gerwin wrote:Did you get a bad specimen, or did I fail to notice these things myself?
Well, I did get a bad specimen insofar as that the plugin for speaker was mechanically broken. This was easy to understand after I soldered out this socket. The metal connectors are soft as butter. The old SB16 no one wanted here donated her "line in" which is way more sturdy. So after that got fixed, I tried the card.
I use Warlords2 for testing, because its sound gets easily distorted by different cards. There is also speech and sound effects overlay right at the start. I used many cards I have here to test that game.
I am am somewhat puzzled but almost all my card's signals are rather weak for my AV-Receiver. I must turn up the volume, so the receiver noise itself becomes quite audible too. When I use the internal amplifiers, things get somewhat better. I shall try a different cable, but I don't think that it is the cause.
Anyway, I compared the following cards a few times:
Terratec Maestro 32/96
Terratec Gold 16/96
the CMI 8330
Soundblaster 16 CT-1740
Soundblaster 32 CT-2760
Ess 688 & opl3
when possible, with yamaha DB
I was rather surprised about the results. The single most impressive card to me was the Maestro 32/96. If one casually builds a retro PC from scratch, that card offers most bang for the buck. Its own wavetable sounds nice and requires no tsr. The card is very clear with a strong signal. FM does sound better than OPL3 in some places (Percussion stuff in Warlord2)
It is available for 1buck at ebay if you look. It even lets you run a second wavetable with it.
Strongest signal goes to the CT-2760. It also sounds fairer than the ESS 1868f chips (Gold 16/96 & Schubert). Amazingly, SB32 produces hanging notes with its own AWE (via TSR), but so far none with the db.
The ESS688 & OPL3 delivers a strong signal too, sounds like OPL3 but unfortunately does not allow a DB without tsr. I have not seen a 1688 with OPL instead.
The CMI8330 looks exactly like yours but that FM rendition wasn't really clear. And the speech rendering wasn't either. And my receiver creates some hiss at the required volume.
Now, since I own the CMI8330, there is no reason for me to put it down. 😊 But I have failed to like it. If I don't find some solution for the signal, I can't use it anyway. Would I only use the screen speakers, it would probably be quite nice, but the stereo with those large speakers reveal things you don't like to hear.