Jump to content

Audio driver for Realtek HD Audio Hardware? [Testing thread]


Recommended Posts

On 1/2/2021 at 1:44 AM, sweaterfish said:

I can't say I've got any good ideas why you're seeing this crashing.

You should probably be installing the HDA driver into as bare a 98SE environment as possible, with nothing else in AUTOEXEC.BAT other than the HDATSR.EXE, no startup programs in Windows, no special drivers to get other hardware working, etc. Later you shoul dbe able to add that stuff, but again for troubleshooting, it's best to keep everything simple.

Also, what method are you using to manage your memory in this Windows installation? What's your config.sys file look like?

>what method are you using to manage your memory in this Windows installation? What's your config.sys file look like?

I'm not sure i hadn't touched that file at all I did have to change something in the system.ini to get my machine to boot as it has 3gb ram. I just went back to xp in the end. I think ill try getting 98 running on my x40 another time as that actually has drivers for 98/me

 

Thankyou

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Tommy changed the title to Audio driver for Realtek HD Audio Hardware? [Testing thread]
  • Tommy pinned this topic
  • 2 months later...

I started writing a response believing that my setup had failed. As it turns out, I only had a typo: I renamed HDAICOUT.HDA.000 to "HDACIOUT.HDA" instead of HDAICOUT.HDA. I need to be more careful!

Anyways, I installed it as instructed (add MinFileCache/MaxFileCache entries to SYSTEM.INI; GENHDA16, HDA2, HDARUN, and HDATSR in HDAFILES; put HDAICOUT.HDA in C:\WINDOWS) on my Dell Latitude D830 and now have working audio but no volume slider in the taskbar. On startup, my speaker pops twice before it plays the startup sound. The Windows startup sound also glitches out a bit while it starts up, making some buzzing noises rather than just cutting out for a bit.

My BIOS identifies the Audio Controller as Sigmatel 9205. Dell's website also calls it Sigmatel STAC 92XX, while Siv insists that it's "Intel 82801HBM (ICH8M) HD Audio Controller" with "Vendor ID 8086-284B-01FE1028-02". The only audio-related setting I have in BIOS is to enable and disable the microphone (I'm assuming it's referring to the microphone jack on the side of the machine).

One strange thing I've noticed is that the driver causes Windows to report my memory as 1023.0 MB rather than the usual 1024.0 MB. As far as I can tell, it has no other adverse effects. Also, much like when I run DOS on this computer, audio will come out of both the speakers AND the headphones if headphones are plugged in.

(As another side note, I happen to own one of those Behringer USB audio devices that was mentioned a few pages back. I'm not sure what they mean by a price spike, since they're still available for about as cheap as I first got it, but it worked fine in my computer as an instant external solution, though I think speakers are needed to take advantage of it. I'm also not sure if it works without updated USB drivers).

Here are the contents of HDAcfg and Hdalog:

HDAcfg.ini HDALOG.TXT

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, beansmuggler said:

on my Dell Latitude D830 and now have working audio but no volume slider in the taskbar. On startup, my speaker pops twice before it plays the startup sound. The Windows startup sound also glitches out a bit while it starts up, making some buzzing noises rather than just cutting out for a bit.

Good!

There is a program included with volume sliders: WAVEOUT.EXE (copy to %windir% and open with "Run").

The pops are always there, more advanced drivers wait a while before giving signal to the output.

Are others system sounds better afterwards? At first run buffers have to be filled up. One possibility is 'editing' your startup sound with one second of silence at the beginning of the file (difficult, I didn't make it).

4 hours ago, beansmuggler said:

My BIOS identifies the Audio Controller as Sigmatel 9205. Dell's website also calls it Sigmatel STAC 92XX, while Siv insists that it's "Intel 82801HBM (ICH8M) HD Audio Controller"

The HD Audio Controller is part of the chipset, sent/ receives digital HD Audio to/ from the codec. Sigmatel 9205 is your codec, doing digital/ analog conversion and much more.

4 hours ago, beansmuggler said:

One strange thing I've noticed is that the driver causes Windows to report my memory as 1023.0 MB rather than the usual 1024.0 MB. As far as I can tell, it has no other adverse effects.

HDATSR has a buffer in memory, no longer available to Windows.

4 hours ago, beansmuggler said:

Also, much like when I run DOS on this computer, audio will come out of both the speakers AND the headphones if headphones are plugged in.

This means jack-sensing is'nt activated in the right way in the codec. Some laptops have switches in the jack, yours probably not. If you like I can take a look in the codec-datasheet and other sources. Maybe some extra Verbs can be written to HDAICOUT.HDA


 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh, ok! I've added WAVEOUT now and it seems to change HDAcfg, but not the volume. On a restart, the windows sound plays at maximum volume. When I play the sound again in Media Player, it pops 2 or 3 times, then starts playing the sound at a lower volume with less errors (though this might be because it's using the volume slider for Media Player).

The Start sound used for clicking on files is played as a single pop/click sound (I'm used to the XP clicking sound, so maybe I'm only confused and nothing is wrong there). All the other sounds play fine in Media Player, though with some quiet electric crackling.

I tried reading the datasheet, but I wasn't able to understand it (though I think the copy I found may have been missing some contents) :lol: I feel bad asking, but could you look at it when you can?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Did you already played with the buffer settings of waveaudio?

In my opinion best is 5 seconds with HDA2.DLL (default is 4, range=2-9). Can be changed through Control Panel, or in

SYSTEM.INI 
[mci]
waveaudio=mciwave.drv 5

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It seems like it glitches on all buffer settings, so I'm guessing it just might be a side effect of everything that runs at startup. I couldn't tell the difference between 5 and 3, so I went with 5 as the safer choice.

Strangely enough, the audio popping seems to be almost entirely restricted to system sounds. I played Welcom98.wav in WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\WELCOME and it played with one pop at 5 and no pops at 3. The audio in Whatsnew.exe from the 98SE install CD seemed to play flawlessly under both settings also.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On Win9x System Sounds are 22050 Hz/ Low-bit only: Radio Quality. Maybe the driver has problems switching frequency of your Codec. Are sounds on your CD WAV in CD-quality?

Further: on my system Playback of media-files is best with Direct Sound output (software emulation only). I think that's not possible in case of System Sounds. Don't know which Device plays them...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The CD audio was from an EXE and I didn't see any source files for it. However, Welcom98.wav claims to be 44100 Hz 4-bit mono, so it might be that the EXE audio was, too.

I tested a .WMA rip of Michael Jackson's "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" (44100Hz 32-bit? 160kbps stereo) and it played smoothly while left alone. While it was playing, I right-clicked it and chose "Properties" so I could see the codec data for this post. After I clicked that, the song immediately slowed down and then froze in place, and I couldn't move my mouse. I faced some other weird issues after that, which I'm guessing was caused by the file possibly being 32-bit or being WMA.

As for Direct Sound output, how would I turn on that setting? I haven't been able to find it yet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

HDA2.DLL is limited to 48000 Hz/ 16 bit, so just within the HD Audio specification.

MediaPlayer will use DirectSound by default. Did you install DirectX 9.0c already?

Players like Foobar can convert 24/32-bit audio to 16 bit. There are old versions, I'm not sure if KernelEx is needed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have done some reading in the datasheet of (IDT) STAC9204,05. I'm afraid auto-switching will be not possible with HDA2.DLL, but it seems PortMonoOut (will be SPEAKER) has it's own independent volume (see page 110 of STAC9204,05.PDF - 213 pages!).

So you can try VolumeWidget=$14 in HDACFG.INI with WAVEOUT.EXE

Of course you will loose volume with WAVEOUT.EXE on your headphone. But - if the headphone still has sound after this change - volume-slider on most players will do the job too as Master volume (Direct Sound enabled!). Or else the physical volume-slider on many headphones....

BTW The Datasheet mentioned this codec can not play 8-bit audio, only 16/20/24-bit. So you will have to stick to 16-bit.

Edited by deomsh
Addition
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I guess the independent volume makes sense since the laptop has hardware buttons (though I don't think they work with 98SE). Changing VolumeWidget back to $14 brought both speaker and headphone back to max volume, so I changed it back to $10. I might keep the speaker volume on zero and get a portable speaker with a volume slider as you suggest.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...