Like the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz it's using a VIA Envy24 chip, but it offers more.

The TBSC uses a Crystal CS4630 chip, not a Via Envy24.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

Like the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz it's using a VIA Envy24 chip, but it offers more.

The TBSC uses a Crystal CS4630 chip, not a Via Envy24.

Btw, does anyone have a good collection of Vortex drivers somewhere online?

Here are some Aureal drivers, I just don't know what drivers are for what cards tho 😜 http://ftp.nchu.edu.tw/Hardware/multimedia/Aureal/

I was using solely Creative's PCI cards, till the new motherboards arrived with respectable audio performance. The latest one I have is the Realtek HD Audio Codecs I'm using in my Z68 based Ggabyte Motherboard. It has optical out, but even the analog out is very silent and no electrical hisses noted, which were common those days with on-board audio.

Technologically these newer on-board audios have come a long way since those days when people preferred add-on PCI cards to the on-board audio codecs.

If you ask me, if you're getting a new motherboard, the reason to get an add-on PCI audio card has diminished tremendously for general home use (read gaming).

The on-board audio in my Gigabyte Z68X has convinced me to sell off my X-Fi Platinum. And it's sold. (The on-board Z68X's audio is THX certified. And supports Dolby Surround)

(Yes, I might miss the "Crystallizer" in the X-Fi, but if you have a good audio system or a good AV receiver, you won't notice the difference. Crystallizer is something like the on-board Dolby ProLogic decoder that some PCI cards come with. If having a good audio receiver, it does not matter anymore, because you can pass the raw audio signals through the sound card directly to the dedicated Dolby decoder. You can re-produce the effects of Crystallizer in any system - just increase the treble and bass. 😁)

But of course a dedicated sound card will be useful for professional musicians and power audio creating/manipulating enthusiasts.

When it comes to Dos gaming or Classic PC territory, then the PCI cards become relevant :

1. For anything DOS-related, Sound Blaster Compatibility is a must.

2. It's memory footprint for the emulation purposes must be minimal to be practical.

3. The least amount of incompatibilities with games, if any at all.

Sound Blaster Live!

Coming to Live!, I've been using Live! 5.1 Platinum for sometime now. So far, there have not been any problems. If anyone has any issues with any game and Live!, you can let me know what games are those, so that I can try to find out if that problem exist in my system too.

I'm using a dedicated AV receiver, which has Dolby Decoders built-in, ranging from Dolby Prologic II to DTS and Dolby ProLogic IIEx and Matrix Upmixing. The output from Live! is via the front panel's Optical out to the receiver. So all audios from Windows 95 and others are purely digital, and the 3D effects are nice (but I think this is more because of the receiver).

The receiver I'm using :

Turtle Beach

My experience with these cards are limited but generally good. Turtle Beach is something like Diamond Multimedia - they make good stuff from available techs and core chips, and enhance them with their proprietary add-ons or just basically polish the quality.

Turtle Beach Montego II - Based on Vortex 2 card is good.

Turtle Beach's ROM samples for wavetbale sounds are also usually commended.

ALS4000

You can see some preliminary tests and initial run by following my link in my signature (- the last, bottom one in small letters).

Aureal Vortex 1

In adddition to the ALS4000, this is the other PCI based solution that has native Windows 3.1x support. And also good SB compatibility.

The above two cards are good if you don't have any ISA slots for DOS gaming.

Audigy 1 & 2

In terms of DOS compatibility, these are the last of the Sound Blaster Legacy. Audigy 2 does not have native DOS drivers, but will work with Audigy 1's drivers. But Creative's PCI drivers for DOS are a real pain in the <censored> with their notorious EMS requirement and high memory TSR footprint.

Creative's Driver support is abyssimal, to say the least. 🤣

CMI 8738

For DOS, this still has drivers, so on board codecs with this chipset can load the said drivers. I do not have personal experience i nusing this card.

And for Windows, the above selections do not matter much unless if one will be heavily using MIDI based games/applications which will rely on the on-board ROM samples.

Some more information on PCI cards/on-board audios in relation to dos :

http://vsynchmame.mameworld.info/ wrote:

**Important information for recently SiS chipsets users, such as 740, 650 with SiS96x southbridge** Use ALS4000 or YMF7x4 (or C […]
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**Important information for recently SiS chipsets users, such as 740, 650 with SiS96x southbridge**
Use ALS4000 or YMF7x4 (or CS46xx, probably) for SB compatibility in puredos. I guess only these chips will work currently.

ALS4000 DOS Driver for pure dos

ALS4000 soundchip DOS Driver (but not TSR) for pure dos for SiS/VIA chipsets users.
ALS4000 based pci soundcard is a good SBPro/SB16 compatible card.
This driver does not need himem.sys and emm386.exe.

for VIA chipsets
CS4624/CS4614/CS4280 patched dos driver for SiS63x/73x and probably SiS96x southbridge
CS4624/CS4614/CS4280 patched dos driver for SiS63x/73x or later chipset users

This is patched dos driver for CirrusLogic CS4624/CS4614/CS4280 based pci soundcard for SiS630/730 or later chipset users.
CS4624/CS4614/CS4280 will provide near-perfect SBPro wave playback in pure dos.
This driver was tested with Hercules FortissimoII(CS4624) and AOpen AW320(CS4614) on ECS K7S6A(SiS745).
[Nov.15] I tested with SY-AP5.1(CS4630) on my ECS K7S6A(SiS745), and it works.
This driver needs himem.sys.

YMF724/744/754 patched dos driver for SiS63x/73x/745 or later chipset users

This is patched dos driver for YAMAHA YMF724/744/754 based pci soundcard for SiS63x/73x/745 or later chipset users.
YMF7xx have a very good SBPro wave playback and genuine OPL3.
This driver does not need himem.sys and emm386.exe.

Trident 4DWave-NX patched dos driver for SiS63x/73x or later chipset users q

4DWave-NX has a good SBPro/SB16 wave playback compatibility. But no OPL.
This driver needs himem.sys and you must remove EMM386.EXE line in config.sys.

EV1935 (OPTi935 MACHONE) dos driver for SiS63x/73x/745 (or later?) chipset users

EV1935 is compatible with SBPro, Windows Sound System and AdLib.
This driver does not need himem.sys and emm386.exe.

"this is the other PCI based solution that has native Windows 3.1x support."

Why in the world would a PCI card need Windows 3.1 support? There weren't that many PCI 486 motherboards out before the Pentium came along and if you have a Pentium motherboard, Windows 95 is much more logical.

Malik wrote:

The latest one I have is the Realtek HD Audio Codecs I'm using in my Z68 based Ggabyte Motherboard. It has optical out, but even the analog out is very silent and no electrical hisses noted, which were common those days with on-board audio.

Seconded. Realtek ALC888 is the frickin' bomb. BETTER response and clarity than any Creative sound card I HAVE EVER USED IN MY LIFE. Onboard audio definitely 'grew the beard'. (as in, the Riker sense)

Also consider SBLive! and later sound cards to be a bit of a CPU hog compared to onboard solutions...

Some games will make your ears bleed with the SoundBlaster Live!, although I only found one game so far which sounds like absolute crap on the SoundBlaster Live!, and that's the floppy disk edition of X-Wing. Have a look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYsQbD33vtg

Yuck!

As for the CMI8738, don't bother with it. I got really poor results trying it out, even though I tried it only with two games: X-Wing and Doom. X-Wing works like crap on that card with the floppy disk edition working only with the AdLib sound option(no SoundBlaster sound option works, and if it ever does work, as soon as the first bit of digital audio plays, the game crashes and resets your computer) and the Collector's CD-ROM edition playing sound effects at double speed when using SoundBlaster 16 sound effects(everything else either makes the card output no sound or loops a little segment of a sound effect for eternity). Doom works fine, but the digital audio is FULL of static. Also beware of CMI8738-SX based sound cards. I have never been able to get FM Synthesis working on my CMI8738-SX and the SoundBlaster 16 support was just as worthless as the plain CMI8738.

Vortex-based cards make me cringe as the sound pitch of the emulated YMF262 is too low and the overall sound is of VERY poor quality. SoundBlaster Pro support seems good on the card, however, I could not get digital audio working in Doom with my Diamond Multimedia Monster Sound MX300, which has a Vortex 2 chip on it.

ESS has several different PCI sound cards, though the compatibility is inconsistent between cards. I've personally tested the Solo-1, Maestro-2 and Maestro-2E. The Solo-1 is a PCI equivalent of the older AudioDrive sound cards complete with ESFM, ESS' near-perfect clone of the YMF262. I did, however, have issues with the floppy disk edition of X-Wing crashing as soon as some digital audio plays when using the SoundBlaster sound option. The Solo-1, as well as the AudioDrive, seems to have issues under Windows 98, as I could only get the ESFM working. The Maestro-2 and Maestro-2E are completely different cards, and they're a fair bit inferior to the Solo-1. Both of these cards use a different YMF262 clone that's really odd as it sounds different depending on whether you use the card under Windows 9x or DOS. In Windows, the sound pitch is much higher than in DOS, plus, the cloned YMF262 likes to hit false notes a lot and isn't of very high quality. SoundBlaster Pro support does work very well on these cards, though, although the volume balance between FM Synthesis and SoundBlaster Pro digital audio is crap, especially on the Maestro-2E, where the digital audio overpowers the FM Synthesis so much it becomes inaudible. Both cards also gave me issues when using OPL3 music in the Collector's CD-ROM edition of X-Wing with certain notes being replaced by loud buzzing noises. This happens on both the Maestro-2 and Maestro-2E in both Windows and DOS, although on the Maestro-2E, the buzzing noises don't occur at all under Windows. On the Maestro-2, they're louder and more numerous.

OPTi even made some PCI sound cards under the name MachOne. I have a MachOne EV1935 which is pretty much the PCI equivalent of the OPTi 82C931, complete with OPTiFM, which sounds really weird. It does have good SoundBlaster Pro support, though.

Stay as far away from any AudioPCI-based sound cards unless you want to use them for General MIDI as those things have no FM Synthesis and instead remap the FM instructions to the wavetable, resulting in really badly screwed-up "simulated FM Synthesis." They do seem to have pretty good SoundBlaster Pro and SoundBlaster 16 support(the latter is only with Creative's drivers for the Ensoniq AudioPCI and AudioPCI-based SoundBlasters), however, the floppy disk edition of X-Wing just refuses to work with the SoundBlaster sound option using those sound cards.

But by far, the best PCI sound cards I've used under DOS are the Yamaha YMF744 and the Avance Logic ALS4000. Both have accurate FM Synthesis(a given with the YMF744 as it contains a YMF262 integrated within the chip) and both have really good SoundBlaster support, with the ALS4000 having a slight edge due to its SoundBlaster 16 support, which, oddly enough, I only got working under Windows. Under DOS, I only got SoundBlaster Pro support. However, both sound cards have issues with Stereo sound. On the YMF744, the Stereo is reversed for SoundBlaster Pro digital audio while on the ALS4000, the Stereo is reversed for OPL3 FM Synthesis.

Lennart wrote:

Yes, I know, but I'm fairly certain that Terratec uses modified drivers in order to be able to use the front module. I'm not sur […]
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TheMAN wrote:

windows 7 is officially supported as I said already about the dynex card... not officially by dynex, but officially by VIA themselves, the maker of the Envy24 chip

Yes, I know, but I'm fairly certain that Terratec uses modified drivers in order to be able to use the front module. I'm not sure whether the official drivers from VIA would work and whether the Terratec drivers are new enough to support Windows 7. I have never tried it.

TheMAN wrote:

I'd love to get my hands on the terratec if I can find it!

They seem to be fairly common here in the Netherlands, so I can help you in obtaining one from here if you like. If you're interested, just drop me a PM! 😀

you mind publicly telling me how much they usually cost?

sliderider wrote:

"this is the other PCI based solution that has native Windows 3.1x support."

Why in the world would a PCI card need Windows 3.1 support? There weren't that many PCI 486 motherboards out before the Pentium came along and if you have a Pentium motherboard, Windows 95 is much more logical.

You got a point there, sliderider. I guess they were trying to reach out to the max number of consumers as possible. Win 3.x was also being used in many Pentium systems those days.

They wouldn't have thought their cards will find a use in modern systems by vintage pc enthusiasts' community, like here, and Win3.x might not be popular to many, but for a (nostalgic) Win3.x sucker like me, the ability to use Win3.x and Dos with full, native sound support in a purely PCI-based system is,uh...nice. 😁

And unlike some cards, (where the SB compatibility seems to be just added to boost sales, rather than focusing on how well the emulation works,) the ALS4000 card has it's own Dos graphical installation program as well as Win3.x compatible setup program. You'll really feel like it was designed with dos/win3.x users in mind.

And for the reason this card (ALS4000) and the Aureal Vortex 1 card having dedicated Win3.x native drivers, in addition to Dos drivers, alone, that these stand out from the rest of PCI sound cards.

I have received the Aureal Vortex 1 card (by Pine) for £4.99 recently and have downloaded the drivers for dos and win3.x. I'll post a test result soon.

I'll try to post a new thread on the PCI sound cards with dos support and win3.x support (if available) soon. And maybe, if possible, I'll try to collect their dos and/or win3.x drivers too, wherever available and applicable.

Thanks all for the comments, I really appreciate people telling their own personal experiences with different soundcards 😀

Even though I prefer to use some "generally best" PCI soundcard for Windows 9x rigs, I still intend to at least try out as many different PCI soundcards as I can so I can make up my own mind about them.

Someone mentioned the Solo-1, and I actually was using a Solo-1 in the very first rig I ever build, a Celeron 400 s370 LX (after I had disabled it's onboard crap sound...which later turned out to be...a Solo-1! woopsy, newb days hehe!! 😁 ).
I never considered any of these of any particular interest. I do recall the Solo-1 sounding very similar to how Creative PCI (can't remember if it was PCI-128 or a Live! I put in there) sounded in Unreal, but the Yamaha based sv550 (Yamaha YMH724 chip) sounded very different! The weapons sounded very different, though not at all bad or anything. And I "think" it had more ambient sounds like water drops dripping within temples and such. Kinda hard to describe it.

I'd like to try several different PCI soundcards basically to hear for myself what they are capable of and I won't be excluding any soundcards unless perhaps it's some chip that's widely used on motherboards.

Edit:

sliderider wrote:

Why in the world would a PCI card need Windows 3.1 support? There weren't that many PCI 486 motherboards out before the Pentium came along and if you have a Pentium motherboard, Windows 95 is much more logical.

This reminds me, the SB Live! I tried in Windows ME used the standard ME drivers, never needed any separate drivers installed...or so I read on the web.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

The TBSC uses a Crystal CS4630 chip, not a Via Envy24.

You're right, my bad.

TheMAN wrote:

you mind publicly telling me how much they usually cost?

If you're patient enough, it should be possible to get one for somewhere between €20 and €30, which is worth it in my opinion.

good price... but shipping is always another matter 🙁
I think TNT has good rates though