First post, by tpowell.ca
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Had some spare time to run some testing on my bench setup to test the sound quality and quality of emulation of various soundcards in my bins.
In the tests we have:
- Creative Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 CT1600
- ESS AudioDrive ESS688 on a Compaq card assy 004198-001
- CMI8330 on the MK8330 card (2022)
- Yamaha YMF719 on a generic A151-A00 card
- MAD16 OPTi 82C929A card
Updated YouTube video:
https://youtu.be/_9un--og3lg
The audible distortion on the CMI8330 seems to be inherent to the chip implementation.
It was audible at all mixer levels (wave audio and master volume).
The output of the Yamaha really impressed me in Windows Sound System emulation mode but the real winners to my ears are the OPTi 82C929A and the ESS688 with the cleanest sounding SBPro emulation.
My observations:
- Merlin: MS-4144, AMD5x86-160 32MB, 16GB CF, ZIP100, Orpheus, GUS, S3 VirgeGX 2MB
Tesla: GA-6BXC, VIA C3 Ezra-T, 256MB, 120GB SATA, YMF744, GUSpnp, Quadro2
Newton: K6XV3+/66, AMD K6-III+500, 256MB, 32GB SSD, AWE32, Voodoo3