Okay a few questions there 😀

Ozzuneoj wrote:

are there any glaring flaws with this idea, or any serious limitations I'd find?

The XP/7 32-bit driver which works okayish is the 5.12.1.2560, 730kb one, however the driver doesn't work properly with the windows mixer and as such it doesn't control the cards codec properly and tends to be very quiet even at 100%, the recording settings don't write the CODEC properly either so you cannot adjust any of the input recording features at all.
The only way around this issue is the Quantex zones XP custom AC97 control panel, or my current "development" control panel which isn't likely going to be released for public use (but does control the card and makes it work properly in XP).

Ozzuneoj wrote:

How is the Vortex 2's DOS support?
Does it require anything that interferes with certain games, like EMM386?

Pretty good, it's an interesting card for sure. The Aureal TSR emulates the OPL3 entirely in software and only uses the cards hardware for capturing the Adlib/SB-Pro 2.0 commands, it does a pretty good job all in all and is sized at 23kb. The DMA handling in the TSR is strange and I'm actually still fussing with their old code getting something working in my new DOS driver, which currently has PCM audio working more or less, but still needs more work. Due to time issues, marriage, lack of a good place to work on it and other nonsense, the project is only getting worked on a few hours ever other week or so. The driver supports EMM386 and doesn't require it, it's mostly a real mode only driver.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

is it possible to run a MIDI device to the line-in on the SQ2500 and then also have it send that through the SPDIF output?

I honestly don't know, as far as I can surmise it would be just fine and should work okay in DOS.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

I currently use optical SPDIF out to an SMSL SD-793II DAC\headphone amp, so it would be amazing to have the ability to connect the Vortex 2's coaxial SPDIF to the other input.
Does that work in DOS?

It will only if you use the Mixer I wrote and tell it to reset the card, it will write a new VDB route to the card and enable the S/PDIF or Coaxial outputs and route the mixed two channels out to them.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

If not, is that something that might be added with the modded drivers ZanQuance is working on?

It's been a long haul and a very tiring and problematic project, but I believe the end is in sight. As it stands right now, Aureals original DOS driver works far better than the new one I've been working on, however my driver will soon surpass the compatibility and feature set of the original driver. S/PDIF out is already doable with the new mixer util, and is enabled by default in the new driver.

I wouldn't use the Vortex 2 on anything newer than XP though, windows XP works better with the card than 7 does, using the XP driver on 8.1 and 10 are completely out of the question right now. We shall see what the future holds for this wonderful sound card...😉

ZanQuance wrote:

Okay a few questions there :) […]
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Okay a few questions there 😀

Ozzuneoj wrote:

are there any glaring flaws with this idea, or any serious limitations I'd find?

The XP/7 32-bit driver which works okayish is the 5.12.1.2560, 730kb one, however the driver doesn't work properly with the windows mixer and as such it doesn't control the cards codec properly and tends to be very quiet even at 100%, the recording settings don't write the CODEC properly either so you cannot adjust any of the input recording features at all.
The only way around this issue is the Quantex zones XP custom AC97 control panel, or my current "development" control panel which isn't likely going to be released for public use (but does control the card and makes it work properly in XP).

Ozzuneoj wrote:

How is the Vortex 2's DOS support?
Does it require anything that interferes with certain games, like EMM386?

Pretty good, it's an interesting card for sure. The Aureal TSR emulates the OPL3 entirely in software and only uses the cards hardware for capturing the Adlib/SB-Pro 2.0 commands, it does a pretty good job all in all and is sized at 23kb. The DMA handling in the TSR is strange and I'm actually still fussing with their old code getting something working in my new DOS driver, which currently has PCM audio working more or less, but still needs more work. Due to time issues, marriage, lack of a good place to work on it and other nonsense, the project is only getting worked on a few hours ever other week or so. The driver supports EMM386 and doesn't require it, it's mostly a real mode only driver.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

is it possible to run a MIDI device to the line-in on the SQ2500 and then also have it send that through the SPDIF output?

I honestly don't know, as far as I can surmise it would be just fine and should work okay in DOS.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

I currently use optical SPDIF out to an SMSL SD-793II DAC\headphone amp, so it would be amazing to have the ability to connect the Vortex 2's coaxial SPDIF to the other input.
Does that work in DOS?

It will only if you use the Mixer I wrote and tell it to reset the card, it will write a new VDB route to the card and enable the S/PDIF or Coaxial outputs and route the mixed two channels out to them.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

If not, is that something that might be added with the modded drivers ZanQuance is working on?

It's been a long haul and a very tiring and problematic project, but I believe the end is in sight. As it stands right now, Aureals original DOS driver works far better than the new one I've been working on, however my driver will soon surpass the compatibility and feature set of the original driver. S/PDIF out is already doable with the new mixer util, and is enabled by default in the new driver.

I wouldn't use the Vortex 2 on anything newer than XP though, windows XP works better with the card than 7 does, using the XP driver on 8.1 and 10 are completely out of the question right now. We shall see what the future holds for this wonderful sound card...😉

Thank you for the comprehensive reply!

I guess I should have specified, I intended mainly to use the Vortex 2 for 98SE\DOS. I actually plan to switch my primary sound card back to a Xonar DX (currently on a PCI Xonar DG) when I can free up my top PCI-E slot (it's currently obstructed by the unnecessarily long mounting screws on my Arctic Accelero S3) and that should work quite well for any XP games since it has functional emulation of EAX 2,3,4 and 5.

Now, if I can just get some confirmation that a Voodoo 5 5500 PCI won't explode when I slot it into a P67 board, I'll have all the information I need to do this build.

The only other problem I foresee with this system is storage, since my board only has SATA ports. I am obviously using AHCI mode for my modern OS and drives, and I know this can sometimes cause problems with older operating systems (I've read about EMM386 crashing with a drive in AHCI mode on some setups), but if necessary I can just switch the controller to IDE mode when I decide to play with 98\DOS.

I know having separate systems for these tasks is usually less of a pain... I just think it'd be really cool to have a system cover such a gigantic range of software with few compromises. Basically, I'd be able to get the highest frame rates and image quality possible from any game aside from ones that require very specific hardware, but I don't really play any of those.