They're all good options! I personally don't like those Yamaha things so would go with one of the creatives - the SB Pro sounds lovely but the AWE64 does SB16 and sounds great too - plus of course you get AWE and the option of sound fonts which are fun.

AWE32 (SB32) CT3670.

It is basically an AWE64 with simm slots.

So unless you already have the AWE64 upgraded, then the CT3670 is going to be a better card.

You can max it out with 28MB of RAM (2x16MB) sticks from eBay for about $22.

I would get a Yamaha YMF724/744/754 PCI card to go along with it for games that you want FM music for.

I have a 233mmx pc with that MPU card 🤣 , I use a CT1600 because it is bug-free in some old games that I like. I used to have a SB16 CT2230 - also great.
If the sfx card has an onboard MPU remember to either disable it or make it use port300 in order not to conflict with the MQ MPU.
In reality for the SFX part choose whatever card you want, just decide if you also want authentic OPL sound.

Getting a PCI soundcard for DOS games is always a bad idea, just asking for issues. AWExx midi playback becomes irrelevant since a SC-55 is available. Just my 2 cents, IMHO 🤣

In my main DOS PC, a Pentium 100, I have pretty much the same setup, an AWE64 Gold and a Roland MPU401 card. It works great.

Sound Blaster Pro 2 would be my next choice, but I feel it's more at home in a 386 or early 486. But because you have a proper MIDI interface, it really doesn't matter that much IMO, as said above, they will all get the job done.

These must all be pretty good choices since everyone suggested using a different card! 🤣 Seriously, though - thanks for the comments.

I think I'll leave the AWE64 in for now just until I get the external devices set up with the MQ card and then play around with the other Sound Blasters.

keropi wrote:

I have a 233mmx pc with that MPU card 🤣 , I use a CT1600 because it is bug-free in some old games that I like. I used to have a SB16 CT2230 - also great.
If the sfx card has an onboard MPU remember to either disable it or make it use port300 in order not to conflict with the MQ MPU.[/i]

Thanks for suggesting the MPU address change to 300, keropi. I'll make sure that's done in the config lines for the AWE. Just picked the MQ card off of Amibay yesterday so it'll probably be a couple of weeks before I get ahold of it. The SC-55 will be here in a couple of days so the AWE will have to suffice as the MPU interface for now.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

In my main DOS PC, a Pentium 100, I have pretty much the same setup, an AWE64 Gold and a Roland MPU401 card. It works great.

Sound Blaster Pro 2 would be my next choice, but I feel it's more at home in a 386 or early 486. But because you have a proper MIDI interface, it really doesn't matter that much IMO, as said above, they will all get the job done.

Funny enough, I pulled the SB2 Pro out of my old 386. I do have a 486 that it would be at home in but it's having some mobo cmos issues I'm trying to sort out. Another thread at some point, I think!

The only downside with the SB Pro for your application is that I believe they're a bit noisier than some other cards. Keep your eyes open for cards from Aztech, ESS based cards, pretty much anything from Turtle Beach. More options means more fun!

^ that's not noise, it's extra sound quality that we cannot perceive yet 🤣 🤣 🤣

The Sound Blaster Pro is also the most sensitive to speed.
You may run into trouble with some software on a fast Pentium, because the delay-loops run too fast for the DSP to respond in time. In that case either the software doesn't detect the SB Pro at all, or you'll get random dropouts of audio or such.
Most clones have a faster DSP, so they work better in faster PCs.

Downside of the SB16 and AWE cards is that they're not compatible with SB Pro at all, and they are buggy with old SB software. You will get annoying clicking sounds, see here: http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.nl/2015/05/16 … t-playback.html
Basically they're only good for software that specifically supports SB16 or AWE.
If you mainly want SB Pro or classic SB software, you're better off with an SB Pro or clone.

My experience so far with the 2-3 months since I did the SB16->SBPRO2 swap is that nothing really changed... some games really need cache disabled to get 386DX speeds, the issues are the same for both cards. Maybe I didn't run yet a game that drops audio on sbpro2? Can you name some to check?

The only issue I found is Open Cubic Player, it just does not work with the SBPRO2 even with caches disabled, playback is horrible.

keropi wrote:

My experience so far with the 2-3 months since I did the SB16->SBPRO2 swap is that nothing really changed... some games really need cache disabled to get 386DX speeds, the issues are the same for both cards. Maybe I didn't run yet a game that drops audio on sbpro2? Can you name some to check?

I don't have experience with an SB16 in a fast computer myself.
Perhaps the SB16 has the same issues as the SB Pro. The AWE32 and newer don't have them, afaik. I used to have an AWE32 in a PII-333, and as far as I recall, it worked okay.
I also have an ESS AudioDrive that also doesn't have issues in a PII.

From what I understood (with both the sb16/sbrpo2) it's not their fault if for example a game doesn't detect them but rather the game's audio driver.
Almost anything made for 486+ just works, it's the older xt~386 games that crap out.
It'a a compromise for using a fast system the way I see it, you get all the extras like speed/ps2 ports/pci/agp but you sacrifice some (not much! unless you are into XT stuff) compatibility.
All you can do is try and use more compatible hardware in order to improve the situation and rely on software to fix the rest of the issues:
- icache to enable/disable cache on the fly
- xmsdsk/emsdsk to occupy ram above the 16MB mark in order to run games that are problematic with more than 16MB
- moslo for the really old games
- the odd fix that maybe someone made because they liked a game, like ripsaw8080's AITDRUN to fix running in systems faster than 386/486 🤣 , or tilakat and newrisingsun's fixes/patches

at least that's my experience in the ~10years of running my p1mmx dos system

keropi wrote:

From what I understood (with both the sb16/sbrpo2) it's not their fault if for example a game doesn't detect them but rather the game's audio driver.

Yes, the cards work just fine, the driver just doesn't wait long enough for the card to acknowledge commands.
The DSP is a microcontroller, and it doesn't get faster or slower, no matter in what system you install it.
The problem is that a lot of software doesn't use absolute timing (as in "wait for 100 ms"), but rather just puts the CPU in a loop, assuming the card will respond before the loop ends. That assumption breaks when the CPU is too fast.
Not entirely their fault I suppose, since the Creative documentation for SB programming uses examples with loops of max 65536 iterations.
Then again, I've seen software that tried to be 'creative' here, and uses the loop like in the SB docs, but instead of 65536 iterations, they only do something like 400. That's the most horrible software out there.
I'm actually not sure if 65536 iterations may be good enough on any CPU. It might be, because inside the loop you're still reading from a DSP register with port I/O, and port I/O should have some limit based on the ISA bus speed, not based on the CPU.

Thanks for all the great info, people! Still waiting for all my stuff so I'm in a holding pattern for now. I like the idea of having the Yamaha OPL available from the SB Pro, I'm just not sure how much use it would get. As for the speed concerns, the oldest games I play would be the SSI AD&D Gold Box games, so it might be worth trying them out with the SB Pro.

So I got the MT-32 and the SC-55 MKII hooked up through the AWE64 - still waiting for my MQ card to get here. Amazing units, of course - but I have noticed some strange music behavior on certain games like Ultima Underworld. I'm assuming it's related to the shortcomings of the UART interface.

humanoid wrote:

So I got the MT-32 and the SC-55 MKII hooked up through the AWE64 - still waiting for my MQ card to get here. Amazing units, of course - but I have noticed some strange music behavior on certain games like Ultima Underworld. I'm assuming it's related to the shortcomings of the UART interface.

SoftMPU might take care of that. It emulates the intelligent mode of a real Roland MPU-401.
http://bjt42.github.io/softmpu/

I'm still working on my builds and haven't had a chance to test it out yet with my MT-100 and SC-88VL.

I'm using an ESS Audiodrive together with a Midi card in my 486, which works great.

I have an AWE64 Gold in my DOS PC alongside MPU401 interface card and it works great.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

I have an AWE64 Gold in my DOS PC alongside MPU401 interface card and it works great.

Yeah, that Music Quest interface card can't get here fast enough! Even with the occasional hiccup the two Rolands are simply fantastic.