Hey all, I recently submitted the order form and look forward (and patiently) to when my turn comes up to purchase this awesome soundcard.

I plan on using the Orpheus in a machine along with an AWE64. If I connect the AWE64's line out to the Orpheus's line in, will it then be possible to use the Orpheus's (S/PDIF) digital out to hear both card's outputs simultaneously? Thanks!

^ yep, this can be done - analog sources are no issue to be heard from s/pdif

I cannot hear CD-audio music when I play "The Eye of Typhoon" where it requires "Perfect SB-Pro support" on its manual.
Other games using CD-audio music works fine.

I tested other cards with this game like Yamaha YMF724 and SB Live! and for these cards CD-audio works fine.
I don't know what's the difference.

That's very odd, considering that CD audio is just mixed in.

Hello,
Could you be more specific?
What are you using to initialize the card?
Orphinit or unisound?
Could you post your orpheus.ini if using orphinit, or commands in unisound? Thanks!

Could it for some reason be making use of some weird SB Pro mixer functionality I wonder..

Marmes wrote on 2022-05-29, 10:15:

Hello, Could you be more specific? What are you using to initialize the card? Orphinit or unisound? Could you post your orpheus […]
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Hello,
Could you be more specific?
What are you using to initialize the card?
Orphinit or unisound?
Could you post your orpheus.ini if using orphinit, or commands in unisound? Thanks!

I used orphinit and as I remember using unisound doesn't help.
Here is my orpheus.ini

----------------------------------------------------------------------

; ORPHINIT configuration file. This is the main configuration file used
; by the ORPHINIT initialisation software for the Orpheus sound card
; designed and produced by VOGONS members keropi and Marmes. The current
; version of the card is based on the Crystal/Cirrus Logic CS4237B.
;
; This software *may* work with other cards based on the same chip, but
; it was specifically designed for the Orpheus feature set.
;
; Any use or experimentation are at your own risk; I accept no responsibility
; for damage to hardware, audio systems, eardrums or other.

; Lines beginning with a ';' are treated as comments.
[config]
WSSBase=534
WSSIRQ=5
CtrlBase=538
CtrlIRQ=disabled
WSSPlaybackDMA=1
;WSSCaptureDMA=4
SBBase=220
OPLBase=388
OPLIRQ=388
;OPLBase=0
;OPLIRQ=disabled
; FMMode can be OPL3, CrystalFM or off
FMMode=CrystalFM

GameBase=200

; This controls the on-chip Crystal MPU-401-compatible UART.
; This tool has NO control over the PCMIDI device, which is configured
; with on-board jumpers.
MPUBase=disabled
MPUIRQ=disabled

; Mode determines the mode in which the card will be configured when
; initialisation is complete. Valid values are sb and wss. Selecting
; SB mode will cause the SB mixer to be configured, which will over-write
; some of the mixer registers of WSS mode, and WSS-mode volume levels will be
; an approximation of the SB-mode volume levels thereafter. In general, this
; can be left at sb, but using wss gives greater mixer flexibility, if you
; are planning to run mostly WSS-compatible software.
Mode=sb

[mixer]
; SRS mode can be enabled, mono or off. In mono mode, Space and Centre have
; no effect (they are fixed in hardware).
SRSMode=off
SRSSpace=3
SRSCentre=8

; For all volume level settings EXCEPT PC speaker and FM, the format is
; "mute;gain_level". Use only "gain_level" if you do not want to mute
; that source. In all cases, 0 means maximum volume.

; PCM minimum volume is 63
PCMVol=0

; Line in, CD audio, wavetable header and microphone minimum volume is 31.
MicVol=mute;31
LineInVol=0
CDVol=0
WTHeaderVol=0

; FM is treated as a special case for now; "mute" doesn't work. Instead, use
; a value of 191 to apply maximum attenuation and mute the source.
FMVol=0
PCSpeakerVol=mute

;DigitalOutput can be spdif or disabled
DigitalOutput=disabled

; RoutingMode applies to digital (S/PDIF) output only, and can can be
; min-digital or analogue. The min-digital setting routes ONLY FM and PCM
; audio via the digital output; all analogue sources are excluded.
; Furthermore OPL3 *REQUIRES* SRS to be enabled, or it will not be heard via
; digital output (this appears to be a chip design bug). Analogue makes
; all sources simultaneously available via digital output and analogue line
; out (including YMF289/OPL3 *without* SRS).
RoutingMode=analogue

; When mode is set to sb, the following SB mixer settings will be used.
; PCMVol, MasterVol, FMVol, CDVol and LineVol range from 0 (mute) to 7
; (maximum volume).
; MicLevel ranges from 0 (mute) to 3 (maximum volume).
[sb-mode]
; Input-select selects the ADC input signal. Valid values are mic, CD
; and line-in.
SB-Input-select=CD
SB-PCMVol=6
SB-MicLevel=0
SB-MasterVol=7
SB-FMVol=4
SB-CDVol=7
SB-LineVol=7

Can you try to use wss instead of SB?
Thanks,!

Marmes wrote on 2022-05-29, 11:23:

Can you try to use wss instead of SB?
Thanks,!

I tried wss mode remaining other parameters the same.
It doesn't work either.

I can confirm CD audio gets muted by the game.
Until you run it CD audio is fine. After you exit the game CD audio remains muted until you re-init the mixer.
My guess is that the game tries to set a volume that CS4237 does not like and interprets in a way that the volume is muted.
I gave MIDITO a shot just in case it can lock the mixer but it made no difference (tool is actually made for SB/ESS cards so it was not that unexpected)

Will ask a friend to help, hopefuly we will at least find out what the game does that results to this 😀

kykypyza wrote on 2022-05-29, 05:55:

I cannot hear CD-audio music when I play "The Eye of Typhoon" where it requires "Perfect SB-Pro support" on its manual.
[...]

Thanks to ripsaw8080's help it is found that the game writes some undocumented/unknown SB registers on startup .
No idea why this is though - could be their dev soundcard needed extra setup steps or just a mistake.
These registers are ignored on some chips like the tested live/ymf719 but on CS4237 one in particular makes CD AUDIO to be muted.

I will PM you a patched TYPHOON.EXE kykypyza to verify that it also works for you and if yes then I will make a small patcher and post on Orpheus site 😀

keropi wrote on 2022-05-30, 09:10:

Thanks to ripsaw8080's help it is found that the game writes some undocumented/unknown SB registers on startup . No idea why th […]
Show full quote

kykypyza wrote on 2022-05-29, 05:55:

I cannot hear CD-audio music when I play "The Eye of Typhoon" where it requires "Perfect SB-Pro support" on its manual.
[...]

Thanks to ripsaw8080's help it is found that the game writes some undocumented/unknown SB registers on startup .
No idea why this is though - could be their dev soundcard needed extra setup steps or just a mistake.
These registers are ignored on some chips like the tested live/ymf719 but on CS4237 one in particular makes CD AUDIO to be muted.

I will PM you a patched TYPHOON.EXE kykypyza to verify that it also works for you and if yes then I will make a small patcher and post on Orpheus site 😀

Thank ripsaw8080 and you for the fix. Since this game also has Korean version so I applied the part of the fix. I modified the hex from "C4 0C 6A 11" to "C4 0C 6A 2E" for both setup.exe and typhoon.exe. (there are other differences in hex when I compared the fixed file and the original, but I just applied this only because "C4 0C 6A 11" is common byte code found in the setup.exe)
Now CD-DA works fine but there's another problem. The volume of SFX cannot be adjusted. I set the volume for both orphinit and unisound but it seems that the SFX volume is always maximum regardless of the volume setting in the setup.exe or orphinit or unisound.

This game has 3 versions, old LG version, 2022 Korean version, and 2022 English version. I can provide the executables if you need to analyze.
Thanks for the help.

good that the CD AUDIO patch works
I cannot promise though there will be a fix for all sound support for the game, it seems it is really weirdly programmed when it comes to sound

kykypyza wrote on 2022-06-01, 17:56:

[...]The volume of SFX cannot be adjusted. I set the volume for both orphinit and unisound but it seems that the SFX volume is always maximum regardless of the volume setting in the setup.exe or orphinit or unisound.

OK there is a workaround for this - tested with the LG version

- 1st step is to use CrystalFM like you already do

-2nd step is to hex edit both TYPHOON.EXE and SETUP.EXE
search these 3 strings in both EXEs:
83 C4 0C 6A 11
83 C4 0C 6A 13
83 C4 0C 6A 17

in all 3 cases change the bold value to 2E

you can test volume levels in SETUP.EXE and they are used in the main game.
In my case I found that CDDA playback does not always start when testing in setup.exe - the CDROM remains inactive so do some retries if the cd rom does not start playing audio
hope this helps!

Got an Orpheus soundcard last year and finally getting around to installing it in my DOS/Windows 95 PC and have a few questions. Currently have a Creative SF16-FMI Vibra 16C soundcard . Do I simply remove it from the ISA slot and insert the Orpheus soundcard or do it I have to go into the computer menu and somehow disable the Creative soundcard first ? Also, to get the best game music and sound I'm assuming I should connect my speakers to the S/PDIF out port of the Orpheus rather than the line out port? Lastly to connect both a MT-32 and SC-55 using a DB15MIDI adapter, do I have to configure or change the jumpers on the soundcard to get both the joystick port and S/PDIF port working simultaneously?

slai50 wrote on 2022-06-03, 07:14:

Got an Orpheus soundcard last year and finally getting around to installing it in my DOS/Windows 95 PC and have a few questions. Currently have a Creative SF16-FMI Vibra 16C soundcard . Do I simply remove it from the ISA slot and insert the Orpheus soundcard or do it I have to go into the computer menu and somehow disable the Creative soundcard first ? Also, to get the best game music and sound I'm assuming I should connect my speakers to the S/PDIF out port of the Orpheus rather than the line out port? Lastly to connect both a MT-32 and SC-55 using a DB15MIDI adapter, do I have to configure or change the jumpers on the soundcard to get both the joystick port and S/PDIF port working simultaneously?

hi!
Yeah you just remove the SB card and install Orpheus
Under DOS you just delete the SB driver stuff from config/autoexec and use ORPHINIT
For windows you might have some more trouble - since back then they did not play very well when you swapped hardware around.
You just have to test and see if the transition from SB -> Crystal drivers goes well

The line-output of Orpheus is very good so it will not have any problems. Ofcourse if you have a good external DAC just go the s/pdif way - depends on your setup.

The joystick port offers 2 things: joystick and MIDI connectivity
What the jumpers change is what kind of midi interface you want to control the joystick port: either Crystal MPU or PCMIDI MPU.
The joystick and S/PDIF functionalities are unrelated to the midi jumpers or mpu settings so no worries there about using all these together.

Hope this helps!

thanks for the clarification Keropi. I purchased the version of the Orpheus with the PCMIDI, is the PCMIDI MPU enabled at the joystick port by default?

slai50 wrote on 2022-06-03, 07:54:

thanks for the clarification Keropi. I purchased the version of the Orpheus with the PCMIDI, is the PCMIDI MPU enabled at the joystick port by default?

yes by default all 3 jumpers are installed in the upper "I" position for "intelligent mpu" AKA pcmidi
you can check the settings here: http://www.pcmidi.eu/orpheus.html in the "Jumper Settings" section
you can mix-and-match mpu routing according to your needs but to keep things simple if you do not care about a dual-mpu setup just keep jumpers in the "I" position and everything is controlled by PCMIDI

keropi wrote on 2022-06-03, 06:56:

OK there is a workaround for this - tested with the LG version […]
Show full quote

kykypyza wrote on 2022-06-01, 17:56:

[...]The volume of SFX cannot be adjusted. I set the volume for both orphinit and unisound but it seems that the SFX volume is always maximum regardless of the volume setting in the setup.exe or orphinit or unisound.

OK there is a workaround for this - tested with the LG version

- 1st step is to use CrystalFM like you already do

-2nd step is to hex edit both TYPHOON.EXE and SETUP.EXE
search these 3 strings in both EXEs:
83 C4 0C 6A 11
83 C4 0C 6A 13
83 C4 0C 6A 17

in all 3 cases change the bold value to 2E

you can test volume levels in SETUP.EXE and they are used in the main game.
In my case I found that CDDA playback does not always start when testing in setup.exe - the CDROM remains inactive so do some retries if the cd rom does not start playing audio
hope this helps!

Thank you again for the help.
I tested with 2022 Korean version and found that when I couldn't control the volume of SFX, I was using OPL3.
When using CrystalFM, modifying only 83 C4 0C 6A 11 11 to 83 C4 0C 6A 11 2E is enough. Both CD-DA and SFX volumes are adjustable.
It seems that in any condition, SFX volume is maximum when using OPL3 but I am satisfied because CrystalFM is good enough for this game (in fact I tested modifying 11, (11 and 13), (11 and 17), (11 and 13 and 17)).

This may have been covered already, but I am not finding any direct information about it. On the Orpheus PCB I see an unpopulated header labeled PCS. I am assuming this is PC speaker support? If I were to populate this header, is it actively working and ready to use?