The one problem with the floppy disk edition of X-Wing with the Roland Sound Canvas is the percussion, which is rather lousy. The Collector's CD-ROM edition has better percussion than that. If ever you get the Collector's CD-ROM edition, mind recording a clip of the Death Star trench run mission's music(that's Tour of Duty 3 Mission 14) on your Roland Sound Canvas(music ONLY)?

Now, try this with your AWE64: select a mission where you can give orders to your wingmen(I typically use CTRL-A... or SHIFT-A, I don't remember). Tell me if the AWE64 stops producing digital sound. If that happens with your AWE64, yours has the "stuck PCM" glitch that affects my SoundBlaster 16 WavEffects and AWE64.

I doubt I will get that far in the game 🤣 I'm not into Star Wars / X-Wing / Tie Fighter at all. It's all Wing Commander for me...

What you could do however, is use DOSBox and capture the midi data (it has a feature for this) and send me that captured data. Then I play it back on the Sound Canvas and record it for you!

There's a profile loaded onto the disc named TOPACE which has all 5 Tours of Duty already unlocked. Simply use that profile, go to Historical Missions, choose Tour of Duty 3 Mission 14, and you're set. This profile is only present in the Collector's CD-ROM edition, just so you know(and the earlier Imperial Pursuit and B-Wing expansions for the floppy disk edition except those don't have all Tours of Duty unlocked).

But if you don't want to do that, let me know how to record the MIDI data from DOSBox and I'll send the data to you. Just so you know, I'm running DOSBox v0.73. I find this version has the most accurate FM Synthesis, so I'm using that version rather than v0.74.

My mate only had the floppy version 🙁

I found this command list:

CTRL-F6 Start/Stop recording sound output to a wave file.
CTRL-ALT-F7 Start/Stop recording of OPL commands.
CTRL-ALT-F8 Start/Stop the recording of raw MIDI commands.

PS: Start recording before you launch the game...

I'll get to it tomorrow since I'd like a 15-minute long sample and I don't have time to record the MIDI data for that long.

Now to search for a cheap Roland Sound Canvas, be it external or as an MIDI daughterboard.

Say, is there some way to use a controller through the Game port while you have an MIDI device attached or will a second sound card be required?

Ace wrote:

Say, is there some way to use a controller through the Game port

Yes!

Here is a picture I took a while ago. These cables are often called joystick midi cable or something like that. Quite common on ebay.

I recommend using your AWE64, as SB16s have this "hanging note bug". ESS AudioDrive also works fine and so should do all the clone cards that have MPU401.

Update: I believe I have finally "heard" what you describe as "sounds down sampled". For the SB Pro 2.0 I have a fix / solution!

I'm pretty sure you will be happy as we now have a card that has genuine FM, good balance between FM and speech, excellent compatibility with every game and now digital speech / sound effects that sound bright and full and not "down sampled" or "held back"...

I did a recording of "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis" with FM synth muted and now I can hear the issue you described much better. I made 4 recordings including a reference recording of DOSBox.

The "fixed" SB Pro 2.0 sounds closer to DOSBox than any other cards, even the AWE64 GOLD.

Here are the 4 recordings:

- SB Pro 2.0 with Filter ON (default)
- SB Pro 2.0 with Filter OFF
- AWE 64 GOLD (note that this card has bass and treble controls, but I left it at default which is 2 steps above the middle setting)
- DOSBox 0.74

PS: The ESS AudioDrive card would lockup my machine. So after this and the GODS incompatibility I will only recommend this card as a cheap wave table board host

Fate of Atlantis Atlantis Speech roundup

And finally I made another recording of X-Wing with driver option Sound Blaster Pro and compatible...

X-Wing OPL3 perfection for ACE

Umm... not quite. Most of the speech doesn't sound as tinny, but the sounds of the TIEs and the lasers being shot in X-Wing still sound pretty tinny compared to my OPTi 82C929A. Hang tight, I'll post a sound byte of various digital sound samples recorded off my 82C929A.

EDIT: I just realized I was using the plain SoundBlaster sound option in X-Wing and not SoundBlaster Pro and compatibles. Oops! Time to redo my recording.

Could you please make a recording of "Fate of Atlantis". I find it much easier to hear the differences...

I'm quite surprised by your feedback. To me the results with the disabled filter are nothing short of amazing. It blows the other cards out of the water and is sooo close to the DOSBox version. To me this was really a breakthrough as I haven't heard this clarity before. Had I done a DOSBox recording in my Wing Commander roundup, I would have likely noticed this earlier.

Not sure what "tinny" means as your issue before was "it sounds downsampled" which I now call "muffled" compared to DOSBox and SB Pro 2.0 with filter OFF. And the low pass filter is a good explanation for this behaviour.

Tinny is just another way for me to say "downsampled." I'm saying the same thing. But the quality to my ears is still inferior to that of the OPTi 82C929A. Let me specify "muffled sound" compared to "downsampled/tinny" sound:

Muffled sound: Sounds like there's heavy filtering on it, so heavy the high frequencies are almost inaudible(there's another type with heavy filtering that still retains some of the high frequencies, and that's what I call "bass-heavy sound," which pretty much every SoundBlaster Pro clone, later SoundBlasters with DOS support and PCI sound cards have on the digital sound end).
Downsampled/tinny sound: Sounds like the sound clip is being played at a lower sample rate than it was originally recorded.

The latter is what I notice on the SoundBlaster Pro 2.0 on every game I heard sound clips of. All the clones and the later SoundBlasters all have either muffled or bass-heavy sound(the SoundBlaster 16 WavEffects, SoundBlaster AWE64, OPTi 82C929A, OPTi 82C931, SoundBlaster Live! 5.1, SoundBlaster Vibra128, Ensoniq AudioPCI and Avance Logic ALS4000 are some examples of sound cards with bass-heavy digital sound. The ESS Maestro-2 would be and example of muffled digital sound).

Then there's unfiltered sound where none of the frequencies are boosted in any way, as is the case with my HP AZT1008 with Aztech AZT2320 chipset for both digital sound and FM Synthesis. Actually, I think this sound card has UPSAMPLED(if it's even possible) audio, as the clarity is better than every other sound card I've used, but it's sometimes a little TOO clear, as some sounds in X-Wing come out weird.

I don't have a copy of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Sorry.

Ok now we are on the same page 🤣

The thing is that the driver setting I discovered disables the output filter on the SBP 2.0. And just like you describe it opens up all these high frequencies, the sound is a lot "brighter" so to speak. So when you say you still find it muffled, I scratch my head as it's almost like the DOSBox recording and the difference between filter ON and OFF is huge!

So that was my breakthrough. Turning off that filter and turning muffle into clarity.

Just to be sure it's the recording with the file name Atlantis SB Pro 20 Filter OFF.

This filter is on by default unless you turn it off with the driver switch.

I saw someone do a frequency chart, might do the same to get a more technical perspective on all of this 🤣

Frequency Analysis of "Fate of Atlantis" recording on Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 with Output filter ON

Frequency Analysis of "Fate of Atlantis" recording on Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 with Output filter OFF

How about the other filter settings of the SB Pro ?
Did you made also recordings for those?

edit: For frequency analysis use a wave file with noise.

elianda wrote:

How about the other filter settings of the SB Pro ?
Did you made also recordings for those?

Yes! See below!

The 4 recordings:

- SB Pro 2.0 with Filter ON (default)
- SB Pro 2.0 with Filter OFF
- AWE 64 GOLD
- DOSBox 0.74

Fate of Atlantis Atlantis Speech roundup

edit: For frequency analysis use a wave file with noise.

So I need to play a "white noise" wave file on the Sound Blaster and record the output?

I might do that later! The analysis clearly show how much of the higher frequencies get lost when the filter is ON.

Here's that sound byte I said I was going to record of my OPTi 82C929A's digital sound in X-Wing attached to the post. I only mashed together a few digital sounds without any FM Synthesis unless there's FM Synthesis mixed in with the digital sound.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Yes! […]
Show full quote

Ace wrote:

Say, is there some way to use a controller through the Game port

Yes!

Here is a picture I took a while ago. These cables are often called joystick midi cable or something like that. Quite common on ebay.

I recommend using your AWE64, as SB16s have this "hanging note bug". ESS AudioDrive also works fine and so should do all the clone cards that have MPU401.

And how exactly am I supposed to use a Game port controller with an MIDI device plugged into the Game port? Did I miss something?

Ace wrote:

And how exactly am I supposed to use a Game port controller with an MIDI device plugged into the Game port? Did I miss something?

They come in versions with joystick support! Basically allowing you to connect a joystick AND a midi device.

I got one here but don't have a picture. But it's quite obvious when you shop around...

I have a game port MIDI cable that has a passthrough joystick connector on it so that you can use both at the same time.

Edit: I think it may be this model: http://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Beach-Systems-Ca … 0/dp/B000059PDQ

Ace wrote:

Here's that sound byte I said I was going to record of my OPTi 82C929A's digital sound in X-Wing attached to the post. I only mashed together a few digital sounds without any FM Synthesis unless there's FM Synthesis mixed in with the digital sound.

Cool if you find some time could you record the complete intro sequence? Just let it run because there is a lot more (human) speech and quite a few sound effects. Thanks!

I'll get to it right away. Do you want the FM Synthesis as well or just the digital sound? I will mention this right away: there is zero distortion in the sound of the floppy disk edition of X-Wing, only the Collector's CD-ROM edition, so the game's OPL2 FM Synthesis will sound the way OPL2 should sound.

Actually I don't think it's needed anymore!

I had a listen to your recording and it is definitely more "muffled" than my recording on the SB P 2.0 with output filter off (which is not standard, it's a user setting as explained above).

I did another recording, this time with FM off of most part of the intro and the other sound bites (robot and a few laser shots) which you include in your videos so you can listen to it yourself. It's attached to this message.

To get some technical clarification I ran the bit "Welcome to the flagship independent" through the frequency analysis tool and I got this:

OPTI

SB Pro 2.0 with Filter OFF

So yea the OPTI version has some detail in the highs missing...

This concludes it for me. In my opinion the SB Pro 2.0 with output filter off is an excellent card for DOS games, combining real OPL3 with excellent Voice / Music balance and excellent speech quality.

In ~ 2 weeks or so I should have my SPDIF gear and then I will revisit the AWE64 Gold and see what can be done...