Audigy 4 is the last creative card in 9x/ME
But if you already have a Audigy and looking for something different then another +1 for Vortex 2/A3D

I always loved the first Audigy but it's an old KT133 machine and I would not like to install hundred mb of software/drivers plus too many capacitors on the board...

chinny22 wrote:

Audigy 4 is the last creative card in 9x/ME
But if you already have a Audigy and looking for something different then another +1 for Vortex 2/A3D

Where on earth did you find 9x/ME drivers for a Audigy 4 I thought Audigy 2 ZS platinum pro was the last card compatible with 9x and requires 98SE. Even then under 98SE the drivers are a headache not so bad with ME it uses the unified driver for Win 2K.

I would chose the MX300 or a Yamaha XG over a Audigy any day when running Win 9x

firage wrote:

A3D is a much better effect than EAX, and support for it wasn't too bad until they were bough out at the end of 2000. EAX was less impressive until 3.0, but very widely supported from the start. The Aureal cards are crap at EAX and Creative's A3D emulation is also bad, so you have to pick between the two.

You could install two cards and flip between them. Just a thought.

gdjacobs wrote:

You could install two cards and flip between them. Just a thought.

Sounds like a recipe for disaster with Win9x involved 😵

badmojo wrote:

Sounds like a recipe for disaster with Win9x involved 😵

Nah, just have to shepherd all the resources involved.

firage wrote:

Vortex 2 SQ2500 or Diamond's MX300 are both pretty nice and clean, though not quite up to the 108 dB SNR or whatever specs the Audigy line hit so many years later.

Read this from Xiph.org, scroll down till you reach "The dynamic range of 16 bits"
Very informative.

There's a pretty nice comparison test for a big bunch of these cards: http://alasir.com/reviews/soundbench/page5of5.html
Being loopback tests they can be held back by inferior line-in quality, of course.

I don't think that list is correct. I just ran RMAA6 on my MX300 under windows 7 using half working drivers, and a really bad 1/8 to Y split and then a Y split to 1/8 loop into my Realtek 898 onboard (So my testing setup should be far worse).

[edit] Adjusted the levels and tested at 44.1 with dsound this time:

[edit3] And here is MME at 44.1:

The Terratec Maestro ISA look great for its time!

ZanQuance wrote:

I don't think that list is correct. I just ran RMAA6 on my MX300 under windows 7 using half working drivers, and a really bad 1/8 to Y split and then a Y split to 1/8 loop into my Realtek 898 onboard (So my testing setup should be far worse).

I wouldn't make the assumption until you make measurements through the card's own input. Audio solutions have improved on their recording quality a lot as it became a more mundane use case.

I'd have to say it's a toss up between sb live (any model) and ensoniq audio PCI, preferring the former a little bit more.

The Turtle Beach Santa Cruz is another option. Here's a nice period-correct review:
http://ixbtlabs.com/articles/santacruzvoyetraturtlebeach/
It uses Sensaura which supports A3D 1.0 and EAX 1.0/2.0. It has nice DLS wavetable support too. Search these forums for Santa Cruz. There are a few threads by myself and others that discuss the card.

-SBLive and Audigy 1/2 get you the best EAX compatibility. Great MIDI. Only use the VXD drivers. With Live, get the original card models so you can run Liveware 3. Audigy 2 has the cleanest output quality.
-Aureal Vortex 2 is the only way to get proper A3D 2.0. Not useful for EAX. Only use driver 2041.

There are only a few considerations to Win9x game audio. You want EAX or you want A3D. You probably don't want to mess around with the 3rd party attempts at being compatible with them. It's troublesome and usually inferior. Maybe you want good MIDI too, but that is typically more of a DOS game concern.

firage wrote:

ZanQuance wrote:

I don't think that list is correct. I just ran RMAA6 on my MX300 under windows 7 using half working drivers, and a really bad 1/8 to Y split and then a Y split to 1/8 loop into my Realtek 898 onboard (So my testing setup should be far worse).

I wouldn't make the assumption until you make measurements through the card's own input. Audio solutions have improved on their recording quality a lot as it became a more mundane use case.

Mixer issues under Win7 are preventing me from using the line in at proper levels with the XP driver, so I'm currently implementing the Mixer controls into my debug control panel. (something I needed to do anyways)

[back to topic]
The Santa Cruz might be 3rd party on A3D and EAX, but I think Sensaura does a great job handling both APIs. It's a good all rounder card and also sports 2 Cirrus Logic 20-bit codecs for 6-channel output, also really good with 4 speaker HRTF 3D sound. So I'll second the recommendation for a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card, I'm very happy with mine.

I would choose a Vortex2 based sound card over the SB-Live.
When comparing the sound quality while listening music on the SB-Live CT4830 and Vortex2 SQ2500, the Vortex2 was and is in another dimension.
I use Sennheiser HD650 headphones with an headphone amplifier.

badmojo wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

You could install two cards and flip between them. Just a thought.

Sounds like a recipe for disaster with Win9x involved 😵

That actually works quite well. You just need to swap the "a3d.dll" file within the Windows/System folder or in game directory.
Because SB-Live, Vortex2 & Yamaha YMF724 (and other) based sound cards have all their own a3d.dll file.
They were running all together with an EWS64XL in my super socket 7 system.
I used hardware profiles within Win98SE to get enough system resources.

386SX wrote:

Hi, what audio card / chip on PCI comparable or better than the Audigy could I try that has Win 9x and Me drivers? Regarding aud […]
Show full quote

Hi,
what audio card / chip on PCI comparable or better than the Audigy could I try that has Win 9x and Me drivers? Regarding audio output quality and if possible also power.
Thank
Bye

I wouldn't get just one card for a 98 system, but three, an awe32, audigy2 & vortex2 running on an athlon xp 3200+ /w a kt133a board that has an isa slot, covers playing late dos games that needed more power than they had when released, a3d 2.0, and eax 2/3/4. Athlon xp 3200+ speed can be set by software from 300 mhz to 2+ ghz. A good rig for covering 97-01 and can handle to around 03. For a video card I'd use a geforce 5950 ultra and a voodoo3 pci, so 1 agp, 3 pci and 1 isa card. if 5950 is being hard to find, a 9800pro/xt.

What drivers are people using with the Audigy 2 ZS under Windows 98 SE?

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

What drivers are people using with the Audigy 2 ZS under Windows 98 SE?

The only Win 98SE driver package for the Audigy 2 ZS is on the CD that came with them, don't think Creative ever released a updated driver but I could be wrong

swaaye wrote:

-SBLive and Audigy 1/2 get you the best EAX compatibility. Great MIDI. Only use the VXD drivers. With Live, get the original card models so you can run Liveware 3. Audigy 2 has the cleanest output quality.
-Aureal Vortex 2 is the only way to get proper A3D 2.0. Not useful for EAX. Only use driver 2041.

There are only a few considerations to Win9x game audio. You want EAX or you want A3D. You probably don't want to mess around with the 3rd party attempts at being compatible with them. It's troublesome and usually inferior. Maybe you want good MIDI too, but that is typically more of a DOS game concern.

All these A3D good advices make me want to try it never had the possibility before. A thing I would like is mostly a noise "free" and still "powerful" line out without having to install ram heavy softwares apps or everything that back in the day made me want to go back to the low profile cheapest audio card just for the nice compatibility and light resources and still "good enough" experience. Sure games but also to enjoy listening music with good headphones.