How good or bad are these? I was curious and bought one (diamond monster sound). I love the early ESS cards so I’m curious to see their later model. What do you guys think about these, if you’ve tried them? Any interesting features or things to note/avoid?
midicollector wrote on 2023-10-19, 23:20:How good or bad are these? I was curious and bought one (diamond monster sound). I love the early ESS cards so I’m curious to see their later model. What do you guys think about these, if you’ve tried them? Any interesting features or things to note/avoid?
If you're referring to MX400 (Canyon3D ES1970S)... I'm not sure.
I once got a simple sound card using that chip. The chip appears to be a rebranded Maestro-2 family one as that's what the DOS TSR told me.
There was a Canyon3D 2 (ES1992) but I have never seen a sound card actually using it.
Yup, that's the one, the Canyon3d. I know pretty much nothing about it other than what's on DosDays.
It's one of the last cards that was made by ESS (at least that's listed on DosDays), and has some interesting advanced features for the era. If it has some nice advanced features along with their good OPL clone and dos support, it might be shockingly good. Or if they had gone downhill and didn't include their awesome OPL clone, maybe it sucks. I haven't heard much about it, so hard to say! Looking forward to checking it out though.
midicollector wrote on 2023-10-20, 03:26:Yup, that's the one, the Canyon3d. I know pretty much nothing about it other than what's on DosDays.
It's one of the last cards that was made by ESS (at least that's listed on DosDays), and has some interesting advanced features for the era. If it has some nice advanced features along with their good OPL clone and dos support, it might be shockingly good. Or if they had gone downhill and didn't include their awesome OPL clone, maybe it sucks. I haven't heard much about it, so hard to say! Looking forward to checking it out though.
AFAIK Solo-1 (ES1938) was the last to contain ESFM. Newer chips no longer use it.
I think Canyon3D (ES1970S) is pretty much the same as any Maestro-2 (Googling about ES1970S points me to Maestro-2SC).
I wonder if there was any sound card with ESS Canyon3D 2 (ES1992).
I know they supported Sensaura (a 3D audio implementation - similar to Aureal's A3D). There are threads about that here and here.
There could also be some more info on their old website.
Sadly, Canyon3D doesn't have ESFM, as LSS10999 wrote. The FM synthesis of Canyon3D is very quiet and tinny, and of a very low quality. Even SB16/AWE32/AWE64 CQM Synthesis is 1000 times better.
That's too bad, good to know though! Thanks for the info everybody 😀
There is support for sound and music in DOS at the sb pro level.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXz9G530r0g&ab
