It seems I've run into a new and odd problem. A few months ago, I could play the likes of Doom and other DOS games from GOG just fine. The installer did its thing and off I went. But with The Immortal now on here, I decided to get it and play. Well, for some reason, I no longer have any sound effects in any DOS games using DOSBox (be it the GOG installed version, or the version I installed elsewhere). When I run DOSBox, I get "Can't open audio: No available audio device, running in nosound mode."

I have no idea when this started or why, but now DOSBox can't emulated Sound Blaster and its ilk anymore, so all I have is midi music. If anyone has run into this problem before, I'd appreciate some help as I've been trying all kinds of things. The audio works fine on the rest of my PC and games, and again, MIDI works fine. But I have no sound effects in DOSBox anymore.

Here's my current setup...

Windows 10
Realtek HD audio

First thing is how are you using DOSBox:-

1. If you have it installed manually (you installed it from DOSBox.com and are adding games manually to it), then the DOSBox config file is usually at C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\DOSBox\dosbox-0.74-3.conf so open that in Notepad.

2. If you are just using it via how GOG packages it, then usually they'll have the config files in your game folder ending in .conf which are DOSBox configuration files specific to each game. The main one is usually called "single.conf" or something like that (the name differs per game).

Either way, if you open the .conf files in Notepad, what do you see in your under mixer and sblaster categories? Eg, under mixer, make sure that nosound=false and that the sample rate is something like 44100. Under sblaster category, make sure than sbmixer=true, and that defaults are something standard like sbtype=sb16, sbbase=220, irq=7, dma=1, hdma=5, oplmode=auto, oplemu=default and oplrate=44100.

The fact that it's happening in multiple games suggests that there's something overriding it beyond one individual game's config file (possibly a Windows 10 issue blocking DOSBox from accessing hardware)? And the fact it's working in other games rules out hardware fault. First thing I'd do there is backup any save game files, uninstall a problem game (and select "No don't keep my saves" so GOG deletes existing config files), then reinstall it and see if that works. Or if you installed DOSBox manually, go to the DOSBox install folder (usually C:\Program Files (x86)\DOSBox) and run Reset Options.bat. If all else fails, contact GOG support.

In the meantime, try the excellent GZDoom source-port for Doom 1-2 (install it then drop your DOOM / DOOM2 / PLUTONIA / TNT WAD files into it). You should at least get audio back in Doom as well as a more pleasant gaming experience with mouse-look, 35fps cap removal, etc.

If want to keep things vanilla and dos level.

I suggest Chocolate Doom.

Have you tried the fix found in this thread?
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/no_sound_on_any_dosbox_games_win7_64bit_realtek_digital_output/post7

All of that was checked on. The installs of DOSBox were using the same settings, so it wasn't a conflict in that way. And Windows (as I learned) wasn't blocking anything. I found that early this morning, but that post didn't explain anything about where they did the fix (in DOSBox? in Windows command prompt?). However...

After doing A LOT of google searching once I got up, I found one post on a forum buried in a lot of text that mentioned where this SDL_AUDIODRIVER environmental variable could be found. My Google-Fu isn't the best in the world, so it took a good while. But, it's located in your computer's registry. Specifically for Windows 10...

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment

I had to change the key there from "directsound" to "dsound" and then POOF!... sound effects in DOSBox. The Immortal music played, the selection sounds in Ultimate Doom played, and all was right in the world. I have no idea why that key was changed or when (a Windows update maybe?), but it was. Gotta love it when something so small gets altered behind your back and creates a sizeable problem.

So hopefully this post will help anyone else who's not as savvy with this kind of thing. POst after post mentioned the SDL_AUDIODRIVER thing, but 95% of them didn't give the most important bit... where the hell it was lol.

That said, thanks for trying to help, guys. It was much appreciated :)

I would sincerely recommend re-creating this post in the Doom sub-forum as well. This may save someone in the future a lot of grief and headaches trying to solve it.

Interesting...
Checked my registry in the location you mentioned (btw, you should also be able to type "advanced system settings" into the start menu, open it, and then click on "environment variables" to edit this without going into the registry as the link I inserted from before alluded to)

and I actually don't have ANY "SDL_AUDIODRIVER" variable in mine, and I have no sound issues.

The reason I'm mentioning this, is because according to this.
https://wiki.libsdl.org/FAQUsingSDL
Your previous entry of "directsound" is used in SDL 2.0, SDL 1.0 uses "dsound"

Most DOSBox distributions use SDL 1.2, with DOSBox Staging being the only that I personally know of that uses SDL 2.0.

Perhaps you installed something in the past that made use of the SDL 2.0 library? And that application set the permanent environment variable? In that case you may find you don't have audio in that application anymore as your environment is now set permanently to "dsound"......

To experiment, I added the "SDL_AUDIODRIVER" variable into my Windows 10 with "directsound" and like you I had no audio in vanilla DOSBox. I then completely deleted the "SDL_AUDIODRIVER" variable, reset the machine, and sound returned. This may be a case where it's actually better to NOT have the variable at all!

In any case, glad you figured it out. Happy Gaming!

That's not an official variable...