bump please?

Anyone have any thoughts please? 🙁

My only thought is that you should check the memory module using the tool provided - I think dignose.exe can do this (in DOS).

badmojo wrote:

My only thought is that you should check the memory module using the tool provided - I think dignose.exe can do this (in DOS).

Thank for the valuable tip -- I ran the diagnose.exe tool from both Real-Mode DOS and from Windows, and all tests appeared to pass with no issues, including the 28MB DRAM memory test, which came back reporting with the message "DRAM on audio card tested successfully". All AWE64 Gold functionality featured in the diagnose.exe test completed with everything working. Is there maybe something else that I might potentially be missing here? Just for example, is the Chorium soundfont fully 100% AWE64 Gold-compatible? The reason I ask is because if the Chorium soundfont was designed for the PCI card in mind, will an ISA card like AWE64 operate as fully-correct when running the soundfont?

bump? (I thought there was at least one or more forum posters here who also had the 28MB AWE64 Gold memory upgrade installed on their retro gaming PCs, if so can any of them or any other kind souls please review my post above and advise?)

If the 8mb soundfont works great, and the 28mb one doesn't, then I rather suspect the larger soundfont to be the issue. Try another large soundfont and see what happens.

keenerb wrote:

If the 8mb soundfont works great, and the 28mb one doesn't, then I rather suspect the larger soundfont to be the issue. Try another large soundfont and see what happens.

Hi thanks for the suggestion, I did try another large soundfont, one I think I actually downloaded from here that was ~20MB, and experienced similar behavior to the Chorium 28MB soundfont? All of the built-in soundfonts that ship with the AWE64 Gold (2MB, 4MB, 8MB) work with no issues at all. I wonder could it be that the larger soundfonts are assuming that the AWE64 soundcard is a PCI card, rather than an ISA card, and/or they may have been designed for a SoundBlaster newer than the AWE64, etc.?

Another interesting thing is that with the 28MB Chorium soundfont, the first few 1-2 MIDI songs that I play though it have no issues and sound correct, it's really only when I usually play a song past the first 1 or 2 that the instruments start sounding different/incorrect? Pressing the "Apply" button under the AWE64's AWE Control utility restores full normal capability, it just takes 30-60 seconds for the soundfont to reapply itself?

Also: since GM reset doesn't work for the larger soundfonts with my AWE64 Gold, is it possible that a sysex file might have the same effect as a GM reset but actually work for the larger soundfonts correctly, and if so, would anyone be able to please point me to a sysex file that could do that?

Yeah I'm not at all sure if there's some soundfont compatibility level deal; maybe newer soundfonts have issues on Awe64. You might try something like Timidity with the soundfont and see how it sounds. I think Timidity supports soundfonts, anyway.

*edit*

Which is the best sbk GM soundfont available for AWE32/64?

Interesting that this mentions seperate Windows 2000 and XP soundfont versions? And there's some discussion about SBK vs. SF2 compatibility.

I also saw some mention in Wikipedia about older Creative products receiving "updates" to make them SF 2.01 - 2.04 compatible; perhaps you're using an older driver that only supports 2.0 properly?

keenerb wrote:

Yeah I'm not at all sure if there's some soundfont compatibility level deal; maybe newer soundfonts have issues on Awe64. You m […]
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Yeah I'm not at all sure if there's some soundfont compatibility level deal; maybe newer soundfonts have issues on Awe64. You might try something like Timidity with the soundfont and see how it sounds. I think Timidity supports soundfonts, anyway.

*edit*

Which is the best sbk GM soundfont available for AWE32/64?

Interesting that this mentions seperate Windows 2000 and XP soundfont versions? And there's some discussion about SBK vs. SF2 compatibility.

I also saw some mention in Wikipedia about older Creative products receiving "updates" to make them SF 2.01 - 2.04 compatible; perhaps you're using an older driver that only supports 2.0 properly?

Thanks! 😀 J/c, is there a way I can check which soundfont version my AWE64 driver is using and/or supports? I have a feeling it may indeed be an older driver version, because I can't use newer WDM-based drivers (doing so fatally crashes sfx in my favorite DOS game), I can only use VxD drivers so that's why I used the older version of the AWE64 Gold driver.

ETA: I think when I checked my AWE64 driver settings in Device Manager, it may have listed it as being published around either 1997 or 1998? I will be sure to check again once I have access to my classic PC again later today.

I have no idea. This is all supposition, I have no idea how soundfonts work but nobody was really offering any advice.

keenerb wrote:

I have no idea. This is all supposition, I have no idea how soundfonts work but nobody was really offering any advice.

No worries, again many thanks for your valuable posts and helpful info.

Update: when I was in the AWE Control Panel recently, I noticed something interesting -- for the info about the Chorium .SF2 file, unlike the other soundfont files which listed "Creative EMU8000" as part of their properties info, the Chorium soundfont info/properties referenced "Creative X-Fi" or something or other like that. I'm not actually in front of my classic gaming/MIDI box atm, but I'm pretty sure they said something to that effect, making me wonder if X-Fi reference as opposed to the EMU8000 reference indicates that the Chorium soundfont may only be partially compatible with the memory-upgraded AWE64 Gold?