Nice_Boat: Hey, thanks for this video tutorials! +1rep
I learned a lot, but now I have two questions I hope you'll can to explain me.
First of all, you recommend 44.1hz (CD quality) as the better frequency to hear the audio. But, in my case, I have an audio interface that can have 96hz too (96000 insted 44100, then), would you recommend me to use this frequency or it will be worse/with no changing?
Also, looking at my configuration files, I found that "my machine" valor is not
vga, but
svga_s3. I thought it's the same, but, could you explain me if there is any difference, please?
I found that valor in the only three games I have installed with DOSBOX: Populous, Dungeon Keeper and Little Big Adventure.
Thanks again for these videos and waiting for your reply!
Thanks for the feedback!
Ok regarding the sample rate, DOSBox has various fixed sample rates which you can use. There are two sample rates higher than 44100: 48000 and 49716 so you can try out these settings.
The important thing is that all the sample rates match. I will follow up with another short video in the playlist because I didn't quite talk about this.
So if your mixer sample rate is 49716 make sure that your Sound Blaster and Speaker Sample rate is also 49716 :)
Why did I choose 44100? Mostly because of compatibility and sticking to one setting helps editing sounds and videos as pretty much all programs support this frequency. With higher sample rates I might run into having to convert the sample rate which I want to avoid. Will 49716 sound any better? Hard to say but in theory it should!
In regards to the machine setting: This allows you to tell DOSBox what kind of computer you want (like a Tandy) and/or what kind of graphics card.
I have a few vintage computers and back in the day some video cards had issues with certain games, especially ones that exploit some tricks on the video card to improve performance. So this setting allows you to change the video card for such games in case you have issues.
svga_s3 is the default/recommended setting. S3 video cards are still now recommended for vintage PCs because they have excellent compatibility and basically everything works. The svga_s3 mode is also the one that is VESA compatible for games with higher graphics resolution. Like playing Duke Nukem in 800 x 600 resolution.
VGA mode doesn't support higher resolutions but is more precise and some games need this setting.
A good example of software that might need a different video card to run and old demos. The Tseng ET4000 was a popular card so DOSBox lets you set that machine as well :)
So in a nutshell: 97% (I just came up with this number) of games will work fine with svga_S3 and for the rest you try out the other settings.