I'm not so sure about the clones but I think Audigy 2 ZS is a good candidate for your title question of this thread. Of course, taking into account the 2 criterias : a.) Older PC rebuilding and b.) from Creative.

Other combinations, meeting different requirements are equally open for suggestions / recommendations.

I have an Audigy 2 ZS which I keep meaning to test! 😦

However, for this particular topic, I am interested in the Ensoniq/Creative AudioPCI sound card.

Yes, the Audigy 2 ZS may very well be an excellent sound card. However, I am building more than 1 legacy machine, so I can test the Audigy 2 ZS card for use inside another machine.

Thanks.

This thread makes me wonder: what makes an Audigy 2 ZS, specifically, a good card for legacy system? I thought Aureal Vortex 2-based cards (like Diamond MX300) is everyone's favorite for legacy system.

Audigy 2 ZS came up in many places and forums being one of the best "middle age" cards to come in a while, though initially Audigy 1 improved a lot over the Live! card.

I've been buying Creative cards since the time of my 286, starting with Sound Blaster 1.5. And I've been sticking ever since to Creative Labs products. Contrary to many people complaining about SB drivers and functionality, I've never faced any major problems with them and have been happy with 'em.
That and the fact that Singapore, where Creative Labs originated, is beside my country, which may have contributed to the products' availability and relative cheaper pricing here. But the EXTRA LONG time it takes for the drivers to install, beginning with Audigy and now the X-Fi is really a major pain in the...

Now coming back to the topic, yes, Kreshna, Aureal Vortex 2 cards are good with good dos SB emulation. Now, that may be a case in a PCI based card.

For a true pure DOS mode, I always prefer to stick to an ISA slot with an ISA card...currently LAPC-I and SB AWE64 Gold ISA. This is for my classic Dos based machine.

As for my mid-range Win98-based PC, I have a Audigy 2 ZS, and a Terratec Aureal 3D (Vortex-2) based card. But this machine is dedicated to Win98 gaming. I prefer to use Aureal card for those games that expressively state about Aureal support. For eg. Thief 1.

And Robert, I would also recommend a TurtleBeach soundcard. Unfortunately I don't have any to do a direct audio testing.

P.S. I keep tinkering with my PC configuration now and then, so you might see different configurations in different posts. But my base system will be the same. I now concentrate on maintaining 3 pcs : 1. DOS/W3.1 based machine, 2. Win98 based machine and 3. Current Win XP/Vista based system for latest games. All the 3 cpus connect to my BenQ DV3750 screen and all the audio outputs connect to my Marantz 5002 SR A/V receiver, which in turn disperses the audio to a 7.1 channel setup. I had to buy a seperate 2.1 speaker system to output my AWE 64's digital sounds while listening to LAPC-I's music via the receiver.

For me, maintaining two separate classic systems is important to run dedicated programs in their respective native mode... for eg.
- Crusader No Regret in DOS and System Shock 2 in Win98.

Malik, have you ever had any experience with any of the Ensoniq / Creative AudioPCI cards? (ES137x chipset)

Yes, turtlebeach - very nice card, I have one for one of my legacy boxes! 😀

Also, regarding "System Shock 2" - I must get that game! I have the first one, but haven't got around to getting its sequel!

retro games 100 wrote:

Malik, have you ever had any experience with any of the Ensoniq / Creative AudioPCI cards? (ES137x chipset)

I have used a Creative Vibra based PCI 128 audio card but never used it for long. I have also used ESS Audiodrive and Crystal Semiconductors' Crystal FM sound card with my Pentium 133 system.

Unfortunately I don't have any experience in using the cards you have mentioned.

The Crystal chip had a major problem with my Award Bios v4.5g. The system won't boot when initializing the card. It hangs there. I also read about this particular problem in a UK based magazine long time ago.

retro games 100 wrote:

Yes, turtlebeach - very nice card, I have one for one of my legacy boxes! 😀

It's one of the cards I'm waiting to buy... Also, I'm interested in getting a SCC-1.

And I read yesterday regarding an LAPC-I being sold in e-bay, from Australia. Just in case if you're interested.

Just bought a Voodoo 2 card from e-bay.

retro games 100 wrote:

Also, regarding "System Shock 2" - I must get that game! I have the first one, but haven't got around to getting its sequel!

I bought the EA Classics version of System Shock 2.

They are all cheap junk. 😀

AudioPCI is basically a early AC97 codec. It doesn't do anything particularly well other than be cheap to manufacture. At least it does have that DOS driver that emulates MIDI hardware. Of course, so does a SBLive (same driver but with SB16 support added) and Aureal Vortex (doesn't need EMM386 but limited to SBPro)(but you get the DB header in DOS on a PCI card!) and they are all-around superior cards for Windows.

I bought a AudioPCI when it first came out. Direct from Ensoniq, actually, and it came in OEM style white box. Something like $75. My Soundscape had superior MIDI quality but the AudioPCI supports SBPro, unlike Soundscape. The AudioPCI had lots of problems with popping and static when used with a Voodoo1 (bus hogging), just like folks complain about with many PCI sound cards actually.

AudioPCI has very limited hardware acceleration. Something like 2 hardware streams. And, its MIDI synth is entirely software along with the effects engine. Directsound3D support is capable of 4 speaker output via the Line In jack, I think, but it's very simple 3D audio compared to a Live! or Vortex especially.

swaaye wrote:

They are all cheap junk. :) […]
Show full quote

They are all cheap junk. 😀

AudioPCI is basically a early AC97 codec. It doesn't do anything particularly well other than be cheap to manufacture. At least it does have that DOS driver that emulates MIDI hardware. Of course, so does a SBLive (same driver but with SB16 support added) and Aureal Vortex (doesn't need EMM386 but limited to SBPro)(but you get the DB header in DOS on a PCI card!) and they are all-around superior cards for Windows.

I bought a AudioPCI when it first came out. Direct from Ensoniq, actually, and it came in OEM style white box. Something like $75. My Soundscape had superior MIDI quality but the AudioPCI supports SBPro, unlike Soundscape. The AudioPCI had lots of problems with popping and static when used with a Voodoo1 (bus hogging), just like folks complain about with many PCI sound cards actually.

AudioPCI has very limited hardware acceleration. Something like 2 hardware streams. And, its MIDI synth is entirely software along with the effects engine. Directsound3D support is capable of 4 speaker output via the Line In jack, I think, but it's very simple 3D audio compared to a Live! or Vortex especially.

Does the Diamond Monster Sound MX series have this Aureal Vortex chipset?

Re: "Does the Diamond Monster Sound MX series have this Aureal Vortex chipset?"

I think the Diamond Monster MX300 has Aureal Vortex 2 chipset.

Re: "AudioPCI is basically a early AC97 codec" -

I think Creative made the ES1371 and ES1373 to be AC'97-compatible versions. (So says Wikipedia)

I just wonder whether the ES1370 version is better or worse than these two later AC97 versions?

Re: "The AudioPCI had lots of problems with popping and static when used with a Voodoo1 (bus hogging), ..."

Yes, I heard this very recently when testing my ES1373 chipset-based sound card with a Diamond Monster Voodoo1. The game "Unreal" sounded bad, so too did a few other games. To solve the problem with "Unreal", inside its .INI file, I set the "use Direct Sound" field to = False. This solved the popping/poor sound problems in that game. In other games where the sound problems were even worse, I unistalled the WDM drivers and reinstalled the VxD drivers.

Re: "And I read yesterday regarding an LAPC-I being sold in e-bay, from Australia. Just in case if you're interested."

Already gone (way) past my max budget amount! 🙁 😢 😒

(Cheers self up) 🤣

Yeah vxd drivers are always best in Win9x. Lower CPU usage and fewer issues.

I don't really know if ES1370 is better than the others. It's the only chip I've used. If the newer chips are worse, that would be ugly stuff. 😀 I forgot one other quirk I've seen with these cards; they may or may not play more than one or two sounds at once within Windows! I'm not sure if this is only with certain chips or what.

And yeah, Monster Sound MX300 is a Vortex2 card. I have one with a Roland SCD15 mounted on it. Very nice in every way except that they didn't emulate SB16 in DOS, only SBPro. Oh well. But, guess what? Its SBPro PCM sound support sounds much better than a real SB16 card! Significantly better signal quality. I also have a Turtle Beach Montego A3Dxstream which is based on Vortex1 and again has a DB header.

I should note that I rarely use FM music and I doubt that any emulation driver sounds as good as a real OPL3. Other than maybe DOSBOX's.

Older Monster Sound cards use different DSPs but still have Aureal 3D audio tech. However, their DOS support is very limited (only a DOS window in 9x).

swaaye wrote:

Yeah vxd drivers are always best in Win9x. Lower CPU usage and fewer issues. […]
Show full quote

Yeah vxd drivers are always best in Win9x. Lower CPU usage and fewer issues.

I don't really know if ES1370 is better than the others. It's the only chip I've used. If the newer chips are worse, that would be ugly stuff. 😀 I forgot one other quirk I've seen with these cards; they may or may not play more than one or two sounds at once within Windows! I'm not sure if this is only with certain chips or what.

And yeah, Monster Sound MX300 is a Vortex2 card. I have one with a Roland SCD15 mounted on it. Very nice in every way except that they didn't emulate SB16 in DOS, only SBPro. Oh well. But, guess what? Its SBPro PCM sound support sounds much better than a real SB16 card! Significantly better signal quality. I also have a Turtle Beach Montego A3Dxstream which is based on Vortex1 and again has a DB header.

I should note that I rarely use FM music and I doubt that any emulation driver sounds as good as a real OPL3. Other than maybe DOSBOX's.

Older Monster Sound cards use different DSPs but still have Aureal 3D audio tech. However, their DOS support is very limited (only a DOS window in 9x).

I've read that the midi wavetable is non functional in pure DOS, haven't tested it myself though (yet) what I do know is that the SbPro mode works in poure dos with the aid of the special init software that's a pafrt of the driver package that get's installed in Windows

swaaye wrote:

Of course, so does a SBLive (same driver but with SB16 support added) and Aureal Vortex (doesn't need EMM386 but limited to SBPro)(but you get the DB header in DOS on a PCI card!) and they are all-around superior cards for Windows.

OT-ish but
so theoretically I could use the SBLive DOS TSR to obtain SB16 / (crap)FM midi capability on my old '99 laptop with AC'97 running Win98?
I might have to try this out for myself, since the VIA AC'97 "LEGACY TSR" sucks

Amigaz wrote:

I've read that the midi wavetable is non functional in pure DOS, haven't tested it myself though (yet) what I do know is that the SbPro mode works in poure dos with the aid of the special init software that's a pafrt of the driver package that get's installed in Windows

For the old Monster Sounds? Vortex cards? Live!? 😀

AudioPCI/Live! do have DOS MIDI. I'm actually unsure of Vortex cards because I used the SCD15 on it. As for the older Monster Sounds, I don't really know at all but I do remember that they were very not-fun to use for DOS games because of their limitations. From reviews, that's what I gather anyway.

Monster Sound MX200 is neat though because it came with a 4MB MIDI daughtercard that you can use on other cards. And the DB used unauthorized Roland samples that caused lawsuits and stuff once Roland found out.

leileilol wrote:

OT-ish but
so theoretically I could use the SBLive DOS TSR to obtain SB16 / (crap)FM midi capability on my old '99 laptop with AC'97 running Win98?
I might have to try this out for myself, since the VIA AC'97 "LEGACY TSR" sucks

It would be a matter of hacking the driver to interface with a new sound codec. I imagine that it would have to be tailored to each codec, unless the DOS driver actually uses some part of the AC97 standard that's shared with all such codecs. I really have no idea.

Re: "Yeah vxd drivers are always best in Win9x."

I had to uninstall my ES1373 WDM driver package - too many problems, eg pops and crackles and dropouts. Very disappointing.

I've gone back to the VxD driver package. I think there are some DirectX issues with it, but generally speaking it's much better.

About cheap AC97 codecs... Just my experience... 4 years ago my main system was an ASUS motherboard, VIA 694x chipset, Celeron 600 (I loved that CPU, usually it was overclocked to 750 or 900), nVidia RIVA TNT2 M64 32 MB and ADI 1881 AC97 codec...
Well, I was not a big fan of them AC97, but that ADI was a good one. SBPro compatible, didn't need any drivers in DOS mode. For the digital sound is simple, but I don't know how they did FM synthesis.

fillosaurus wrote:

I was not a big fan of them AC97, but that ADI was a good one. SBPro compatible, didn't need any drivers in DOS mode. For the digital sound is simple, but I don't know how they did FM synthesis.

I had a Biostar M7VKA with integrated AC97 SBpro emulation
Digital sound work in real mode
FM sound is done in software, need a tsr and worked only with EMM386