A "daughtercard" is usually a General MIDI card. GM was designed in 1991 by Roland and a couple other synthesizer manufacturers, and the first games to really use it didn't appear before 1992. It was better received than CD audio (for obvious technical/mechanical reasons) and remained in fairly wide use until sound cards went all PCM around 1997. Some publishers really made the most of it (Sierra, Origin, Falcom...). For the record, many Japanese game companies are still using GM as their primary sound format.

The catch is that you need a really GM-compliant device, not some Creative or Microsoft softsynth crap. The choice between Roland and Yamaha comes down to which type of sound you prefer (a Yamaha piano doesn't sound like a Roland piano, etc). Soon after GM specification was published, both manufacturers also defined their own set of GM-compatible extensions: GS and ED for Roland, XG for Yamaha. Those extensions were rarely used in games -- especially true for XG (the most notable exception has to be Final Fantasy 7).

OK. I follow. Daughtercards are for midi sound support.

Although XG extensions are not used in games, do many games support the yamaha spec?

Is it worth the cash for a Yamaha DB50XG?

I think that I've maybe seen 2 games that natively supported Yamaha XG.

If you want to have sound in games before 1992 an adlib compatible sound card is a must. Many older games and a number of later ones!) just support soundblaster or adlib, so a SB is probably what you want.

If you want to play Sierra/Lucasarts games only, a General Midi Card will - of course - offer better music for games.

You asked about SB16 variations; some of them include:
There was the regular SB16: 16-bit ISA, non-PnP (you have to use jumpers to set IRQ, DMA, and base address)
There was the SB16 MCD (I think that's what it was called), which I had: same as the regular SB16, except with an on-board controller for connecting first-generation CD-ROM drives. It had like 3 or 4 different connectors on it because it was made before CD-ROM drives were fully IDE/ATAPI compatable.
Then there were the SB16 PnP's, which were ISA SB16's that let you set the IRQ/DMA/addr in software (or automatically by the BIOS) instead of having to use jumpers.
Finally, there's the PCI SB16 cards. I don't know much about these, but knowing Creative they're probably unstable.

I believe all of the SB16 series had Yamaha OPL3 chips for FM sound. I think they could also all support 16-bit digital samples at rates up to 44100Hz (or maybe even 48000 - I don't remember exactly). They were backwards-compatable (for the most part) with previous Sound Blaster cards, so you didn't need TSR drivers to make them work with DOS games. One exception is with the ISA and PCI PnP cards, which sometimes got assigned wacky settings by the BIOS that would cause compatability headaches with games that assumed standard settings were being used.

Hmmm. I have one XG50 on the way, since it is only thing I could find that is GM compatible (at least according to Yamaha it is) that is on the same level as the Roland products.

With an SB16, is PnP preferrable or is the manual config. much better for compatibility?

I think they're about the same as long as you get an ISA one with an OPL3 chip (which I think they all have). With the non-PnP you won't have to fight with stupid configuration software though (but you may have to take the card out and move jumpers around to change settings for different games)

The XG50, which I believe is the MIDI soundcard version of the MU50 expander, is perfectly compatible with the GM spec and gives satisfactory results compared to the Roland SC-55 (the GM and GS reference module). The XG50 is even somewhat compatible with the GS spec via its own TG300B mode (basically a mode that simply remaps GS banks to XG ones on the fly).

All in all, a good buy 😀

Yes the Yamaha XG50 is as described. Although it cost me a small fortune. The whole "fight config. software" or play with jumper settings for each game is a worry. You make it sound like opening up the machine is easier than wrestling with software! No wonder the console market took off! The later series of SB16's, dubbed Vibra, were all PCI I believe, but I will stick with an ISA. All had the port for the daughtercard except a value edition release.

Using the XG50DG with DOS software is very easy 😀 Just use the soundsetup of the game and choose General Midi at port 330 and you're done 😀 It works well even if you're in "pure" DOS and not in Windows.

My XG50DG and SB16 ISA works together in perfect harmony. I need no extra drivers except for the normal SB16 drivers.

And it sounds brilliant 😎 It's like a state-of-the-art Yamaha MIDI keyboard (without the keyboard) from the mid-90s.

Freddo, I can hear that 90's synth sound already!

So do you run a PnP SB16 or one that you manual config. using jumpers?

Do you know what the Roland GS compaibility is like? I have read instrument mapping between the two can produce less than appealing results.

As long as your mids are pure GS (read: designed for the SC-55), the XG50 will sound decent and more or less balanced (though some missing patches will be remapped to roughly "equivalent" XG instruments with various results).

Later Sound Canvas expanders (SC-88/88Pro/8820/8850) use their own variations of the GS spec with extended instruments and reverb modes, which are not supported by Yamaha devices.

If you want to play a game that sounds great on the XG50, play descent with Music set to General Midi. Although it doesn't use the XG specific patches, the XG50's lends itself beautifully to Descent's techno soundtrack.The bass line of the intro song alone will make it worth the purchase. 😀

Thanks for the help guys. I'm going with the SW60XG - not a daughterboard but a seperate card with essentially the same chipset as the 50XG - its a lot cheaper and will produce the same end result. Plus a Roland SCC-1.

I'll make compare the GM outputs of each and give you a verdict.

I'm becoming extremely partial to the VDMSound/DOSBOX and a Creative Live or Audigy and some good soundfonts method. It is SO much easier than messing with old, huge, buggy, incompatible sound cards! I've found tons of huge soundfonts for free by searching around. They are almost certainly going to sound FAR better than a old ISA card with 1-4MB ROM samples. I mean, I have a few soundfonts between 50-80MB! I've also found a replica of the SCC-1 ROM set.

http://www.geocities.jp/shansoundfont/
http://www.personalcopy.com/home.htm
http://www.hammersound.net/

I am especially fond of Chorium and Taiji Generation 4 SE right now. Some aren't downloadable anymore on Hammersound, but you can find them usually on something like eMule.

I stumbled on this crazy file listing, but I can't figure out how to actually download anything.
http://dark.nafura.it/home/contents.asp?dov=/ … %20SOUNDS/MUSIC