That is a very nice collection of underrated but very capable soundcards. Maybe try one of these Opl3-Sax cards that allow you to post.

I am curious about the AV309, can you post a picture?

The tropez-32 is already one of the better cards, I don't think another card can easily top that one. Especially when you combine it with an external midi module.

It's really too bad that I didn't know the Tropez32 worked in my system until I had already sold it on eBay. I was testing it again to verify that it worked before packing it up and shipping it out. I was thinking to send the buyer the Tropez Plus instead, but I still have hopes that I can get it working. It should be identical in every way, except that it has a 4mb sample rom and room for 12mb of sound font.

I'll try to get some photos of these cards on here for you later today.

Here are some of the photos of cards I have. Not all of of them are the ones I recently bought.

This is the Tropez Plus. A very nice card. It would have been almost perfect had they added a standard MPU401 header rather than the proprietary thing that's on there at the moment. As I already have an MPU401AT board, it wasn't a big issue for me.

This it the Tropez32 card I just sold. I probably shouldn't have sold it, but oh well.

Sorry about the blurry photos. I'm taking the shots inside at night, and I have a shaky hand.
This is the first OPL3-SAx card I bought. It has a QS1000 wavetable on it. Looks like a pretty nice card, but it didn't work on my system.

This is my second OPL3-SAx card. It is an older revision, but made by the same company. Does not have the optional wavetable, and also does not work. Unfortunately I didn't take a photo of the working Yamaha card as it is inside the 486 at the moment.

Finally here is that weird CS4232 card I bought. AV309. Supposedly that CS4289 chip provides "3d sound", but I haven't yet been able to find the datasheet on it. I suspect it must also at least supply FM, as CS4232 supposedly does not have integrated FM.

gerwin wrote:

That is a very nice collection of underrated but very capable soundcards. Maybe try one of these Opl3-Sax cards that allow you to post.

I am curious about the AV309, can you post a picture?

The tropez-32 is already one of the better cards, I don't think another card can easily top that one. Especially when you combine it with an external midi module.

I'm actually wondering about the non-creative ISA sound cards now that I've had most of my own collection in my hands during the past weeks. Most were the ESS and Crystal varieties and I frankly have no idea yet what they are.
Only thing I know is that all of them are rather smaller (no big-azz ones, except for a couple creatives).

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Finally here is that weird CS4232 card I bought. AV309. Supposedly that CS4289 chip provides "3d sound", but I haven't yet been […]
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Finally here is that weird CS4232 card I bought. AV309. Supposedly that CS4289 chip provides "3d sound", but I haven't yet been able to find the datasheet on it. I suspect it must also at least supply FM, as CS4232 supposedly does not have integrated FM.

I have this card, and quite frankly, I don't like it. This uses Crystal's cloned YMF262, which, from what I can tell, resides within the CS4289. Crystal's YMF262 clone gets many notes wrong, especially in OPL2 where it seems to be at its worst. OPL3 is more accurate, but I personally would not bother with this sound card except maybe to use in conjunction with a CMI8738, as those cards have worthless SoundBlaster support(but very accurate OPL3).

I did notice something really odd with this card. When I used it on my IBM Personal Computer 300PL, the sound pitch was WAY too high both for FM Synthesis and SoundBlaster Pro digital audio. I never had this happen with any sound card I've ever used. On my Cyrix C3-based MS-DOS test computer and on my IBM Personal Computer 300GL, though, the sound pitch was correct. Seeing as there are no oscillators on the sound card, I assume this works off either the 14.31818MHz clock or the 8MHz clock coming from the ISA slot.

Ahhhh

The never ending quest for the perfect ISA sound card 🤣

At some point you just got to pick one and live with the good and bad sides.

* strokes his Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 *

🤣

Oh, I've long given up on the perfect soundcard. But I hope to at least find 2 or 3 good ones to use in combination. I have a soundblaster pro 2 available. I just wouldn't mind having something fairly sbpro compatible with cleaner sound. I have a feeling that either CS4232 + YMF262 or OPL3-SAx will do the job nicely. It's only a matter of finding the right card. There are tonnes of them out there, it's only a matter of time before one falls into my hands.

For me MPU401 isn't really an issue, as I've already got a separate card for that. I'd me much happier to have a card with an IDE header, as I run SCSI and have very few expansion slots left.

I think the next thing on the agenda is to test the OPL3=SAx card to see how it does for SBPro compatibility, OPL2/3 accuracy and SNR. If I no hope of ever getting Tropez Plus working in this system (which in my opinion is the ideal card for my needs) then I would be happy to use OPL3-SAx paired with goldfinch.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Ahhhh […]
Show full quote

Ahhhh

The never ending quest for the perfect ISA sound card 🤣

At some point you just got to pick one and live with the good and bad sides.

* strokes his Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 *

🤣

Or pick 3 if you have enough ISA slots.

Ace, how does the discrete CS4289 FM sound compared to whatever is integrated into say a CS4235/6/7?

It's 100% identical, though on the CS4235 integrated on my IBM Personal Computer 300PL's motherboard, the FM was INSANELY distorted, most likely due to bad drivers as neither my AV309 nor my AOpen AW32 Pro, which uses a CX4236, are distorted. I personally would not bother with Crystal sound cards except when used in conjunction with a sound card that has problematic SoundBlaster support but perfect OPL3 or a discrete YMF262.

Right now, my sound card of choice for DOS games is the SoundBlaster 16 CT2840. It puts out sound like my SoundBlaster Vibra16 CT2260, but without the obnoxious ringing noise I'd get out of that sound card when booting the computer. For emulation through old DOS versions of MAME with support for sound cards containing YM3812s and YMF262s, though, the SoundBlaster Pro 2.0 gets my vote.

But for me, the best sound card I've ever used for DOS games is the OPTi 82C929A. The sound that thing put out before the amplifier for the YMF262 failed is something I just could not get with any other sound card. Be advised: some OPTi 82C929As come with discrete YMF262 clones rather than the real thing and the sound changes depending on the quad op-amp used to amplify the sound coming off the YMF262. If you get one with a TL084C op-amp, the sound will be like a SoundBlaster 16 with less filtering, but if you get one with an LF347 op-amp like on my 82C929A, the deep bass notes get distorted at high volumes, which in some games, in particular the Collector's CD-ROM edition of Star Wars X-Wing and Star Wars TIE Fighter, actually seems to enhance the sound a little bit due to the distorted bass notes, but if you don't want the bass notes to distort, you can simply lower the volume of the YMF262.

I've always avoided the OPTi 929 cards as in the early 90s opti had a bit of a bad reputation for 486 chipsets. I think I always considered their sound cards to be second rate, and not very SB compatible. It seemed that pretty much every crappy clone card had an opti chip on it.

Though I would be willing to give it a shot as the original Tropez had one of these chips on them. It also gives me a little hope knowing that OPTi actually aquired the techology from Oak, though I have to say I'm not impressed with oak vga

It seems that the problem with my Tropez Plus is somehow related to ISA pin B2. This is the "RESET" pin. Is this pin critical to a soundcard's operation?

Is there a nice rundown of the old Turtle Beach MIDI cards online somewhere? I don't know a lot about them.

@Swaaye
Alasir: T.B. Multisound series (The Multisound are purely windows 3.1 / Windows 95 cards)
Turtle Beach Wiki seems quite complete.
Then the document in my signature has T.B. included too.

Thanks for the links. That Alasir site is excellent.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

I've always avoided the OPTi 929 cards as in the early 90s opti had a bit of a bad reputation for 486 chipsets. I think I always considered their sound cards to be second rate, and not very SB compatible. It seemed that pretty much every crappy clone card had an opti chip on it.

I rarely ever had any issues with my OPTi sound cards. The two worst OPTi cards I've used are the 82C931 and EV1935(this is a PCI variant of the 82C931, from what I can tell, and it's also got a MachOne logo on it instead of an OPTi logo), which use the horrid OPTiFM YMF262 clone. Only one game had issues with the 82C929A, and that was Descent, which would not output Stereo SoundBlaster Pro sound effects on the 82C929A, which is really weird as every other DOS game I have with Stereo SoundBlaster Pro sound effects works perfectly fine with the 82C929A. The floppy disk edition of X-Wing, which is in and of itself a highly problematic game when it comes to setting up sound cards unless you apply Dvwjr's patch for the SoundBlaster and SoundBlaster Pro sound options, doesn't work with those sound options on any OPTi sound card under Windows unless you use only the DOS drivers. But under DOS, only Descent has ever given me issues with OPTi sound cards.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Ahhhh […]
Show full quote

Ahhhh

The never ending quest for the perfect ISA sound card 🤣

At some point you just got to pick one and live with the good and bad sides.

* strokes his Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 *

🤣

🤣

Here's a photo I found online of that other Yamaha card I found that works in my 486 system:

It's very similar to the Labway card, only it takes optional OPL4 rather than QS1000.

I've been playing with this Yamaha card. It seems to work much better for me than the previous one. Setup is easy and sound quality is good. Need to do further testing on SB pro compatibility, but I haven't ran into any issues so far.