As far as I know the PAS16 only supports SB2.0 not SBPRO by the help of the Thunderbird Chipset.
Correct me if I am wrong.

You're right... Suddenly the card sounds a lot less interesting.

CT3900 it is!

Mobygames lists over 100 games w/ PAS16 support.
http://www.mobygames.com/attribute/sheet/attributeId,1728/

Seriously people, why is the PAS/16 always beeing compared to Sound Blaster ?

The PAS/PAS16 had never been a Sound Blaster clone. *sigh*
It was a standard in its own reign.

That's like saying the GUS is not interesting because it isn't AdLib compatible.
For SB Pro 2 compatiblity, any dirt cheap no-name card will do. 😁

And I quote myself...

smevans526 wrote:

PAS16 was widely supported

I don't want to compare the two, but I do need legacy support for this system

Also, the PAS16 was an early and very popular OPL3 board. 😀
Originally, some games only even offered OPL3 music for PAS16 (no SB16 mentioned yet).
A famous game that comes to mind is Knights of Xentar*.

Personally, I hope that someone will *finally* make an attempt in trying to start to write an emulator for that card.
Even if is only at a higher level, with a very basic MVSOUND compatible API interface without any mixer/surround features.
(I thought about writing myself a dummy-TSR that does fake the presence of mvsound.sys to make
OPL3 selectable in some games ..but I'm such a lousy programmer. 😅)

So far, all the major cards have been covered, except for this truely historic piece of a soundcard.
The only other two remaining species I know of are the AdLib Gold and the Soundscape.
But I'm afraid we'll rather see the AdLib Gold along with its rare surround module
beeing supported first, than the PAS line.

(*"PAS16" uses OPL3 + Thunder Board DAC)

Not as many Lucasarts games supported as I hoped. Does Day of the Tentacle have *any* PAS support? Didn't see it on the box

Does PAS16 support the prior PAS (backwards compatibility)? I thought one of them was basically dual adlib

I heard about the stereo FM for sierra (for a model prior to the PAS16). But I use mpu401

smevans526 wrote:

Or I don't quote myself, and mess it up. Too lazy to fix it

🤣

That's okay, never mind! ^^

If you're looking for a SB Pro compatible card, there are many choices.
Maybe you're lucky and even find an original SB Pro 1.

Then you could use the PAS16 for OPL3 and the SB Pro for Dual-OPL2+DAC.
Well, provided that such a pairing is possible. Never had an original SB Pro..

Even if that's not possible, any ISA card from the mid-90s should be SB Pro 2 compatible.
Some of them even support Windows Sound System (the third species I forgot to menion).

In either way, you could still install a PAS16 as a secondary card.
The built-in Thunder Board can be disabled, so it doesn't require any SB resources.

As mentioned, I often use mpu401. Redbook audio is often used as well. The sound card comes in for sound effects and speech. Even with genuine hardware, would I notice a difference between sb2.0 and the sbpro(or pro2) for those applications?

Again, my point is I'll minimally use fm for music. My problem is that awe32 is just 'loud', so I'm considering alternatives. PAS/16 is indeed a different world.

I love my windows sound system (genuine Microsoft card), but I only use it within windows 3.11

smevans526 wrote:

Not as many Lucasarts games supported as I hoped. Does Day of the Tentacle have *any* PAS support? Didn't see it on the box

Hmm.. Mobygames doesn't mention it. I would have to check that by installing the game.
On the other hand, it also isn't clear about SB16 or SB Pro 2 support..
If the game uses mono sound effects and AdLib music, it should work just fine on the PAS16, as well. 😀

smevans526 wrote:

Does PAS16 support the prior PAS (backwards compatibility)? I thought one of them was basically dual adlib

DAC wise, yes, I think so. But it doesn't support Dual-OPL2 (music). The SB-Pro 1 used another, incompatible type of Dual-OPL2, by the way.

smevans526 wrote:

I heard about the stereo FM for sierra (for a model prior to the PAS16). But I use mpu401

Knights of Xentar mentions a "Sierra Aria" sound device, but I never heard of it before.
The MPU-401 (UART only) on the PAS16 wasn't mature yet (buffer too small).
Like the SB16, it was one of the early consumers cards with such an interface.

Anyway, SoftMPU seems to works with the PAS16, at least.
For graphic adventures / point&click adventure games, this should be good enough.

smevans526 wrote:

As mentioned, I often use mpu401. Redbook audio is often used as well.

Well.. To be honest, the PAS16 isn't a powerful MIDI device. Another card might be better for this (-> HardMPU).

smevans526 wrote:

The sound card comes in for sound effects and speech. Even with genuine hardware,
would I notice a difference between sb2.0 and the sbpro(or pro2) for those applications?

It depends. If the game doesn't use the SB Pro mixer to play mono sound effects on either left or right (to simulate stereo),
both cards (SB 2.0 and SB PRO 2) *should* sound about the same. Sorry, I can't give an accurate answer to this (please ask a DOTT player).
The SB 2.0 and SB Pro have some minor details that are different. I think the SB Pro has an optional filter, while the SB/SB2
has a much more balanced Voice/FM relationship (Sound effects / AdLib music).

smevans526 wrote:

Again, my point is I'll minimally use fm for music. My problem is that awe32 is just 'loud', so I'm considering alternatives. PAS/16 is indeed a different world.

The PAS16 is very loud in its default setting. I think that's because it was meant to drive passive speaker boxes.
This can be fixed by using the mixer utility. Just add something like PAS SET VOLUME TO 70 IN 2 SECONDS to autoexec.bat.
(- By the way, the mixer can also enable/disable the PAS16 surround sound feature.)

smevans526 wrote:

I love my windows sound system (genuine Microsoft card), but I only use it within windows 3.11

Awesome, I'm also a proud owner of an original WSS. I got mine several years ago, when I was collecting Windows 3.x hardware.
Take good care of yours, they are true collectors items now (hard to find)! 😀

By loud, I mean noise, gain, sounds always like everyone's talking through a poorly grounded microphone. I exaggerate, but I can hear it and find it somewhat bothersome. The WSS card is much cleaner, I never used trying emulate sound blaster, though. Vibra16 is also clean.

For LucasArts games, any game with iMuse seems to support PAS. But it is one driver for all three types of PAS cards, including pas/16.

Meanwhile, they have regular sound blaster, pro, and sb16 as separate drivers. Full throttle even has a distinct awe32 driver for digitized sound.

DOTT just has a driver for 'sound blasters, adlib, and compatibles.' Even though the box distinguished pro and regular, reality seems to be no.

How would a pas/16 sound with Wolfenstein 3d? Could you get stereo? I guess the question is can you get wolf3d to do stereo on sb2.0. My awe32 can do it.

I can't speak for the PAS or PAS Plus, but the PAS16 has a clean audio stage as far as I can tell.
It also comes with a proper microphone-input for dynamic microphones.

As for the iMuse games, I think they just use a single driver because all PAS models are compatible when it comes down
to monophonic audio that's used for sound effects/speech.

The reason these games have a separate SB, SB 1.5, SB 2.0, SB Pro, and SB16 setting could be because of several reasons.
It's really hard to tell. SB, SB Pro and SB16 do support different PCM modes. ADPCM, for example.
It could also be releated to the different DMA modes (DMA-Auto Init, Single-Cycle DMA).
The whole matter is very technical, sorry. Here's a part of it : Sound Blaster 1.x 'seamless' playback investigation

That's also my point of an emulation support of the PAS/PAS16, by the way.
In some ways, the PAS line was much more elegant by design.

(I rarely played Wolf3D, sorry. 🙁 )

smevans526 wrote:

Does PAS16 support the prior PAS (backwards compatibility)? I thought one of them was basically dual adlib

Two entirely different things. The original PAS is very interesting for its dual OPL's. I think it's got better support than the shortlived SB Pro 1's dual OPL configuration.

Unfortunately, it looks like I would be mainly using it as a "soundblaster clone", in which case, I should just use a genuine noiseblaster.

Thanks, though