I don't know what that red thing in the picture is, but it is definitely not a Yamaha card.
This is a Yamaha card.

Yours looks more like a FM801 or something.

Dude, there's a YMF724E-V on the card. Don't you see the XG logo on the chip? All Yamaha YMF7xx chips have XG written on them.

EDIT: Here's a clearer shot of the card taken through my magnifying glass I use whenever I solder stuff:

The chip is yamaha, but not necessarily the card, i think yamaha sold the ymf7xx chips to a bunch of third party manufacturers.

I myself recently bought a 724 card and a 754 card, still waiting for them. I think the 724 i bought is genuine yamaha hardware, but the 754 is a third party.

Hope i didnt buy a load of crap, those cards sound cool in the specs but thats providing they work 🤣.

I bought a couple of NOS yamaha sp724s a few months ago, they were green rectangular pcb's. Didn't have any trouble with them. Here's the link to the auction [looks like he has a load of them] if you're interested:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sound-Card-SP-724-Y … =item2c5efbce09

my WaveForce192 XG also works without probs (but that's a yamaha-made card)

The noise effect you describe sounds like the card is recording 'what you hear' i.e. the sum output with 20dB amplification. So there is a feedback loop.

Could you check the mixer settings again? And change settings even if it looks correct. Sometimes it shows settings that are not really set on hardware level.

Also, it could just be a crap card. That looks like one of those cheap generic Chinese cards, which tend to cut a lot of corners, especially in the way of filtering, and also don't have much in the way of quality control.

elianda wrote:

The noise effect you describe sounds like the card is recording 'what you hear' i.e. the sum output with 20dB amplification. So there is a feedback loop.

Could you check the mixer settings again? And change settings even if it looks correct. Sometimes it shows settings that are not really set on hardware level.

I don't think it is possible to accidentally do that in software, not in Windows at least. You would need a physical cable that loops back from line out to line in.

Ace wrote:

Dude, there's a YMF724E-V on the card. Don't you see the XG logo on the chip? All Yamaha YMF7xx chips have XG written on them. […]
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Dude, there's a YMF724E-V on the card. Don't you see the XG logo on the chip? All Yamaha YMF7xx chips have XG written on them.

EDIT: Here's a clearer shot of the card taken through my magnifying glass I use whenever I solder stuff:

The chip might be made by Yamaha but I don't think the card is.

For some reason it still reminds me of this card:

(not that I have bad experience with them, especially not Terratec's version)

elianda wrote:

The noise effect you describe sounds like the card is recording 'what you hear' i.e. the sum output with 20dB amplification. So there is a feedback loop.

How could this be possible when the sound card gives me that whining noise WITH NO DRIVERS INITIALIZED? That, to me, is a clear indication of a crap card, and the place I bought the card from has 3 more of these YMF724-based cards available, so I can just exchange it for another one.

Actually, I stuck my headphones into the Line In of this card and ended up getting that exact same whining noise in the right audio channel, but it was much more faint than on the Line Out. Also, this card is supposed to have 4-speaker support, yet I hear the exact same horribly whiny and distorted sound from both the front speaker output and the rear speaker output. I'm quite sure this YMF724 is defective.

Unbelievable... I buy 3 Yamaha YMF724-based cards and all three are broken to a certain extent. Only my Yamaha YMF744 works correctly(minus the ringing noise under Windows), and when properly configured with SBLink, the YMF744 is the best PCI-based sound card you can get. The one problem with it is reversed Stereo, which doesn't affect OPL3, but affects SoundBlaster Pro digital audio.

EDIT: ARGH, WTF??? The Game port on this YMF724 is fake! There are no pins connecting the Game port to the sound card! That's it, I'm sending this back and getting another one. This is ridiculous.

EDIT 2: Well, son of a *****. The sound card is overheating! I just placed a big fan in front of the sound card and the whining noise is gone. As soon as I remove the fan, a few seconds later, the noise comes back, then goes away a few seconds after placing the fan back in front of the card. I guess I should probably keep the card and just add a heatsink to it? Or maybe hold onto this one, try out another one, and if it too overheats, I'm going to keep one, slap on a heatsink on both the YMF724 and the codec and place a fan on top of the card.

Ace wrote:

How could this be possible when the sound card gives me that whining noise WITH NO DRIVERS INITIALIZED? That, to me, is a clear […]
Show full quote

elianda wrote:

The noise effect you describe sounds like the card is recording 'what you hear' i.e. the sum output with 20dB amplification. So there is a feedback loop.

How could this be possible when the sound card gives me that whining noise WITH NO DRIVERS INITIALIZED? That, to me, is a clear indication of a crap card, and the place I bought the card from has 3 more of these YMF724-based cards available, so I can just exchange it for another one.

Actually, I stuck my headphones into the Line In of this card and ended up getting that exact same whining noise in the right audio channel, but it was much more faint than on the Line Out. Also, this card is supposed to have 4-speaker support, yet I hear the exact same horribly whiny and distorted sound from both the front speaker output and the rear speaker output. I'm quite sure this YMF724 is defective.

Unbelievable... I buy 3 Yamaha YMF724-based cards and all three are broken to a certain extent. Only my Yamaha YMF744 works correctly(minus the ringing noise under Windows), and when properly configured with SBLink, the YMF744 is the best PCI-based sound card you can get. The one problem with it is reversed Stereo, which doesn't affect OPL3, but affects SoundBlaster Pro digital audio.

EDIT: ARGH, WTF??? The Game port on this YMF724 is fake! There are no pins connecting the Game port to the sound card! That's it, I'm sending this back and getting another one. This is ridiculous.

EDIT 2: Well, son of a *****. The sound card is overheating! I just placed a big fan in front of the sound card and the whining noise is gone. As soon as I remove the fan, a few seconds later, the noise comes back, then goes away a few seconds after placing the fan back in front of the card. I guess I should probably keep the card and just add a heatsink to it? Or maybe hold onto this one, try out another one, and if it too overheats, I'm going to keep one, slap on a heatsink on both the YMF724 and the codec and place a fan on top of the card.

Rofl, this is funny, install a fan on it, solder a bunch of smd res and caps for the joystick port, and maybe its gonna work ok 🤣

MaxWar wrote:

Rofl, this is funny, install a fan on it, solder a bunch of smd res and caps for the joystick port, and maybe its gonna work ok 🤣

See, here's the thing with the Game port: it's there and the traces connect to the YMF724, but the plug itself is fake. It's a DB-15 with no pins inserted in it. WTF?

And what could cause the sound card to overheat within seconds of turning on the computer? Seriously, some of the things on there are burning hot. The YMF724 is quite hot, the codec is even hotter and the 78L05 regulator is too hot to touch. My guess is the regulator might be faulty and overvolting the sound card as it's not supplying 5V, but something much stronger.

Probably a cheap Chinese bootleg card or something,

It does look like a generic card, although my other generic cards aren't this bad. They all work perfectly, although a generic card I have based off the C-Media CMI8738 works like crap, but only because the chip itself is crap with nearly 100% worthless SoundBlaster 16 support.

God, I just don't have any luck with Yamaha cards. Only 1 I've ever come across works right. All the others were either built into dead motherboards or were broken when I got them.

i have used a lot of YMF724/744/754 cards, from yamaha/labway/nec/aopen/hoontech/chaintech/addonics... and so on. a few are dead on arrive but most are working, and i don't think they are especially unreliable.

MaxWar wrote:

Probably a cheap Chinese bootleg card or something,

Sounds more like this, though I'm by no means a sound card expert. Probably a bad batch or something is a miss that I don't know about (and this is well possible, my knowledge on sound cards is very limited compared to what some others here know).

The shape of the PCB is that way as they can cut out lots of PCB's out of it, kinda like a puzzle. But it does look like one of those cheap low-budget cards.

Does the card have any kind of model number you could google?

None whatsoever. Although I'm just really tempted to remove the 78L05 already on the card and installing another one or completely bypassing the regulator by linking up the output point of the 78L05 to the PCI slot's 5V line. I think I should check with my multimeter to see how much voltage is coming out of the 78L05. If it's over 5V, it's safe to say the 78L05 is defective and needs to be replaced.

EDIT: Just checked the voltage coming out of the 78L05, and it's actually outputting LESS than 5V, about 4.3V or something. Yet, the 78L05, at the moment the YMF724 outputs a whining noise, becomes too hot to touch. I'm guessing at this rate, the input voltage into the 78L05 is too high? Or is the regulator shot?

I have a Yamaha YMF-724 PCI card and it works fine... On the box it says 'SoundMax' so i don't think it's actually made by Yamaha (just the chips are). I also have full DOS compatibiltiy using the SB-link cable that goes from the sound card to a header on my Intel SE440BX-2 motherboard.

Well, that YMF724 did indeed have a bad regulator. I just exchanged it for another YMF724 and the regulator on the new card barely gets warm. On the old one, it would become too hot to touch after just a few seconds of the computer being on. The YMF724 chip itself was also quite warm, while on the new YMF724(which has a YMF724F-V instead of the YMF724E-V), it's barely any hotter than room temperature. So it was just a faulty card. Now, I'm going to listen to Doom's music with XG synth. Yamaha's PCI cards are the best I've ever used. Although I do need to replace the Game port as the one on the card is fake and has no pins on the port.

I just received both my YMF7xx today. Maybe have time to try one tonite! I think there is a way to swap to sound banks with them.