carlostex,

I have no idea how sb-link actually works but... would it be possible in your case to use a fingerboard to grab the needed signals directly from the isa bus?

IMHO the signals are different. The ISA bus has a separate line for each possible IRQ and DMA, whereas the SB-Link appears to have some sort of serial communication going on.

ZanQuance wrote:

Nice writeup, however there is a slight error here: […]
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Great Hierophant wrote:

I talk about these cards a bit here : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2013/03/1 … am-machine.html, I hope some information there will be useful.

Nice writeup, however there is a slight error here:

The advanced 2.0 effects were supported in games like Half-Life, Hexen II, Quake III Arena, SIN, & Unreal Tournament. 3.0 was in development but not released before Creative bought Aureal, Soldier of Fortune may support it.

The A3D 3.0 SDK was released publicly on 02/25/00 and is implemented fully in Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force. To hear A3D 3.0 you need either the 2048 or 2050 beta drivers, however due to the annoying speaker swap bug, these drivers are less than ideal for playing. You'll know it's working if you can hear the ship hum and forcefield on the right as soon as the first mission starts, with the 2041's you do not have these extra sounds present.

Thank you, I incorporated that information into that blog entry.

squareguy wrote:

ZanQuance wrote:

squareguy wrote:

Sorry, just so I am clear on what you said. Are you saying that the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sounds good in A3D 2.0 games that you have tried? I might just swap the Santa Cruz in until you get your drivers done. Any ETA on that? I mean are we talking months or years?

I've been meaning to make more videos showing what Sensaura sounds like in games :p Sensaura is good at piggy backing tech, it hooks into any provided A3D geometry scene and uses it for occlusions, has doppler support and great HRTF's. It wont do WaveTracing of course but will use EAX 2.0 as reverb in EAX/A3D games. There is a feature touted as MacroFX2 which uses "Chaotic WaveTracing" but I can't locate a single game or testing application to show it off. I vote Sensaura as the best #2 to Aureal A3D 2.0, it has the most complete API...speaking of which I need to acquire that SDK of theirs for testing purposes.

[edit]
None of the details I posted here were accurate enough, so I removed them. My project ran into many hurdles causing numerous delays.

That is a pretty awesome project ZanQuance!

falloutboy, wow!

I fnally got around to trying out Power YMF and loading the 4MB sound bank. I admit I don't know much about MIDI but this thing sounds awesome! I cannot tell the difference between it and the Yamaha S-YXG100 software synth.

I have a lot more testing to do but I get DirectX 7, Sensaura and Yamaha synth all in one package. I may not get the synth in pure DOS mode but who cares, it works flawlessly in Windows MS-DOS Mode window (ok, so it's a full-screen only window 🤣)

EDIT: forgot to mention, real OPL3 too

I think I have figured out my problem with this card. It isn't impressive looking. Sorta like why you might use Voodoo2 SLI instead of a Voodoo3, it just looks more awesome even if it really isn't. I mean two sound cards hooked together is way more sexy than this little PCI soundcard that is pretty bland to look at. From a little bit of listening to some MIDI files, Doom 1 and Thief 1 (with Sensaura enabled of course) I am just not finding a technical reason not to use this card. It sounds good, fully DirectX 7 compliant, awesome XG synth, real OPL3, Sensaura, DS3D and some stuff I am probablt forgetting. Definitely install Power YMF and load the extended 4MB sound bank. Like other Yamaha cards you can disable the onboard amplifier. This isn't a perfect card but for my Windows 98 SE DirectX 7 / late DOS games build I am having a hard time talking myself out of using it even with tons of Sound Blasters, Vortex 2's, Santa Cruz's and Yamaha 71x cards laying around. Is there something I am missing on this card? Does it have an Achilles Heel I am missing? It just seems too good to be true and usually they are. Glad to find out it works with SoftMPU for external MIDI boxes that need intelligent mode. I probably wouldn't use it in pure DOS but I'm not trying to do that on this box. If I were to make a recording or two what would you want to hear, if anything? I wish I had known about this card years ago.

If you like the card, just be happy that you found it 😀

It doesn't cook you meals, nor generates money xD

Now, for real, the only issue I see with this card is the lack of a wavetable header, but if you use external modules, or stick to Windows(+SoftSynth), this is a moot point.

Sounds like a good card all in all. I recall seeing a soundcard (Waveforce perhaps?) with the XG chip on it just lying around the office where I used to work, it got thrown away not knowing anything about it.
Sadness...

I have the Waveforce 192 Digital and Vortex2 SQ2500 on my machine.

See how they compare with Aureal Minerva's status info.

The card might be underpowered for Sensaura use.

1Device Selected: Aureal - Vortex DirectSound Driver
2DirectSound reports...
31 Primary buffer available
496 Total 2D hardware mixing buffers available
596 Static 2D hardware mixing buffers available
696 Streaming 2D hardware mixing buffers available
776 Total 3D hardware buffers available
876 Static 3D hardware buffers available
976 Streaming 3D hardware buffers available
100 Total bytes sound card memory static buffer storage
110 KB/sec Data transfer rate to hardware static buffers
12100000 KB/sec Max sample rate supported by secondary buffers
136000 KB/sec Min sample rate supported by secondary buffers
14
15Minerva is testing: <Aureal - Vortex DirectSound Driver> for :-
16DirectSound acceleration: <available>
17DirectSound3D acceleration: <available>
18A3D acceleration and compatibility:- 
19<available, compatibility 100% verified>
20
21Device Selected: YAMAHA DS-XG Direct Sound Driver
22DirectSound reports...
231 Primary buffer available
2422 Total 2D hardware mixing buffers available
250 Static 2D hardware mixing buffers available
2622 Streaming 2D hardware mixing buffers available
278 Total 3D hardware buffers available
288 Static 3D hardware buffers available
298 Streaming 3D hardware buffers available
300 Total bytes sound card memory static buffer storage
310 KB/sec Data transfer rate to hardware static buffers
3250000 KB/sec Max sample rate supported by secondary buffers
33100 KB/sec Min sample rate supported by secondary buffers
34
35Minerva is testing: <YAMAHA DS-XG Direct Sound Driver> for :-
36DirectSound acceleration: <available>
37DirectSound3D acceleration: <available>
38A3D acceleration and compatibility: <not available>

Stretch wrote:

The card might be underpowered for Sensaura use.

Sensaura will take advantage of whatever DS3D channels are available and mix the rest via software. It should be fine even with 1 DS3D buffer, just more CPU overhead.

squareguy wrote:

Does it have an Achilles Heel I am missing?

Turbo Pascal bug occurs really easy, at least with my AMD K6-III+ CPU. (I think it's a general PCI sound card problem)
e.g. with Lotus III The Ultimate Challenge
K6-III+@120 MHz disabled internal cache --> TP-bug. It works with ISA soundcards in this setting.
Disabling the external cache as well --> no TP-bug.
There weren't such problems with an Pentium-S 200 (100 MHz FSB), haven't seen the TP-bug with this CPU & the YMF-724 combination.
The Pentium 3 should be less sensitive to this.

It is difficult for me to hear the above & below positional sounds. They aren't as good as with the Vortex2 sound card.
That's why I am interested in a TB: Santa Cruz. Does it really have the "Sensaura Virtual Ear" software on it's driver CD? It allows you to tweak the HRTF to fit your ears better.
http://www.digitalgamedeveloper.com/Htm/Artic … Controlof3D.htm

falloutboy wrote:

It is difficult for me to hear the above & below positional sounds. They aren't as good as with the Vortex2 sound card.
That's why I am interested in a TB: Santa Cruz. Does it really have the "Sensaura Virtual Ear" software on it's driver CD? It allows you to tweak the HRTF to fit your ears better.
http://www.digitalgamedeveloper.com/Htm/Artic … Controlof3D.htm

sc_4193.exe These drivers come with VirtualEar, I've played around with it and it makes a difference, but the default HRTF works best with my ears.

I was playing with a Santa Cruz last night and was playing CD audio from a burned CD. It played fine with analog CD input but was scratchy with some stuff over the SPDIF CD input. I need to try a retail CD but any ideas on why that might be?

EDIT: I forgot I was using the WDM drivers, I will try the VXD drivers and repeat test. I seem to remember from back when I used a Santa Cruz on my main system that I preferred the VXD drivers for some reason. It rocked pushing Klipsch Pro Media speakers 😉

ZanQuance wrote:

sc_4193.exe These drivers come with VirtualEar, I've played around with it and it makes a difference, but the default HRTF works best with my ears.

Thanks a lot. 😀

I swapped out my Waveforce 192 Digital (YMF-724) with a Guillemot Maxi Sound Fortissimo (YMF-744).

Aureal Minerva shows the Fortissimo has more capability, although it might be a difference in drivers since I used the Yamaha drivers on the YMF-724, while I'm using the Hercules drivers on the Fortissimo.

1Minerva is testing: <YAMAHA DS-XG Direct Sound Driver> for :-
2DirectSound acceleration: <available>
3DirectSound3D acceleration: <available>
4A3D acceleration and compatibility: <not available>
5
6Device Selected: YAMAHA DS-XG Direct Sound Driver
7DirectSound reports...
81 Primary buffer available
928 Total 2D hardware mixing buffers available
100 Static 2D hardware mixing buffers available
1128 Streaming 2D hardware mixing buffers available
1232 Total 3D hardware buffers available
1332 Static 3D hardware buffers available
1432 Streaming 3D hardware buffers available
150 Total bytes sound card memory static buffer storage
160 KB/sec Data transfer rate to hardware static buffers
17100000 KB/sec Max sample rate supported by secondary buffers
18100 KB/sec Min sample rate supported by secondary buffers
19
20Minerva is testing: <YAMAHA DS-XG Direct Sound Driver> for :-
21DirectSound acceleration: <available>
22DirectSound3D acceleration: <available>
23A3D acceleration and compatibility: <not available>

Is there a newer Sensaura library other than SensauraVxd2203 for YMF7x4 VXD drivers in Win9x?

I use this one

. You can also rename it to a3d.dll and have it take over A3d games.
Sensaura is really nice all in all.

carlostex wrote:

j^aws wrote:

From my tests in real DOS, I found the PCI YMF724, with SB-Link enabled, more compatible than the YMF71x on an ISA bus. The YMF724 was also more compatible in DOS than the YMF744 and YMF754 cards; IIRC, it could be used with older drivers in DOS...

Problem is, not all boards have SB Link unfortunately, some chipsets support DDMA, but i found some compatibility problems. Dune 2 does not work well with Yamaha YMF724 cards.

Okay, FYI, I had an opportunity to test Dune 2 with a YMF724 card using SB-link, and it works great. System used was MS-DOS 6.22, a 440BX chipset and a VIA C3 CPU. Using such a card is a great way to save an ISA slot, especially on Slot 1 boards.

This setup has no Windows installed, and surprising works well. One thing to note is that DOS4GW needs to be manually copied to the Yamaha DOS drivers directory. Then I setup batch files to run "setupds /s" or "dsdma". If needed, I can CALL these batch files from Autoexec.bat for convenience.

From my tests, most games work with SB-link/ PC-PCI, but a few need switching to DSDMA. With games such as Doom2, I switch to DSDMA using a batch file. I haven't come across a game that doesn't work with this card. They probably exist, but still haven't encountered one yet...