ratfink wrote:

I'm thinking there is probably a document or guide somewhere, but I haven't found it [yet]. […]
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I'm thinking there is probably a document or guide somewhere, but I haven't found it [yet].

I have an EWS64XL, with a DB50XG attached. As I understand my setup:

- The synth [=EWS64 on-board synth you can load soundbanks to] is at 300

- MIDI-2 which the DB50XG is attached to is at 330

I use cs32mix.exe to eliminate the muted daughterboard bug in DOS.

And I seem able to select 300 or 330 in DOS games run in a 98 dos window, and get MIDI playing. There are some problems with sound levels I need to investigate.

I can also play MIDI files from Windows on external modules using MIDI-1 or MIDI-2 sockets on the front.

What I don't understand is 2 things:

1. Routing on this card, what it is and how to change it. The mixer has A/D/M and A/B/C settings as well as a few others that to be honest I just mash in Windows until I get the music throught the speakers. There ought to be some logic to this - is there a guide anywhere? I have various ftp.terratec.de downloads.

2. What I think is related to this, which is: how do I get DOS games to play MIDI on external modules, and be able to plug the output from those modules back into the EWS64 [ie via IN-1 or IN-2]. External MIDI devices seem to produce a low sound level that is pretty much swamped by the EWS insisting on playing the music itself anyway [whatever I set in the Windows EWS mixer]. [Do I need to un-fix the DB mute-bug I wonder...].

Grateful for guidance. After all these years I am finally getting round to trying to use this card properly!

Routing:

Noted is the naming convention from the terratec mixer utility. Some terratec mixer switches change two internal routing switches at the same time.

Still I strongly recommend to use Promix. It is much more intuitive.
ftp://78.46.141.148/driver/TerraTec/EWS/64XL/promix/

I usually plug external Midi to MIDI-2. Then the front module wavetable and the external module plays at the same time, but the internal wavetable module can be muted with the mixer. I plugged the external Synth to a external Mixer.
If you want to route it back in, I would use the Codecs Line-In for this.

For DOS the A path indicated in the routing diagram is sufficient.

I feel you Ratfink. These are the kind of problems which made me pack down my EWS64XL. Some day I'll take it back up and give it another shot 😉

I have exactly the same setup here, so I'll try and give some guidance and help on this rather complex piece of hardware.
To understand the on-card signal routing, you should think of the EWS64L/XL (*not* EWS64S b.t.w.) as two soundcards on one board: a WSS compatible Crystal codec and the SAM9407 synth. Both parts have their own D/A-converters and can act as the overall signal output provider. This also includes that the output of each "card" (CS4236/SAM9407) can be routed into an input of the other.

If you open the EWS control panel, you can see the sliders of two outputs, OUT-1 and OUT-2. OUT-2 is *always* connected to the SAM chip ("rear" speakers), the OUT-1 ("front" speakers) can be fed with the signal either from the codec or from the SAM. This is what the "A/B/C"-switch below the OUT-1 slider does: A selects the codec output as OUT-1, B the SAM9407 output and C is like B, only the codec output is now routed to the PC speaker connector (you rarely will need that setting...)

The counterpart to the output switch is the A/D/M-switch, which controls the synthesizer's input: A selects the analog IN-2 connector as a source, D selects the digital input in the front panel and M will route the mixer output from the codec to the SAM.

So you have two choices on how to get sound from your EWS: You can use the codec as the final element in the chain (SAM -> CoDec -> OUT-1, means ADM set to A, ABC set to A) or the synth (Codec or IN-2 -> SAM -> OUT-1, ADM either A or M, ABC set to B). If you choose to route the Codec signal to the synth, all the codec signal streams (IN-1, CD/Daughterboard, Wave) can be extended with the SAM9407 effect processor, but you will loose the IN-2. Using effects on codec output is not possible if it is directly connected to OUT-1.

The output from the daughterboard is always connected to the CoDec, it shares its input wires with the CD audio connector. If you have put the DB into the front panel, you should also set the MIDI routing switch to "off", because this switch controls which MIDI port (1 or 2) is connected to the gameport. The corresponding front panel MIDI connectors are switched off then.

All these informations are on the Terratec FTP server hidden in ftp://ftp.terratec.de/Audio/EWS/64XL/Manual/E … 4-Manual-SW.exe as a Windows help file. Unfortunately, it's all in german. You can see the signal path diagram if you open the help file, click Control panel and then "Signalwege". the schematic is a bit simpler than the one posted above, it omits the effects processor part. I think the EWSProMix also has a manual in english, and there is some more information on http://www.studio4all.de/htmle/welcomeewst.html.
I hope that some things about the EWS are a bit clearer now (and that I didn't mix up anything), if not, just ask.

Thanks so much for these replies 😀 - it will take me a while to work through this - I will post back if I have any more issues.

This is now going rather well. Apart from the useful posts above I also found that I actually have the ews64 help files installed,, invoked from the control panel. I'd never seen these before but this card came with original CD'sso I guess that explains it.

The cs32mix program is also starting to make sense. I find the card sometimes goes silent on some functions for no apparent reason - for example earlier today the daughter board went silent in windows. I think using cs32mix woke it up again but I will have to test to make sure.

I have now managed to boot to dos and use an mt32 attached to midi2 and feeding the output back into the ews64 and to run heretic from a windows dosbox using either db50xg or sc155 on midi2.

I think that covers all my dos gaming needs. The key features of the routing for me are that the daughter board is on the same volume control as the CD,so can be muted, and the external midi is on in-1 the way I have it set.

What I still need to fathom is how to use midi-1 for games,and to be able to select that vs the onboard midi synth.

This is a fantastic card for midi, you can play midi on these devices
- a midi daughter board in the front box
- either of 2 external midi channels
- the onboard synth which uses sound sets loaded into onboard memory
- FM synthesis

It's a nice card, but I'm personally less and less happy with the FM part. Especially FM sound effects sound quite off in games like Wolfenstein etc. when you're used to the original OPL's.

I personally don't think the Dream synth is a full replacement for a Sound Canvas (even with the recommended settings) as some users say, because although the samples are identical, some parts of the music will sound louder and some not as loud. Again, probably not noticable when you're not used to a real SC.

What's my biggest problem with it atm is its noise, because it seems very noisy for a "professional" card

ratfink wrote:

What I still need to fathom is how to use midi-1 for games,and to be able to select that vs the onboard midi synth.

I might be wrong because I never investigated this, but I *think* that the onboard synth is connected permanently to MIDI-1, at least in DOS. You should be able to play music an an external MIDI device connected to MIDI-1 out, just turn down the volume of the EWS synth or do not load any sound bank.

The crystal chip is not too bad when it comes to SBPro compatibility, but I agree that its FM capabilities are mediocre at best. Disabling the codec on the EWS64 completely and adding a second soundcard with decent OPL sound would probably be the way to go.

I had pretty annoying sound popping issues in Tyrian too, could be a SB Pro compatibility issue. Need to investigate if that's on other sound cards as well...

On the EWS64XL you have to adjust the volume levels of the components since it is two soundcards on one basically. I recommend turning Clipping Off (EWS64XL feature) and do volume level adjustments first. Popping sounds are usually an indication that some levels are set too loud.
Other reasons might be IRQ sharing with a non-PnP card.

As for OPL quality, this is indeed not a focused application of the card. It is more or less included for compatibility and the Crystal Codec sound a bit different. Still, if you have heard other OPL clones it is one of the better implementations.
(I think even in the help file FM-Synthesis is quoted as "outdated technology")

Yes, setting the Audio IN-2 value to something like 45 instead of the default maximum 128 and raising the other values indeed helped. Tyrian seems much better now too. Only noise left now is when the CPU is utilized e.g. when opening windows and such, but overall a decent improvement.

Is it likely I could run this card with an AWE32 if I disable the sb pro emulation on the terratec? I have a ct2760 somewhere.

[I seem to have found an incompatibility with a pcx1, which caused problems with midi2 that disappeared once the pcx1 was removed - the daughterboard would not work and external midi was missing one stereo channel. No conflicts shown in windows and I didn't try the powervr card in different slots. It was a bit jerky on unreal which I don't think it should have been at low resolution so I guess that could ne another symptom of some resource conflict or bottleneck.]

Usually MIDI-2 does not require an IRQ. Only Synth/MIDI-1 needs an IRQ.
I could imagine that this might be related.

I don't see the point why you want to add another AWE32, but the CT2760 can be fully jumpered. So just make sure the settings don't overlap. Before disabling features I would move them to other ports/irqs/dmas as some software tool may require certain hardware parts enabled.
Typically FM at 388h on several cards at the same time is no problem, all cards will play simultaneously.

Thanks, I'll dig it out some time. I was mainly pondering the issue of FM synth and sb16 compatibility, though the AWE's synthesizer might also be interesting to play around with. I suspect it will be a waste of time because I think the games I have that have SB, SB pro, and sb16 selections on the sound card menus probably will sound the same on all sb versions. And I'm not convinced about FM synth differences being very great.

Well now it's done, and was quite straightforward after all - I just had to move one of the EWS64XL MIDI addresses as the CT2760 can only choose between 300 and 330.

The CT2760 is not fully configurable by jumper incidentally, some of the DMAs and IRQs are set by software [or so it seemed].

So I think I finally perhaps have the sound setup I wanted: one machine with an EWS64XL with all functions enabled [except gameport] so I can use a variety of on-board and external MIDI devices, and an AWE32 with it's various bits all apparently working too, with a real OPL3 onboard as well as SB16 compatibility.

There's probably some combination of sound and music this setup cannot do [OPL3 FM synth with SB Pro sound effects for example] but I don't think they are of any practical significance to me and for all I know they can be obtained by suitable mixer settings anyway. I'm happy for now at least!

[Incidentally adding the PCX1 back in was too much for the AWE32 - seemed to cause a domino effect by taking IRQ 11 which meant that alot of other devices got reallocated to different IRQs and the AWE32 was left with nothing it could use. Pretty much 98 ran out of resources with both these two sound cards.]

I can vouch for that promix too - excellent piece of software and a great improvement over the original EWS64XL control panel 😁.

Thanks for all the input!

=====================================

Final spec for what it's worth:

Athlon 700 + MSI MS-6167 motherboard + 384mb ram
Voodoo 3 2000 AGP
3Com 905B-TX
EWS64XL + DB50XG
AWE32 CT2760
DOS 6.22 + 98SE
5.25" + 3.5" FDDs, DVD drive
short and wide Lian Li aluminium case
FSP PSU from an old NEC powermate

Right now this is my system for old games; run with disabled caches it seems to approximate something around 386 speed for the few games I'm bothered about that I am aware need to be slowed. With any luck it will survive a few weeks without needing to be pulled apart and rebuilt...