GXL750 wrote:

FWIW, I found out a few days ago that it's not just with a MIDI daughter board you can get the hanging note problem. I was playing KGB when things kinda went messed up so I used CTRL ALT DEL to make Windows kill the program and from there, I had to reboot because of a hung note. This was on my old Micron computer after I installed an SB16 in it. No clue on model number but I'll find that out later. This one has a SCSI port and an empty chip socket that is supposedly for some sort of upgrade chip.

no need to find out... there's only 1 SB16 SCSI that was ever made, and that's the CT1770... creative designates the ones with the empty socket (without ASP chip) as the CT1779, but the boards are the same and they all say CT1770

they made this same card from 93 through 95, so DSP 4.05 through 4.13 were all used

Well I've given my CT3990 AWE32 a try with a MIDI daughterboard and in the hexen warp 02 test I get a hanging note straight away.
However it seems people get varying results with the AWE32's, some report they don't get the hanging note in hexen. YMMV.

I also tried running Halloween Harry and noticed a lot of crackles/pops etc which aren't present on a CT2800.
Add to that the crappy AWEUTIL and lack of true general MIDI support and overall, I'm not too impressed with the AWE32.

Have there been any reports of how soon hanging notes appear on any of these SoundBlasters:

-SoundBlaster Vibra16 CT2260
-SoundBlaster 16 Value CT2770
-SoundBlaster 16 CT2840
-SoundBlaster Vibra16C Prelude CT2960
-SoundBlaster 32 PnP CT3600
-SoundBlaster 16 WavEffects CT4170(don't think there will be hanging notes as the DSP version is 4.16 like the AWE64)

I could test these with Hexen and my Roland CM-300 and record some audio clips for you(I don't have any MIDI daughterboards, but from what I can tell, it doesn't matter whether you use an external MIDI device or a MIDI daughterboard, they'll both get hanging notes). Although I might not get the SoundBlaster 32 PnP to work with the CM-300 as AWEUTIL is such a piece of crap(I can only use AWE synth once before I get an absolute mess of garbage out of the sound card which overpowers EVERYTHING until I restart the computer and I kept getting some kind of overflow error when using my CM-300 on the SoundBlaster 32 PnP to make sure what MIDI port I'm using with the SETMUSE sound card configuration program in the Collector's CD-ROM edition of X-Wing).

-SoundBlaster Vibra16C Prelude CT2960

Yes I've tried one of these and it fails the hexen test - hanging note straight away.

I had expected the Vibra16C Prelude to have DSP version 4.16 as there's the SoundBlaster Vibra16C CT4180 which seems like it was released around the same time as the SoundBlaster 16 WavEffects CT4170, but much to my dismay, it had DSP version 4.13, which really surprised me. Wonder if the SoundBlaster Vibra16C CT4180 has DSP version 4.16 or again has DSP version 4.13.

Lots of crappy SoundBlaster 16s out there... and yet, Creative refused to acknowledge the hanging notes bug as an actual bug. Idiots.

Who has a SoundBlaster Vibra16C CT4180? I'd like to know what DSP version it has.

I was going to test a 4170 but its dead.... diagnose or CTCU won't pick it up 😒

Anyway, I've given up on Creative cards for MIDI.

I have had great success with an ESS 1868 card.
FM synth sounds just like a real Yamaha OPL, as far as I can tell. No hanging note bugs at all. Sound quality is generally pretty good, certainly better than early SB16's. However on my system at least, there seems to be more 'background noise' with the ESS card than a CT2800. When actually playing music though, there are no pops and crackles or anything. There might be something else causing this, I'm not sure. When plugged into a pair of speakers the noise is not noticable over the sound of the AT power supply fan. Definitely noticable with headphones though.

I had some trouble getting my XR385 to fit. The 1868 is physically smaller than SB16's so the daughterboard actually extends down past the ISA slot.
I managed to find one slot on my motherboard that did not had any components that the DB could interfere with. It *barely* fits like this. I got pretty lucky as other boards I have, don't have any 'free' slots like this, they've all got components beside each ISA slot.

One really neat feature of this card, is that ESSVOL has a seperate volume control for the wavetable header, AND the external MIDI port (The wavetable header is referred to as Synth B). This is great for me as I have an SC-55 as well. So I can use this card for both devices - just turn the volume down on Synth B when I want to use the SC55 😀

So for people looking for a card that works for MIDI, and has good OPL and digital sound, I can definitely reccomend an ESS 1868 card. However, if yo uwish to use a wavetable daughterboard, either find a card that is physically as tall as the L bracket, or find an ISA slot on your motherboard that is free of any components that might interfere with the daughterboard, and it should *just* fit.

EDIT: regarding the noise issue. There are two jumpers on the card for SPK OUT or LINE OUT. I had it on SPK OUT, so I've changed it to LINE OUT and the noise has pretty much disappeared. So yeah, that was pretty much my only complaint with the card, now a non-issue. Even with headphones on you can turn the volume up using ESSVOL for it to be perfectly audible in LINE OUT mode.

Ace wrote:

Have there been any reports of how soon hanging notes appear on any of these SoundBlasters
.... Collector's CD-ROM edition of X-Wing).

I don't know if this goes for X-Wing as well, but "Tie-Fighter Collectors CD" cannot work properly with a SB-16/AWE MPU-401 of any kind, at least when the card is used for sound+music simultaniously. This also goes for the supposedly bug-free AWE64 Gold.

DonutKing wrote:

I have had great success with an ESS 1868 card.
FM synth sounds just like a real Yamaha OPL, as far as I can tell.

Don't be fooled. ESFM does NOT sound 100% identical to OPL3. Wait until I feature my ESS AudioDrive ES1868F, AudioDrive ES1869F or Solo-1 in my "The Many Sounds of:" series of videos on YouTube, you'll notice right away that OPL3 and ESFM don't sound 100% alike.

Speaking of which, ESFM actually has more audible quantization noise than OPL3. When notes stop with ESFM, it has much more audible quantization noise than OPL3, something which I noticed when Mau1wurf had posted clips comparing OPL3 to ESFM with one of the Monkey Island games.

DonutKing wrote:

I had some trouble getting my XR385 to fit. The 1868 is physically smaller than SB16's so the daughterboard actually extends down past the ISA slot.

How easy/hard would it be to mount an XR385 on this AudioDrive:

I have one exactly like it and as you can see, the WaveBlaster header is mounted at a 90-degree angle compared to other sound cards.

You'll need to make a cable, I did that with my non full-height card.
Mounting it is another thing, I ended up wrapping it in bubble wrap and taping it down. (I know, I know...)

Concerning that photo: I figure any Daughterboard should fit fine, but will stick out a bit to the side. Correct me if I am wrong.

@Ace: you have a yt channel with old pc stuff?

Concerning that photo: I figure any Daughterboard should fit fine, but will stick out a bit to the side. Correct me if I am wrong.

I agree. As long as your case still closes properly there shouldn't be a problem. Or you could just run with the case open 😀

keropi wrote:

@Ace: you have a yt channel with old pc stuff?

Have a look here for his channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Ace9921

Don't be fooled. ESFM does NOT sound 100% identical to OPL3. Wait until I feature my ESS AudioDrive ES1868F, AudioDrive ES1869F or Solo-1 in my "The Many Sounds of:" series of videos on YouTube, you'll notice right away that OPL3 and ESFM don't sound 100% alike.

Speaking of which, ESFM actually has more audible quantization noise than OPL3. When notes stop with ESFM, it has much more audible quantization noise than OPL3, something which I noticed when Mau1wurf had posted clips comparing OPL3 to ESFM with one of the Monkey Island games.

Have you got a link to the videos in question? I sort of had a look around in mau1wurf's channel but couldn't find it.

I found your channel and I must say you are quite thorough 😀 My only criticism is that it would be easier if the name of the sound card was in the video title, as this would make it a lot quicker to perform comparisons. I'll have to have a dig through sometime to find the ESS one.

I didn't test X-Wing myself yet, all I've done so far is Hexen, Doom, Transport Tycoon original, Tyrian, Duke Nukem 2 and Blake Stone. Haven't found any hanging notes in these games and the FM synth doesn't sound discernably different. I usually play sound through speakers when I play games so a lot of the subtle differences may not be as audible, or may be drowned out by background noise, than if I was wearing headphones.

I'm interested to see these youtube videos and do a comparison between OPL and ESFM but I suspect it will sound 'close enough' for my needs. I REALLY couldn't be arsed having 3 sound cards in the one machine (GUS, ESS and SB) and trying to tie their outputs to one set of speakers.

My YouTube page mainly specializes in retro gaming systems and modern-day hardware clones of those systems as well as retro games(and a few modern ones thrown in, not to mention the music from those games), but I do have "The Many Sounds of:", which features direct capture of my various DOS/Windows 9x gaming PCs running MS-DOS games using different sound cards. I currently only have 2 games shown, which are Star Wars X-Wing and The Ultimate Doom(I will also show Doom v1.1), and X-Wing alone has 23 different clips from both the floppy disk edition and Collector's CD-ROM edition with many of my sound cards, but I will expand to include other games such as Star Wars TIE Fighter, Wolfenstein 3D, Red Baron, Raiden, Golden Axe, and other DOS games. Although I will need to redo all X-Wing videos prior to Part 20 as A) there's a HUGE overscan area around the video which shouldn't be there and B) many of the clips using the floppy disk edition of X-Wing were done on computers with fast CPUs, and X-Wing's standard ADLIB_W.IMS driver is so bad that even a sound card which is less prone to putting out garbage from their FM chips will still not sound right as the data is being sent to the FM chip too fast and several notes are completely missed. This is most evident with any SoundBlaster using CQM, but sound cards with true OPL3 can do the same thing if you're using a PC with a CPU slow enough to not make the YMF262 output garbage. So I'm now using Dvwjr's patched ADLIB_W.IMS driver, which fixes all these issues, though the delay value between writes might need to be tweaked depending on what sound card you have as some cards require higher delay values than others(seems those with OPL2 require higher delay values as my Audio Excel AV300, which uses two discrete OPL2 clones, requires a higher delay value to output sound correctly).

EDIT: DonutKing beat me to posting the link to my channel.

DonutKing wrote:

Have you got a link to the videos in question? I sort of had a look around in mau1wurf's channel but couldn't find it.

They're not videos on his YouTube page, but rather audio clips he posted on VOGONS, possibly on the thread I created here for "The Many Sounds of:"(which is in need of an update for The Many Sounds of: Star Wars X-Wing - Part 23 and The Many Sounds of: Doom - Part 1). I'll go find the post for you.

DonutKing wrote:

I found your channel and I must say you are quite thorough 😀 My only criticism is that it would be easier if the name of the sound card was in the video title, as this would make it a lot quicker to perform comparisons. I'll have to have a dig through sometime to find the ESS one.

It just doesn't seem right for me to do that as I don't like to give information straight up like that. General rule of thumb on my channel: keep annotations on at all times. This is how I intended my videos to be.

DonutKing wrote:

I'm interested to see these youtube videos and do a comparison between OPL and ESFM but I suspect it will sound 'close enough' for my needs. I REALLY couldn't be arsed having 3 sound cards in the one machine (GUS, ESS and SB) and trying to tie their outputs to one set of speakers.

I'm first going to post a clip of both X-Wing and Doom(both The Ultimate Doom and Doom v1.1) using my SoundBlaster 32 CT3600 and its CQM, then move on to the ESS AudioDrive ES1868F. My AudioDrive ES1869F is currently inside my Packard Bell Legend 316SX and would be a pain in the *** to use as there's no Game port on the sound card(the card was made by Compaq). It's a non-issue for Doom, but playing X-Wing with a mouse and keyboard is pretty difficult. I need a flight stick for that.

As for your sound card setup issues, you really should invest in either a proper MPU-401 card or an early Ensoniq Soundscape. That's what I run on my main DOS gaming PC: a SoundBlaster 16 CT2840 and an Ensoniq Soundscape to drive my Roland CM-64 and CM-300.

As for your sound card setup issues, you really should invest in either a proper MPU-401 card or an early Ensoniq Soundscape. That's what I run on my main DOS gaming PC: a SoundBlaster 16 CT2840 and an Ensoniq Soundscape to drive my Roland CM-64 and CM-300.

I've already got a Music Quest MPU401 in my 386 to drive my MT32. Pretty much everything that's composed for MT32 runs fine on my 386. I'm not worried about intelligent MPU401 on my 486.

What's special about the Ensoniq Soundscape? my understanding was that these only have software emulation of intelligent MPU401. Plus they lack true OPL and a Wavetable header.

My AudioDrive ES1869F is currently inside my Packard Bell Legend 316SX

Can you post the DOS drivers you used? Nothing I tried would detect my 1869F card. The latest version of ESSCFG I found was 5.2 and that wouldn't find it.

DonutKing wrote:

I've already got a Music Quest MPU401 in my 386 to drive my MT32. Pretty much everything that's composed for MT32 runs fine on my 386. I'm not worried about intelligent MPU401 on my 486.

Do these MPU-401 cards use off-the-shelf parts or do they have some proprietary chips on them? I'd like to buy one, but I can't seem to find any at a reasonable price, so I'm thinking of making my own.

DonutKing wrote:

What's special about the Ensoniq Soundscape? my understanding was that these only have software emulation of intelligent MPU401. Plus they lack true OPL and a Wavetable header.

I thought the earlier Soundscapes were supposed to have hardware implementation of MPU-401. I know the later ones do everything in software, but the earlier ones should have everything MPU-401 done in hardware.

DonutKing wrote:

Can you post the DOS drivers you used? Nothing I tried would detect my 1869F card. The latest version of ESSCFG I found was 5.2 and that wouldn't find it.

Sure thing. I've attached the ESSCFG file I use to this message.

Here's an old pic of my MPU401

The card looks simple enough I guess. If what you see looks interesting then I can pull it out and take a photo without the stickers. Might not happen instantly as my poor 386 is kind of buried at the moment 🙁 my computer room is a mess...

I thought the earlier Soundscapes were supposed to have hardware implementation of MPU-401. I know the later ones do everything in software, but the earlier ones should have everything MPU-401 done in hardware.

That's interesting... didn't know that.

Thanks for the driver, will try that out when I get home 😀

DonutKing wrote:

The card looks simple enough I guess. If what you see looks interesting then I can pull it out and take a photo without the stickers. Might not happen instantly as my poor 386 is kind of buried at the moment 🙁 my computer room is a mess...

It most certainly does look interesting. Looks like something that could easily be put together as I only see off-the-shelf parts on that thing. Please take some more shots of this thing. I'd like images of both the top and bottom of the card.

OK I'll try to get some this weekend.

I found this page which has a different model card: https://sites.google.com/site/flytrapgear/ele … ---pc-midi-card

That one has a Music Quest branded ASIC on it while mine apparently doesn't.
I haven't run into any issues with this card and my original model MT32 - Wing Commander 1, Loom, Space Quest etc are some that I've tried and they all worked fine.

The Soundscape cards prior to the VIVO90 have MPU-401 UART mode hardware. They don't need drivers of any sort, just an initialization that uploads some firmware to the card. No DB header but the joystick port is a MIDI port too.

FM emulation is bizarre as it uses the MIDI synth. Sometimes people would run a SB or SBPro alongside because the SB support is not great. But starting in '94 games began natively supporting Soundscape and that was great because its sound quality blows a SB16 out of the water.

Just what I thought. Gotta love the huge clunky sound card the older Soundscape is. Though, Swaaye, do you have an idea what version of the Soundscape this is:

It looks like an original-model Soundscape, but the ROM is a surface-mount chip and all the CD-ROM connectors and associated circuitry are not there at all. What kind of Soundscape is this? This is the card I use to hook up my Roland CM-64 and CM-300 to.