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Sound Blaster 16 Clones

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Reply 41 of 408, by Filosofia

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OMG! That's it! Thank you that is it! (20 years will do that to a memory), it was a sound machine bundled with some real bad amplified soundmate speakers, 😀

The bundle came with: the ISA soundcard, autoamplified SoundMate2 speakers :

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and a Gamepad, this one:

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Reply 43 of 408, by Ace

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The CX4237 is a Crystal chip, a definite NO for me. It's miles ahead of the Analog Devices SoundPort, but it still sounds rather crappy. Digital audio is fine, but the OPL3 is noticeably off. Some Crystal chips seem to have complete f-ed up OPL3 as well, which results in a mess like this. A CS4235 is used, but Crystal's cloned OPL3 sounds the same on all their chips with integrated OPL3, though some will be completely screwed up like this one.

Creator of The Many Sounds of:, a collection of various DOS games played using different sound cards.

Reply 45 of 408, by soviet conscript

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I recently picked up an Audeo Excel AV307. complete in box. The box claims sb16 and pro compatability but I havnt tested it yet. I cant find much info on this particular model. doesd anyone know if its as good as the other models that supposedly do everything without the hanging note bug?

Reply 46 of 408, by badmojo

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Do you have a pic of it? I have a couple of the Audio Excel 3d cards discussed in this thread and re-tried one recently, but - as mentioned earlier in this thread - it doesn't work with Mortal Kombat, which is a deal breaker for me.

Life? Don't talk to me about life.

Reply 47 of 408, by fillosaurus

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After testing many ISA soundcards, I can say this:
CMI 8330 (re-marked as SoundPro or 1869+) is not that good. I don't like it. Or PCI 8338 or 8738. Appeared on many shady (think PC Chips) motherboards back in the days of SS7 and Slot 1. Some 8338 have been re-marked as Yamaha 724 on discrete soundcards. I know, I had one of these pieces of s..., bought new. Fortunately I was able to sell it without much money loss.
IMO, CMI are crap. The only other SB16 compatible chips are ALS100/100+/120/200. Maybe even the PCI ALS4000; don't know, never owned/tested one.

I tested one ALS100+ and one 120. It was long time ago, they worked with the few games I runned; Can't remember if I selected SB/SBPRO or SB16.
I still have an ALS100+, maybe I will compare it against som genuine Creative SB16 compatibles.

Last edited by fillosaurus on 2013-04-16, 06:51. Edited 2 times in total.

Y2K box: AMD Athlon K75 (second generation slot A)@700, ASUS K7M motherboard, 256 MB SDRAM, ATI Radeon 7500+2xVoodoo2 in SLI, SB Live! 5.1, VIA USB 2.0 PCI card, 40 GB Seagate HDD.
WIP: external midi module based on NEC wavetable (Yamaha clone)

Reply 49 of 408, by gerwin

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@fillosaurus
Care to give the reasons? ISA vs PCI is apples and oranges.

@soviet conscript
Looks like a relabeled predecessor of the CMI8330, with seperate FM chip.

--> ISA Soundcard Overview // Doom MBF 2.04 // SetMul

Reply 50 of 408, by vetz

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fillosaurus wrote:
After testing many ISA soundcards, I can say this: CMI 8330 (re-marked as SoundPro or 1869+) is not that good. I don't like it. […]
Show full quote

After testing many ISA soundcards, I can say this:
CMI 8330 (re-marked as SoundPro or 1869+) is not that good. I don't like it. Or PCI 8338 or 8378. Appeared on many shady (think PC Chips) motherboards back in the days of SS7 and Slot 1. Some 8338 have been re-marked as Yamaha 724 on discrete soundcards. I know, I had one of these pieces of s..., bought new. Fortunately I was able to sell it without much money loss.
IMO, CMI are crap. The only other SB16 compatible chips are ALS100/100+/120. Maybe even the PCI ALS4000; don't know, never owned/tested one.

I tested one ALS100+ and one 120. It was long time ago, they worked with the few games I runned; Can't remember if I selected SB/SBPRO or SB16.
I still have an ALS100+, maybe I will compare it against som genuine Creative SB16 compatibles.

I'm interested in hearing more of why you think it is so crap. I own the Audio Excel 310 myself (CMI8330) and I think it is pretty decent.

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Reply 52 of 408, by elfuego

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I never tried cmi 8330, but i did have 8738 pci. It had 2 stereo outputs for quad surround and it worked like a charm. It also worked in dos to some extent but i cannot elaborate on details since it was a very long time ago. All in all not that bad.

Reply 53 of 408, by gerwin

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soviet conscript wrote:

yhea, peeled away the sticker and the chip says its a CMI8329A. any idea what those empy sockets on the right are for?

Could be sockets for single channel amplifiers.

--> ISA Soundcard Overview // Doom MBF 2.04 // SetMul

Reply 54 of 408, by fillosaurus

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I do have an ISA card with 8330. It's one of the cards which gave me endless trouble.
I tested it on the system in my sig, and I had my share of windows errors and BSODs.
All the other soundcards I have, except Philips PSC-703, behave nicely.
10 years ago I had a PC Chips M726 mainboard with SoundPro audio, and while at first thought it was good, after some time I deactivated it and returned to my Yamaha SW20-PC+GUS ACE combo.
Some DOS games lacked FM music, others did not detect either SB DAC or FM.
Same thing happened with my first PCI soundcard, a 8338 re-marked as Yamaha 724, back in '98 or '99. Then again with a 8738, in '05. Sold them and never looked back.
Well... Someday when I am in a testing mood I will try again the 8330. I have an AT SS7 mobo with onboard SoundPro, but I received it without the audio connector, so for now I can't test that.

Y2K box: AMD Athlon K75 (second generation slot A)@700, ASUS K7M motherboard, 256 MB SDRAM, ATI Radeon 7500+2xVoodoo2 in SLI, SB Live! 5.1, VIA USB 2.0 PCI card, 40 GB Seagate HDD.
WIP: external midi module based on NEC wavetable (Yamaha clone)

Reply 56 of 408, by gerwin

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PARUS wrote:

Hi Gerwin. Excuse me I don't speak English well. Tell please what about your test S/PDIF in DOS? Is it really working in pure DOS as you expected? (and me too 😀 ) I mean OUT and IN too.

I tested Digital OUT. It works all the time: DOS, Windows etc.
I have not found an easy way, or a need, to test Digital IN.

--> ISA Soundcard Overview // Doom MBF 2.04 // SetMul

Reply 57 of 408, by PARUS

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OK, thank you! OUT channel really has most priority for us. But I want to use it with Terratec EWS64XL in one system. Of course I can connect AV310 DIG OUT to EWS64 DIG IN but here is one problem: on EWS64 DSP Dream has only one IN tract, it may not be used with DIG IN and CS mixer together at the same time. First or second. And if I could connect them conversely EWS64 DIG OUT to AV310 DIG IN it would be perfect, all sounds from Terratec mixer in this case can present through AV310. This is the reason of my interest about AV310 S/PDIF IN.

Reply 58 of 408, by gerwin

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The main benefit of the digital IN/OUT of the AV310 is that one can bypass the questionable DAC (digital -> analog) of the AV310. The CS4236 certainly has a superior DAC, the best of the consumer soundcards at the time. The setup you propose will not give optimal sound quality.

I considered purchasing a seperate external S/PDIF DAC box for the AV310. Because it it a bit troublesome to rely on a second soundcard for this job. But currenly I mainly use a Creative SB16 CT2940 + Roland MPU401AT and forgot about it.

--> ISA Soundcard Overview // Doom MBF 2.04 // SetMul

Reply 59 of 408, by PARUS

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Really? I know it. If not for this fact on most built-in DACs I never would want to connect SPDIF and I never would have interest about AV310. And I know that the CS4236 DAC is one of the best of ISA-based designs.
Why will not give optimal? My "external DAC" is digital receiver-amplifier. I propose this:

Terratec [CS4236->DAC->MIXER->ADC->Dream->SPDIFout] ---> AV310 [SPDIFin->CMI8330->SPDIFout] ---> Digital receiver.

EWS64 will give me SB Pro, 94b banks and WT-daughterboard, total mixer to S/PDIF out. AV310 will give SB16. In this case I will bypass the questionable AV310 DAC too. And in any case I don't agree to make any analog connections through noisy DACs on Creative cards.