If you stick to Windows games all should be fine. If you want to play Dos games not so much, at least not when the game forbids emm386 use.

Thanks for the reply.

No, I'll be playing dos games in a win98 dos window.

I just read here http://dukertcm.com/knowledge-base/downloads- … od-patchs/#insw

That apparently, The bug exists with the SB Live! version of cards

Does anyone know a pci card that DOESN'T suffer from this bug or the midi one and does
SB16 emulation? (that is not sb-pro, but full SB-16)

I was also looking into the yamaha series of cards. I had a yamaha chipset on my
lan party setup (8 p-2 era machines running all sorts of goodness) but apperantly,
they require distributed DMA, something i dont think the Asus p4s800 has...

batmreload wrote:

Thanks for the reply. […]
Show full quote

Thanks for the reply.

No, I'll be playing dos games in a win98 dos window.

I just read here http://dukertcm.com/knowledge-base/downloads- … od-patchs/#insw

That apparently, The bug exists with the SB Live! version of cards

Does anyone know a pci card that DOESN'T suffer from this bug or the midi one and does
SB16 emulation? (that is not sb-pro, but full SB-16)

I was also looking into the yamaha series of cards. I had a yamaha chipset on my
lan party setup (8 p-2 era machines running all sorts of goodness) but apperantly,
they require distributed DMA, something i dont think the Asus p4s800 has...

Every pci card has the crash bug on build games unless you're on pure DOS.

SBLive's FM emulation also introduces latency and slowdown as well, and doesn't exactly have compatibility with every game out there. Sierra/Dynamix games tend to suck on it, with no digital audio support.

And yes, the SBLive echo crash with ASS games (All Build engine licensees) is a real thing. ROTT also doesn't work on Live well either.

Does anyone know a pci card that DOESN'T suffer from this bug or the midi one and does
SB16 emulation? (that is not sb-pro, but full SB-16)

No. But what stops you from using sbpro emulation with the Live?

WDM drivers (no newer than 09-2001) give pretty much flawless SBPro emulation without the need of setting dos environments in 98SE. Soundfonts work, as well as digital cd audio without spdif cable (can use sata drives), and there's no crashes in sewers with Duke 3D (have yet to find any game that crashes with this sound setup). This is actually my primary soundcard for Dos games inside Windows 98SE on an AM3+ mobo, and it's considerably better than any other sound setup I've used for Dos (yeah it's 98SE, but honestly on a modern system Dos games just run better this way and speed is still native, and there's still dosbox if you encounter a rare problem). It's a lot less hassle than setting up Dos environments, booting into pure Dos mode, dealing with glitches, etc. It's flawless with 9X games like Final Fantasy VII-VIII as well, and there's no clipping in Dos games (the wave slider actually works, unlike the aureal vortex 2 au8830). You'll notice the soundfonts sound way better than any external midi module too (no ground loops, totally digital, don't need a mess, and it's free). Mortal Kombat II works flawless with midi music too (this game doesn't have music and it's glitchy with the au8830 vortex2).

Basically, you can't go wrong with WDM drivers (no newer than 09-2011) if you play Dos games inside 98SE with sbpro emulation, and they are rock solid (I would go so far as to say they're more solid than Windows XP drivers).

You can have emm386 without loading emm386 in Dos, in 98SE BTW.

More info here: Re: Dark adventures of AMD AM3+ SB950 DOS SB PCI compatibility.

EDIT:
ESS-solo pci soundcards might be worth your time. These have very good FM synthesis btw, in addition to sb16 emulation. It's pci, and others have mentioned it having flawless real-mode DOS compatibility on more modern mobos because of the tdma emulation (no luck on my am3+ mobo apparently). If you must have native DOS compatibility, this card is usually considered the best (vortex2 is highly regarded too, but it's not so great with 98SE dos box's). You would need an external midi module for midi music of course (unless you only play with CD audio based games).

I've never had much luck with the ESS PCI cards. always sounded like crap to me whether DOS or windows. I have a Compaq EN that only has PCI slots that I wanted to put win98 on and use for some light DOS/Windows gaming. I ended up using a SB live! and on the few games I've played (Wolf3d and duke3d) it sounds pretty good.

batmreload wrote:

I've never run into a serious prolbem this way except for stupid windows key on junk keyboards

I've always had good luck with WinKey Killer on my Win9x systems.

Update: On an impulse, i bought a Yamaha pci card from ebay. Bad idea. Maybe its
the implementation, but theres no high dma (tried with Yamaha's drivers) Crashes
under win98se dosbox running Blood while doing the sound test no matter how its configured. 🙁

Chip is the YMF724F-V. Too bad, It must have been quite a differant setup on the p-2 isa boards
i used to have with this chip integrated.

Guess I'm off to dig out an SB Live from my repository of cards.

When it comes to PCI sound cards I swear by Vortex 2. Great card for late DOS and early Windows games. And it has A3D virtual surround over headphones which puts current technologies to shame 😀

Regarding sound blaster live cards, I have had my share of issues. Real big issues and deep thoughts.
What I have come to conclude, by reading up on posts here on Vogons and tried my self, is the following.

For true and continuing use of SB16 emulation on pure DOS, you need to have an old Motherboard with ISA slots.
And you need to use EMM386 games only. XMS just don't work with SB LIVE cards.
And you need to have the CT4620 not any other SB-LIVE.
Not to say that non ISA-Slot boards can use SB16 emulation, it is just that only the first non ISA boards can do it.
What determins if it is possible, is in my opinion a matter of the right combination of chipset and southbridge.
This is just a really broad and difficult question, wich is really hard to navigate in.
That is why I say, that you need ISA slot boards. And only if you can't find ISA cards that work, then use SB-LIVE.
It is a great card for Doom and for Duke3D, as it gives amazing sound quality when working. 😜

When using Win98 gaming, I have had luck with both 4620 and 4780 cards.
Only 4620 would give sound in Dos games launched from within Win98. I guess it is the same on Win95.

The Creative Ensoniq AudioPCI card, has the same compatibility as the CT4620.
It has lower system requirements, yet it has inferiour wavetable than CT4620. (less onboard memory)
The only upside, is that it is better at emulating OPL-3 than the Live card. (Just slightly not good at all)

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

When it comes to PCI sound cards I swear by Vortex 2. Great card for late DOS and early Windows games. And it has A3D virtual surround over headphones which puts current technologies to shame 😀

Is that the Turtle Beach TBS400 card? The one wich have an "angeled" side facing away from the motherboard?

That's one of them! There are heaps of others. Not that long ago I got a brand new one. I forgot the name of it however.

There are 2 reference drivers. One with SB emulation, one without. Make sure you got the correct one.

There is also a bug with detecting the card when installing the driver. There is an easy fix, just got to edit some INI file. But most of the time it should just work...

brostenen wrote:

The Creative Ensoniq AudioPCI card, has the same compatibility as the CT4620.
It has lower system requirements, yet it has inferiour wavetable than CT4620. (less onboard memory)
The only upside, is that it is better at emulating OPL-3 than the Live card. (Just slightly not good at all)

Both the SBLive! and AudioPCI do not have any onboard memory (they both use system memory to load wave sets/soundfonts); the difference in wavetable sound comes from the fact that the AudioPCI uses a propietary patch set format (ECW - Ensoniq Concert Wavetable, only 3 official wave sets and no custom ones to my knowledge), while the SBLive! uses the more common E-mu SoundFont format (several official soundfont sets and a huge amount of custom-made ones). Also, the SBLive! has better OPL3 emulation than the AudioPCI IMHO (the SBLive! at least tries to sound like a real OPL3 chip, while the AudioPCI is just a mess - replacing FM sounds with wavetable samples on the fly is not the way to go; just listening to Jill of the Jungle, Duke Nukem 2 and Wolf3D music with the AudioPCI was an exercise in torture for my ears 😵 ); still, neither one compares to a real OPL3 chip.

That is strange, i have tried two different sblive and one ensonic card. The live makes a horrible adlib compared to ensonic on my system. The live and the live value, have different amount of memory to load wavesets.
To me. This would indicate that the live cards clearly have different amount of memory and it is onboard not from system mem. This is just how i interperate the cards without looking at specs sheet.
All three cards are made by creative. The ensonic is allmost idendical to pci128 from creative.

Sorry brostenen, that's not how it is. Here are a couple of links to start with:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensoniq_AudioPCI

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_Live!

I know Wikipedia is not everyone's cup of tea, so I also dug up an old press release from the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/19971224042445/ht … /a_pressrel.htm

The SBLive! works the same way to load wavetable samples (not surprising since Creative Labs acquired Ensoniq in January 1998).

As for OPL3 emulation, that is subjective; you like how the AudioPCI sounds, I like the SBLive! instead. Nevertheless, neither one is perfect. Here's a link to an old topic from the Sega-16 forums - look for post #10 made by Ace:

http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?1 … in-old-PC-Games

Of course, if you're still unconvinced then let's just agree to disagree and move on. No harm no foul 😀

Never ever intended to stir anything up at any time.
Why the live and live value have different amount of mem is what i dont understand then.

brostenen wrote:

Never ever intended to stir anything up at any time.
Why the live and live value have different amount of mem is what i dont understand then.

They both have limited ammount of system allocated memory, but their limit is different. That's what makes the value a cheaper card.

Yeah..... Can not load the 8 megabyte om the value.
It reports that only 4 or 2 megabyte are avaliable.

The drivers don't always recognize a particular Live! model the same as others, which might be your case. If you can install the audiohq program, you can increase the soundfont cache well above 8 megabytes for any emu10k1 based live! card. Are you sure you have an emu10k1 based Live! card?