The wikipedia says that in 1995 the sound blaster 16 started coming with the CT1978 CQM synthesis chip rather than the Yamaha OPL-3 FM synthesizer. Did any titles use CQM synthesis? Did any titles make a distinction between sound blaster 16 earlier version versus sound blaster 16 later version for music setting?
Daniel L Newhouse
Creative Quadrature Modulaton (CQM) Synthesis is basically an emulation of the Yamaha OPL3 hardware FM synthesis chip. The Wikipedia article you referred to provides more detail, but it's not a new "standard". Just a different form of an existing standard.
Games didn't support CQM, they supported Yamaha's FM synthesis which CQM just emulated (probably for Creative to save a couple of bucks).
This wasn't the only instance of someone trying to emulate the OPL2 or OPL3 chip.
As I recall, the Gravis Ultrasound, Orchid Soundwave 32 & Ensoniq Soundscape cards emulated the OPL2 or OPL3 in some form or another.
If I have to draw a correlation:
You had your General MIDI standard.
There were numerous manufacturers that produced General MIDI compatible sound cards, add on daughterboards and external modules, all of which used their own instrument sample sets.
So, if you play a General MIDI soundtrack on a Roland Sound Canvas, compared to a Wave Blaster II/AWE based card or an Orchid Soundwave 32, they all sound different (some more horrible than others), despite them all supporting the same sound standard.
Here's a rundown of hardware and software based OPL3 emulation.
OPL3 implementations (ESFM, Crystal FM, dual OPL3 etc)
All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder
This should be in Marvin.
It's very bad with polyphony and sounds more 'buzzy'. Some that might accuse DOSBox's OPL emulation being inaccurate could have grown up on CQM
Moved to Marvin.
"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen
Stiletto
If you want a list of cards and the types of synth they use, you can start to use the list on the Vogonswiki Device Library. It's still incomplete, so if you have cards not listed then please create articles for them, but you can already compare the synths for some more common cards.
What this question is effectively asking is if there were any games with more than one music mode for the soundblaster 16, like a soundblaster 16 1.0 v soundblaster 16 2.0 or something like that. If the original chip were CQM I can see now why people put a premium on the vibra (Dell) cards, they would have had better sound than some soundblaster 16 sold separately!
Also, and I hope I have it right, the synthesizer on the original soundblaster 16 PCI was a CT1948.
Also, and they don't have a reference to it anymore, the original synthesis chip was a CT1747.
Daniel L Newhouse
I believe Tempest 2o00's adlib soundtrack was composed on a CQM card.
My proof.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZVHOFijsgE
Compared to the jaguar original, and an actual OPL2 chip, this sounds right. On an actual opl3, the main melody synth is an octave lower, and doesn't sound at all like the original Jaguar tune.
What's important here is that ordinarily the standalone soundblasters were always better than the Dell "vibra" alternatives. But I don't think so with the soundblaster 16. These CQM chips I think were superior to the OPL3 and not just budget models.
Daniel L Newhouse
