Hmm, the faster DOSBox "interpretation" doesn't necessarily sound bad, though... I think I might even prefer it. 😉

I notice some debug log message about strange things going on with IRQ 5, so there might be a video-related timing issue.

Ski or Die intro sounds okay in SVN; seems about the right speed.

Here's a recording from Cloudschatze:

Featuring SN76496 "3-voice" tones, noise-channel drums, and 4-bit playback of PCM digital samples.
Audio recorded directly from a Tandy 1000 RL system, with additional stereo-chorus and EQ effects applied.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8_z_CI37JE

DOSBox has it right on 😀

krcroft wrote on 2021-08-01, 02:11:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8_z_CI37JE

DOSBox has it right on 😀

Very interesting. The sound output on my speakers (iMac) sounds slightly “rougher” but almost identical to that recording. However, I do hear a high pitched ring in my recording that is not in the video - does anyone else hear that? I think I’ll boot into Windows 10 to see if the ring occurs there too.

It seems that perhaps there was no default Tandy sound, and each model may have offered its own variations, depending on its specific chip sets and what the particular game made use of? I noted the following comment below the YouTube video:

“ The Tandy 1000 RL uses Tandy's PSSJ-2, "Bonanza" chip, which incorporates an NCR 8496 megacell, and is described as having a different noise-channel pattern than the TI variants.”

Unfortunately I only seem to have a standard Tandy 1000 or 1000HX available in PCem, not the model used for the recording in the video. I cannot actually get the emulated HX to boot at the moment. It makes me wonder whether the slower and softer playback was normal for the original Tandy 1000.

EDIT: I just tested in Windows 10 with the same DOSBox configuration, and the high pitched ringing sound I mentioned is even more pronounced.

You can get Skate or Die to play its samples properly in a fork of DOSBox which has the sampleaccurate patch applied. If the patch is complied into the fork, it works well when set to "true" with samples which play back on the Tandy or Adlib sound chips. It will corrupt PC Speaker sample playback, so it must be set to "false" with those games.

Great Hierophant wrote on 2021-08-01, 17:02:

You can get Skate or Die to play its samples properly in a fork of DOSBox which has the sampleaccurate patch applied. If the patch is complied into the fork, it works well when set to "true" with samples which play back on the Tandy or Adlib sound chips. It will corrupt PC Speaker sample playback, so it must be set to "false" with those games.

Thanks. Apparently DOSBox-X is the only current branch that supports this feature. I searched around on this forum and also Github, but could not find any diff patches for use with SVN. There are discussions from around the start of this year that indicate the code would have to be re-worked to make it possible to apply to SVN or other branches (as DOSBox-X's mixer is forked from an earlier branch of DOSBox). If anyone has successfully ported this feature to an SVN-compatible branch, please let me know. 😀

The other thing I have realized is that in Skate or Die, the intro music needs the "sampleaccurate" feature enabled, but the in-game events use standard PC speaker music. So if you use that feature you will get distorted music in the main game. Seems you cannot have accurate music for both at the same time, unless there is a future fix that prevents this patch from distorting the standard PC speaker output.