#510 Worms audio issue

[James-F]

In Worms there is an issue with PCM audio (worms speech) playback which makes it sound "stuttery" or "clicky" for a lack of better words., but NOT when SB1 is selected in dosbox configuration file, only SB2 and above have this issue.
This does not happen on real hardware, tested with real SBPro2 and SB16.

I have many guesses (DSP version, HDMA, sampling rate) but I only guess.
Can someone confirm?

[krcroft]

Yes, I've reproduced this with DOSBox-SVN r4253 using the following for research: https://archive.org/details/Worms_-_Game_for_MS-DOS_OceanENG Once the game starts, I went into Game Options > Audio Settings > Test Effects to play the voice samples.

The rate and bit-depth sound correct, but the number of samples (stereo vs mono?) appears incorrect. Maybe the game only uses mono effects, which works fine for SB1, but either fails to duplicate them (fake-stereo) for newer sound blasters or perhaps doesn't set mono-mode (if that's possible).

On the other hand, configuring Gravis Ultrasound works perfectly, although I had to manually configure it inside SETUP.EXE using the following:

[gus]
gus=true
gusrate=48000
gusbase=240
gusirq=5
gusdma=3

[dos]
xms=true
ems=false
umb=true

[speaker]
pcspeaker=false
tandy=off
disney=false

[sblaster]
sbtype=none

[James-F]

Yes, the game samples play in stereo during gameplay and screen position but they are clicky.
Strangely, SB2 is mono only but still has this problem.
I dont' know what the game does for stereo but real hardware does not have this problems.
So it appears DOSBox doesn't handle Worms sound output correctly.