Skip to main content ↑ ↓
Topic: Lost Sound (Read 5924 times) previous topic - next topic

Lost Sound

I have been a user (and committed supporter) of NWC for over a year now. I had great luck using it under Win 3.1. When I changeed to Win95 I lost my playback ability. I'm using an Acer Magic S23 card with Wavetable daughter board attached. After upgrading to Win95 my system crashed, with the message "Windows protection error, you must restart your computer." Tyhe only way to get things running was to remove all the sound card drivers and use Win 95's built in drivers. That works fine for system sounds, but wavetable sounds are gone, and if I can get NWC to play at all, it's only in FM synth - 4 part. The tech support for Acer has no responce, and Win95 support is no help either. Has anyone run into this problem and found a solution?

Thanks,
Dave

Re: Lost Sound

Reply #1 –
That's a shame. It does sound very much like a driver problem. I thought NWC took pains to only use standard midi that would work with standard midi drivers. If I were you, I would press Acer very hard for new drivers. Do they have a web-site with Win95 drivers available? When you say tech support for Acer has no response, do you mean they don't respond to you, or they don't know what to do?

A

Re: Lost Sound

Reply #2 –
Andrew,

Thanks for the responce. Acer never responded to my inquiry. I did download a new Win95 driver and had the same problem. It seems there must be a conflict somewhere, but I have been unable to track it down. I was hoping another NWC user hada run into (and solved) the same problem. I'll just have to keep playing with Win 95 settings until I find a set that work.

Re: Lost Sound

Reply #3 –
This does, indeed, sound very much like a driver problem. Here are some tips that might help:

-> Sometimes the daughter WaveTable board can be controlled via the External MIDI Out driver (sometimes also called the MPU-401 Out driver). I have seen this on at least one sound card. You might try this.

-> If you have a conflict, you might learn more about the conflict by reviewing your System Properties. Right click on your My Computer icon (on your desktop), and review its contents.

-> In NWC, only select one driver for use by play back. DO not bother selecting the MIDI Mapper until you have successfully found which real device is the one you want. Once you find it, you can setup your system's MIDI Mapper to use that device as well (so the Windows Media Player will also sound good).

-> Try again to install the Win 95 drivers for your setup. Make sure that you remove all of the old drivers first. If your system does not support Plug-n-Play, you may have to get intimately involved with your system's IRQ and DMA settings. Your system manufacturer should provide documentation on this procedure.