That could be useful!

Also, you need to distinguish between PAS and PAS16, they are different and not compatible with each other.

I know Police Quest 3 supports PAS and Space Quest 4 supports PAS16 (or both). So Sierra had some support. Descent (and Descent 2) also supports the PAS16 natively.

according to the Pro Audio Spectrum FAQ (can be found at comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware) the PAS-16 is compatible to the original PAS/+.

I already tested privateer and strike commander and they both work well with my PAS16.

Well that's simply not true...

The PAS is a dual OPL2 card, whereas the PAS16 is a OPL3 card. Privateer and Strike Commander are very very modern games and likely support both cards.

Try Police Quest 3, it has native support for the PAS, but not for the PAS16. It will fail to launch on a PAS16.

Note that these games support MT-32 or General Midi anyway. So PAS support IMO isn't such a big deal, but it's kinda cool to hear OPL Stereo music. Quite a rare thing in most early 90s Dos games.

PS: I suggested that this might be a cool feature to be implemented in DOSBox!

interesting, I get a deja vu regarding the sound blaster pro against its successors

Yea, the PAS was a SB Pro 1.0 competitor so to speak...

PS: Wondering which one came first though...

schlang wrote:

Is there a list of DOS games with native support for PAS Pro Audio Spectrum?

http://www.mobygames.com/attribute/sheet/attributeId,79/

schlang wrote:

according to the Pro Audio Spectrum FAQ (can be found at comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware) the PAS-16 is compatible to the original PAS/+.

The PAS16 does seem to be fully backwards-compatible with the PAS for digital-audio playback, depending on the IRQ/DMA configuration.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Yea, the PAS was a SB Pro 1.0 competitor so to speak...

PS: Wondering which one came first though...

Pro AudioSpectrum - Released April, 1991
Sound Blaster Pro - Released August, 1991

Creative played catch-up with Media Vision for a number of years, and basically threw the SBPro out the door to compete with the PAS (which, unsurprisingly, resulted in buggy hardware and a ridiculous number of revisions).

unfortunately the list from mobygames does not differ between native support and soundblaster emulation support

schlang wrote:

unfortunately the list from mobygames does not differ between native support and soundblaster emulation support

Apogee supported the PAS and PAS16 in many games:

http://www.rinkworks.com/apogee/s/3.1.5.shtml

Prince of Persia (at least version 1.3) also has PAS support.

mh thats a good reason to install ROTT again after 16 years 😀

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=8T0EAAAAM … nepage&q&f=true

Cute article about the PAS on the left!

Facebook 🤣:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Media-Vision-Pr … 137008886321847

schlang wrote:

unfortunately the list from mobygames does not differ between native support and soundblaster emulation support

For the most part, I think it's pretty safe to assume that if a game specifies PAS(/16) support, it's provided by a native driver.

how to get archon ultra to run with the PAS? 😀

I was also looking for the PAS, but to be honest, it's not like there are many (any?) games that support PC speaker and PAS, but nothing else. Sound Blaster is usually always supported and in many cases MT-32 support.

So while Stereo FM in Police Quest 3 would be cool, MT-32 is supported, much easier to source and sounds fantastic.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Privateer and Strike Commander are very very modern games and likely support both cards.

I had to re-check, but yes, your post was made in 2011. 🤣

I never understood what would be the reason to buy a PAS/PAS16 over SB. LAPC1 had a different approach, GUS was a demoscene sweetheart, but PAS was "just" an incompatible SB clone. Or was I mistaken?

compared to the PAS, the quality from all SB cards is crap. noises, hisses, interference, cracking, popping, ..........

schlang wrote:

compared to the PAS, the quality from all SB cards is crap. noises, hisses, interference, cracking, popping, ..........

I think this is debatable and highly dependent on which card you have.

While I agree that Creatives 8 bit and most SB16 cards are quite noisy, other cards such as the Pro 2.0 or AWE64 range are quite good. There are also certain models of SB 16 which are much better. It really depends on the model, as there are differences between cards (what chips they have used).

And again, you have a MT-32 and Sound Canvas, so for most games you can use these of music in combination with an AWE64 for speech.

Bottom line, I see the PAS16 is one of many Sound Blaster clone cards. While games do support it natively, they always also support Sound Blaster and other standards.

The PAS16 isn't compatible to Sound Blaster Pro however, only Sound Blaster MONO, so it's one of the less capable clone cards, especially considering that it doesn't have a wavetable connector...

Sol_HSA wrote:

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Privateer and Strike Commander are very very modern games and likely support both cards.

I had to re-check, but yes, your post was made in 2011. 🤣

Hahah, true my comment could easily be taken out of context 😵

I never understood what would be the reason to buy a PAS/PAS16 over SB. LAPC1 had a different approach, GUS was a demoscene sweetheart, but PAS was "just" an incompatible SB clone. Or was I mistaken?

I think we need to look at the timeline...

Cloudschatze wrote:

Pro AudioSpectrum - Released April, 1991
Sound Blaster Pro - Released August, 1991

Creative played catch-up with Media Vision for a number of years, and basically threw the SBPro out the door to compete with the PAS (which, unsurprisingly, resulted in buggy hardware and a ridiculous number of revisions).

There was a thread here recently, and apparently there are at least 4! revisions of the Sound Blaster Pro 1.0. Now that's quite a feat, considering that card was quickly replaced by the Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 🤣.

According to that article I linked earlier, the PAS was priced at a premium compared to the Sound Blaster Pro. This was likely an important factor. Back in those days, who cared about a "premium experience". All these cards sounded amazing and the average consumer would have likely purchased the cheaper product.

Creative was/is after all a marketing company at hearth, an area most of its competitors didn't do very well.

On wikipedia there is a note about a financial scandal, and that likely sealed the fate of the PAS cards.

And regarding GUS *prepares for abuse from GUS lovers 🤣*, it was fantastic if you were into tracker music, epic pinball games and other games using the GUS in that (tracker) way.

Apart from that it tried to be a jack of all trades (wavetable and Sound Blaster compatible), but master of none (heaps better wavetable options were available and Sound Blaster compatibility was average) and took over a ton of resources.

Still, it was unique enough and left its mark. The current prices for GUS products are a testament of this.

for me, the PAS is something like I wanted earlier in the old days bti I never had the chance to hear it in action,. just like the mt32/scc1 😀

Oh yea, I totally understand that! The PAS16 is quite cheap and easy to source. But the PAS basically doesn't exist. At least I haven't seen it anywhere on eBay yet.

And if one becomes available, it will likely cost a ton...

actually I have found a guy in a cars forum which still seems to have a PAS - he will look after it the next days 😎