DOS ain't dead

Greetings, Good People of DOS!

My HDA sound card doesn't work with this version of MPlayer when I use the well known WSS library, but it works with AU and it took my attention, as it supports both my internal speakers and the output jack. HX and some new experimental stuff only support the out jack. I tried to find anything the library, but nothing about it on the internet. Does anyone know anything about it?

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DOS isn't about why. It's about why not.

> Greetings, Good People of DOS!
>
> My HDA sound card doesn't work with this version of MPlayer when I use the
> well known WSS library, but it works with AU and it took my attention, as
> it supports both my internal speakers and the output jack. HX and some new
> experimental stuff only support the out jack. I tried to find anything the
> library, but nothing about it on the internet. Does anyone know anything
> about it?

I can find nothing about Kostylev's audio library, either. I do not even know what "AU" stands for. Incidently, my HDA soundcard Connexant HD Audio devid= HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&CTLR_VEN_8086&VEN_14F1&DEV_510F seems to work but I get no sound either with WSS or AU libraries. I suspect it is a problem with the speaker and headphone output methods, but using Mpxplay, the same behavior exists even while using -scc, and sds options to enable speaker or headphone output. Seemingly detects the soundcard and plays fine, but no audible sound produced. Tweaking BIOS settings also produces no result, either.


I'm interested for years in trying to incorporate Kostvlev's library into other programs (example Allegro programs which use its obsolete sound drivers) but do not know if the AU library is available anywhere, in Portable C code, or any other language.

I don't believe that LIBAU is a standalone sound library. More likely it is a kind of wrapper for WSS.
If you look at the binary of MPLAYER.EXE you will find messages originating from WSS and messages from Allegro but no any other.
Sure, the mysterious LIBAU can be very silent and leaves no text messages but I don't believe that.
Maybe is the LIBAU just a modification of LIBAO which is a sound wrapper for various sound libraries.

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DOS-u-akbar!

> I tried to find anything the library, but nothing about it on the internet.
> Does anyone know anything about it?

I'm not sure Michael Kostylev is interested in end user support. In other words, I don't know how to contact him, and he's seemingly always AWOL, to say the least. (Not blaming, not complaining, just saying, he's always busy/missing.)

Curl's website always lists him under Downloads -> DOS, i.e. https://curl.haxx.se/download.html#DOS (which points to a direct download link based upon here, which is almost always down: "404 Not Found", "nginx/1.10.2"). "The most recent stable [Curl] version is 7.70.0, released on 29th of April 2020."

So maybe he's in contact with Curl maintainers? Or not! Either way, that's all I know. (I only have older Curl builds of his, as mentioned in another thread.)

> Greetings, Good People of DOS!
>
> My HDA sound card doesn't work with this version of MPlayer when I use the
> well known WSS library, but it works with AU and it took my attention, as
> it supports both my internal speakers and the output jack. HX and some new
> experimental stuff only support the out jack. I tried to find anything the
> library, but nothing about it on the internet. Does anyone know anything
> about it?


Please see this old post of mine: http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=16121. I don't know of any "sound library" by Michael Kostylev.

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Glory to God for all things

> I'm interested for years in trying to incorporate Kostvlev's library into
> other programs (example Allegro programs which use its obsolete sound
> drivers) but do not know if the AU library is available anywhere, in
> Portable C code, or any other language.

I don't know to what "Kostvlev's library" do you refer, but I know that my reply to you (which you can re-read by following the link from my other post in this thread) was very clear.

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Glory to God for all things

That's okay, but this way I don't even know what command line switches it accepts. There's a missing documentation of the whole thing as, like Rugxulo said, Kostylev always deletes his stuff, then uploads his new stuff, deletes it again and so on. Now the only source of Kostylev's MPlayer I know about is Rayer's site, where he mentiones that libau accepts the au:volume=nn argument, but there is no other clue, if, for example, we can set up the output device (internal speaker and/or output jack) or anything else. So even if I give it up to incorporate the thing in my programs (which would be sad itself as the more libraries means the more possibility of a working thing, HDA is not a "safe" device to support, as you can see, in my case, WSS doesn't work but AU does), I would still like to know how to use it within MPlayer.

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DOS isn't about why. It's about why not.

Attila updated MPXPlay's soundcard support several times since Ruslan extracted his library so I think today either the Ruslan-library should be updated from the latest MPXPlay or something should be done if we want a really reliable library, but yes, you are right otherwise. Yet, this doesn't help me finding out what the heck(or hack) LIBAU is and why its name sounds as if it were a small German village, lol. My idea was to include as many libraries in my game as possible so both Ruslan's libs and a new one I'm gonna extract from MPXPlay's latest version (and WSS, which I can't test on my PC) together with AU if it can be found. If you're right, it's just a different name for something pre-existing stuff. Yet, I would like to know what's its command line for MPlayer, as it is also unknown.

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DOS isn't about why. It's about why not.

You better try the latest MPXPlay versions as Attila still updates its sound card drivers sometimes. He told me he doesn't develop for DOS anymore but the soundcard support is still being updated for the existing DOS versions.

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DOS isn't about why. It's about why not.

Yes, this is why I periodically check his directory, because if you are late, you might lose the chance a good program forever :D

---
DOS isn't about why. It's about why not.

> Attila updated MPXPlay's soundcard support several times since Ruslan
> extracted his library so I think today either the Ruslan-library should be
> updated from the latest MPXPlay or something should be done if we want a
> really reliable library, but yes, you are right otherwise. Yet, this
> doesn't help me finding out what the heck(or hack) LIBAU is and why its
> name sounds as if it were a small German village, lol. My idea was to
> include as many libraries in my game as possible so both Ruslan's libs and
> a new one I'm gonna extract from MPXPlay's latest version (and WSS, which I
> can't test on my PC) together with AU if it can be found. If you're right,
> it's just a different name for something pre-existing stuff. Yet, I would
> like to know what's its command line for MPlayer, as it is also unknown.

AFAIK in his Mplayer port Michael Kostylev used no other "LIBAU" than the "LIBAU" mentioned in my old reply to Zyzzle, if you have reasons to believe otherwise, please explain them. You can find "LIBAU"'s source code following the link in my post.

EDIT: In order to avoid any possible misunderstanding, I provide the link again: https://bitbucket.org/neozeed/q2dos/src/master/dos/3rdparty/libau.src/src/

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Glory to God for all things

Hmm, this happens when I read things without attention. As I never used Ruslan's SOUND_LIB, I never realized, it is LIBAU. I downloaded it about a year ago, even read it, but I didn't know about Kostylev's MPlayer than. Now that I know about it, I didn't remember that Ruslan's package even has an AU.C file. Thanks for your help. Yet I can not figure out the correct MPlayer command line, but that's a different story.

Thank you.

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DOS isn't about why. It's about why not.

> > I'm interested for years in trying to incorporate Kostvlev's library
> into
> > other programs (example Allegro programs which use its obsolete sound
> > drivers) but do not know if the AU library is available anywhere, in
> > Portable C code, or any other language.
>
> I don't know to what "Kostvlev's library" do you refer, but I know that my
> reply to you (which you can re-read by following the link from my other
> post in this thread) was very clear.

Yes, indeed! I do not ever know how I missed your original reply almost five years ago, but I feel like an idiot for bothering you about it again. In any event, thank you again for responding, and I have for sure now downloaded this source code and will, with your permission, attempt to incorporate it into some older projects which use the Allegro libraries. Is this also the library which was incorporated into Quickview v. 2.61 for modern PCI soundcard support?

Again, I also like Kormax am unsure of the exact commandline option to enable the speaker vs. headphone (line-out) output for your DOS version of Mplayer. I think that it defaults to Speaker output, but am not sure if it is even possible to modify the bit for the subconfiguration if IHD soundcards.

> Yes, indeed! I do not ever know how I missed your original reply almost
> five years ago, but I feel like an idiot for bothering you about it again.
> In any event, thank you again for responding, and I have for sure now
> downloaded this source code and will, with your permission, attempt to
> incorporate it into some older projects which use the Allegro libraries. Is
> this also the library which was incorporated into Quickview v. 2.61 for
> modern PCI soundcard support?

I am involved in no way in this project. Yes, Ruslan Starodubov's PCI.SDR used by QuickView is based on the same code (EDIT: see PCI.ASM at http://sound-dos.narod.ru/).

> Again, I also like Kormax am unsure of the exact commandline option to
> enable the speaker vs. headphone (line-out) output for your DOS version of
> Mplayer. I think that it defaults to Speaker output, but am not sure if it
> is even possible to modify the bit for the subconfiguration if IHD
> soundcards.

If you refer to my ancient port, you use it with -ao wss:dev=28 to enable internal speaker output and -ao wss:dev=29 to disable internal speaker output, as you can also read in README.WSS.

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Glory to God for all things

No problem with WSS. The problem is with AU. In fact, I originally was looking for your ancient port, but I wasn't able to find it on the internet (everyone was just talking about it, dead links and no binary), but I've found (thanks to Zyzzle) Kostylev's version on Rayer's site where the only documentation for it was a few lines in Czech. I don't speak the language, but "Nová verze 1.3.0 používá knihovnu au (parametr -ao au:volume=xx), která si zvukovku detekuje automaticky" was very straightforward, so I tried it and it works, but, though there are available docs about the possible arguments for -ao wss:, there is nothing else about -ao au:. I tried the WSS switches and also tried to reconstruct the logic of possible switches (if it has ':volume=nn' instead of ':vol=nn' then it might have ':device=nn' instead of ':dev=nn'and so), but, naturally, it didn't lead to any working result. If Rayer hadn't mentioned -ao au:volume=nn, I wouldn't even know about that one. But it's important, as WSS doesn't even work on my chipset. Pádár Attila's drivers and all its successors do (HX.DOS only uses my lineout jack though) and there is an experimental extended version of Judas that I tested and works (when the HW is already initialized by something from the Pádár-line of drivers), but only for the lineout jack, and TomCat's beeper-speaker initializer works perfectly. WSS doesn't.

---
DOS isn't about why. It's about why not.

> No problem with WSS. The problem is with AU. In fact, I originally was
> looking for your ancient port, but I wasn't able to find it on the internet
> (everyone was just talking about it, dead links and no binary), but I've
> found (thanks to Zyzzle) Kostylev's version on Rayer's site where the only
> documentation for it was a few lines in Czech. I don't speak the language,
> but "Nová verze 1.3.0 používá knihovnu au (parametr -ao au:volume=xx),
> která si zvukovku detekuje automaticky" was very straightforward, so I
> tried it and it works, but, though there are available docs about the
> possible arguments for -ao wss:, there is nothing else about -ao au:. I
> tried the WSS switches and also tried to reconstruct the logic of possible
> switches (if it has ':volume=nn' instead of ':vol=nn' then it might have
> ':device=nn' instead of ':dev=nn'and so), but, naturally, it didn't lead to
> any working result. If Rayer hadn't mentioned -ao au:volume=nn, I wouldn't
> even know about that one. But it's important, as WSS doesn't even work on
> my chipset. Pádár Attila's drivers and all its successors do (HX.DOS only
> uses my lineout jack though) and there is an experimental extended version
> of Judas that I tested and works (when the HW is already initialized by
> something from the Pádár-line of drivers), but only for the lineout jack,
> and TomCat's beeper-speaker initializer works perfectly. WSS doesn't.

Re: AU, perhaps it "detects the sound card automatically", as Google translates, and there is no other switch than "-ao au:volume=xx". Re: WSS, by "doesn't even work on my chipset" do you mean that it can't detect your sound card or do you mean something else?

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Glory to God for all things

I looked in my archive and I have only some old mplayer sources from 2012 that use WSS, from README.WSS:

Usage:
-ao wss:dev=<devid>:vol=<volume>:latency=<latency>

Where:
<devid> is one of the following:
-1      -       Autodetect;
0       -       Eternal silence;
1       -       SB autodetection;
2       -       AC97 autodetection with initialization;
3       -       AC97 autodetection without initialization;
4       -       GUS MAX (CS4231 codec);
5       -       GUS;
6       -       Windows Sound System
7       -       Ensoniq Soundscape;
8       -       ESS Audiodrive;
9       -       WDM SBPRO emulation;
10      -       SB 2.01 interrupt driven;
11      -       SB 1.00 interrupt driven;
12      -       SB 2.01;
15      -       SBPRO;
16      -       SB16;
17      -       CMI8x38 as SB16;
21      -       Trident 4D Wave as SB16;
23      -       SBPRO interrupt driven;
24      -       VIA686 AC97 with initialization;
25      -       VIA686 AC97 without initialization;
26      -       ICH AC97 with initialization;
27      -       ICH AC97 without initialization;
28      -       High Definition Audio;
29      -       High Definition Audio with internal speaker(s) disabled.
Defaults to -1.

<volume> is a value between 0 {min) and 31 (max). Defaults to 31.

<latency> is a value between 0.0010 (min) and 0.0100 (max). Defaults to 0.025.

The source includes libwss and libao2 that contains ao_wss.c - "WSS audio output", "wss", "Khusraw", "experimental version"

I don't have MPlayer 1.3.0 sources, only binary...

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.