Or, I guess, put another way: what's my best option for an ISA card that will let me hear SC2's music in stereo, and have excellent compatibility with other early-to-mid-90s games?

I appreciate any advice you can offer.

Gravis Ultrasound...

For a really cool modern Windows SC2 experience get "The UrQuan Masters" (google it). It's free and comes complete with all the sounds, graphics and gameplay of the original DOS game.

But on an P133?? Are you crazy?

And yeah, Star Control 2 always had low quality output for sound. I've played it with a SB16 too

Dude, use some logic. I don't think for a second that he's going to use UQM on his P-133 just as I doubt he uses a P-133 as his main PC. To assume so would REALLY be crazy.

It is quite difficult to get good sound quality out of this game if you want to use retro hardware.

The music sounds best by far with a Gravis Ultrasound. Unfortunately the game driver for GUS is a bit wobbly; it doesn't work in case a Roland MPU interface is present in the system, and sometimes the samples get screwed up (I don't know why this happens).

A SB Pro or compatible card will only give you the same sound as SB or SB 16, only in stereo. The harsh metallic quality of the sound is a result of SC2's MOD player routine, it mixes on a low sample rate and doesn't do any sample interpolation. This was necessary to keep the game playable on 286 and 386SX machines.

BTW, you are right about the later Creative cards: No Creative card (other than a SB Pro) can handle SB Pro stereo sound effects.
If you can't find a real SB Pro, pick a 16bit ISA sound card from another manufacturer, most of them play SB Pro sound effects without a hitch.

Considering all those difficulties, I agree with dh4rm4: The easiest and best way to enjoy this game is to play the UQM remake on a modern machine. As an alternative, you could play the original game in DOSBox (with GUS emulation for best results).

5u3 wrote:

The music sounds best by far with a Gravis Ultrasound.

Right! And I think it's worth trying the real thing! I personally like it even more than many of the remixed "Ur-Quan-Master" tracks. I got best results with an Ultrasound ACE, followed by the Ultrasound Classic.

5u3 wrote:

Unfortunately the game driver for GUS is a bit wobbly

The problem with the sound setup is that the game designers wanted to keep it simple (no sound setup menu, if you want a commandline option /s:XXXX, where XXXX is the name of the card to use). The program automatically searches for the standard IRQs and I/O ports the soundcards of those days usually occupied. In case of GUS the game suggests that the card is configured at the adresses 220h, DMA 1, DMA 1, IRQ 5, IRQ 11. Every other adress will not work! Also the game crashes if you have a Soundblaster or compatible card in your system, configured at one of those adresses. In a PnP system you have to reserve IRQs and DMAs in the bios.

5u3 wrote:

it doesn't work in case a Roland MPU interface is present in the system, and sometimes the samples get screwed up (I don't know why this happens).

What do you mean by MPU interface - the original Roland ones (like MPU-401AT) with an attached MT-32 or General Midi daughterboard (so perhaps you have a GUS MAX and one of the useless CD-Rom interfaces is configured on Port 330)? Or every "mpu-401 compatible" interface - used as gameport? I noticed that my system allways turned the gameport of my EWS64 OFF when I used it alongside with a GUS, even with the ACE. So the problem is likely the gameport adress (200 / 201).
The "screwed up sample" could have to do with "left-overs" in the memory of the card, you can empty / format it with a tool called "gusdrive".

Overall, if you just want to play the game I would agree with 5u3 and dh4rm4 and recommend the dos-box version with GUS emulation (you will need the Gus instrument patches) or the well done UQM remake. If you like to tinker a bit and have a great day when it finally works, choose the GUS.
A soundblaster card does not make much sense. It is noisy and I doubt that there is stereo sound from any soundblaster in SC2 at all.

The point of my endeavor here is to get the best possible experience from genuine hardware of the era, so DOSBox, UQM, etc. aren't an option. I'm sorry if the placement of my thread in this particular forum may have suggested otherwise; it seemed like the best place since I'd seen threads on real sound hardware here in the past.

Thanks for the tip. I will seek out a Gravis Ultrasound. Looks like getting one will be a bit of a project, though. A quick search on eBay yielded only one result and that was for $165.70. Are there any GUS-compatible cards you can suggest?

Some games prefer SB16+, so I'll probably end up assembling two machines - one with a GUS and one with an SB16.

Also: perhaps I'm just not understanding properly, but if the metallic sound is a result of how SC2 itself plays MODs, why would I get better sound from a GUS?

Silent Loon wrote:

What do you mean by MPU interface - the original Roland ones (like MPU-401AT) with an attached MT-32 or General Midi daughterboard (so perhaps you have a GUS MAX and one of the useless CD-Rom interfaces is configured on Port 330)? Or every "mpu-401 compatible" interface - used as gameport?

I mean the original Roland interfaces, like those present on MPU-401AT, MPU-IPC, LAPC-I, SCC-1, etc...
Before I had two Roland cards in my 486, I would simply not initialize my Soundblaster PnP card, set the GUS to the desired values, and enjoy the game. Now I'd have to physically remove two Roland cards as well to get it working. 😒

I didn't check whether the incompatibility was caused by the resources used by the Roland devices, but the README supplied with the game states that GUS sound is not possible with a Roland MPU interface installed.

Silent Loon wrote:

The "screwed up sample" could have to do with "left-overs" in the memory of the card, you can empty / format it with a tool called "gusdrive".

Hmmm, could be true. Nice idea about using GUSDRIVE for clearing the RAM 😉

Subjunctive wrote:

Also: perhaps I'm just not understanding properly, but if the metallic sound is a result of how SC2 itself plays MODs, why would I get better sound from a GUS?

Because for SB sound, the game has to mix four music channels into one (SB) or two (SB Pro) channels. On a weak processor this takes a considerable amount of CPU time, so the developers chose a rather poor mixing quality in order to keep the game running smoothly.
A GUS can do the channel mixing and interpolation in hardware, requiring only minimal efforts from the CPU. This feature is rarely used in games, but SC2 is one of the few games that takes advantage of the GUS hardware mixing abilities.

Ah, I understand. Were there any cards that happened to be GUS-compatible - or perhaps later cards, from any manufacturer, that might do the trick for SC2 sound quality? I'm willing to accept that the only solution is to lay my hands on a real GUS, but given their rarity I'd like to avoid that if possible. Breaking compatibility with all my other games is of minimal importance.

There were a couple of non Gravis Interwave cards. The Interwave was a multisampling DSP made by AMD which was sold in a few different products including the Ultrasound PnP. You might find one of those but frankly you're much better off with a real Ultrasound (classic, ACE or Pro) AND an SB Pro/16 in the same machine.

Subjunctive wrote:

Were there any cards that happened to be GUS-compatible - or perhaps later cards, from any manufacturer, that might do the trick for SC2 sound quality?

This article seems to be quite accurate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravis_Ultrasound

There might be compatibility differences between the GF1 and the second gen Ultrasound chip AMD Interwave (which I do not know), so better go for a card w. GF1.

If compatibility with other games is of minimal importance, you will be content with the classic model. Otherwise (with a second soundcard installed) the ACE is a good choice. Besides: in those days long ago they offered highpriced memory upgrades for the card. I got upgrades for my GUS cards simply by plugging them out from an old ISA VGA card (20 pin, for the GUS Classic) and a VLB graphics card (40pin, belongs to classic models later than board Rev. 3.73 and also MAX and ACE models). So don't throw away Uncle Tseng! 😉

Anyway the amount of memory (512k or 1MB) doesn't change the sound of SC2 I guess, but you can hear a difference in later games that support the GUS , like i.e. DESCENT.

Some thoughts for the GUS specialists:

Maybe Subjunctives question if there are other cards that could "do the trick" is not as simple as it seems on first sight: Some time ago, I grabbed the original SC2 and converted the sound to single mod files. My soundcard (an EWS64 with DREAM chipset) claims to be able to play mod files right from the hardware (no emulation?) and so it does - in WN98 with its own MOD player. The sound was crystal clear and thereby perhaps even better than the original one.
But could there be a way to make it "GUS compatible" in DOS? And if I use dosbox with its GUS emulation (and the original patch set in the back) would the EWS (or any other "mod compatible" card) play with the "original" or almost original GUS sound?

Silent Loon, if your theory holds true . Then we can in some ways have a cool and great solution to the old and "inferior" soundblaster vs. the GUS sound in old games ? Anyway your thoughts makes sense to me anyway.