I think my favorite SB is the AWE32. The original one, with RAM slots, Daughterboard header and true OPL3. It's quite noisy, but LINE is manageable and certainly not much noisier than some of the SB16 and Vibra 16 cards.

Oh man, I've read several novel sized threads around here on this topic and after all that, I still ended up trying a dozen cards to see which worked for me with my particular hardware.

For now I've settled on the Sound Blaster Vibra "S", which is a relatively modern version of the SB16, real OPL3 (on most of them), Wavetable header on a full sized card, not true PnP (good thing), is cheap, has good software and is of course compatible with everything.

It does have the hanging note bug but in my experience that's not a big deal, it gets blown out of proportion IMO.

Keep in mind that SB16 isn't compatible with SB Pro. So games with SB Pro support but no SB16 support will have to run in plain old SB mode, no stereo.

My choice is an SB Pro2, followed by AWE64 Gold.

The former for having decent noise properties, not needing software initialisation, and having wide compatibility.

The latter for having pretty-good OPL quality, having chorus and reverb on OPL music, good quality output, no hanging-note bug, and AWE support.

SquallStrife wrote:

Keep in mind that SB16 isn't compatible with SB Pro. So games with SB Pro support but no SB16 support will have to run in plain […]
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Keep in mind that SB16 isn't compatible with SB Pro. So games with SB Pro support but no SB16 support will have to run in plain old SB mode, no stereo.

My choice is an SB Pro2, followed by AWE64 Gold.

The former for having decent noise properties, not needing software initialisation, and having wide compatibility.

The latter for having pretty-good OPL quality, having chorus and reverb on OPL music, good quality output, no hanging-note bug, and AWE support.

Is there a significant difference between SB Pro 2 variants (assuming there are any)?
Also, what about the Pro 1? It seems to have two OPL2 chips for stereo. Did any game use this?

My two favourite Creative cards are the Sound Blaster Pro 2 and the AWE64 Gold.

SquallStrife wrote:

Keep in mind that SB16 isn't compatible with SB Pro. So games with SB Pro support but no SB16 support will have to run in plain old SB mode, no stereo.

We need to clarify this again, because this "myth" keeps popping up.

Firstly we need to distinguish between FM and speech.

The SB16 is 100% compatible with FM of the Sound Blaster Pro 2.

It is NOT compatible (MONO only) with the speech part of the Sound Blaster Pro.

Now the thing is the Sound Blaster 16 came out in 1992. You find me a game from before 1992 that uses Stereo speech 😀 It's really a non-issue.

What do I use in my Time-Machine?

An AWE64 Gold with MIDI set to A300 in combination with a Roland MPU401AT.

I vote for the awe32 non-pnp. It's the only one I kept.

I found sb 16s were muffled and crackly, awe64 was muffled to my ears too, and the games I needed FM synth for had sb16 settings so would work with awe32. I never came across anything needing SB pro 1 rather than 2.

when I need SB pro i use my ews64 which does pretty good FM synth and is SB pro compatible.

I second the comment about hanging note bug being a bit overblown.

Also despite comments from real musicians on here, whose views I completely respect, to my less discerning ears the awe32 midi in games like heretic and Warcraft is acceptable. Though whether they are loading fonts themselves I have no idea.

But I am coming to the conclusion that a lot of sound card issues are overblown. I played FM music on my mx300 last night, I used to hate it but now it just seems a bit tinny.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Now the thing is the Sound Blaster 16 came out in 1992. You find me a game from before 1992 that uses Stereo speech 😀 It's really a non-issue.

Wolfenstein 3D? It's not before 1992, but it was still before the Sound Blaster 16.

silikone wrote:

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Now the thing is the Sound Blaster 16 came out in 1992. You find me a game from before 1992 that uses Stereo speech 😀 It's really a non-issue.

Wolfenstein 3D? It's not before 1992, but it was still before the Sound Blaster 16.

I have a demo of Wolfenstien 3D and I think stereo works on my AWE64 Gold, though I think it may have been updated for Sound Blaster 16.

silikone wrote:

Wolfenstein 3D? It's not before 1992, but it was still before the Sound Blaster 16.

Yes this game manipulates the mixer to get Stereo. It's a nice trick and therefore compatible on the SB Pro and later cards. It's not "real" Stereo.

I'm pretty sure Operation: Inner Space uses the same trick, though it's not a DOS game.

Yes you have to keep in mind that Stereo samples meant double the storage requirement. And back in those days games still shipped on floppy disks...

Do you get both SBPro and SB16 compatibility with the SBPCI?

AdamP wrote:

Do you get both SBPro and SB16 compatibility with the SBPCI?

Depends on what driver you use.

So the SB Pro 2 seems like a popular choice, but opinions between AWE32 and AWE64 Gold seem to vary. Don't they both lack the YMF262 chip? Either way, what are the notable differences?

AFAIK the AWE64 variants only have the CQM chip which is decent. The early AWE32 models use a true OPL3. Apart from that, the AWE64 uses propriatery RAM expansions vs standard 32pin SIMMs on the AWE32.
Also, the AWE64 cards lack a DB header and the AWE64 Gold uses RCA jacks with great results.
That's about it I think.

F2bnp wrote:

AFAIK the AWE64 variants only have the CQM chip which is decent. The early AWE32 models use a true OPL3. Apart from that, the AWE64 uses propriatery RAM expansions vs standard 32pin SIMMs on the AWE32.
Also, the AWE64 cards lack a DB header and the AWE64 Gold uses RCA jacks with great results.
That's about it I think.

The CQM chip is definitely something I would avoid, but how is its wavetable MIDI and PCM compared to the AWE32?
Which CT numbers do the early AWE32 cards with true OPL3 have?

MIDI and PCM are identical. The AWE64 Gold has 4MB RAM onboard which allows you to load some small soundfonts. I think the AWE32 comes with 1MB or 2MB RAM. The Value versions come with 512KB I think. Anyway, the AWE32 can take 32pin SIMMs and the AWE64 can too with http://simmconn.tripod.com/ .
By default, all AWE cards use the 1MB onboard soundfont for MIDI.

Can't remember the CT numbers now, AFAIK there was a list somewhere here. I think that as long as you go with the original ISA full length cards, you're good to go. Man, those things were beasts.

I'm sticking with my PCI Yamaha YMF724 based card 😀. It's been great so far with Win 95/98 and DOS games. The PC/PCI (aka SB-Link) cable is very handy when it comes to DOS support, but only a few motherboards actually have the SB-link header (you can use distributed DMA mode instead). It features a genuine OPL3 chip and has great SB Pro support... I can't fault it at all (yet) 😎.

If I'm only using it in DOS or Windows 3.11/95/98, I choose the SoundBlaster AWE64 Gold.

If I'm using, say, Windows 2000 or XP in a dual boot configuration with DOS, I use the SoundBlaster PCI. IIRC, this was the last SoundBlaster card to have DOS drivers. But I think the sound quality suffers a bit. I don't think the AWE64 worked very well with 2k or XP.