
don't think they'll help here.

Re: Sound support (2), using hardware directly

[Julius Schwartzenberg]

Stas Sergeev wrote:
> Softsynth involves timidity++,
> which requires ~P4 by default,
> but can be tuned even for 386
> I think.

I have ran it succesfully on my AMD Athlon @ 1GHz, and I know there are 
softsynths that need much less, although not for Linux. Hmm, this gives 
me an idea..., running a softsynth inside Dosemu... :) This probably 
won't work for games though.

>> Yes I noticed your pc-speaker driver in ALSA :)
> 
> Yes, but the kernel interface
> for it is still not in the kernel,
> thats the problem.
> 
>> Is the goal really to get full sound and music from Dosemu through a 
>> plain pc-speaker?
> 
> The goal is to make it compatible
> with the modern sound systems like
> alsa, and with the cheap soundcards
> without the HW mixing and midi. The
> pc-speaker, being the one of such a
> cards, will work just in case, but
> for me it is probably more important
> than any other cards out there:)

Hehe, it would be really interesting to see how well this will work. I 
haven't tried your driver yet (but I definetaly will), but I remember 
that the pc-speaker driver in BeOS was pretty good. Also sometimes the 
pc-speaker is somehow wired to the soundcard too, in those cases the 
quality isn't even too bad.

>> I understand the current OPL3 modules aren't suitable to be used in 
>> this case?
> 
> Of course.
> 
>> I personally indeed do not really care about needing root access, so a 
>> working solution using $_ports would work for me. Would you recommend 
>> sending an e-mail to the ALSA mailing list about this?
> 
> About that the $_ports doesn't work
> very well for the native OPL3? I
> don't think they'll help here.

Well, the problem seemed to be at the time that the (OPL3) driver from 
ALSA was conflicting with the OPL3 being accessed directly. I've now 
verified that this problem occurs on another system with different 
hardware too. It probably isn't a Dosemu problem either, so this points 
to the ALSA driver. I don't think it can be called a bug in the ALSA 
driver, but maybe it would be possible to support cases such as these in 
the driver somehow?

Thanks,
Julius

Re: Sound support (2), using hardware directly

[Stas Sergeev]

Hello.

Julius Schwartzenberg wrote:
> The current system seems to work pretty well for me
It doesn't even work with ALSA.
Also, your AWE probably have the
hardware mixing, but for those
with the cheap sound cards, it
is not possible to get the midi
together with sound (provided they
do not have the wave-table too).
I myself can't get this to work on
my pc-speaker, and that really annoyed
me enough to start writing the new
code. Now as for the DOS programs:
FT2 doesn't work, sound in DOOM
stutters, sound in Aladdin have a
big latencies, etc. It is not very
good.

> While OPL3 emulation would be really nice, wouldn't it be better to 
> implement support for real OPL3 chips and emulate and OPL3 at another 
> level in the system if one isn't availlable?
Problematic. Access to the real OPL3
will require root or the kernel module.
And then you can just use $_ports to
get this working that way, no need to
write anything (yes, I know it doesn't
work for you right now, but thats a
different problem). So the real value
is to have the good OPL3 emulation.

> Then also other
> applications such as FreeSCI and
> ScummVM would be able to make use of
> it.
They all use the MAME OPL3 emulation
engine. I don't think they'll want
something else. And really, having
the OPL3 emulation system-wide doesn't
sound sane to me - this is too specific
to the old-PC emulators.

> About the new system. If the new code isn't comparable to the current 
> code yet, maybe release 1.4 of Dosemu should still contain the old 
> code?
Noone knows when 1.4 will be released.

> I'm really looking forward to the new stuff.
You will get it and the sound code
is not even the main part.

Re: Sound support (2), using hardware directly

[Julius Schwartzenberg]

Stas Sergeev wrote:
>> The current system seems to work pretty well for me
> 
> It doesn't even work with ALSA.
> Also, your AWE probably have the
> hardware mixing, but for those
> with the cheap sound cards, it
> is not possible to get the midi
> together with sound (provided they
> do not have the wave-table too).

My AWE doesn't have hardware mixing, but the wavetable indeed allows me 
to have both at the same time. My laptop does have hardware mixing, but 
it isn't very fast (Pentium III 500MHz, 128MB RAM), so I don't know how 
fast a softsynth will work.

> I myself can't get this to work on
> my pc-speaker, and that really annoyed
> me enough to start writing the new
> code. Now as for the DOS programs:
> FT2 doesn't work, sound in DOOM
> stutters, sound in Aladdin have a
> big latencies, etc. It is not very
> good.

Yes I noticed your pc-speaker driver in ALSA :)
Is the goal really to get full sound and music from Dosemu through a 
plain pc-speaker?
I know that the current sound support has many problems. I used to have 
many problems getting sound to work at all on real hardware though and 
several games that Dosemu runs with good sound, do not work in MS 
Windows 9x with sound for example. Which is why I am considering the 
Dosemu sound to work pretty well for me. I know there are many problem 
with it though and having even better sound support would be great of 
course!
I was able to fix the latency problem in Aladdin btw by changing a value 
in my dosemu.conf. I believe I have also mailed about that at some point.

>> While OPL3 emulation would be really nice, wouldn't it be better to 
>> implement support for real OPL3 chips and emulate and OPL3 at another 
>> level in the system if one isn't availlable?
> 
> Problematic. Access to the real OPL3
> will require root or the kernel module.
> And then you can just use $_ports to
> get this working that way, no need to
> write anything (yes, I know it doesn't
> work for you right now, but thats a
> different problem). So the real value
> is to have the good OPL3 emulation.

I understand the current OPL3 modules aren't suitable to be used in this 
case? I personally indeed do not really care about needing root access, 
so a working solution using $_ports would work for me. Would you 
recommend sending an e-mail to the ALSA mailing list about this?

>> Then also other
>> applications such as FreeSCI and
>> ScummVM would be able to make use of
>> it.
> 
> They all use the MAME OPL3 emulation
> engine. I don't think they'll want
> something else. And really, having
> the OPL3 emulation system-wide doesn't
> sound sane to me - this is too specific
> to the old-PC emulators.

OK, that indeed makes sense. I could imagine having a system-wide 
library though (AdPlug maybe?) so that it would be more easy to maintain 
the emulator.

>> About the new system. If the new code isn't comparable to the current 
>> code yet, maybe release 1.4 of Dosemu should still contain the old code?
> 
> Noone knows when 1.4 will be released.
> 
>> I'm really looking forward to the new stuff.
> 
> You will get it and the sound code
> is not even the main part.

Woa, I'm really curious now.... :D

Thanks again for all the good stuff!

Julius

Re: Sound support (2), using hardware directly

[Stas Sergeev]

Hello.

Julius Schwartzenberg wrote:
> Yes, I am aware of the MIDI support in Dosemu, but I thought it was 
> only for General Midi compatibility.
No. On the software synth side, midid
have the -m option which will give you
some basic mt32 support.
As for the directly passing the midi
stream to the wavetable - this is also
possible and described, and will allow
you to use your AWE synth fully, provided
it all goes via the mpu-401 in a
pass-through mode (almost always this is
the case).
So you can try and see if there are any
differences with what you now have - there
shouldn't be, but you won't need root,
which is very important in some cases.

> Sounds great! I'll watch the Dosemu
> development and try things out when 
> they get released :)
Well, the primary goal is to design the
very simple but robust sound subsystem
from zero, so that it won't depend on
OSS, but can work also with ALSA and
anything, and so that it can work with
many more DOS progs than the current one
does. But the OPL3, again, is not in the
list of the primary targets:)
Of course porting the MAME OPL3 emulator
to the planned sound system must be easy,
but we'll see where this all will end up.
It will probably take some time before
something can be released though - the
main problem is that the current code
also happened to work somehow, and the
replacement is possible only when the new
code matches the current one in the
functionality, which can take long enough.

Re: Sound support (2), using hardware directly

[Julius Schwartzenberg]

Stas Sergeev wrote:
>> Yes, I am aware of the MIDI support in Dosemu, but I thought it was 
>> only for General Midi compatibility.
> 
> No. On the software synth side, midid
> have the -m option which will give you
> some basic mt32 support.
> As for the directly passing the midi
> stream to the wavetable - this is also
> possible and described, and will allow
> you to use your AWE synth fully, provided
> it all goes via the mpu-401 in a
> pass-through mode (almost always this is
> the case).
> So you can try and see if there are any
> differences with what you now have - there
> shouldn't be, but you won't need root,
> which is very important in some cases.

Ah, I already suspected this. I'll try this out at some point and see if 
I'm able to hear a difference.

> Well, the primary goal is to design the
> very simple but robust sound subsystem
> from zero, so that it won't depend on
> OSS, but can work also with ALSA and
> anything, and so that it can work with
> many more DOS progs than the current one
> does. But the OPL3, again, is not in the
> list of the primary targets:)
> Of course porting the MAME OPL3 emulator
> to the planned sound system must be easy,
> but we'll see where this all will end up.
> It will probably take some time before
> something can be released though - the
> main problem is that the current code
> also happened to work somehow, and the
> replacement is possible only when the new
> code matches the current one in the
> functionality, which can take long enough.

The current system seems to work pretty well for me, although it seems 
to soundquality could be a little bit higher in certain cases.
While OPL3 emulation would be really nice, wouldn't it be better to 
implement support for real OPL3 chips and emulate and OPL3 at another 
level in the system if one isn't availlable? Then also other 
applications such as FreeSCI and ScummVM would be able to make use of it.

About the new system. If the new code isn't comparable to the current 
code yet, maybe release 1.4 of Dosemu should still contain the old code? 
After that I think the development version could be switched over to the 
new code, even if it's not fully ready yet. Then it would already get 
more testing and it might be easier for development. It shouldn't be a 
big problem if a development version/tree has regressions.

I'm really looking forward to the new stuff.
Thanks,

Julius

Re: Sound support (2), using hardware directly

[Stas Sergeev]

Hello.

Julius Schwartzenberg wrote:
> Is anyone else using a similar setup?
No.

> cards and it's wavetable for MIDI,
> but is the way I described this the 
> way to do it in this case?
In principle - not. MIDI can be achieved
by the more legitimate means.
sound-usage.txt describes many ways of
setting up midi under dosemu. That
includes the software synth and the
wavetable access ways, so you really
should have a look.

> be near perfect, but I'm really
> looking forward to have OPL3 support 
> within Dosemu :)
I think it will soon be there. At
least a lot of work is being done
in the sound area right now.

Re: Sound support (2), using hardware directly

[Julius Schwartzenberg]

Thanks for your mail.

Stas Sergeev wrote:
> In principle - not. MIDI can be achieved
> by the more legitimate means.
> sound-usage.txt describes many ways of
> setting up midi under dosemu. That
> includes the software synth and the
> wavetable access ways, so you really
> should have a look.

Yes, I am aware of the MIDI support in Dosemu, but I thought it was only 
for General Midi compatibility. With the current setup, I am able to 
choose AWE32 in the Duke Nukem 3D setup for music. I don't know if there 
is a big difference between a GM device and an AWE device tbough other 
than that they use different drivers.

>> be near perfect, but I'm really
>> looking forward to have OPL3 support within Dosemu :)
> 
> I think it will soon be there. At
> least a lot of work is being done
> in the sound area right now.

Sounds great! I'll watch the Dosemu development and try things out when 
they get released :)

Thanks,
Julius

Sound support (2), using hardware directly

[Julius Schwartzenberg]

Hi,

At some point there was a thread in which I was looking into using the 
OPL3 in my laptop with Dosemu. This only worked somewhat, the sound 
could only be partially be heard.

I've now set up a new Dosemu installation on another system for testing. 
It contains a Sound Blaster AWE64. I've currently installed Dosemu CVS 
from 17 July 2005.

With the following ports setting:
$_ports = "device /dev/snd/seq fast range 0x388 0x38b"
I get the same result as I got on my laptop with the OPL3 sound only 
partially working.

I thought it would also be an idea to look into using the wavetable 
stuff of the card directly from Dosemu. It seems the following port 
settings achieve this:
$_ports = $_ports, " device /dev/snd/midiC0D0 fast range 0x330 0x331"
$_ports = $_ports, " device /dev/null fast range 0x620 0x623"
$_ports = $_ports, " device /dev/snd/midiC0D1 fast range 0xa20 0xa23"
$_ports = $_ports, " device /dev/snd/midiC0D2 fast range 0xe20 0xe23"

This allows me to have pretty good music in Duke Nukem 3D :)
I haven't tried it from pure Dos yet, but it sound pretty good already. 
Also it seems I need to load a soundbank first before any MIDI plays at 
all and I haven't got the original ones from Creative, so I'm using one 
I downloaded somewhere.
Is anyone else using a similar setup? I don't know much about the AWE 
cards and it's wavetable for MIDI, but is the way I described this the 
way to do it in this case?

I'm still hoping to get OPL3 to work too though. Since the problem 
occurs on two pretty different systems, it isn't a problem specific to 
my laptop. Both systems probably use the same driver for OPL in ALSA though.
I thought that with the Sound Blaster, it might be easier to test it 
without the Linux driver, since it might be easier to get the Dos driver 
to work inside Dosemu. Could anyone comment on the possibility to use a 
Sound Blaster card completely from within Dosemu?

It would be really nice to have good sound support in Dosemu. The combo 
I have with the Dosemu Sound Blaster emulation and the AWE midi seems to 
be near perfect, but I'm really looking forward to have OPL3 support 
within Dosemu :)

Thanks in advance,
Julius