First post, by FinalJenemba
- Rank
- Newbie
Just wanted to post this as I don't see a ton of love for this card on here, but its awesome! I wouldn't sleep on it especially for its price. I've played around with several cards and card combos at this point and so far everything has been either a pain or didn't do something I needed. I had an ESS for awhile, but really the only thing that card did well was OPL, line out was too quiet, and the speaker out amp sucked. Plus cant do 16bit which I really need and 8 bit has a ton of hiss in games like The Dig and Discworld. Played around with lots of SB 16 cards, but I have a sound canvas and every one I could find had hanging notes. Which meant I was stuck using a dual card setup with the ESS, and that always created its own headaches.
Finally I just decided to try the CT4500, they're really affordable on eBay. It's perfect for what I needed. The wave output is sooo clean and noise free, The Dig sounds like a movie. No note bugs, and routing the sound canvas through the line in outputs a clean sound with good bass. Playing Discworld using the SC for music and 16bit AWE sound effects is an audio experience I didn't think was possible from this era of gaming 🤣. The built in EMU8000 Synth is just OK, I played with it a bit, but since I use a sound canvas it's basically irrelevant for my use case. And yes, no real OPL, but at the risk of getting attacked, I think the CQM in the 64 sounds fine. I don't play many games that need the OPL, mainly just Dune, and frankly I think it sounds good enough to not deal with a dual card setup. Anyway that's my speech, don't sleep on the value! For $50-$60 I think it's a really hard card to beat for late DOS gaming.
PS, god bless UNISOUND, its a dream tool for these cards