Sound Blaster 16 Emulating Devices \ VOGONS

Sound Blaster 16 Emulating Devices

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First post, by Great Hierophant

Posted on 2008-08-28, 04:00

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As far as I know, the only PCI devices that would emulate the Sound Blaster 16's functions would be Creative's Sound Blaster Live! and SB PCI series. I am concerned with these cards compatibility with the digitized portion of the '16. Now, the TSR driver uses EMM386, which certain DOS games will not work with. The only ones I know of only support the SB Pro. Other DOS games require it, and most don't care one way or the other. Sound Blaster 16 support not only gives support for 16-bit digitized sound playback, but 8-bit digitzed sound playback at 44.1kHz, which is must more important.

So, how well does the emulation work in this limited instance?

Reply 1 of 3, by leileilol

Posted on 2008-08-28, 04:24

leileilol Offline

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Sierra/Dynamix's DOS games don't like it. I've never ever gotten digital sound to work on their Sound Blaster supported DOS games back then.

long live PCem

Reply 2 of 3, by swaaye

Posted on 2008-08-28, 20:32

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AudioPCI emulates a 16-bit Ensoniq Soundscape, fyi. One of the few DOS PCI TSRs that get you 16-bit audio. Actually, Live! and AudioPCI may be the only two cards with TSRs that do 16-bit? And it's actually basically the same TSR anyway. Both do need EMM386.

The Vortex1/2 TSR only does SBPro but doesn't need EMM386. It isn't exactly compatibility perfect either though. Too bad that it doesn't do SB16 because, with that DOS-functional daughtercard header, it would make a pretty nice DOS card. SBPro support is pretty limiting in later DOS games. Ever since I discovered that the Crusader games could output 48KHz 16-bit sound with a little cfg editing, I've been strongly wanting 16-bit audio.

Reply 3 of 3, by fillosaurus

Posted on 2008-08-29, 14:20

fillosaurus Offline

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C-Media CMI 8330, 8338 and 8738 emulate SB16; The emulation is not perfect but it usually works.
ALS sound chips emulate it too. I know ISA ALS 100, 100+ and 120 were SB16 compatibles, so PCI ALS 4000 might do it.

Y2K box: AMD Athlon K75 (second generation slot A)@700, ASUS K7M motherboard, 256 MB SDRAM, ATI Radeon 7500+2xVoodoo2 in SLI, SB Live! 5.1, VIA USB 2.0 PCI card, 40 GB Seagate HDD.
WIP: external midi module based on NEC wavetable (Yamaha clone)

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