SinForged: I think I found a fix

serzh_ak: Thx for the info, it really works!
Still, have another problem with this mod, bzw. Some SFX are too loud and sound out of place.
If you set SFX volume to 50% and music to 100% - it not works. Some SFX will still be at 100% anyway.
So, it is only possible to maximize SFX volume and music altogether and use Windows Volume Control.

Another problem what I have - "mouse cursor bug" (on Win7). Not sure why this happens, but after Darkstone or gdVoodoo or indirectsound mod - mouse cursor have "loading" animation until you reboot.

By the way, latest versions of dgVoodoo 2 now works surprisingly well with resolution higher then 800x600 in Darkstone.
Didn't work before.. So, it is now possible to play Darksone in full HD glory with no problems with UI =)

SinForged: Not sure what could be causing the mouse issue, I havn't had that problem myself

SinForged: As for the issues, maybe try changing some of the setting in the ini file the mod uses. It's set up for 41000 hz headsets by default.

pornaga: The IndirectSound fix seems to work for me too. All I had to do was drop the 3 .dlls into the main Darkstone directory:
alsoft.cfg
dsoal-aldrv.dll
dsound.dll

At first it didn't seem to work, but then I disabled all command line arguments that I had been using (-sortbyz, -noasync, etc.). Now it seems to be working fine, i didn't notice any skips in music or dialogue for 30 minutes straight, before I would have heard it before the town music was even halfway finished. The game seems to be patched to the point that the command line arguments aren't needed anymore too, everything looks to be rendering correctly. I bought this game years ago but never played it because the sound issues were too distracting.

serzh_ak: I found a solution, by the way. Yay!
The problem was not in the IndirectSound fix, actually. It caused by gameux (Game Explorer) that integrated in every Win7 (but never used by anyone). A very common problem, I believe. Game Explorer tries to connect to the Microsoft's server and freezes. Damn you, Microsoft. =)
Than, I deleted GameuxInstallHelper.dll from Darkstone folder (just in case) and gameux.dll from windows\system32 (windows\SysWOW64 for Win7 64) and is OK now. It helps with TES:Oblivion too, bzw.
It's a system file (gameux.dll), but Unlocker (app) is capable to do it (delete).
Maybe this info will be useful to someone, who still use Win7 for such games. Not needed for Win10.

serzh_ak: That was the first thing that I tried. Doesn't help, no difference.
I googled a bit about that problem (and about dsound.dll, specifically) and found an old post (on ixbt forum) about dsound.dll from WinXP can help. I put dlls from there into Darkstone folder (instead of Indirect Sound) and it seems to be works, surprisingly.
Placebo or not, but, at least, no sound problems about an half hour. Before that, even the first audio track not played without "stuttering".
This dlls are here: https://yadi.sk/d/ZmvAjGFmQs9x3w if someone needed (not sure if dsound3d.dll and dsdmo.dll are necessary, but I put them all into Darkstone). Ingame volume control works okay with that dsound.dll. At least, for me and whole half an hour. Win7

SinForged: I tried the files you linked, and while they work in game, the intro videos before the title screen have no sound, though strangly enough the opening movie when starting a new game works fine. I like watching the intro scene that's right before the title screen some times, so I went back to the old fix, but tried using the old version of the dll that's in the DSOAL v1-1 folder and the music seems to be looping properly now. I wasn't sure, but I thought I heard a slight skipping everytime it looped. Seems fine now though.

serzh_ak: Have the same problem with logos/intro. I didn't notice that before, because I always skip it. =)
I tested game a bit more and didn't find any problems except that.
Looks like that only "dsound.dll" is needed (dsound3d.dll and others not required) and version 5.3.2600.5512 the best.
By the way, you can delete data1,2,3.avi from "mdata" folder and game will start directly from main menu, ignoring intro.

"DSOAL (Indirect Sound) v1.31a" still have problems for me..
1. the music still stutters sometimes (rarely)
2. SFX are weird and some special effects are too loud. It's not very noticeable right away, but if you play with (stereo) headphones, then you will hear late. It looks like that "HRTF mod" will try to make a "virtual 3D-sound" and it’s happen to be not so good for Darkstone. Don't know..
3. Game can sometimes freeze with it (rarely)

I attached some pics with spectr. (found a way how to check for "stuttering")

Golden-Dragon: Hi guys,
i played around abit and found a quick fix for the music skipping. I extracted the music.mtf file with a progam Quick BMS and pasted the MUSIC folder in the darkstone directory. And it worked for me. No music skipping for 30 min in town. I uploaded the file so you guys can download it.

Here's the link:

https://www.file-upload.net/download-13794637/MUSIC.rar.html

It should look like that

SinForged: Trying this now. If it works I might try to do the same thing with the dialog files too. Thanks. Always good to have more solutions.

Edit 1: The music fix works, but unfortunately doing the same with the voice files does not fix it, Looking at the images you posted, it seems you used this with the indirect sound fix. Seems it works without the indirect sound fix as well, though it doesn't fix the voices without that fix. I noticed you extracted the data folder too. Does that fix the issues with the sound effects that Conkwer had?

Edit 2: BTW figured out how to get the Darkstone logo intro video to play without crashing. Just delete or rename the data1 and data2 avi files in the mdata so it skips the first two intro movies (since they are just the publisher and dev logos) and it will immediately play the intro video for Darkstone instead.

Edit 3: Nevermind, seems playing that 3rd intro video causes the game to crash either on the next fmv or when gameplay starts. Still, you can always watch the intro video in a media player at least.

pornaga: I've been able to spend a fair bit of time over the last few days troubleshooting the sound jumping as I played through a Novice game. I think I may have found a reliable fix, on my system I've had two 2-hour sessions with no music or dialogue skipping. It also runs stably, several hours of overall testing without a crash. Here's a link to the configured files I've been using:

mediafire(dot)com/file/9rs4nbkz4c6vw79/Darkstone_OpenAL-Soft_sound_fix.zip

Just copy the 3 files to the Darkstone directory, and it should work, no configuration necessary. I downloaded this over a year ago but only recently got around to really testing it, I believe it's the older IndirectSound/OpenAL version that was linked from the Fallout NV Nexus in this same thread. The settings in the included alsoft cfg were causing Darkstone to freeze within 15 minutes of loading a game, so I deleted the few strings that I suspected might be responsible and changed a few other values. As I said, it will run now for hours without crashing. Just the OpenAL-Soft files alone greatly improved the jumping, making it very infrequent on my system, but it looks like I've managed to eliminate it completely by also setting the Windows sound output to 44100 hz.

In Control Panel, click Hardware and Sound, then click Sound, click your sound
output device (likely Speakers) then click Properties.

Click the Advanced tab, then in the dropdown select 16bit, 44100 Hz (CD Quality).

(I also tried changing the frequency in alsoft.cfg to 48000 to match the Windows 10 default but it didn't fix the sound jumping.)

As an alternative to OpenAL-Soft, there's also an old dsound.dll you can get from this Darkstone tools page: oketado(dot)ru/darkstone(dot)html
Just be sure to delete the files from the OpenAL method before using this one. It did totally fix the music jumping, with the tradeoff of no sound in the FMVs and the game sometimes hitching when dialogue would load in. If you go this route, the file you download has multiple .dlls in it, you only need dsound.dll. Copy it into the directory with Darkstone.exe.

You can also fix display issues with dgVoodoo, I'm using version 2.63.2. Just drop the program files into the Darkstone directory and allow it to overwrite the default ddraw dll. It overrides DirectX automatically when you run the game. You can force the game to use 4:3 resolution which also fixes the graphic errors on some of the UI sprites, - in dgVoodooCpl on the General tab select "Scaled, keep aspect ratio" for the scaling mode.

ExpDevourer: I recently installed old Darkstone, I bought this game from Babbages years ago and fell in love with it. Simple, fun, great soundtrack...which brings me to the problem. Looping audio both in voices and music. I signed up with Mediafire and tried to look for that file you had there, but I couldn't find an option to actually search, only upload my own files. So two questions, does that ^ fix the looping problem or at least cut back on it, and how do you search on that buggering site? >,<