Windows Sound System or WSS for short is a audio standard started by Microsoft back around 1991-1992 or so. It was their competitor to Creative Lab's SoundBlaster, Gravis' Pro Audio Spectrum and UltraSound, and other various competing Sound Cards at the time. The card is remarkably similar to a SoundBlaster rin that it basically consisted of a digital audio section, and a FM Synthesizer section (OPL), however, while the SoundBlaster had it's own custom silicon to make a fully functional sound card, the Windows Sound System used a Analog Devices AD1848 (or compatible) Audio Codec chip instead, where Windows would do all the processing for audio in software. Remnants of this system exist in Windows, likely up to this day, but it eventually lost favor over the Soundblaster standard which overtook just about everything.

The major reason I'm putting up a page of awareness of this device, is that every year, many retro-computing enthusiasts into old PC's take a deep dive into finding audio hardware or vintage laptop computers and then wonder why the heck their DOS games don't work with their "SoundBlaster compatible" sound card - when in fact the card they are using, is not a SoundBlaster compatible at all, it's a Windows Sound System compatible card.

These cards typically live at Memory Address 530h, with a soft-IRQ of some kind (usually 5 or 7), and use DMA Channels 0, 1, and 3. Some diagnosic software for SoundBlasters can pick up these addresses and verify that you indeed have a WSS compatible audio codec card rather than a Soundblaster compatible audio chipset card. Also, MANY late-model vintage 486 class laptop computers such as the Zenith Z-Note, NEC Versa M/75 and M/100, and Toshiba T4860CT feature this sound chip, and often without a FM Synthesizer. This leads to some rather interesting nightmares when it comes to finding a vintage laptop for DOS gaming on E-bay that has digital audio and/or FM Synthesis.

There's a program called WinGroovee Beta 9 - which has a virtual MIDI Driver that allows games to utilize WinGroove to have MIDI in Windows software. This is handled by loading WinGroove as a Driver, and then further bolstered by using the "fully Active" program to allow proper multiplexing so you can have sound effects and digital audio at the same time. I needed this for Sim City 2000 in Windows 3.11 For Workgroups to work. That said, it seems WinGroove does NOT work for DOS games though. Being as it's a Wavetable synth, the sound quality is actually quite good.

The first problem is not all WSS cards come with a FM Synthesiizer. My NEC Versa M/75 laptop for example, does not have an OPL chip on-board, so no FM Synthesis. This seems to be extremely common on WSS equipped 486 laptops from 1993-1995 with a Crystal CS4231 series codec chip as it was maarketed as "Crystal Business Audio", and likely was intended for presentations of businessmen talking about business stuff, and not some nostalgic guy 20-30 years later playing DOS games on a laptop that would have cost as much as a low mileage, used, current vintage Toyota Corolla in 1993.

One thing suggested in the drivers for Windows Sound System (WSS) is it's ability to emulate a SoundBlaster Pro in 8-bit mode using WSSXLAT.EXE TSR, utilizing EMM386.EXE to "hook" the memory address and/or soft IRQ to port 220h for SoundBlaster digital audio support. It is configured in this method....

CONFIG.SYS
DEVICE=EMM#86.EXE 512 RAM
DEVICE=WSSXLAT.EXE sbio=220 irq=5 dma=1


AUTOEXEC.BAT
SET BLASTER=a220 i5 d1 t4


**NOTE** Add P330 after D1 if your card has a FM Synthesizer on it. I skipped this here because my Versa does not have a OPL Chip on-board, just the Crystal chip.

Supposedly, how this works - or so I'm told - is that the EMM386.EXE EMS driver acts as a liason and "hooks" the WSSXLAT to the parameters for SoundBlaster compatibility. PRoblem is I've NEVER had it ever work. And it seems that's the common experience with this particular driver outside of Windows. It needs to be the version 2.0 driver, not hte version 1.0 driver - but it also appears to require this version of EMM386.EXE, and this can cause some issues since certain games with only SoundBlaster Support that are incompatible with EMS - say Ultima VII or Serpent's Isle for example - still will notwork because the EMS driver interferes with the VooDoo Memory Manaager causing it to fail (though a workaround for that is using something like U7DPMI or U7RUN to run the game from Windows and go around VooDoo).

Only problem is, following the instructions above, I have been unable to get the NEC Versa M/75 to behave as a SoundBlaster Pro 2 compatible digital card by any stretch of the imagination at all. It's pretty much never found. I know SoundBlaster Emulation works because in Windows 95, it does work (Windows 95 has it's own form of SB Emulation that allows DOS applications to utilize the WSS Codec as a SoundBlaster Pro 8-bit card and it works quite well with almost all MS-DOS software including Wolfenstein 3D and NESticle). I did try this out on IRQ 10 though after looking at a thread on VOGONS looking for soundcard drivers foor a Zenith Z-Note (which is similar to the Versa M/75 in a lot of ways).

At first some forum digging told me that it was not working because I was no in Windows when using the driver. However, this seems not to be true, because right below is a guy using WSSXLAT on a Toshiba T4860CT playing Wolfenstein 3D with digital audio - and it works. This seems bizarre to me because I have yet to get this working at all on my M/75. However, I don't know if the 4860CT uses a AD1848 or a Crystal chip, and I'm not sure how well Crystal Semiconductor or NEC followed any "rules" or "guidelines" given for the WSS standard when designing their audio circuit/laptops.

Another problem I have run into is using the drivers hosted at WinWorld. Apparently they are missing an insntallation file from the disk images since it asks for a WinSetup file upon launch for both WSS installs - so I can't get a FULL install of WSS on Windows 3.1x without having to just copy the install I had on the M/75 originally (which was missing WSSXLAT.EXE and SB Emulation did not work on that - but little surprise, they might have skipped that feature as the laptop was being used as a communications device ala Stephen Hawking's AAC, not as an entertainment machine). Either way, highly annoying.

If anyone knows of how I can get this working, please throw me a line via e-mail/YouTube/etc.

Something to keep in mind is this is not a comprehensive elist, this is just stuff I have personally run, tried, or attempted to run myself, and my own experiences with them using a NEC Versa M/75 with a Crystal CS-2431-KQ Chipset audio codec on it. Your mileage may vary. Also, many times, games that have WSS Support have earlier releases that lacked that support and that support was added via a later update, or on a later edition.

To find more DOS software with native WSS support, you can actually narrow down the most likely period for support. The majority of WSS compatible software for DOS was released between 1993 and 1997, with the majority being 1994, 1995, and early 1996. Typically it was implimented in Multimedia Heavy Titles that were not huge mainstream releases. All the huge mainstream stuff (with the exception being Sierra from 1993-1997) - such as LucasArts, ID Software, and Apogee, don't support WSS. Those would require the SoundBlaster comaptible trick above to work.

Another key thing to remember is not all WSS compatible devices have a FM Synth on board. The best examples of this would be many laptop computers of the era, especially those with a "Crystal Business Audio" (CS4231x) Codec Chipset on board. A lot of DOS titles used FM Synthesis for the music, while using digital audio for the full audio. That said, a handful of titles on this list actually do all the audio and music in digital, such as Fit Up, Flying Tigers 1 & 2, or the Great Giana Sisters. But these titles are not that common.

please note a lot of the information here is pilfered from Mobygames, and might not be 100% accurate, but I'm using it to figure out what runs on what and what uses what drivers andwhat structures these audio engines usually take form in.

AUDIO INTERFACE LIBRARY (AILS) & MILES SOUND SYSTEM (MSS)
John Miles created the Audio Interface Library sometime around 1990-1991, with version 3.03 in 1993 starting to support Windows Sound System digital audio. It seems this particular audio system uses DIGPAK Drivers as well as *.ADV and executable drivers such as SNDSYS.COM. compatibility seems to be very up and down and varies wildly from engine to engine. I may look into ways to make these particular games hackable as I know Ultima VII: Pagan does not at all include support for Windows Sound System - but maybe there's a way to force it. Some of these have install programs. Used By: Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (1995), AD&D: Menzoberrenzan (1993), Sim Farm (1993), Fade To Black (1994), Ultima VII: Pagan (1994), Z (1995), Advanced Civilization (1995), Simon The Sorcerer II (1995), The 11th Hour (1995), Grand Theft Auto (1997), The Settlers II (1997)

ACCOLADE (PROPRIETARY)
Accolade had their own proprietary sound system that they used for Unnecessary Roughness. It was possibly used on other titles as well.
Used By: Unnecessary Roughness (1993)

DIGITAL SOUND INTERFACE KIT (DSM)
THis was a sound interface created that uses *.DSM Files for audio, usuallly embedded into the game's resrouce files. It also appears this was used for various players used in DOS and Windows, as well as Linux, and possibly OS/2. The files aare usually MOD Tracker files and similar converted to the DSM format. The interlallation program looks a lot like the DMX one used by DOOM, which is NOT compatible with WSS and an entirely different sound setup program.
Used by: Earthworm Jim II (1995),

DIGITAL SOUND AND MUSIC INTERFACE (DSMI/AMF)
This was used by some other games such as Tronic and possibly TekWar. I will comment on it later when there's more details availible.
Used by: Tronic (1996)

GROOVIE
Groovie is the audio engine used by puzzle adventure games The 7th Guest and it's Sequel The 11th Hour. Initially this engine did not support WSS, particularly on earlier releases of The 7th guest. Support was added via an update sometime in 1994 or 1995. That said, the engine uses ADLIB.ADV for the driver for music, so it needs OPL to work, and uses a SNDSYS executable/command file to load the audio drivers. These files loaded in the GROOVIE.INI file located in the root directory for the game. VOGONS has this improperly listed in an old thread as "DIGPAK" but Digpak drivers do NOT work with The 7th Guest or the 11th hour, SNDSYS.COM or SNDSYS.EXE Is the file that activates digital audio. With my NEC Versa M/75, it crashes with a memory dump during installation, and fails to load the card if manually configured to the default settings of Address 530h, IRQ 7, DMA 1. So support is a bit tricky. I know this file CAN work with the NEC Versa in some other situations though because I doanloaded the drivers standalone from somemwhere of the same name and they worked and played back audio from DOS. It could have something to do with teh "Soft IRQ" of the Crystal CS-4231-KQ audio chipset, or it could be that Adlib is failing to work too and that's blocking out the game (as some games REQUIRE that both sides of hte audio work). Used By: The 7th Guest (1993), The 11th Hour (1994)

JUNGLEVISION SOUND DRIVE
Junglevision is the audio engine created by Junglevision Software, a Berkley California games company, that supports Windows Sound System native in DOS. There is not a whole lot of informamtion I could find on this engine, and I'm going to need to do a deep dive on it. It does seem to be quite stable and compatible with the clone chipsets such as the Crystal and works quite well with it. That said, I've only found two games that utilize this audio engine so far and need to do more experimenting and messing around in it to figure out exactly how it works yet..
Used by: Gloriana (1996), Dime City (1995)

LOUDNESS AUDIO SYSTEM (LDS)
This is a tracker system created by Andras Molnar from 1993 to Aug 11, 1996 and is famous for playing high quality instruments on Adlib. AS far as I'm aware, it was only used by Tyrian 2000, and not much else. That said, I've found this engine to be terribly unstable with the Versa M/75. It seems to cause random hanging and locking up of the machine when I set it to use digital audio only, though I have, once - gotten it to work 100% right. Whether this is an anomaly with the Versa M/75 itself, or the WSS Sound implimentation on that machine has yet to be figured out, but that said, it's a shame since Tyrian 2000 is quite an amazing game and is very well tailored to the NEC Versa line otherwise. If I find out more info and more games, then I'll discuss this. I have not found this sound system to be all that hackable either. It appears to possibly use *.ADV drivers, but it seems like there's not a whole lot of leeway to setup with this sound system for WSS. Used by: Tyrian 2000 (1999)

SIERRA CREATIVE INTERPRETER (SCI)
Sierra's Creative Interpreter, or SCI, was the successor to the original Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI) used on such classics as King's Quest, Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, and Space Quest. Earlier versions of SCI had EGA/TGA graphics at best (320x200 16-color), with the only audio options being Adlib, SoundBlaster, Tandy 1000, and maybe Gravis Ultrasound, or the Covox SoundThing/Disney Sound Source Parallel Port audio, or the PIT Internal Speaker. Theese versions don't support WSS. But later 256 Color VGA Variants (320x200, 256 Colors - games likee Kings Quest V, Leisure Suit Larry 6, Freddy Pharkas, etc.) DO support WSS audio (usually). It can sometimes be grafted on, but not always. And usually when it is capable of it, the music still comes from an FM Synthesizer, so if you have a laptop like a Zenith Z-Note or NEC Versa M/75, you're not going to have music, just digital audio.
Used By:King's Quest V (1993), Space Quest V (1993), Freddy Pharkas Frontier Pharmacist (1993), Hoyle Classic Card Games (1993), Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out (1994)