Subject pretty much says it all. I'm on Windows 7, 64-bit, with my system sound being "Realtek Digital Output".

On various games, I've tried the "Launch Settings" shortcut, and any sound card I pick results in no sound when running the "Test Sound" option.

GOG DOSBOX games used to have sound before I updated them to the current GOG version using GOG Galaxy, and I never had to make any changes to sound config for them to work before.

Any ideas, or anything I can do that will help debug the issue better?

Here's a long shot: Make a shortcut to a locally installed DOSbox, and drag a game executable atop it.

I want you to make note of the first like, that should be something like

'Z: SET SOUND[...]' and see what the numbers are. There's a weird chance that the numbers the games are expecting and what the configs are have been mismatched.

Does the sound work apart from dosbox ? Or is it only dosbox which lacks sound ?

Check your dosbox conffig file. In the [mixer] section, check that nosound=true and not false. Also check the [midi] and [sblaster] sections and verify that there are no wrong values.

OK, this got me something. The output in the status window includes:

MIXER:Can't open audio: No available audio device , running in nosound mode.
MIDI:Opened device:win32

The DOSBOX window itself says:

SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 H5 T6

This comes from the DOSBOX Default.conf file, but doesn't really mean anything if DOSBOX can't find the Windows sound driver.

The audio works fine for all other Windows programs. I'm going to try and reboot and run DOSBOX first thing, to see if something is interfering.

Incredibly stupid guess, have you checked your mixer?

I rebooted, and since I was rebooting, I decided to apply updates, which I always do from the "Administrator" account. Just for grins, I tested DOSBOX from that account, and it finds the sound card with no problem.

After the reboot, I logged in as myself with all startup apps disabled (registry and Startup groups), and still no joy. Running DOSBOX as an administrator didn't help, either, but I didn't expect it to, because UAC is completely disabled on the machine, and my account is a member of the local Administrators group.

Since the Windows sound card settings (Control Panel->Sound->Realtek Digital Output->Properties) are shared between all users, that isn't the issue.

Now I know it's something with this account, but I really don't have a clue, because all DOSBOX config seems to be from .conf files on disk, with nothing stored in a place like the registry.

Some searching at the DOSBOX forum lead to a Google search that gave me the answer:

I had to set the environment variable SDL_AUDIODRIVER to "dsound".

I added it to my environment variables in "Advanced System Settings", logged off and back on (to get EXPLORER.EXE to recognize it), and everything works fine now. I have no clue why a different account worked without this, though.

It's probably complicated, but it may have been that it never saved those details in the first place.

Glad you figured it out, enjoy your old gaming.

Congratulations on finding a fix. Don't forget to mark this thread as Solved. ;)

I know this is a necro but this just helped me get audio for Harvester and I couldn't find any solutions for it elsewhere in regards to that game. Personally my SDL_AUDIODRIVER was set to "directsound" and needed to be changed to "dsound". Worked straight away.

I have solved my issue by setting the speakers as default. https://thegeekpage.com/realtek-digital-output-has-no-sound/

edit: Crap. Necro post by a bot and I missed the date.

I don't care about "Necro". The problem still exists.

SDL is the biggest piece of crap I've seen in recent years. Some games like Cyberia didn't find the DLLs they need for it until I reinstalled them. Some want SDL_AUDIODRIVER set to "dsound" - others crash with this setting and only work with "DirectSound". Who ever developed this junk really must hate gamers...

Run your DOS games using Dosbox-Staging. They'll run much better and with sound:

https://www.dosbox-staging.org/#feature-highlights

https://www.dosbox-staging.org/getting-started/introduction/

https://github.com/dosbox-staging/dosbox-staging/wiki/Frequently-asked-questions#where-is-the-config-file