kode54 wrote:Final Fantasy VII for Windows, the original release, could use the newer SoundFont Bank Manager for AWE32/64, or for Live!/Audigy/X-Fi to upload its custom sample banks to the card, but it still only commanded it through the MIDI driver, not raw chip access.
A handful of DOS game engines could also access the AWE32/64 directly for sound mixing, incurring the extra delay of uploading the samples to the card. I don't recall the exact sound engines that supported this. At least one of them supported various module formats. I could barely use this, though, since I only had an AWE64 Value, which had the 512KB of RAM included, but was still upgradable with a proprietary add-on card that was out of my price range.
jheronimus wrote:gdjacobs wrote:The way I see it, there's three tiers of support for the AWE32 and AWE64:
1) Operates as a SB16, optionally with the TSR providing access to the EMU synthesizer.
2) Directly addresses the EMU chip but uses the default soundfont off the ROM.
3) Directly addresses the EMU chip and uploads custom sound effects, hardware audio processing, or both.
I would think the place to begin is testing different game settings and different sound devices (SB16 vs AWE32) to find what changes cause a difference in sound.
Could you name an example of a game that does number 3? Just curious
gdjacobs wrote:Raptor (from Apogee) uses GM or OPL3. It's not sample based MOD music.
David_OSU wrote:gdjacobs wrote:Raptor (from Apogee) uses GM or OPL3. It's not sample based MOD music.
Raptor has tracker music when setup with Gravis Ultrasound as the music sound card. This is the best sounding configuration, IMHO.
ommadawnyawn wrote:So it has native GUS hardware mixing then?
Scali wrote:ommadawnyawn wrote:So it has native GUS hardware mixing then?
The only way to get sound from a GUS is to use its hardware mixer.
It doesn't have a conventional DAC, only the GF1 wavetable chip with up to 32 hardware-mixed channels.
So for a GUS, playing MIDI and playing MODs is basically the same: upload samples, and use the hardware mixer to play the notes.
The difference between the formats is only on the CPU-side, which translates either MIDI or MOD (or whatever other music format) to native commands for the GUS' GF1 chip.
David_OSU wrote:I don't know if this helps, but here's a partial list of DOS games that use tracker (mod) music on the soundblaster (and other soundcards capable of digital audio playback):
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