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PC internal speaker's tools for Windows 9x

You will find in this section players/drivers or tricks to play common format with those players/drivers. Also included are tools to mute the PC speaker.

Tools of the DOS section will also work well, provided you reboot your PC to DOS. They will not work from a Win9x DOS box.

It is a hard task to find anything really good for the PC internal speaker under Windows 9x. Here is what I found, if you know something better, please let us know via the forum. Thanks in advance.

WAV format

The next two drivers were meant for Windows 3 and 3.1, but they work fine under Windows 9x.

- Sound Driver for PC Speaker from Microsoft (1992)

This driver provides good sound quality. The disadvantage is that it disables all other processes on your computer. That means that the mouse, keyboard, modem and everything else freezes as long as the sound is played. You are even not allowed to stop the playing.
You play the WAV file (only format accepted) by using the Microsoft sound recorder.
The EXE file (22Kb) has no help either. You need to install it by right clicking on the "oemsetup.inf" file.

- Sound Driver for PC Speaker from John Ridges (1992)

Sound quality is not as good as the Microsoft driver, but all other processes stay enabled. On my laptop there is a ticking noise in the background and the sound looses quality when moving the mouse. But you have all the time full control over the player (Microsoft sound recorder) so you can stop, rewind etc.
There is a help file in the ZIP file (8Kb), just follow instructions.

- LxVox V1.0 from Stefan Peichl (1998)

This is a curiosity software. I could not make it work under windows 95 second edition on my 486 laptop, but it worked fine on the speaker under windows 98 second edition with a 750 Mhz processor PC (having a soundcard).
The good side is that that your WAV file can be of any length. The bad sides are that you can't stop the process once it is running (well I could not) and that the WAV file can be of any sampling rate (22050 Hz recommended) but must be 8 bit mono. You can modify any WAV file to match those parameters using the windows sound recorder.
There are some interesting information in the documentation file of the zip file (20Kb).
May be you should try this one on your computer before installing one of the two mentioned drivers as it will save you memory and space on your hard drive.

- A trick to reduce your WAV file size without loosing (much) sound quality

Of course, you don't want to be dealing with double digits megabyte size files, as the windows recorder needs to load the whole file first. You would better go for 8 bit mono and 22050 Hz (or lower) sound quality. Again, you can modify any WAV file to match those parameters using the windows sound recorder.

Size of a WAV file is critical for the kind of PC we are talking about. A good way not to loose quality (we are talking for 8bit mono 22050 Hz files) is to convert your WAV file to MP3 and then convert the MP3 file back to MP3 (see tools below). Provided the source of your first original WAV file was not a MP3, you should see a significant decrease in size but none in term of quality.

MP3 format

No players for this format work under Windows 9x, the only way is to convert your MP3 files to a WAV format.

- Convert MP3 to WAV converter using Lame Encoder (600Kb) from Mike Cheng and Mark Taylor (2002)

Works both ways MP3 to WAV or WAV to MP3. Work under Windows 9x or plain DOS.
Probably the best freeware MP3 codec.

- Convert MP3 to WAV converter using MP3 2 WAV Ver. 1.0 (290Kb) from Rasmus J.P. Allenheim (1998)

For those of you looking for smaller downloads, lesser sound quality (is it the subject here ?) but easier to use tools, this is the choice.

CD format

There is no CD players, that I know of, that would play directly for the PC speaker under Windows 9x.
The way to go is, once again, to convert your CD tracks to the WAV format.

- Convert CDA to WAV converter using CD2WAV (290Kb) from Rasmus J.P. Allenheim (1998).

Well, not much to say it does the work.

- The real trick is to install CDFS (41Kb) from Microsoft (1995).

Read the txt help file in order to install it properly, then use explorer, it is magic ! Works in the DOS box too. Just one bad thing : if the CD has both data and music (usually game CD) you won't see the music.

MIDI format

- Midext MIDI driver for PC speaker from Daniel Dan (1995)

This is a driver that makes you listen to only one channel of a MIDI file. No help document in the ZIP file (26Kb), you just need to install it by right clicking on the "oemsetup.inf" file.

- Convert MIDI to WAV using ModPlug Tracker from Olivier Lapicque (1997-2002)

You can use Modplug Tracker. I do it (with Modplug Tracker version 1.12) on a PC 486-75 with 8Mb memory, no sound card and a 640*480 screen resolution. Make sure the sound level is to the maximum.

MOD formats (IT, MOD, S3M, XM, ...)

No players for this format work under Windows 9x, the only way is to convert your MOD files to a WAV format. You can use Modplug Tracker (see MIDI section above).

Turning the PC speaker off

Volume adjustment for the PC speaker

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