The Solo-1 ES1938S is a PCI card with DOS capabilities and the AudioDrive ES1868F is a simple but nice ISA sound card.

Non of them are worth much but both are good to have.

I know nothing about the Crystal ISA card but I doubt it's any good.

jheronimus wrote:

Hi, everyone […]
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Hi, everyone

Tomorrow I'm going to get an AOpen AP5T motherboard and while I'm at it, I have a chance to pick a ESS sound card. I have no experience with those and not even sure if they have any value, given that I already have some soundblasters, and two cards with Yamaha chip. Here are two cards:

- AudioDrive ES1868F
- Solo-1 ES1938S

I can also get a Cirrus Logic Crystal CX4237B-XQ3.

Is there anything these cards can do that an AWE64/Vibra16 can't?

BTW, can I have two sound cards in my system at the same moment? Say, an AWE64 and a MediaMagic ISP-16 with AdLib support.

Thanks!

If you have an ISA slot available, go with the ES1868F. It has good 8-bit Sound Blaster compatibility and a very nice FM Synth (ESFM). The Solo-1 is very much the same, but in PCI form. Don't bother with the Crystal card, DOS compatibility is good, but the FM synth is quite bad.

The benefit of an AWE64 would be wavetable synthesis, and 16-bit Sound Blaster Support in DOS. The FM Synth is okay, but uses CQM, a Yamaha OPL3 clone.

As for the Vibra 16, it depends on which model you're referring to, there were quite a few variations. But again, it has the benefit of 16-bit Digital Audio in DOS games which support it.

Skyscraper wrote:

The Solo-1 ES1938S is a PCI card with DOS capabilities and the AudioDrive ES1868F is a simple but nice ISA sound card.

Non of them are worth much but both are good to have.

I know nothing about the Crystal ISA card but I doubt it's any good.

The Crystal card should be okay. Better than a CS4235, but worse than a CS4232 with real OPL3 (which is good indeed). Noise levels are good, but the OPL3 clone is of course a clone.

Recently I also read about the CS4235 being the worst one: "CS4235, better known as "THE BROKEN ONE" because of its glitchy FM synth." Source. I did test a CS4236B once and IIRC it was OK for FM/Adlib Music. But I don't know too much about it since I have a multiple CS4232+OPL3 cards to use instead.

gerwin wrote:

Recently I also read about the CS4235 being the worst one: "CS4235, better known as "THE BROKEN ONE" because of its glitchy FM synth." Source. I did test a CS4236B once and IIRC it was OK for FM/Adlib Music. But I don't know too much about it since I have a multiple CS4232+OPL3 cards to use instead.

I've only had first hand experience with the Crystal CS4281, and it pretty much put me off Crystal cards forever. I'll take CQM any day over the CS4281's Crystal FM.

Totempole wrote:

I've only had first hand experience with the Crystal CS4281, and it pretty much put me off Crystal cards forever. I'll take CQM any day over the CS4281's Crystal FM.

It's not unlike a lot of PCI cards with respect to FM, I suspect. FM was mostly thrown in without much consideration of performance.

ESFM is pretty good quality, but it's impossible to know how noisy the Audiodrive card is without more information. I'd see if you can test drive the card or at least get some more information on the card or it's output stage. If it's a Terratec, grab it!

If a CS 4235 or CS 4236 is used on the motherboard (like on a FSC D1026), perhaps it's a better option to deactivate FM and use an opl2ltp instead?
For dos (sbpro) and windows the CS42xx should be very good.