No, this card - like every card from the TB Multisound series - is not DOS compatible, at least if you mean compatible with dos games. As far as I know you need at least win 3.1. to use its features. It was made for musicians, but is now obsolet because its an isa card. Maybe you could benefit from the onboard synth by connecting it with a midi interface & cable to a second computer and use the pinnacle as some kind of expander.
Search the Turtle Beach website (archives) for more information if you wish.

Silent Loon wrote:

No, this card - like every card from the TB Multisound series - is not DOS compatible, at least if you mean compatible with dos games.

Not quite true.
In pinnacle drivers directory you can find "dosapps" sub-dir, which contains:
- dos initialisation utility
- dos diagnostic utility
- simple .wav player.
Initialisation utility can start:
- ide part
- joystic part
- dac part
- mpu401 part.
Dac part, looks like, useless in dos, since it use not compatible io range with SB port, like 0x290.
Mpu part is work ok in dos games.It use onboard rom-bank for synth, and sound quality is very good.
We can't change midi synth from onboard to wavetable DB, so DB is useless in DOS.
I don't test ide and joystic parts.

So, in general, this board can work in dos as good midi board, like similar card - yamaha xg60, turtle beach maui and other midi-only devices.

This was a pretty high-end sound card for the time, focusing on audiophile quality audio. Unfortunately, it wasn't sb16 compatible, which hurt it for any gaming usage. But the wavetable was very good and comparable to adding a yamaha wavetable. It's a great card if you've got Windows-based sounds.

Samir wrote:

But the wavetable was very good and comparable to adding a yamaha wavetable.

For my opinion - pinnacle sound better, than yamaha 50xg. I've done some records, so you can listen http://kawai.spb.ru/files/sound/index.html

easy_john wrote:

Samir wrote:

But the wavetable was very good and comparable to adding a yamaha wavetable.

For my opinion - pinnacle sound better, than yamaha 50xg. I've done some records, so you can listen http://kawai.spb.ru/files/sound/index.html

Great feedback! I was going off memory from the reviews of that era, so I there are some details I don't recall.

This is from their multisound sound cards series. A PROFESSIONAL series of cards that have some of the best components on it.
People who use such cards are not concerned with games, SB compatibility or DOS.
The turtle beach Monterey (Tahiti + Rio) is another multisound card. One OF THE BEST.
Sound blasters are pieces of junk compared to this class of cards.

Farfolomew wrote:

I have an old ISA card that says "Turtle Beach Systems PINNACLE REV C" on it, but not much else. I've done some googling, but nothing i've found really tells me if this is compatible with DOS or not, and if it is, what kind of emulation, if any, it supports.

I'd post a picture, but I couldn't find any readily online. It has 2 DIMM slots for memory, a small Kurzweil daughterboard, and an EIDE and Waveblaster header.

Sound quality of Turtle Beach Pinnacle destroys all sound blaster ISA cards in sound quality.
Very good bass, low noise, SPDIF I/O (with add-on card), Internal and External (header) MIDI, Motorola DSP, multiple output and input.
Dos compatibility is a bit poor, i wanted to use mine with MS DOS MP3 players because of its superior quality in sound, but they can not detect it.

But as for windows MIDI and general sound reproduction its the shit.
Mine came with out Kruzwell external MIDI card, but i don't complain 😀

By the way, DIGPAK supports Turtle Beach Multisound for PCM. I am pretty sure that Multisound Classic is meant, that one with Proteus synth. However, there's a tiny chance that PCM part of Pinnacle is the same.

Known DIGPAK games to support TB Multisound:

Grand Fleet
Kasparov's Gambit
Pickle Wars
Rallo Gump
Strike Squad
The Seventh Guest (only with 1.30 patch)
Walls of Rome
Warriors of Legend

Stumbled upon this topic again.

No, the PCM part of TB Pinnacle and Fiji is different to that of TB Classic and Tahiti/Monterey. They are incompatible, thus DOS games that mention TB Multisound for PCM playback, would only work on TB Classic/Tahiti/Monterey.

Quite old topic and completely not true. Turtle Beach Multisound is awesome sound card! There are some MS-DOS games that use it for sound and wavetable music. Too bad Turtle Beach didn't produce newer PCI card with same capabilities. Because of that it is obsolete, but still usable in vintage computers that many of us are using for true music experience. BTW, same insanely bad decision was the reason that Gravis Ultrasound and many other awesome cards (including AWE32/64) doesn't exist anymore. Well, actually there is very rare PCI version of AWE64, but I have seen it only in Ebay auction and some forums.

SEGStriker wrote on 2020-05-31, 15:16:

BTW, same insanely bad decision was the reason that Gravis Ultrasound and many other awesome cards (including AWE32/64) doesn't exist anymore.

They don't exist anymore because with busses after ISA allowing direct access to system memory and with faster CPUs, such cards simply made no sense anymore. Just like we don't need MPEG2 decoder cards to watch a DVD these days. Any modern system can do in software what no sound card from back then could ever do in hardware. That's just how technology advances.

derSammler wrote on 2020-05-31, 15:25:

SEGStriker wrote on 2020-05-31, 15:16:

BTW, same insanely bad decision was the reason that Gravis Ultrasound and many other awesome cards (including AWE32/64) doesn't exist anymore.

They don't exist anymore because with busses after ISA allowing direct access to system memory and with faster CPUs, such cards simply made no sense anymore. Just like we don't need MPEG2 decoder cards to watch a DVD these days. Any modern system can do in software what no sound card from back then could ever do in hardware. That's just how technology advances.

Well, sort of, but not really. Not at all 😀
The difference between those old cards and modern ones is so huge, that I still have some retro PCs to listen to them. Even those, who don't possess musician's hearing can differentiate easily between the real hardware and emulators that are used on newer audio cards. And much more in case of direct comparison (without wavetable or emulators of those old cards).