I have the same card and find that the noise on the line varies considerably with the software and what's happening elsewhere on the computer (poor EMI shielding?).

I don't know exactly what's causing the popping but I noticed in your esscfg line you have J:E, which means the CD-ROM header is using interrupt 14, which if I'm not mistaken is the primary IDE channel. Maybe change it to C, which I think is IRQ 12. Maybe also disabling the header outright would be a good idea (I don't know if your sys file has the ESS line to enable that header). Also how is the bus harmony so to speak? Have you tampered with the bus speed or have any interrupt issues with other cards on the same bus? I remember a Creative SB card flaking out on me because of the PCI bus speed and IRQ I had selected. I know that's not the same thing but I think cards can be temperamental when they share the bus with other stuff that isn't configured right or if the bus' bandwidth is taxed too much.

Thanks for the response.

Something that I should have mentioned before is that the IBM 07h0849 version of this card does not have an IDE header, so nothing to worry about there as far as disabling it.

The /J option in ESSCFG enables or disables the joystick port ("e" or "d').

There isn't a whole lot connected to the IDE bus on this system. The only two cards are the sound card and the SCSI controller. I haven't messed with the bus speed, I don't believe it is possible on this machine. The only jumpers on the board are for enabling/disabling the onboard video, 25 vs. 33 Mhz bus, and SX vs. DX processor.

I thought about the bus contention issue: I kind of doubt that is the case. I have enough RAM where Doom or Heretic will load the entire level and won't be accessing the hard drive or CD-ROM on the system. It might make a bit more sense on LSL7 as it is accessing the CD-ROM drive constantly, but I only have a 2X CD-ROM drive so it would be consuming a max of 300K/s on a bus that can transfer 16M/s.

I'm thinking more that this isn't interference, but that there is actually something wrong with this particular card in how it handles playing back certain sounds or frequencies. I have heard this popping in both FM and sample playback, but only on certain tracks. The popping is actually predictable of if you listen to it, it corresponds with specific instrumentation or sound being played. This card actually sounds very clean the vast majority of the time.

I ordered a Pro AudioSpectrum 16 to mess with, I know that those can be both very good but very irradiating cards at the same time. We'll see how that goes. 😀

Yeah, that nuclear power cell from Mediavision always was a problem.

gdjacobs wrote:

Yeah, that nuclear power cell from Mediavision always was a problem.

🤣

I'm going to assume irritating was intended there and yes they can be in my experience, but with the correct set of drivers and some effort to eliminate the hiss via the mixer they're a great option for a 486 / P1 era machine. I don't think I've heard a nicer implementation of the OPL3 and most games supported the PAS16 natively by ~1995, which means sweet stereo 16 bit sound 😎

Tenorman wrote:

Thanks for the response. […]
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Thanks for the response.

Something that I should have mentioned before is that the IBM 07h0849 version of this card does not have an IDE header, so nothing to worry about there as far as disabling it.

The /J option in ESSCFG enables or disables the joystick port ("e" or "d').

There isn't a whole lot connected to the IDE bus on this system. The only two cards are the sound card and the SCSI controller. I haven't messed with the bus speed, I don't believe it is possible on this machine. The only jumpers on the board are for enabling/disabling the onboard video, 25 vs. 33 Mhz bus, and SX vs. DX processor.

I thought about the bus contention issue: I kind of doubt that is the case. I have enough RAM where Doom or Heretic will load the entire level and won't be accessing the hard drive or CD-ROM on the system. It might make a bit more sense on LSL7 as it is accessing the CD-ROM drive constantly, but I only have a 2X CD-ROM drive so it would be consuming a max of 300K/s on a bus that can transfer 16M/s.

I'm thinking more that this isn't interference, but that there is actually something wrong with this particular card in how it handles playing back certain sounds or frequencies. I have heard this popping in both FM and sample playback, but only on certain tracks. The popping is actually predictable of if you listen to it, it corresponds with specific instrumentation or sound being played. This card actually sounds very clean the vast majority of the time.

I ordered a Pro AudioSpectrum 16 to mess with, I know that those can be both very good but very irradiating cards at the same time. We'll see how that goes. 😀

Doe! I was thinking of the config.sys line that ALSO has a letter to dictate the IDE interrupt. That one uses A-F for this purpose... my bad.

If you think it's not related to a random phenomenon like noise or data conflicts, then maybe it's the circuitry chosen for the board. Some (cheaper) amplifiers saturate at lower voltages or have lower slew rates or their gain is obliterated at certain frequencies... that sort of thing. If the board manufacturer was cheaping out on solid state components, that could be the reason. Also, popping sounds like what happens when the voltage is interrupted going to the speaker. This could also be signal interruption inside the audio processor but speculating about that won't help you since you can't fix it... and who wants to go desoldering mosfets and amps either? Have you tried different volume levels? I'm assuming you probably mentioned this already or tried it.

Maybe what you could try is to grab an mp3 or wav file of a ramping frequency (I've seen such things around for diagnostic purposes) to see if PCM playback screws up at a certain frequency and then try the bad frequencies at low volume to see if it goes away. Similarly you could use a software midi keyboard to try ramping frequencies through the FM synth to see if any of them are bad and then lower the volume as before. Do this in a clean environment free of other overhead activities. Just a thought.

irradiating / irritating... Same thing right?

Thanks for the suggestions. I think it would be easiest to just grab another card with a ES1868 or ES1869 chip and see if it has the same problem. These things are pretty cheap and common. Right now the plan is to install the Pro AudioSpectrum 16 when it shows up in the mail. I'm sure I'll circle back to ESS at some point though.

Yeah some times is just better to trow some piece of hardware away, and grab new one, or different one... It is saves lot of time, as well as nerves..