The "best" OPL3 card is one that has a OPL3 chip, or exact equivalent. Those will give you the most authentic sound. That means, off the top of my head: any Creative or non-Creative card that has a YMF262 chip, any Creative card that has a CT1747 chip, and Aztech sound cards that have chips marked "OPL" (there was a thread about them recently). For a very slightly non-authentic sound (most ears won't be able to tell the difference) add all cards with a YMF289 chip(OPL3-L) or with OPL3-SAx (YMF715, YMF718, YMF719 for ISA, YMF72x-74x-75x for PCI).

(Written while stamasd was posting, so some duplicated info, but I've expanded on most points)

Anything with a Yamaha OPL chip will do the job. I have a Labway A151-A00 like this, which I acquired in a bundle of ISA cards. It has the YMF719 chip, which is fully backwards compatible with OPL3. The Yamaha Audician 32 Plus can still be purchased as new old stock and uses the YMF718. So it's like having an Adlib but with digitised sound (via SoundBlaster Pro compatibility) and a game port. The only downside is that it requires a driver, so that can affect your memory management.

Alternatively an older SoundBlaster card such as the SB16 model CT2230 also uses a true OPL chip, although they are more expensive. And if you're not intending to use it for MIDI (because you have an AWE64) then you don't need to worry about things like the hanging note bug. If you have money to spend, getting a card without the bug would be the best all-round solution for compatibility and authenticity.

If you want to be really oldskool, you could look at Sergey's OPL2 project

That's my own opinion on the situation, anyway.

brassicGamer wrote:

Alternatively an older SoundBlaster card such as the SB16 model CT2230 also uses a true OPL chip, although they are more expensive.

And CT2290 which is almost exactly the same card, just with different CD drive interface. I have both, and they sound great.

In principle, a good genuine OPL3 card + Wavetable general MIDI daughterboard makes an AWE card unnecessary.

In practice, when I tried such a combo with (Audician 32 + Dreamblaster S1) I ran into a few compatibility issues that just did not happen with the AWE64. I did not have much time to spend yet trying to resolve them all, and I believe most of them likely have solutions. But I do feel, that an AWE PnP is more "PnP friendly" with a lower tinkering / configuration overhead than such a combo solution.

dr_st wrote:

In principle, a good genuine OPL3 card + Wavetable general MIDI daughterboard makes an AWE card unnecessary.

In practice, when I tried such a combo with (Audician 32 + Dreamblaster S1) I ran into a few compatibility issues that just did not happen with the AWE64. I did not have much time to spend yet trying to resolve them all, and I believe most of them likely have solutions. But I do feel, that an AWE PnP is more "PnP friendly" with a lower tinkering / configuration overhead than such a combo solution.

Furthermore, and especially in my case, the AWE32 and 64 cards are WAY cheaper, especially for people like me who are getting into retro DOS gaming. All this combo sound stuff, and the Roland machines are all well and good, but if I can spend 40 dollars on an AWE32 and have it perform as good as I personally want it to, I am not wasting money on 200 dollars work of sound equipment.

Well, the combo I mentioned will only run you for about 40 euro. Not quite 200 dollars, but not cheap either. An AWE64 can be had for half of that, sometimes less (it's cheaper than an AWE32).

Even with the real OPL3 cards, the sound can be quite different. Some have no filtering and sound very crisp and bright, whilst others have filtering or have poorly designed analogue sections and sound "grungy" and almost distorted. A lot of people prefer the grungy sound, an SB-PRO CT1600 is a good example of this, as it sounds more authentic and retro to them. Others prefer a clean, undistorted, noise free sound, an Aztech Soundgalaxy Pro II would be a good example of this.

As Stamasd mentioned above, the YMF-289 and OPL3-SAx sound ever so slightly different due to them having a lower frequency reference clock compared to the YMF-262 chips. It's discussed at length here FM OPL3 frequency differences

Sound is obviously a very subjective topic, so if we say the YMF-262 OPL3 is the holy grail of FM synthesis, then IMO, I'd rate the CQM in the AWE64 as the second worst in terms of accuracy. The Analog Devices OPL3 clone in the AD1816JS is the worst, damn it sounds aweful!

ESS cards also have a very good OPL3 clone. There are a few sounds that sound slightly different from the YMF-262, but for all intents and purposes, it sounds the same. In fact, if the midi file was written to take advantage of the extra features of the ESS FM synth, it'll probably sound better than the YMF-262.

Here's a great thread on the OPL3 sound differences of various cards. The Grand OPL3 Comparison Run!

Really appreciate all the info so far....very helpful.

I've already got all the MIDI hardware, so that's a non-issue for me. My thought was that I'd use Keropi's MPU project card along with an internal card with an OPL3 chip. I thought that all meant I could eliminate the AWE64 Gold.
Not that I'm trying to get rid of it, just thought the aforementioned combo would give me "better" more authentic sound overall. Are there any benefits to keeping the AWE64? I believe I only have 2 ISA slots on my mboard as well.

How about these?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sound-blaster-16-ct22 … mAAAOSwB9xXO0AK

http://www.ebay.com/itm/CT2230-Sound-Blaster- … p0AAOSwFe5X1vZH

http://www.ebay.com/itm/CREATIVE-SOUNDBLASTER … wMAAOSwn8FXRc9T

This is my current "OPL" Card and would love to pair it up with an MT-32 for some true midi action. Its a YMF-719 with a YMF-704C-S onboard also. The one thing i like about the OPL4 is the drum sounds. They sound real nice and punchy! Card is nice and quiet also.

The AWE64 Gold's strong points are very strong. It's noise level is very low, has soundfonts that can be uploaded, the 16-bit playback was arguably the best in it's era bar professional sound cards, doesn't have the hanging note bug when used with midi devices (although, you're gonna use Keropi's card, so it's a moot point). It's bad points are the CQM FM synthesis and mono playback when SB-PRO is selected in games. It's a superb late era DOS card where you have SB16 and General Midi as options in your soundcard setup, however it's not great for earlier DOS games where FM and SB-PRO are your options.

To cover as many bases as possible, it'll probably be better to swap out the AWE64 for a different soundcard with a genuine OPL3. My recommendation in terms of price and availability would be either a Yamaha YMF71x based soundcard or an Aztech Soundgalaxy Pro card (just not the early versions as they are noisy).

The PAS16s provide a lovely OPl3 experience too, very warm and bright. I find myself wondering what card provides the best "OPL3 only" experience, I.e. a card that you can pair with a AWE64, for example, and turn off everything except its FM functionality. The PAS16 might be a good candidate actually as they're totally silent without the driver loaded, but the FM might still work.

I might give it a go.

The CT2230s you've listed aren't bad, they're quiet. However they also only play in mono if SB-PRO is selected in games and have the single-cycle DMA bug. Check this review by James-F
My Sound Blaster 16 CT2230 Review

In fact, search for all of James-F's posts on various soundcards, he has comprehensive information on most of them and also makes some good recommendations.

There are better options out there than Creative's cards, I was also duped by their marketing in my earlier years. Fortunately later on, once ISA soundcards became really cheap on EBay and Amibay etc, I built up a collection of other soundcards and realised that Creative's engineering was sub-par and shoved a lot of cards down our throats that were full of bugs and never quite worked as intended.

This is my current "OPL" Card and would love to pair it up with an MT-32 for some true midi action. Its a YMF-719 with a YMF-704C-S onboard also. The one thing i like about the OPL4 is the drum sounds. They sound real nice and punchy! Card is nice and quiet also.

Nice little card you have there! My Intel Pentium motherboard has the same setup onboard. Download SoftMPU for use with the MT-32, SoftMPU works well on YMF-71x cards.

stamasd wrote:

For a very slightly non-authentic sound (most ears won't be able to tell the difference) add all cards with a YMF289 chip(OPL3-L) or with OPL3-SAx (YMF715, YMF718, YMF719 for ISA, YMF72x-74x-75x for PCI).

Careful with the choice of words. OPL3-L is just as authentic as OPL3 sound. The difference would be like comparing a guitar tuned A=440Hz to A=439Hz.

Personally I'm leaning towards you keeping the AWE64 Gold. It does a lot of things really well, and seeing you have a range of MIDI devices and also running Windows 98 SE, it's a great card.

But, it's a journey that one needs to make, so I do recommend you just try out a few cards.

Cards with Yamaha YMF718-S, like the Audician 32 Plus, the Sound Blaster Pro 2 and the ESS AudioDrive 1868F are all cards I would give a go. Nothing is better than trying it out for yourself and then you have a better idea of what's important to you!

Having a hard time deciding what to suggest.... So many good cards, and as the need for a non-top-notch-over-the-budget card are present, it makes it even more hard to decide what to suggest for you to get. One thing is clear. You need OPL, as this is what you have as only criteria.

I think you need one of these:
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trk … cian32&_sacat=0

Pro's: Shiny new never used and OPL core in the chip.

Bancho wrote:

This is my current "OPL" Card and would love to pair it up with an MT-32 for some true midi action. Its a YMF-719 with a YMF-704 […]
Show full quote

This is my current "OPL" Card and would love to pair it up with an MT-32 for some true midi action. Its a YMF-719 with a YMF-704C-S onboard also. The one thing i like about the OPL4 is the drum sounds. They sound real nice and punchy! Card is nice and quiet also.

Hey look a full height YMF card! Would need to be modded for wavetable use but a rather easy mod, if one has all the tools. Solder the wavetable pins, solder the capacitors and use a hot air gun to remove the OPL4.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Personally I'm leaning towards you keeping the AWE64 Gold. It does a lot of things really well, and seeing you have a range of MIDI devices and also running Windows 98 SE, it's a great card.

But, it's a journey that one needs to make, so I do recommend you just try out a few cards.

Cards with Yamaha YMF718-S, like the Audician 32 Plus, the Sound Blaster Pro 2 and the ESS AudioDrive 1868F are all cards I would give a go. Nothing is better than trying it out for yourself and then you have a better idea of what's important to you!

The good news is that most of these cards (except the SB Pro 2.0) are cheap!

orcish75 wrote:

The CT2230s you've listed aren't bad, they're quiet. However they also only play in mono if SB-PRO is selected in games and have the single-cycle DMA bug.
...
There are better options out there than Creative's cards...

Exactly why I posted, so thank you. Any recommendations for specific cards? If they are hard to find or expensive, that's fine with me. I don't mind waiting or spending the money.
I thought the SB16s would play stereo, but I guess you're saying that SB16 would have to be supported in the game. Most of the games I'm playing wouldn't support SB16 directly.
I def want a card that will support stereo across all possible games that also support it.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Personally I'm leaning towards you keeping the AWE64 Gold. It does a lot of things really well, and seeing you have a range of MIDI devices and also running Windows 98 SE, it's a great card.
...
Cards with Yamaha YMF718-S, like the Audician 32 Plus, the Sound Blaster Pro 2 and the ESS AudioDrive 1868F are all cards I would give a go.

Thanks, Phil. Ya, I may end up just staying with the AWE64, but not before trying a few things out as you also suggested. I've had absolutely zero issues with the AWE64 and everything works with the occasional use of
SoftMPU. The only issue I've had is a silly one in that my RCAs I'm plugging into the AWE64 are very tight and as such, I've somehow loosened the RCA terminals. So, I have to now put some weight on them in order
for them to output sound. Not a huge deal really.

There are a lot of games I play with no MIDI support though and I'm really interested in hearing an OPL3 chip against the AWE64. If I recall too, I did seek out a desirable board revision of the AWE64 Gold and I don't
recall the advantage of it.