gerwin wrote:

borgie83 wrote:

I'm curious though, what are the 5 chips on the left hand side of the card?

These are there for the IDE interface.

Ahh yes! Thanks mate 😀

I've only ever used the original SB16s, mainly a CT 2230 and CT 1770. Everytime I consider trying out a Vibra card, I come here and read some negative comment that puts me off. The CT 1770 probably has horrendous SNR, but nothing beats an SB16 with a volume dial (and SCSI). I remember this card back from when it was new costing a bloody fortune, so I have some attachment to it. There are probably still drool stains on some of my old PC magazines. I keep mine decked out with the ASP chip and WB1 for extra l33tness points.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

I've only ever used the original SB16s, mainly a CT 2230 and CT 1770. Everytime I consider trying out a Vibra card, I come here and read some negative comment that puts me off. The CT 1770 probably has horrendous SNR, but nothing beats an SB16 with a volume dial (and SCSI). I remember this card back from when it was new costing a bloody fortune, so I have some attachment to it. There are probably still drool stains on some of my old PC magazines. I keep mine decked out with the ASP chip and WB1 for extra l33tness points.

🤣... I couldn't agree more. That hiss and electronic interference 'noise' doesn't bother me. Reminds of how things just 'were' and how far PC audio has come.

so basically we can dedeuce that sometime during 1994 - creative labs decided "Screw yamaha - we dont need to pay them for their chips! we can copy it and make our own similar tech" and they switched from real OPL to CQM .. their knock off to let them make more money...

thats lame.

chrisNova777 wrote:

so basically we can dedeuce that sometime during 1994 - creative labs decided "Screw yamaha - we dont need to pay them for their chips! we can copy it and make our own similar tech" and they switched from real OPL to CQM .. their knock off to let them make more money...

thats lame.

Eventually ALL sound chip manufacturers dropped discrete Yamaha chips and created their own OPL3-like implemenations. CQM, as far as OPL clones go, isn't that bad. Crystal and OPTi clones are usually very bad, CQM is mostly passable and ESFM is usually regarded as the best clone. PCI cards emulating OPL3 through their wavetable MIDI are what is trully horrible.

Artex wrote:

🤣... I couldn't agree more. That hiss and electronic interference 'noise' doesn't bother me. Reminds of how things just 'were' and how far PC audio has come.

To me things like a bit of hissing aren't really a problem, anything is better than that onboard speaker that you couldn't silence and was actually afraid waking up one of the adults who wanted to sleep long after a working week 😊

Have to chime in, here since OP mentioned he liked the in your face FM and bass presence of his Aztech card.

A while back I did a capacitor refresh of an SB16 to all the parts which were relevant to analog output. In the end, the card was very in-your-face and very bass-heavy--it seemed the main contributing factor to this was the replacement of the output capacitors on the powered-output with nice, low-impedance capacitors. Another would have been the capacitors tied to the line-level signal being input to the TEA2025B amplifier on the board with similar capacitors.

I feel bad, now that I don't recall if I ever tested the line-level output of my SB16 after refreshing the capacitors... would have been a good idea. (DUH) Now, I'm tempted to go put something together to check it out. If I recall, correctly I read on this very forum that the Vibra series cards had cleaner output than previous SB16's so do not discount your Vibra card, yet. Perhaps it just needs a capacitor refresh as cards this old have aging capacitors which have been given ample time to drift in value.

I actually like the later Vibra cards. Don't know, I always see value and positives in things that others might dismiss.

What I like about it is how simple it is in terms of design. Heavily integrated and less things that can go wrong. It also doesn't have bass and treble sliders, great for OCD type people who, when confronted with options, stress out over finding a good setting.

They have a bug free MIDI interface, so perfect for driving external MIDI devices. And they should be cheap and easy to source 😀

I'm currently using a CT2800 and am quite happy with it, but I'm interested to know the quality of PCM output on CT2505 equipped cards. If the only real downside is CQM and a lack of waveblaster header, Vibra 16s like the CT4170 will be a great option for many retro-ers.

alexanrs wrote:

chrisNova777 wrote:

Eventually ALL sound chip manufacturers dropped discrete Yamaha chips and created their own OPL3-like implemenations. CQM, as far as OPL clones go, isn't that bad. Crystal and OPTi clones are usually very bad, CQM is mostly passable and ESFM is usually regarded as the best clone. PCI cards emulating OPL3 through their wavetable MIDI are what is trully horrible.

CQM gets a bad rap mainly because felt cheated by Creative after realizing their card's OPL chip was an inferior clone. At face value, it's really not that bad, but doesn't compare to real Yamaha OPL. I really like ESFM as well, in certain instances it can actually sound better than Yamaha OPL. I've never bothered to test an Opti based card, but I have had the unfortunate experience of testing a couple Crystal sound cards. I had no idea that anything so far out of tune, could pass for an FM synth!