Not sure about best, but my favourite is the Audician 32 / Yamaha ISA card.

ESS Audio drive is also a very good wavetable host. Sound Blaster not too much, there are issues with hanging notes and noise. If it has to be a Sound Blaster I'd go with an AWE64 Gold and an external wavetable board connected to the joystick port.

MrEWhite wrote:

I would prefer a Soundblaster one.

This is a severe limitation. SB 16 and AWE cards tend to have problems, either the hanging note bug or severe noise. The AWE64 solves both of these problems, but doesn't have a WB header so using it would require an external adapter.

gdjacobs wrote:

MrEWhite wrote:

I would prefer a Soundblaster one.

This is a severe limitation. SB 16 and AWE cards tend to have problems, either the hanging note bug or severe noise. The AWE64 solves both of these problems, but doesn't have a WB header so using it would require an external adapter.

Ah, so the Audician 32 Phil mentioned is the best option?

The Audician 32 Plus would be my choice too. I went through this process a few months ago. I insisted on a SB, but in the end, after getting a Dreamblaster S1 daughterboard, the hanging note bug bothered me way more than I thought it would. I ended up buying an Audician anyway. 😀

edit: I should note that the folks on here were kind enough not to say "I told you so" after I replaced the SB16 with the Audician. 🤣

There are a ton of threads on this topic but no-one ever agrees, because there is no "best". The Audician is fine but the DOS software sucks and you can't fit a full sized DB on it. It's not 100% compatible either - I tried Mortal Kombat on mine the other day and it wigged out, for example.

I'd recommend a CT2290 or CT2230, which don't have the "bad" hanging note bug. But they do have a documented issue with Duke3D, Tie Fighter, etc.

The other option is something like this: ESS AudioDrive (ES1868) - a surprisingly good ISA sound card

Or this, which I've found to be good: Sound Blaster 16 Clones

What is the Duke3D issue that the 2230 has? I use one for several years now and can't remember about an issue in duke3d ?

keropi wrote:

What is the Duke3D issue that the 2230 has? I use one for several years now and can't remember about an issue in duke3d ?

I can't remember the technical details but I think someone explained it once - probs that Cloud fellow who knows everything about sound cards. Duke3D will stutter occasionally (noticeable on load at least) with a SB16 + MIDI via the MPU-401. Not a deal breaker, but kinda annoying. I think even the AWE64 will do it.

I mentioned it here and Gerwin confirmed:

Acer Magic S30 ISA sound card - what's with this thing?

badmojo wrote:

There are a ton of threads on this topic but no-one ever agrees, because there is no "best". The Audician is fine but the DOS software sucks and you can't fit a full sized DB on it. It's not 100% compatible either - I tried Mortal Kombat on mine the other day and it wigged out, for example.

1000x this. There's no cookie cutter solution when it comes to DOS sound. The true question is, "What DOS sound card will make me happy?" To answer that question, you must articulate your priorities and the restrictions you operate under.

I still prefer my game theater 64, great opl3, wave table onboard4mb that can be expanded to20mb, direct sound support on windows 98, works with windowsxp, and also even with some games from 198x ( like ultima IV works with the wave table)

badmojo wrote:

I can't remember the technical details but I think someone explained it once - probs that Cloud fellow who knows everything abou […]
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keropi wrote:

What is the Duke3D issue that the 2230 has? I use one for several years now and can't remember about an issue in duke3d ?

I can't remember the technical details but I think someone explained it once - probs that Cloud fellow who knows everything about sound cards. Duke3D will stutter occasionally (noticeable on load at least) with a SB16 + MIDI via the MPU-401. Not a deal breaker, but kinda annoying. I think even the AWE64 will do it.

I mentioned it here and Gerwin confirmed:

Acer Magic S30 ISA sound card - what's with this thing?

ah, that's why I never noticed it - being using dedicated mpus since many years now 😎
thanks for the info though 😊

There are some Crystal cards with real OPL, they would be an excellent choice too. But, as others have said an Audician is great. Cables intended for the Raspberry Pi can be used to break out the wavetable header to a DB mounted elsewhere in the case.

bjt wrote:

There are some Crystal cards with real OPL, they would be an excellent choice too. But, as others have said an Audician is great. Cables intended for the Raspberry Pi can be used to break out the wavetable header to a DB mounted elsewhere in the case.

Hi bjt, do have a link for those cables? I remember there being some trick with the reversing of the pins - I've bought/ made one that hasn't worked in the past I think.

badmojo wrote:

There are a ton of threads on this topic but no-one ever agrees, because there is no "best".

^This!!

badmojo wrote:

The Audician is fine but the DOS software sucks and you can't fit a full sized DB on it. It's not 100% compatible either - I tried Mortal Kombat on mine the other day and it wigged out, for example.

Aren't you overreacting a little? Yeah the software is not great but .INI editing can be a necessity for most if not all PnP cards. Let's say the DOS port of Mortal Kombat is special. And on my Socket 7 build Mortal Kombat runs great with my Audician. I do get issues when combining Roland / SB but that causes issues with other cards as well, not only the OPL3-SAx.
Of course it is known of the Audician not supporting(?) ADPCM modes of the SB Pro 2, but i don't know how many clones do support them entirely. And yeah it sucks that most boards aren't full height. This one seems to be close to full height though... I won't grab it because with shipping the cost will be rather high.

badmojo wrote:

Or this, which I've found to be good: Sound Blaster 16 Clones

I once thought these could be the ultimate DOS sound cards specially because one of my machines i had back in the day had the CMI chipset integrated on the motherboard. Well if someone doesn't care about OPL artifacts in certain games by all means get one.

badmojo wrote:

bjt wrote:

There are some Crystal cards with real OPL, they would be an excellent choice too. But, as others have said an Audician is great. Cables intended for the Raspberry Pi can be used to break out the wavetable header to a DB mounted elsewhere in the case.

Hi bjt, do have a link for those cables? I remember there being some trick with the reversing of the pins - I've bought/ made one that hasn't worked in the past I think.

No reversing of the pins. It's a point to point connection.

carlostex wrote:

Aren't you overreacting a little?

Sorry yes my language was probably a little inflammatory - it's a pretty cool card I admit. I personally think there are better options but I know that it's a popular choice around here, so I should probably just zip it.

badmojo wrote:

bjt wrote:

There are some Crystal cards with real OPL, they would be an excellent choice too. But, as others have said an Audician is great. Cables intended for the Raspberry Pi can be used to break out the wavetable header to a DB mounted elsewhere in the case.

Hi bjt, do have a link for those cables? I remember there being some trick with the reversing of the pins - I've bought/ made one that hasn't worked in the past I think.

Here you go
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/141354697688

gdjacobs wrote:

badmojo wrote:

bjt wrote:

There are some Crystal cards with real OPL, they would be an excellent choice too. But, as others have said an Audician is great. Cables intended for the Raspberry Pi can be used to break out the wavetable header to a DB mounted elsewhere in the case.

Hi bjt, do have a link for those cables? I remember there being some trick with the reversing of the pins - I've bought/ made one that hasn't worked in the past I think.

No reversing of the pins. It's a point to point connection.

An IDE cable might do the trick if you add a double-row male pin header at one end.

badmojo wrote:

Sorry yes my language was probably a little inflammatory - it's a pretty cool card I admit. I personally think there are better options but I know that it's a popular choice around here, so I should probably just zip it.

Nah i didn't think language was inflammatory, i just think one can eventually adapt. I found the perfect settings for my YMF cards so i don't really deal with SETUPSA anymore besides for turning the card on with the command line switch. And you should voice your opinion whether the card is popular here or not. The software is really not that great, no one can say otherwise, but with preserverance the card can work really well. So don't zip it!

ESS Audiodrives are great too, the problem for me was the psyche of not being a true Yamaha OPL card and the codec on my ESS 1868F card was lower quality vs the codec on the YMF chipsets. It was really noticeable in games like Wolf3D believe it or not. And despite me having a Gravis Ultrasound the YMF cards are great for tracker music due to their full 44KHz stereo sampling even in SB Pro mode.

Wavetable headers are really not a corn to me since i always preferred to use external synths, but yeah, i hope one day to find a AudioTrix 3D-XG, which is still a OPL3-SAx. In fact, Cloudschatze uses the standard SETUPSA software on his Audiotrix.

And i'm going to check Mortal Kombat again to see if i get any issues. 😀

bjt wrote:

Here you go
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/141354697688

Thanks bjt!