I finally got a YMF 719E-S card so I thought I'd share some of my experiences. I'm currently using the official SETUPSA.EXE from the latest Win9x driver archive (95v2343.exe) and it works well enough for my needs. As per the instructions posted by James-F, I've adjusted the SB mixer settings, disabled the 3D/bass/treble stuff and lowered the WSS master volume to 12.
First thing I noticed was that the card kept producing loud hissing noises, even with the jumper in the Line Out position and using a (known good) set of powered speakers. Turns out the initial mixer settings (set by the installer) for the WSS WAVE VOL L/R sliders were way too high. They were originally at 60 (!) and lowering them to 12 got rid of the hiss, without adversely affecting PCM volume levels.
I also realized that CD audio was too quiet in WSS mode, so I had to raise the WSS AUX1 L/R sliders to about 28 to fix that. The FM synth volume was also slightly quieter than the PCM volume at the default settings, so I had to raise the WSS AUX2 L/R sliders a bit as well.
WSS compatibility seems to be pretty good overall. I had no problems running Sierra games like Gabriel Knight and King's Quest 6 (CD versions) in WSS mode. I did notice that Space Quest 5 needed both WSS and SBPro to use IRQ 7 and DMA 1 in order to work in WSS mode, but that might be an edge case. Miles Sound System games like Heroes of Might and Magic 2 ran fine in WSS mode, as did HMI Sound System games like Descent and Tomb Raider. This is all in pure DOS. Paradoxically, I couldn't get any of these games to work in WSS mode when I ran them from within Win98. 😁
All in all, this seems like an excellent SBPro/WSS card. I may try James-F's low pass filter mod at some point, but I'm not comfortable with (de)soldering SMD components at my current skill level. Lastly, here are a few screenshots of the mixer settings which worked well for me, in case they might be useful for someone else.
The "XG Lite" softsynth that is available under Win9x is kinda interesting. If anyone is curious how that sounds, I've uploaded some samples of the YMF719E-S playing General MIDI music in Doom, Duke3D etc. using the softsynth. It's not as good as the DS-XG suite from the later PCI Yamaha cards, but I think it's still fairly decent for the time.
in windows the driver monopolizes WSS and it is unavailable for games but in pure DOS it works well with many things.
I like the softsynth in the final driver very much myself ~
in windows the driver monopolizes WSS and it is unavailable for games but in pure DOS it works well with many things.
That explains it, thanks!
BTW, can you confirm that the WSS INPUT L/R slider of SETUPSA.EXE controls the wavetable daughterboard volume, as someone mentioned earlier? I don't have one to test this myself, as my MIDI gear is all external.
I cannot confirm that, I don't have any hardware available to me to test with right now, and besides I use my SETYMF util instead of SETUPSA 😜
It should be AUX1 or AUX2 though, one is CD, other is WB+FM.
My server is offline but it can be downloaded from here : Re: T-04YBSC-A, new YMF71x based sound card + SETYMF utility
I'm somewhat confused about something concerning my Labway variant of this card. I can't seem to effect any change in "SBPro" volume at all under Win98 DOS mode (when doing the "SBPro" sound test in the SetYMF.exe setup utility) except by using the master volume adjustment. I can't make the volume change using either setupsa or setymf outside of adjusting the overall master volume.
Is this expected behavior? I'm mainly annoyed with it as it pertains to the mix between that output and the midi output from my X2 and was trying to avoid having to dig the X2 out and increasing its gain with its setup utility, but it just seems odd that I can't change the SBPro output volume separately at all. I have no idea if this has to do with the bug the thread is originally about or is just how it works.
There shouldn't be such a problem at all in SETYMF. I vaguely remember having a card where SB PCM volume didn't do anything but that was a while ago and I don't think I saw any way to get things going. What chip is on the card ?
It's a YMF719-S. The Board FCC ID is LWHA151a00, A151-A000.
I actually partially take my qestion back, I actually can adjust the SB volume using setupsa.exe and hear the difference while in the setup, but when I was going back to the test game I was using, Star Trek: Judgment Rites, it seems the game itself isn't respecting the setup gain adjustment. I'll have to try another game to see if that's universal (ie. is the gain changing and not being "saved" or is this a one-off game not being affected by it).
I can't seem to change the SB volume in setymf though.
I actually partially take my qestion back, I actually can adjust the SB volume using setupsa.exe and hear the difference while in the setup, but when I was going back to the test game I was using, Star Trek: Judgment Rites, it seems the game itself isn't respecting the setup gain adjustment. I'll have to try another game to see if that's universal (ie. is the gain changing and not being "saved" or is this a one-off game not being affected by it).
Some games ignore existing mixer settings and force their own instead.
You can somewhat rectify this using the Sound Blaster Pro Volume Control TSR utility which James-F mentioned earlier in this thread. It runs in the background and allows you to control individual volume sliders via hotkeys.
Some games ignore existing mixer settings and force their own instead.
You can somewhat rectify this using the Sound Blaster Pro Volume Control TSR utility which James-F mentioned earlier in this thread. It runs in the background and allows you to control individual volume sliders via hotkeys.
That's handy, I'll have to try that out! Still not sure why I can't adjust SB output using setymf, but I'll play with that some more, but if I can't figure it out at least I can stick with setupsa.
So it works in SETUPSE but not in SETYMF ? Interesting, unfortunately I have no access to my hardware to debug things, if I can find a chip where the problem is apparent. I should have a card with YMF719-S somewhere.
I may try James-F's low pass filter mod at some point, but I'm not comfortable with (de)soldering SMD components at my current skill level.
After practicing for a bit, I got confident enough to try the mod today, and I'm pleased to report that it was successful! Not very pretty to look at, but fully functional. 😁
Huge thanks to James-F for all the research he's done on this topic!
Came to put my $0.02 into this thread. I got one of these a long long time ago from a scrap pile, was digging through my basement earlier in the week and happened upon it in a box. Rather, I happened upon it months ago, but really only got around to messing with it this past week.
Image below is after replacing quite a few capacitors that had gotten dented or otherwise ripped from their legs off the board. Also had to clean up the joints on quite a few of the surface-mount components near the wavetable header and almost considered doing the filter mod in the meantime... but more on that down the post a bit.
Some things to note about this board that are notable- For one, the solder pads on the through-hole parts, on the bottom side, are absolutely terrible. If you have your iron at any amount of a good temperature for ANYTHING ELSE, they will singe off in part or in full. In some cases I had to do a solder bridge to a nearby trace to get stuff reconnected and flood the through-hole with solder to keep the part in place with only the upper side anchoring it to the board.
I had an issue with the 719E-S on my card for some reason where I had to go back through and reflow every single pin twice to get it to work. Both of the main power filter caps near the slot edge were either heavily dented or broken off, and one of the output 16v 470uF caps looked like something tried to nip it open. I wish I took a picture before I fixed it, it was gnarly.
The caps I went with in this case were a couple of 0-hour Cheapo-Teapo 16v 470s that don't initially look matched, but definitely are. different plastic casings, yet measure pretty much the same on my meter, so in they go.
Also noticed I had to put 16v 47uF caps in place of the 10uF caps for the inputs to make the card run anywhere near stable. Could have been that all the other 10s I tried up to that point were problematic, but the increased capacitance doesn't seem to have harmed anything too much if at all. Given all the original capacitors on this board are G-Luxons from the late 90s, I'm definitely going to be adding a list from this card to the ever-growing Digikey cart and treat it to some fresh stock when money isn't as tight.
This is definitely a card for something running pure DOS if anything, or 9x/ME/NT4/2K/XP. WFW311 went absolutely bonkers with GDI errors after installing the yamaha reference drivers and such, to the point I had to restore the backup of my Windows folder from a couple weeks ago. It might be an incompatibility between this card and the WD7600 series chipset on my board there, but it just was not happy. Instead, after popping it into my PowerEdge 2300 running XP, it found the driver and worked without a hitch. Installing the Y-Station software off the win9x CD helped a bit, albeit with the volume controls doing weird things, but the 3D enable/disable seems to actually do something, so there's that. Also had problems with the gameport on this card on the 386 as well, even properly configured... and yet, on the PowerEdge with XP, works just fine. Also another reason why I believe there's a compatibility issue.
Overall I like the audio without the filter mod so I'm not going to do that just yet, not until I get my hands on a couple wavetable cards to do some comparisons with... This is one of the only two cards I have with such a header (the other being a TB Santa Cruz card) and if I can help it, both are going to get the same card, and probably something from Serdaco in the end. Am I right in assuming that the low-pass filter mod also affects the waveout sound as well? if so, I may want to stray away from that entirely anyway.
Below are a few recorded 320K MP3 samples of the audio from my card post-repair, and some control recordings from a couple other cards. I chose Dune for this, as the Arrakeen Palace bgm is complex enough to really tell the difference. There's also a point 10 seconds in where some cards in my collection (namely my SB16 Value CT2770 every time, compared to my CT1740 and CT1750 which do not, nor does my Awe64 Value) will sometimes miss a note and set off a wrong instrument, which seems to happen here only after ymersion is disabled. Interestingly this missing note seems to be a random occurrence on this card, but I've only see it happen on OPL3 cores baked into other chips thus far. Trying to get my hands on a CMI8330 card to test that out later.
Am I right in assuming that the low-pass filter mod also affects the waveout sound as well?
While I can't speak directly for this since I don't have a wavetable daughterboard, I can say that the low-pass filter mod doesn't affect FM synth, Line In or CD Audio. I can also confirm that the mod has no effect when the card is running in WSS mode. As James-F previously explained, a different type of filter is used in that case.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the YMF715 datasheet indicates that the SBFLT capacitors only affect digital audio, and only when the card is running in SBPro mode. Even in that case, you can turn the filter on/off at any time by using the SBPVOL utility that James-F linked to earlier in this thread.
Changing those capacitors will only affect sound of the SB DAC output, so WSS output remains untouched by the mod.
Alright, thanks for the clarification. it's been running in the poweredge for a while now and it really is a miracle it works as well as it does in XP. I really wanted to see this used in one of the ISA-only machines I had but this is one of the rare cases where the PnP stuff finally gave me an issue enough that it was just not meant to be. The issues I had with Windows 3.1 scared me off enough to stop using it in there, at least. Otherwise it's been fine.
I'll probably do the cap mod at some point down the line once I get brave enough to set my wallet on fire with all the caps I'm gonna need to order... this is just more quantity onto the pile.
