@Ace: I did a comparison between the Youtube video of the SB Pro and my ESS1868, using Xwing CD DOS.
While wearing headphones I did notice the quantization noise that was mentioned before on the 1868. I also notice the SB Pro seems to be bassier and more filtered. As far as the instruments go however, I am very hard pressed to tell much of a difference so far.
I'd be interested to see your comparison of the ESS FM synth in a future video.

Thank you for the ESSCFG but it also complains that it can't find the card. I suspect the card might be faulty.

As an aside, I tried both my Roland Sound Canvas 55 and XR385 (DB50XG clone) in X-Wing. Interestingly, I prefer the SC55 to the XR385 in this game which is actually the opposite of pretty much everything I've tried so far- I generally much prefer the XR385. I've yet to try my GUS Classic.

I just picked up a SoundBlaster 16 CT2230 today and would like to know how serious the hanging notes bug is on this SoundBlaster 16 variant(it uses DSP version 4.13). If nobody's tested this sound card to see how severe the hanging notes bug is, I'll add it to my list of SoundBlaster 16s to test with my Roland CM-300 for the hanging notes bug.

I've tested one of those- I did not notice any hanging notes in Hexen -warp 02 or the first level of Doom. SNR is poor however.

Huh... if the signal-to-noise ratio is so poor, how come I got clean and practically unfiltered audio with barely any hiss on my SoundBlaster 16 CT2230?

What DSP version does your SoundBlaster 16 CT2230 have? It could be different from mine.

Ace wrote:

Huh... if the signal-to-noise ratio is so poor, how come I got clean and practically unfiltered audio with barely any hiss on my SoundBlaster 16 CT2230?

http://alasir.com/reviews/soundbench/page4of5.html

I'm sure they vary but I've never heard good quality from a SB ISA card. At best they don't hiss/pop/etc but the output still sounds muffled and narrow to me.

It's DSP 4.13
Apart from playing a bit of doom/hexen with headphones on, (pretty subjective I know), I like to test with Halloween Harry as cracks/pops are very noticable with this game's tracker based music. There's a studio.exe file that plays music from the game and pretty much any non-Vibra SB16 will instantly start crackling.
SB Pro doesn't do it, nor do SB16 Vibra's, or any ESS or Crystal card I've tried.

Well it looks like I spoke too soon about the SoundBlaster 16 CT2230. I can hear a fair bit of hissing in the audio signal just by passing the audio straight into my laptop's microphone input(it doubles as a Line In, so there's no distortion except at high volume). My capture equipment seems to muffle the hissing noise quite a bit. I still don't mind some hissing in the audio signal. As long as it doesn't overpower the actual audio output, I'm fine. If it does like my Audio Excel AV300 when using the on-board amp instead of the Line Out, the amount of background noise is just outrageous and I would immediately set the sound card aside. Still doesn't sound as good as my SoundBlaster 16 CT2840, which is what I use in my main MS-DOS PC.

I wonder: has anyone tried to swap the CT1745A with a better mixer chip? If so, what was the end result?

the CT1745A-S is pretty common in the 95 and newer cards, on my CT3900 it is noticably quieter than my CT2230, even though it has way more circuits and crap on it

does anyone have a recording of the hanging notes compared to without? I know I heard of hanging notes before in other games, but since I never really cared about hexen, I want something definitive

I'll get some samples from all my SoundBlaster 16s and my SoundBlaster 32 which are supposed to be prone to the hanging notes bug over the next week or so. Hang tight.

get a normal (without hanging notes) sample too... need to compare afterall 😉

Sure thing. Though I'd need to set up my primary MS-DOS gaming PC for this as my Ensoniq Soundscape is in that computer. I don't know if its MPU-401 interface is better than my other cards(it's better than any SoundBlaster I have, that's for sure), but I've had much less trouble setting up my Roland CM-300 on that than on any other sound card.

On that note, I'm gonna pull out all my SoundBlaster 16s and my SoundBlaster 32 CT3600 and set up my primary MS-DOS gaming PC to record the audio samples.

Say, has anyone experienced hung notes with Duke Nukem 3D? I can't seem to get Doom to play nice with my Roland CM-300 and SoundBlaster 16 CT2230 except if I use PC Speaker sound effects or completely disable sound effects, so I'd like to test for the bug with Duke Nukem 3D. If I use SoundBlaster sound effects with Doom, I get about a few notes, then the game either crashes or stutters like hell, and this happens soon after the game boots. Is this part of the hanging notes bug? Or is this a problem caused by the use of Windows 98(first edition, not second) and not DOS? Duke Nukem 3D and the Collector's CD-ROM edition of X-Wing work fine with the CM-300 and SoundBlaster digital audio, but just can't get Doom to work.

EDIT: Currently checking if I get a hung note with the Collector's CD-ROM edition of X-Wing on my SoundBlaster 16 CT2230. 4 minutes in, still no hung note. I'll update this post as time passes.

This SoundBlaster 16 has DSP version 4.13(chip is made by Intel), no CSP chip, CT1745A mixer chip and the CT1747 combo ISA interface/YMF262/YAC512 chip, by the way.

EDIT 2: Now just over 10 minutes in, music's still playing fine.

EDIT 3: While no notes are hung yet, I do think the CM-300 is starting to miss a few notes.

EDIT 4: Might just have been my ears playing tricks on me. All the notes are there.

EDIT 5: Now 20 minutes in. Still no hung notes. Considering DonutKing(and Samudra way before this) failed to notice hanging notes on the SoundBlaster 16 CT2230, I guess it's either immune to the hanging notes bug or much less prone to it than other SoundBlaster 16s?

By the way, why do people say the signal-to-noise ratio of the SoundBlaster 16 CT2230 is so poor? I'm currently listening to audio coming from my SoundBlaster 16 CT2230 with headphones through the SPEAKER output, not even the Line Out, and I only hear hissing at very high volume. The output is clear and almost 100% unfiltered. Dare I say, this is quickly becoming my favorite SoundBlaster sound card.

Try a game with MOD based music like Halloween Harry or Mystic Towers, you'll quickly notice the horrible SNR.

What's so special about MOD-based music that makes the poor signal-to-noise ratio more noticeable? If there's a shareware version of either game available for download, I'll be sure to check them out and see if the audio output is as dirty as most people say it is.

As for my X-Wing test, the test has now run for 40 minutes and not a single note has gotten hung. I guess this is one of the better SoundBlaster 16s to use for MIDI modules and daughterboard?

EDIT: Huh... Doom suddenly worked with the CM-300 for a about one minute, then the game started to stutter like hell, the music stopped playing aside from one note and no more SoundBlaster digital audio until I exited the game. WTF?

What's so special about MOD-based music that makes the poor signal-to-noise ratio more noticeable? If there's a shareware version of either game available for download, I'll be sure to check them out and see if the audio output is as dirty as most people say it is.

I've no idea. But I've tried on multiple sound cards, including Crystal, ESS, etc - but non-vibra SB16's (and AWE32 CT3990) were the only ones to do it. SB Pro doesn't do it either.

There are shareware/freeware versions available at www.3drealms.com

As for my X-Wing test, the test has now run for 40 minutes and not a single note has gotten hung. I guess this is one of the better SoundBlaster 16s to use for MIDI modules and daughterboard?

Seems that way, I've seen on queststudios and VCF people saying that it works for them and I never had hanging notes with it either.

Ace wrote:

Considering DonutKing(and Samudra way before this) failed to notice hanging notes on the SoundBlaster 16 CT2230, I guess it's either immune to the hanging notes bug or much less prone to it than other SoundBlaster 16s?

Cards bearing the CT1747, while pretty tolerant, are not immune to the hanging MIDI notes issue, as a number of others, including myself, have verified. They are, however, immune to the spurious MIDI note problem, as described on page 3 of this thread.

Have you configured X-Wing for SB16 (stereo) sound-effect playback, perchance? If not, that would explain why you haven't encountered any stuck notes yet. If so, try loading up a training session, and let that run for a bit - I'm able to reproduce a hung note here every time (with a CT1747-bearing card), though never in the same place.

...CT1747 combo ISA interface/YMF262/YAC512 chip

Not to nitpick, but the CT1747 doesn't contain a YAC512, or any other DAC. Depending on the card, the CT1747's OPL-3 output is sent, via I2S interfacing, to either a TDA1387 or TDA1543 DAC, or fed to the EMU8000.

Cloudschatze wrote:

Cards bearing the CT1747, while pretty tolerant, are not immune to the hanging MIDI notes issue, as a number of others, including myself, have verified. They are, however, immune to the spurious MIDI note problem, as described on page 3 of this thread.

I never knew that issue even existed.

Cloudschatze wrote:

Have you configured X-Wing for SB16 (stereo) sound-effect playback, perchance? If not, that would explain why you haven't encountered any stuck notes yet. If so, try loading up a training session, and let that run for a bit - I'm able to reproduce a hung note here every time (with a CT1747-bearing card), though never in the same place.

I am using Stereo sound on the SoundBlaster 16 CT2230. I even had Stereo digital audio playing at the same time as the music. Though I did use Tour of Duty 3 Mission 14, so I don't know if this could change anything.

Cloudschatze wrote:

Not to nitpick, but the CT1747 doesn't contain a YAC512, or any other DAC. Depending on the card, the CT1747's OPL-3 output is sent, via I2S interfacing, to either a TDA1387 or TDA1543 DAC, or fed to the EMU8000.

Really? I thought the CT1747 had the YAC512 built-in. *inspects a SoundBlaster 16*

Ace wrote:

It most certainly does look interesting. Looks like something that could easily be put together as I only see off-the-shelf parts on that thing. Please take some more shots of this thing. I'd like images of both the top and bottom of the card.

Well it took me a while but here are the shots. I've linked them as they are 2MB each

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9151127/IMG_1027.JPG
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9151127/IMG_1029.JPG

Yes it does look pretty simple. Those SN74L's are just logic gates, Zilog Z8 is a microcontroller, PC900V in lower right corner is an optocoupler, HY6116AP is CMOS SRAM. The 27C64A is an 8 x 8K EPROM, and it should be possible to dump the contents of that one way or another.
There's a 12MHz crystal and a few caps, resistors and one diode scattered around.

The only thing that might be troublesome is the PAL16L8-25 which may take a bit of effort. There's a guide ere www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/entry. ... L-(Part-1) but I lack the equipment or skills necessary for this.
PALs are hard to find now but it should be possible to replace this with a GAL which are still available, are reprogrammable so can be salvaged from old equipment.

The biggest problem is - I don't want to destroy this card 😜

If someone with the motivation and the skills wants to have a go at reverse engineering this card so that we can all enjoy its benefits I would be willing to swap for a similiar MIDI card.

I know some guys at vintage computer were trying to build an adlib clone type card, maybe this would be of interest to them. It would be good if perhaps the functionality of both these cards could be combined. I'd particularly like a standalone card that can fit a Wavetable daughterboard but since that actually involves audio output which isn't present on this card it might be a bit more involved.

My AWE64 Gold arrived today. I feel like I'm in the club now! 😀

I still need a GUS. 🙁

Just tested my Roland CM-300 on my SoundBlaster 32 CT3600... instant failure. In Star Wars X-Wing Collector's CD-ROM edition, when I first booted the game, I got a stuck note almost immediately after the game booted up. I then quit the game and restarted it, and the second time around, the stuck notes kept coming, though some would stop before other notes got stuck. At one point, the hanging notes bug manifested itself so badly I got 4 to 5 notes getting stuck one after the other and staying stuck.

Also had problems with Duke Nukem 3D where the game would stutter pretty heavily just before a song started playing, then when the music was playing, several notes were completely missing.

Bottom-line: do not use any MIDI devices on the SoundBlaster 32 CT3600. Its hanging notes bug is pretty severe and some games will have missing notes.