Sound Blaster 16 emulation in VMware Player

[mrjoey98]

Hello all,

I was wondering if it was possible to change the emulated sound card in VMware Player to the usual ES1371 to Sound Blaster 16, and if so, how to do it. This article I found suggests it's possible: Zamba's VMware page but I've tried all the steps listed and I can't get the sound to work with the Sound Blaster 16. In fact, if I change sound.virtualDev = "es1371" to sound.virtualDev = "sb16" in the VMX file, no sound cards appear in Device Manager. (I am using a Windows 98 virtual machine, by the way.)

I know that per this page Sound Blaster 16 on VMware Workstation 15.5 and VMware Fusion 11.5 SB16 emulation is available as of Workstation 15.5, but per Zamba's VMware page, I'd like to think it's been possible since at least Workstation 6.0.

Long story short, I want to know if it's possible to emulate SB16 sound cards on VMware Player. (I am using VMware Player 6.0.7, if it matters.)

Thanks in advance for any answers.

[dariusd]

We've supported SB16 emulation for a very long time.  I don't have a specific version number, but it was definitely earlier than Player 6 (which went in parallel to Workstation 10).

The SB16 is not plug-and-play hardware, which means you will probably need to ask Windows to search for non-Plug-and-Play hardware through the Add New Hardware wizard in Win98's Control Panel.  Have you tried that?

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Darius

[mrjoey98]

Haha, I'm still learning VMware, so I had no idea that SB16 emulation had been supported for such a long time... :smileylaugh:

After changing es1371 to sb16 and going through the Add New Hardware wizard, the drivers did install, but no sound is playing. The LED on the sound icon stays on and attempting to play any sound results in "Your sound card may be in use".

[dariusd]

Is the error message appearing in the guest (i.e. a Win98 error dialog box) or on your host OS?  What host OS are you using?  Did you install any SB16 drivers inside the VM, or is it just using the drivers included with Win98?

As the VM runs, it generates a log file named vmware.log in the same directory as the rest of the VM's files.  Can you attach a vmware.log to your next reply here?  To make sure it is useful, make sure it shows an attempt to play sound.  For instance: Completely power off the VM, then power it on, attempt to play sound in the guest, then shut down the VM normally, and then grab the vmware.log from the VM's directory before you do anything else with the VM.  Attach that here, and I'll take a look.

Thanks,

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Darius

[dariusd]

Heh... Known Issues with VMware for Linux 1.0​​​:

Sound support
VMware provides basic play support for Soundblaster-compatible PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) audio and can support formats such as .wav and .au files. VMware virtual machines do not support MIDI devices, game ports nor the ability to record sounds.

So... we have had Sound Blaster support in some form since the very first release of the product which would eventually become Workstation/Player/Fusion/etc.  I knew it had been around for a long time, but had not realized it was since the very beginning!

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Darius

[mrjoey98]

The error message is appearing from within my Win98 guest. It says, "Windows cannot play the sound C:\WINDOWS\media\Logoff.WAV. Your sound card may be in use." I installed SB16 drivers that worked in the past with Virtual PC, and not the ones included with Windows 98 natively. My host OS is Windows 10 1909.

EDIT: I took a look at my VMX file and I saw that I'd added sound.opl3.enabled = "TRUE" in there... and it turns out that's what was stopping the sound from working.

While the sound does play, there aren't any more problems, but there is one slight annoyance: WAV files sound cut off, especially if they're shorter, like chord.wav or ding.wav. I don't know if there's a fix for this or if I should just let it continue. After all, it's not a big problem.

[dariusd]

Yeah, with Player 6.0.x through until Workstation Player 15.1.x, adding sound.opl3.enabled = "TRUE" will enable the OPL3 synthesizer but will also deactivate the PCM/wave output.  Workstation Player 15.5 allows OPL3 to work without interfering with PCM/wave, but I see you're running a 32-bit host OS, so anything newer than Player 6.0.7 will be off-limits. 

Glad you got things figured out!

Unfortunately, short sounds are difficult to handle.  More recent versions of Workstation might do slightly better, but what you're finding there is probably about the best that you can expect for now.

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Darius