SS7 boards typically come with 2-3 ISA slots - if you have the choice of an ISA sound card I would get one. The Audician32 or AWE64 are the best ISA sound cards for Win98 in my experience. The Vortex2 is a good choice though if you only have PCI slots.

kolderman wrote:

SS7 boards typically come with 2-3 ISA slots - if you have the choice of an ISA sound card I would get one. The Audician32 or AWE64 are the best ISA sound cards for Win98 in my experience. The Vortex2 is a good choice though if you only have PCI slots.

I do indeed have ISA slots but AWE64 prices are terrifying.

Avoid eBay, With a bit of patience you can get a lot on Craigslist/Marketplace type sites for a fraction of the price.

Tbh, max quality in Win9x is probably an SBLive, which is dirt cheap too. Not the street cred of an Aureal2, but decent enough (if you don't have a Via 686 SB) - in DOS too. However you could add an ISA card for DOS, maybe an Aztech AZT2316 or so for perfect SBPro2 (without the noise & bugs)

dionb wrote:

Avoid eBay, With a bit of patience you can get a lot on Craigslist/Marketplace type sites for a fraction of the price.

Tbh, max quality in Win9x is probably an SBLive, which is dirt cheap too. Not the street cred of an Aureal2, but decent enough (if you don't have a Via 686 SB) - in DOS too. However you could add an ISA card for DOS, maybe an Aztech AZT2316 or so for perfect SBPro2 (without the noise & bugs)

Craiglist does not exist here, nor does any other local marketplace for used PC/IT stuff.

Are you looking at am Aureal branded card or one from an OEM build such as a Dell?

The Aureal branded Vortex 2 cards generally go for way more than an OEM Vortex 2 card.

Try to get a card with an OPTi 82c929 chipset - I have a Mad16 Pro and I can throw anything at it.

The original drivers are already pretty good and the new ones by JKnipperts are even better:
https://github.com/JKnipperts/OPTi82c929_Driver

cyclone3d wrote:

Are you looking at am Aureal branded card or one from an OEM build such as a Dell?

The Aureal branded Vortex 2 cards generally go for way more than an OEM Vortex 2 card.

Its an Aureal branded card.

kolderman wrote:

SS7 boards typically come with 2-3 ISA slots - if you have the choice of an ISA sound card I would get one. The Audician32 or AWE64 are the best ISA sound cards for Win98 in my experience. The Vortex2 is a good choice though if you only have PCI slots.

The Yamaha Audician 32 is doable price wise, just about.. tell me more ?

Watch Phil's video 😉

Xs1nX wrote:

kolderman wrote:

SS7 boards typically come with 2-3 ISA slots - if you have the choice of an ISA sound card I would get one. The Audician32 or AWE64 are the best ISA sound cards for Win98 in my experience. The Vortex2 is a good choice though if you only have PCI slots.

The Yamaha Audician 32 is doable price wise, just about.. tell me more ?

The Audition32 is nothing more than a specific brand/model with a specific Yamaha chip on it. The same exact functionality can be gotten with a different brand with the same chipset for much cheaper.
The Audition 32 has a Yamaha YMF718-S chipset. Any card with that chipset or a YMF719 chipset will be just as good.

If you tell us where you are located we could probably give you a good idea of exactly what to get based on what is available on your eBay.

Another good audio chipset to look for is the Opti 930. All based on that chipset will have great compatibillity with everything you can throw at it. The card will have a real or clone OPL3 and some even have onboard wavetable. I used one of those cards all the way from 386 until my first motherboard that didn't have ISA. I actually still have that card around 27 or 28 years later. I also collected every different brand/model I could find with the Opti930 chipset that has onboard wavetable as well.

Crystal Semiconductor based cards are also generally quite good (except the CS/CX4235 based chipsets). Bonus points if you find one with a genuine or 100% illegal clone OPL3.

https://youtu.be/TC01uiyuJxI

I am located in the UK,

The current sound card I have is a ISA one, AZT2316R based. I am not happy with it.. does not seem to work well in DOS on some games/apps, and its Windows support is very very basic. I feel I could do much better..

Once you get into super socket 7 era you want 3 things from your sound card: Hardware 3d Audio Acceleration, MIDI capabilities and a low noise floor. Of course, if you are looking to play a back catalog on the system, FM Synthesis is a fourth major tick box.

My choice sound cards from this era are definitely the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and Terratec DMX Xfire 1024. They support A3D 1.0 and EAX 2.0, high quality low noise sound output, DLS 1.0 compatible (average) software synth, great noise floors and a sweet CrystalFM synthesizer. These are, to me, the kings of PCI.

In that regard an Aureal Vortex 1/2/Advantage are also good card to have, as they have A3D 2.0 (1.0 for Vortex 1), high quality low noise sound output, DLS 1.0 compatible (average) software synth, great noise floors but a rather underwhelming FM synthesizer.

Another alternative is the good old AWE64. This card has no 3D acceleration but it's sound quality is still very good for an ISA card, it has Crystal's CQM FM Synthesis and being ISA makes it very compatible with older games (although the PCI cards above also have very good backwards compatibility on many PCI bus implementations), and finally it has the AWE hardware synthesizer.

Finally, I've also had very good experience with ForteMedia FM801 cards, they support A3D 1.0, EAX 2.0, have good FM Synthesis but they lack any hardware/software wavetable capability so you have to rely on external MIDI devices with them, or use a second sound card like an SB Live in parallel.

appiah4 wrote:

Finally, I've also had very good experience with ForteMedia FM801 cards

My experience with one of those was one of the worst. The drivers are constantly crashing on Windows 98 and the DOS emulation can be summarized with "Hopefully it works". There are a lot of games were the sound is garbled or doesn't work at all.

Even a C-Media 8738 card is better than an FM801.

schmatzler wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

Finally, I've also had very good experience with ForteMedia FM801 cards

My experience with one of those was one of the worst. The drivers are constantly crashing on Windows 98 and the DOS emulation can be summarized with "Hopefully it works". There are a lot of games were the sound is garbled or doesn't work at all.

Even a C-Media 8738 card is better than an FM801.

Not my experience, I've been using a Terrated Digital 512i for quite a while now and its compatibility with DOS games under Windows 98 was great.

You can find my recordings of the card here, actually.

I have found a Terratec DMX Xfire 1024 for approx £25 shipped from Germany ..

appiah4 wrote:

Once you get into super socket 7 era you want 3 things from your sound card: Hardware 3d Audio Acceleration, MIDI capabilities a […]
Show full quote

Once you get into super socket 7 era you want 3 things from your sound card: Hardware 3d Audio Acceleration, MIDI capabilities and a low noise floor. Of course, if you are looking to play a back catalog on the system, FM Synthesis is a fourth major tick box.

My choice sound cards from this era are definitely the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and Terratec DMX Xfire 1024. They support A3D 1.0 and EAX 2.0, high quality low noise sound output, DLS 1.0 compatible (average) software synth, great noise floors and a sweet CrystalFM synthesizer. These are, to me, the kings of PCI.

In that regard an Aureal Vortex 1/2/Advantage are also good card to have, as they have A3D 2.0 (1.0 for Vortex 1), high quality low noise sound output, DLS 1.0 compatible (average) software synth, great noise floors but a rather underwhelming FM synthesizer.

Another alternative is the good old AWE64. This card has no 3D acceleration but it's sound quality is still very good for an ISA card, it has Crystal's CQM FM Synthesis and being ISA makes it very compatible with older games (although the PCI cards above also have very good backwards compatibility on many PCI bus implementations), and finally it has the AWE hardware synthesizer.

Finally, I've also had very good experience with ForteMedia FM801 cards, they support A3D 1.0, EAX 2.0, have good FM Synthesis but they lack any hardware/software wavetable capability so you have to rely on external MIDI devices with them, or use a second sound card like an SB Live in parallel.

cyclone3d wrote:

Are you looking at am Aureal branded card or one from an OEM build such as a Dell?

The Aureal branded Vortex 2 cards generally go for way more than an OEM Vortex 2 card.

Hello, are the dell oem cards same as Vortex2? Any tip about where I can find them?

Thanks

Nemo1985 wrote:

cyclone3d wrote:

Are you looking at am Aureal branded card or one from an OEM build such as a Dell?

The Aureal branded Vortex 2 cards generally go for way more than an OEM Vortex 2 card.

Hello, are the dell oem cards same as Vortex2? Any tip about where I can find them?

Thanks

The Dell park number is 5931D

You can also search for TB400 and just look at the pictures as the older dell cards had the AU8820 chip (Vortex 1), while the newer ones had the AU8830 (Vortex 2).