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Heroes of Might and Magic serieshomm2 music changing issue - CD Music with Opera(23 posts)(23 posts)
(23 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted September 24, 2011
Hi Everyone,

I'm using win 7 64 bits. When I play the HOMM 2 with the CD music with opera setting I get sound "scratches/pops" everytime the music is changed during the game, for example going to different town screens, switch heroes in different terrain, the message music at the end of a battle etc... (you notice that more when you switch while the music is playing)

I don't have of these issues with the music in MIDI but I prefer the opera setting.

I'm going crazy trying to find a way to fix this since it's very annoying, I have edited the dosboxhomm2.conf file, added prebuffer=100 etc... I don't seem to be able to find a way to fix this... but after reading the forums I seems I'm the only one with this issue?

Please HELP!

Tota.
Posted September 24, 2011
You're not the only one - I get scratches and pops in the regular sound as I play. I just assumed it to be the consequence of using a new machine to play an old game. If there's a solution, though, I'll take it.
Posted September 25, 2011
I have this issue too, on two different computers (one Windows 7 32-bit and one Ubuntu). I've also tried to change the settings of the conf file, without success.
Posted September 26, 2011
Thanks for the replies, at least I know I'm not the only one :-/

I have done quite a lot of testing the past couple of days and I want to share my finding with you.

I got a copy of the windows version of homm 2 and it did installed fine in Windows 7, no issues whatsoever if you run the shortcut in compatibility mode with windows 95 (also let me comment that it runs faster than the dos version, no mouse lag and you get the option of a nice black&white cursor :-P). Now, if you mount a bin/cue image of the CD (with music tracks) you do get the CD music working without most of the "pops" and "scratches" when switching, HOWEVER, there are other issues with it: the music doesn't loop properly many places, for example if the battle takes long you end up without music and also there is lag (delay) on playing some of the tracks as well.

Another option I tried is to use this windows version with a program that is somewhere on the internet that basically acts as a server and play the tracks (you need to patch heroes2w.exe so it can send the events to that program). I can report that it works pretty good, HOWEVER, there are 2 issues with it: 1) If you mount the CD with the audio tracks, then you will have 2 background music tracks at the same time... since in some of the cases they won't start at the same time, you get the weirdest music ever sometimes, 2) If you mount the CD without the audio tracks (so the CD music doesn't play from the CD) you get a delay every 2-3 seconds, that delay is because the game will look for the tracks in all drives :-/, the more you have, the worst it is. Making the CD mount something like D:/ does help with the problem but doesn't remove it completely (you can notice it more during battle animations).

So long story short, I haven't been able to find a solution that works 100% for me. I like the windows version of the game a little better than the GOG one, but I'm not happy with the CD audio options in either one.

I still haven't tried burning a physical CD with the audio and using it to play the game, but I suspect there will be issues as well.

Bottom line, MIDI is so far the way to go with Win 7 64bit (unless a new DosBox version or GOG version fixes some of these issues).

Love this game, my favorite of all homm games :-)

Thanks,
Tota.
Posted September 27, 2011
That all sounds interesting, and it seems that you've gone to a lot of work to fix what it a merely cosmetic problem - an annoying one, sure, but still... Well done. Glad to know that there's a solution!

But, as a musician, I did have to comment on this:
avatar
totabiento: 1) If you mount the CD with the audio tracks, then you will have 2 background music tracks at the same time... since in some of the cases they won't start at the same time, you get the weirdest music ever sometimes, [...]
I suggest that, for your listening pleasure (arguably), you find some Charles Ives. If it doesn't entirely open your ears to a new world of sound, at least it will make the double-tracked music seem less weird.
Posted September 28, 2011
avatar
organmike: That all sounds interesting, and it seems that you've gone to a lot of work to fix what it a merely cosmetic problem - an annoying one, sure, but still... Well done. Glad to know that there's a solution!
Well, I wouldn't call it "fixed". It all depends how much you love this game. For me it's not good enough, I'd like to be able to play the game with the CD opera music without sound "artifacts" :-)

By the way, I did tried burning a CD and playing the audio from the CD, same stuff as I predicted. I think this issue might have to do with some incompatibility problems between modern directx and the code that was used on the game....
avatar
totabiento: I suggest that, for your listening pleasure (arguably), you find some Charles Ives. If it doesn't entirely open your ears to a new world of sound, at least it will make the double-tracked music seem less weird.
Sure, I'll check that out! :-)

Thanks,
Tota.
Posted September 29, 2011
avatar
totabiento: Well, I wouldn't call it "fixed". It all depends how much you love this game. For me it's not good enough, I'd like to be able to play the game with the CD opera music without sound "artifacts" :-)
One thing to try if you've done everything else is to set your CPU affinity to one core only when playing HoMM2. I don't really have instructions on that because I've never had to do it, but I've heard that it fixes similar issues in other games.
Posted October 02, 2011
Hi Everyone,

After a lot of work, I'm happy to report that I was finally successful in finding a way to play HOMM 2 without any sound issues: no artifacts, pops, scratches, weird sounds when changing music etc... on my windows 7 64 bit OS.

I'm finally enjoying this jewel of a game the way it was intended to :-)

It's a little complicated, but I'd like to share with you what I ended up doing. At the end it's a matter of personal taste, if you are happy with the emulated GOG dos version of the game, then it's probably not worth the effort of doing all this stuff, however, if you are picky about things and want a flawless experience then you can try what I did.

I'm going to summarize everything. Here we go:

1) Install the windows version of HOMM 2 Gold. Make sure you have the game running in compatibility mode with Windows 95 (otherwise you will have serveral issues including crashes)

2) Obtain a bin/cue image of the HOMM 2 data/audio CD (you can rip this from the original cd). This way you can pass the cd check and also have the audio tracks.

3) Get the "Heroes of Might and Magic II 2 CD MUSIC + PATCH". Just google it. It comes with a "h2cdplay" program that you can execute before launching the game, the music in mp3's and a modified heroes2w.exe. The program will play the music from the game from the mp3's based on windows events thrown from the modified executable.

4) Replace the heroes2w.exe with the modified one, make sure you make a backup first and ensure it's running in compatibily mode with windows 95.

5) (Optional) The mp3 audio tracks that comes with this "patch" are not exactly the best. I'd recommend getting higher quality mp3's if you either rip them yourself of find a better source. Please note that this is optional since the mp3's from the patch might be good enough for most people, the only really noticeable issues is a little "pop" on the knights castle theme....

6) Now comes the tricky part. Basically at this point you want to edit the cue file (with notepad or something similar). Why?, well, to avoid issues with the game, the game must play the music from the CD, however we don't want the music from the CD to make any sounds, we want the music to come from the h2cdplay program that we downloaded before. If you mount a homm2 CD with no music, the game will freeze for 1/2 seconds every 3-4 seconds, this is because the program will keep searching for the audio in all your drives. You will avoid all these issues by simply using the silence at the end of the CD, so let's edit all the music tracks so they only play "silence" from the end of the CD. This how my cue file looks like:

FILE "H2G.bin" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:15
TRACK 03 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:16
TRACK 04 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:17
TRACK 05 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:18
TRACK 06 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:19
TRACK 07 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:20
TRACK 08 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:21
TRACK 09 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:22
TRACK 10 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:23
TRACK 11 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:24
TRACK 12 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:25
TRACK 13 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:26
TRACK 14 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:27
TRACK 15 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:28
TRACK 16 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:29
TRACK 17 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:30
TRACK 18 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:31
TRACK 19 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:32
TRACK 20 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:33
TRACK 21 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:34
TRACK 22 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:35
TRACK 23 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:36
TRACK 24 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:37
TRACK 25 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:38
TRACK 26 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:39
TRACK 27 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:40
TRACK 28 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:41
TRACK 29 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:42
TRACK 30 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:43
TRACK 31 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:44
TRACK 32 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:45
TRACK 33 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:46
TRACK 34 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:47
TRACK 35 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:48
TRACK 36 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:49
TRACK 37 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:50
TRACK 38 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:51
TRACK 39 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:52
TRACK 40 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:53
TRACK 41 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:54
TRACK 42 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:55
TRACK 43 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:56

As you can see, all the audio tracks will play pretty much nothing, so the game will keep playing these empty tracks, while we get the nice music from the h2cdplay program :-)

7) Mount the modified bin/cue in a drive letter as close as possible to C:\ (there are many tools available that can allow you to do that)

8) Launch the h2cdplay program (it will open in a command line window, just leave it there and close it when you are done playing the game)

9) Launch your Heroes II Gold, switch the music to CD/Opera Audio and enjoy this glorious game at it's fullest!

Enjoy,

Tota.
Post edited October 02, 2011 by totabiento
Posted October 02, 2012
I know this is a bump, but I can confirm the above post works fixes the music issue :D

So anyone having trouble getting the music in HOMM2 to work should do the same process.

Also thanks :)
Posted August 01, 2017
avatar
totabiento: Hi Everyone,

After a lot of work, I'm happy to report that I was finally successful in finding a way to play HOMM 2 without any sound issues: no artifacts, pops, scratches, weird sounds when changing music etc... on my windows 7 64 bit OS.

I'm finally enjoying this jewel of a game the way it was intended to :-)
tota,

This was the only solution that worked for me! Thank you! I had to make a couple of changes; firstly, my .cue file needed the audio tracks a little bit later than yours as it was a different length for some reason. Secondly, the h2cdplay program had a few logic errors (and for some reason fade-in and fade-out) that made the playback different from the original. Luckily it's open source so I forked it and made changes to fix it, and now I have it playing perfectly! My fork is at: https://github.com/jez9999/h2cdplay
Posted November 18, 2018
avatar
totabiento: 3) Get the "Heroes of Might and Magic II 2 CD MUSIC + PATCH". Just google it. It comes with a "h2cdplay" program that you can execute before launching the game, the music in mp3's and a modified heroes2w.exe. The program will play the music from the game from the mp3's based on windows events thrown from the modified executable.
Unfortunately, the only reference to this search is this thread itself. Probably doesn't help that your post is from 2010. Having some issues with the music under Windows 7, I'd really like to try this.

Update:

I found the files. I was able to get it to work, but I'm not able to get the game to recognize the music tracks on my virtual drive. However, the game will use it as a CD check.

I'm able to play the music from my physical CD, but the terrain music stops playing after 3-4 turns, for whatever reason. This is why I'm trying the h2cdplay method. I'm a bit confused as to why this program was developed without a way to disable the game from playing the tracks from the CD, which as totabiento detailed, causes intermittent pauses in gameplay.

I noticed that the tracks in the Heroes of Might and Magic II 2 CD MUSIC + PATCH archive have different town music and an additional track with a slightly different sequence, from my physical CD. The town tracks are very different musically. I much prefer the town music off my CD. I already made a rip of that with higher fidelity, so I'll definitely use that if I can get the pausing issue squashed.

I tried to burn a new CD with the modified cue sheet, but it behaves exactly as my original disc, with the music playing, when it should be silent. But I don't know what the hell I'm doing exactly, so I may have done something wrong.

It's funny how the first HOMM1 doesn't have any of these issues. I can play the music straight off a virtual drive for that one.

Update (again):

Ok, I was able to get the game to play music off the virtual drive by reassigning my virtual drive to use my DVD/CD rom letter and reassigning my DVD/CD drive. But I can't get this cue sheet thing to work properly. No matter what I set it too, it always plays the music, so I don't get any silence like you're suppose to. How do I determine where the silent space is? LOL.

I would just give up on this, but the audio glitches are so annoying, and the MIDI is unacceptable.
Post edited November 19, 2018 by rezidentsaurus
Posted November 19, 2018
avatar
rezidentsaurus: I would just give up on this, but the audio glitches are so annoying, and the MIDI is unacceptable.
Hello,
If you are using GOG Windows version you can play *.ogg tracks instead of MIDI after little game modifying.
1) You just should update winmm.dll from game folder to this one https://www.filedropper.com/heroes2win10fixes
Just extract ogg-winmm.dll rename it to winmm.dll and put it in the game folder (replace existing)
2) You should put wing32.dll from this theme in the game folder as well.
Direct link for download: goo.gl/Fz6QdT

Please keep in mind that first dll doesnt work without second so you should use it alltogether.

After that you will be able to play Track*.ogg tracks from folder MUSIC in game installation folder when you select CD quality in game. They are not the best quality btw: 192 kbps VBR, so you can rerip them from your disk if you wish better quality in OGG VORBIS format.

As about different music sets - NWC changed all castle themes when price of loyality was released. There is also 3rd set of music in Millenium edition. You can find more info here
Post edited November 19, 2018 by AKuHAK
Posted November 19, 2018
avatar
rezidentsaurus: I would just give up on this, but the audio glitches are so annoying, and the MIDI is unacceptable.
avatar
AKuHAK: Hello,
If you are using GOG Windows version you can play *.ogg tracks instead of MIDI after little game modifying.
1) You just should update winmm.dll from game folder to this one https://www.filedropper.com/heroes2win10fixes
Just extract ogg-winmm.dll rename it to winmm.dll and put it in the game folder (replace existing)
2) You should put wing32.dll from this theme in the game folder as well.
Direct link for download: goo.gl/Fz6QdT

Please keep in mind that first dll doesnt work without second so you should use it alltogether.

After that you will be able to play Track*.ogg tracks from folder MUSIC in game installation folder when you select CD quality in game. They are not the best quality btw: 192 kbps VBR, so you can rerip them from your disk if you wish better quality in OGG VORBIS format.

As about different music sets - NWC changed all castle themes when price of loyality was released. There is also 3rd set of music in Millenium edition. You can find more info here
I don't have the gog version, but thanks a lot for the help and the info! I'll have to see about getting the gog version, unless there's a way to modify my existing version (Windows gold) to do the same.

Thanks again. :)
Posted November 19, 2018
avatar
rezidentsaurus: I don't have the gog version, but thanks a lot for the help and the info! I'll have to see about getting the gog version, unless there's a way to modify my existing version (Windows gold) to do the same.

Thanks again. :)
I just assumed that you are using GOG version cause this is GOG forum (your C.O.) :)

GOG made some changes according to Windows Gold version:
- Video cutscenes moved from CD disk to game folder
- added some manuals
- game main executable modified with IIDking: changed Help action, now when you press F1 or select Help entry manual.pdf is opened instead of HEROES\HEROES2.HLP
- game main executable modified to run without CD disk
- added free ogg-winmm
implementation. Unfortunately it is based on very outdateddll version so doesnt work on modern machines. It is possible to use fix from user moranms

Download link

Unfortunately this fix doesnt work on very last OS without additional modifying (see next point)
- add *.ogg vorbis rips inside game folder: folder MUSIC - filled with Track02.ogg - Track43.ogg. Interesting fact: Russian company Buka used that trick for Heroes 1 and Heroes 2 in late 2003 year.

So to make it possible you also nedd GL Wrapper:
- user Verok from russian forum old-games made fantastic wrapper for all 4 homm series. You can read more about it here. With this fix it is possible to use ogg-winmm.dll library. You can just put dll inside game folder - and thats all you need :)

If you wish to make your version to be able to play ogg files you should put GL Wrapper inside game folder and use updated ogg-winmm.dll from user moranms. Then you should rip your CD music set as explained here.
Post edited November 19, 2018 by AKuHAK
Posted November 27, 2018
avatar
totabiento: Hi Everyone,

After a lot of work, I'm happy to report that I was finally successful in finding a way to play HOMM 2 without any sound issues: no artifacts, pops, scratches, weird sounds when changing music etc... on my windows 7 64 bit OS.

I'm finally enjoying this jewel of a game the way it was intended to :-)

It's a little complicated, but I'd like to share with you what I ended up doing. At the end it's a matter of personal taste, if you are happy with the emulated GOG dos version of the game, then it's probably not worth the effort of doing all this stuff, however, if you are picky about things and want a flawless experience then you can try what I did.

I'm going to summarize everything. Here we go:

1) Install the windows version of HOMM 2 Gold. Make sure you have the game running in compatibility mode with Windows 95 (otherwise you will have serveral issues including crashes)

2) Obtain a bin/cue image of the HOMM 2 data/audio CD (you can rip this from the original cd). This way you can pass the cd check and also have the audio tracks.

3) Get the "Heroes of Might and Magic II 2 CD MUSIC + PATCH". Just google it. It comes with a "h2cdplay" program that you can execute before launching the game, the music in mp3's and a modified heroes2w.exe. The program will play the music from the game from the mp3's based on windows events thrown from the modified executable.

4) Replace the heroes2w.exe with the modified one, make sure you make a backup first and ensure it's running in compatibily mode with windows 95.

5) (Optional) The mp3 audio tracks that comes with this "patch" are not exactly the best. I'd recommend getting higher quality mp3's if you either rip them yourself of find a better source. Please note that this is optional since the mp3's from the patch might be good enough for most people, the only really noticeable issues is a little "pop" on the knights castle theme....

6) Now comes the tricky part. Basically at this point you want to edit the cue file (with notepad or something similar). Why?, well, to avoid issues with the game, the game must play the music from the CD, however we don't want the music from the CD to make any sounds, we want the music to come from the h2cdplay program that we downloaded before. If you mount a homm2 CD with no music, the game will freeze for 1/2 seconds every 3-4 seconds, this is because the program will keep searching for the audio in all your drives. You will avoid all these issues by simply using the silence at the end of the CD, so let's edit all the music tracks so they only play "silence" from the end of the CD. This how my cue file looks like:

FILE "H2G.bin" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:15
TRACK 03 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:16
TRACK 04 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:17
TRACK 05 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:18
TRACK 06 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:19
TRACK 07 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:20
TRACK 08 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:21
TRACK 09 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:22
TRACK 10 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:23
TRACK 11 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:24
TRACK 12 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:25
TRACK 13 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:26
TRACK 14 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:27
TRACK 15 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:28
TRACK 16 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:29
TRACK 17 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:30
TRACK 18 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:31
TRACK 19 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:32
TRACK 20 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:33
TRACK 21 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:34
TRACK 22 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:35
TRACK 23 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:36
TRACK 24 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:37
TRACK 25 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:38
TRACK 26 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:39
TRACK 27 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:40
TRACK 28 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:41
TRACK 29 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:42
TRACK 30 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:43
TRACK 31 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:44
TRACK 32 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:45
TRACK 33 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:46
TRACK 34 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:47
TRACK 35 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:48
TRACK 36 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:49
TRACK 37 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:50
TRACK 38 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:51
TRACK 39 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:52
TRACK 40 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:53
TRACK 41 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:54
TRACK 42 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:55
TRACK 43 AUDIO
INDEX 01 72:14:56

As you can see, all the audio tracks will play pretty much nothing, so the game will keep playing these empty tracks, while we get the nice music from the h2cdplay program :-)

7) Mount the modified bin/cue in a drive letter as close as possible to C:\ (there are many tools available that can allow you to do that)

8) Launch the h2cdplay program (it will open in a command line window, just leave it there and close it when you are done playing the game)

9) Launch your Heroes II Gold, switch the music to CD/Opera Audio and enjoy this glorious game at it's fullest!

Enjoy,

Tota.
You shouldn't have to go trough all that trouble. I just play windows version as it is on my win 10-64bit.
All you should have downloaded was dxwnd.
1) Install HOMM2 GOLD
2) download dxwnd
3) Run dxwnd
4)go to game directory and drag&drop heroes2w.exe on dxwnd. A menu will pop up. Be sure to uncheck Run in Window. Nothing else, although you're free to conduct experiments at your own risk :) ... Press OK.
5) you'll be returned to the small dxwnd window. Double click on heroes icon and enjoy.

Few notes.
You actually don't need to set any compatibility modes to play the game this way. You can try thou, if there is any trouble with sound or anything else.. I don't recall anything particular.

There is three heroes2w.exe files in existence (to my knowledge)
Sucession Wars
Price of Loyalty 2.0
Price of Loyalty 2.1

POL 2.0 runs smoother, but there is a problem with cd opera music. Terrain themes in particular. They keep restarting after you go to in to castle screens, switch to hero who is on different terrain, end your turn and wait for next day.You will probably never hear grassland if you wont wait for it on purpose :)

POL 2.1 Is a bit laggy. for example, pick up some ore or treasure chest and you will notice a small pause in your game play. It is very very small but it's enough to drive you crazy :D It works fine regarding music tho.

SW nothing much to say. It has different town themes and you can do some funky stuff with function keys (F1;F2...) in battle screen. Try it ;)

In the beginning you should have to install SW, then expansion POL and then apply patch to get 2.1 exe file.
HOMM2 GOLD right away is POL 2.1 version. You're pretty much stuck with it from the beginning.

GOLD installer works in 64 bit windows.
Original SW and POL expansion installer wont work in 64-bit windows. Use 32-bit version, if you have to.

Also, make sure to put your iso image in the very first virtual cd drive when palying, otherwise cd opera wont work.

Anyone trying to play the game with a dos-box... i feel sorry for you. This might be helpful thou .
Post edited November 27, 2018 by dahbk
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Heroes of Might and Magic serieshomm2 music changing issue - CD Music with Opera(23 posts)(23 posts)
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