WC4 with 95 patch in xp - sounds horrible!

[Unregistered]

i got nostalgic and installed WC4 (dos cd rom version) on my system. installed it from the cd in a dos prompt window in xp pro. i then added the win95 patch, set the shortcut for win95 compatibility mode, started it up, and did the initial setup. it's working almost flawlessly - video is clear and has good sound, gameplay is smooth, it even detected my joystick (logitech extreme 3d pro) without any problems and i'm using it side by side with a nostromo speedpad with all the keys mapped to both devices (beats the hell out of my old 2-button joystick setup).

there's just one problem... the in-flight sound is atrocious. it's flat mono - i have no stereo at all. it's been a while, but i swear that when i played it on my old p75 with an sb16, the in-flight audio was in stereo. it's not always in mono though. every once in a while, it pops through with some stereo separation for about a second or so, but it's agonizingly loud in my headphones. to top it all off, the in-flight music (which seems a lot blander than i remember, but maybe i've just been spoiled by modern game music) starts skipping badly after a while. all of this is making it very difficult to enjoy the game.

if this has already been addressed, please forgive me. i scoured through the tech support forum all the way back to mid-2002 and didn't see anything related to this.

here are some of my system specs:

athlon xp 3200+
shuttle an35n ultra mainboard with alc650 on-board sound (nforce2) & latest nvidia drivers
win xp pro sp2 (dx9.0c)
xfx fx5600 ultra 128mb vidcard w/ forceware 56.72 drivers

any help at all will be *greatly* appreciated.

 

[Sphynx]

Hey, I'm not trying to hijack the thread, but where can I get the DOS to windows 95/98 patch?

 

[Dyret]

Thou should try the download section.

 

[ChrisReid]

Well.. it's pretty much got to be the sound card I think. Not sure what other conflicts might cause that. You might try going back to older drivers and directx if you can. I wonder if some sort of extra codec you might have added is causing a conflict. Could you have some sort of media application open that's hijacking things?

 

[Unregistered]

i think i've figured it out. in a way, it was another media application. it has to do with the 3d sound environment settings and the graphic equalizer in the nvidia mixer. i disabled the environmental enhancement, which seems to have solved the problem with the volume spikes, and turning off the graphic eq stopped the music from stuttering so much. i've noticed that i have stereo sound - when a fighter flies past me, the sound does move from one speaker to the other, but the stereo separation's not great. at least now the music's smoother and i don't have random and sudden volume increases scaring the crap out of me and nearly blowing out my eardrums.