Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-03-19, 11:05:
mkarcher wrote on 2023-03-19, 10:29:
Getting a ESS688 card is likely a lot cheaper than an original SB Pro 2.0. Do we have experience here on VOGONs whether the ESS cards with their programmable low-pass filter lived up to that promise?
I have an ESS AudioDrive 1868F as well as an OPTi 82C930, and they both use a low-pass filter while running in SBPro mode. I haven't done a detailed waveform comparison with a real SBPro card, since I don't own one myself, but I did cross-check their output against the recordings in this thread.
To my ears, the ESS card sounds very close to a real SBPro, and the OPTi card is not far behind either, with only a minuscule difference. In older games, both of these cards produce much more pleasing results than my AWE64.
I have tried both, and they were both OK but not 100%. I had the same ESS, im not sure if the issues I had were with the the actual chip abilities or the model of card. I had this generic one: http://dosdays.co.uk/topics/images/E5X1853L.jpg. When set to line out mode the output was very weak, and when set to speaker mode it was super over amped and noisy. I could never find a middle ground with that card (I found the closest to be amp on, volume level 40 in unisound, still some noise but the right volume level). The amp in the SB Pro 2 seems to be much higher quality, and with the volume wheel I can set the output level to be just right for whatever speakers im using. The other issue I had was higher bitrate games, like The Dig, or Discworld, always had background hiss when playing in 8 bit mode, sounded like a cassette tape. No hiss with the Pro2. Of course, something like the AWE is still the best way to play these 16bit games. But I feel like im loosing alot less then with the other 8 bit cards, it's good enough I don't feel like I need to run a second card for 16 bit. ESFM, while not totally accurate to OPL, sounded good to me, much better than CQM.
I also had an OEM card that came with my NEC that had an OPTi 82C929 paired with a real Yamaha OPL. This sounded quite a bit better to me than my particular ESS, at least when the bloody thing was working correctly. In most cases I could have been fooled into thinking it was a real 8 bit SB. The real OPL of course sounded right, and the digital sound was good, volume levels were fine. Still had that hiss in the 16 bit games tho. My issues with it were more card related. The drivers were a complete nightmare as it was pnp and had a million other things on it like a modem and ide controllers and whatnot. Unisound didn't support it, so had to find and run the real dos driver which took me awhile to find. Finally the card started to fail and no one wanted it so I just scrapped it.
This led me to wanting to try the real deal, and it's been the best overall. It's just such and issue free experience. Here's an example of the opening to POP, sorry about the PC fan noise I should get a Noctua in there 🤣. https://youtu.be/Uvc6EZfX2vA