Out of curiosity, you can try a ground loop isolator to see if it makes a difference. This was the only way to quiet a particular ISA ESS AudioDrive I have which always had a lot of interference bleeding into the line out.

It sounds like audiophile voodoo, but it really does work, when it's actually solving the kind of problem it is indeed to.

keropi wrote on 2024-02-14, 18:16:

Glad to hear the noise issue is resolved
Make sure that the Gus resources are truly free, maybe something wants to use the irq or dma channel, pnp bioses can get in the way....

This is on a non-pnp bios (Asus 486SV2GX4). I was able to free up some resources that were being used by LPT/COM by disabling them thru jumpers (see below). I'm able to play Doom, Doom2, and Hexen with GUS SFX and GUS music, but they still crash after a minute or two. If I use GM (E-Wave module from Serdashop) and SB for Music/SFX, no crashes. What am I doing wrong?

Kahenraz wrote on 2024-02-14, 21:23:

Out of curiosity, you can try a ground loop isolator to see if it makes a difference. This was the only way to quiet a particular ISA ESS AudioDrive I have which always had a lot of interference bleeding into the line out.

It sounds like audiophile voodoo, but it really does work, when it's actually solving the kind of problem it is indeed to.

Screenshot_20240214-162530_eBay.jpg

Thank you for the suggestion. I wonder if this would work for my scenario - the noise increases when there is IDE (ex: loading Doom) or mouse activity.

airs wrote on 2024-02-15, 00:39:

This is on a non-pnp bios (Asus 486SV2GX4). I was able to free up some resources that were being used by LPT/COM by disabling them thru jumpers (see below). I'm able to play Doom, Doom2, and Hexen with GUS SFX and GUS music, but they still crash after a minute or two. If I use GM (E-Wave module from Serdashop) and SB for Music/SFX, no crashes. What am I doing wrong?

I am not sure what is going on. These games should just work , one thing to try is to run PREPGAME from their directories - it will patch the DOS4GW extender and it might help in your case.
What about other GUS software? What happens if you run Jazz Jackrabbit or Epic Pinball for example (both require PREPGAME) , do they crash?
Have you tried another stick of ram just in case some weirdness is going on?

and about the noise you are getting - there should be none in reality and you should not be able to hear either hdd or mouse working through speakers, I thought moving slots eliminated it completely for you but that does not seem the case. Have you tried removing the E-WAVE? Does anything change?

keropi wrote on 2024-02-15, 06:25:

I am not sure what is going on. These games should just work , one thing to try is to run PREPGAME from their directories - it w […]
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airs wrote on 2024-02-15, 00:39:

This is on a non-pnp bios (Asus 486SV2GX4). I was able to free up some resources that were being used by LPT/COM by disabling them thru jumpers (see below). I'm able to play Doom, Doom2, and Hexen with GUS SFX and GUS music, but they still crash after a minute or two. If I use GM (E-Wave module from Serdashop) and SB for Music/SFX, no crashes. What am I doing wrong?

I am not sure what is going on. These games should just work , one thing to try is to run PREPGAME from their directories - it will patch the DOS4GW extender and it might help in your case.
What about other GUS software? What happens if you run Jazz Jackrabbit or Epic Pinball for example (both require PREPGAME) , do they crash?
Have you tried another stick of ram just in case some weirdness is going on?

and about the noise you are getting - there should be none in reality and you should not be able to hear either hdd or mouse working through speakers, I thought moving slots eliminated it completely for you but that does not seem the case. Have you tried removing the E-WAVE? Does anything change?

Removed the E-Wave, used PREPGAME, and tried a 16MB non-parity FPM RAM stick - still crashes. I tested spdif output and the noise is the lowest yet (but still exists). Via spdif the noise does not increase with mouse or IDE activity..

I don't think it's possible to have noise through SPDIF that is originating from the sound card, because it's purely digital. Wouldn't the noise have to come from the speakers or some other analog component?

Kahenraz wrote on 2024-02-15, 18:40:

I don't think it's possible to have noise through SPDIF that is originating from the sound card, because it's purely digital. Wouldn't the noise have to come from the speakers or some other analog component?

I'm not an audio engineer but I don't believe the path is fully digital - isn't there an ADC prior to SPDIF output? There can also be noise in a fully digital path due to jitter (and other variables?) - exemplified by the variance in SINAD measurements between audiophile DAC products.

analog sources will still get mixed in the digital output , things like opl3, wavetable, interwave itself ... it is unavoidable if you want to hear all sounds from spdif output
what other cards are present on the system? having noises like HDD and mouse activity is not normal behavior , or having to use another isa slot to lower noise... what other cards are in the system?
I also cannot really think why DOOM-engine games would crash using gus, normally when DOOM crashes it means there is some sort of system instability but again I do not want to say that your system is somehow faulty... but I am out of ideas atm

edit: maybe ISA bus is overclocked? could affect interwave

Okay so I tried Jazz and EPB - neither of them crash so this is a Doom engine issue I guess. Has anyone else been able to get Doom to run with GUS for music and fx without crashing?

To answer your question Keropi, the system has a CL VLB graphics card, and a kouwell kw-559ag VLB controller card.

Out of curiosity, are you certain that you've slimmed down your config.sys and autoexec.bat to the bare essentials to be certain that it's not a memory or driver conflict?

The noise symptoms described do sound like ground loop interference. I've had this situation on a studio computer setup. Even over things like USB or Firewire ports, the noise would persist since all the noise needs is a ground connection. The actual audio equipment was irrelevant, as any audio interface connected would pick up the same noise.

One way to test if it is a ground loop issue is to run the system off a battery bank while not plugged into the socket. If you have an uninterruptable power supply, you could try running it on batteries only (again, unplugged). If the noise disappears, it's a ground loop problem.

You could try ground loop isolators as a possible solution. In my own situation, the only thing I found that worked was a USB isolator and putting that between my computer and my audio interface.

Update: haven’t solved the noise yet, but Doom crashing is isolated to the 486sv2gx4 system - other builds I have do not crash with the O2.

keropi wrote on 2022-07-19, 14:03:

I did some 3.11 testing , it is indeed possible to install both and you do get both 4237 and GUS devices available and working t […]
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I did some 3.11 testing , it is indeed possible to install both and you do get both 4237 and GUS devices available and working
the setup is meh though , I cannot see the point messing so much in 3.x to get both parts working in tandem , you do have to install first the 4237 and then GUS driver and then create some midi maps because both drivers like to overwrite them

I can't for the life of me find the right Crystal 4237 drivers for Windows 3.1, could you point me in the right direction? Vogons has a generic set of "Crystal ISA Audio Drivers for DOS/Windows + Extras" but none of them work for Orpheus. That file also contains a nice PDF showing a Win 3.1 installer on pg. 10, but ironically, no such installer exists, as every "Setup.exe" in every version included is either Win 9x only or takes me to a DOS program that installs incompatible drivers. And none of the others are for the 4237.

EriolGaurhoth wrote on 2024-02-27, 05:25:

I can't for the life of me find the right Crystal 4237 drivers for Windows 3.1, could you point me in the right direction? [...]

Windows 3.1 drivers are located in the original Orpheus page: http://pcmidi.eu/orpheus.html
When it comes to win3x things will work the same as the original Orpheus , there is no way for improvement. Please read the installation/limitations notes on the page.
The drivers do come with the proper win3x installation program and that fancy configuration panel but it is almost useless and only available during installation.

keropi wrote on 2024-02-27, 06:20:

Windows 3.1 drivers are located in the original Orpheus page: http://pcmidi.eu/orpheus.html When it comes to win3x things will w […]
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EriolGaurhoth wrote on 2024-02-27, 05:25:

I can't for the life of me find the right Crystal 4237 drivers for Windows 3.1, could you point me in the right direction? [...]

Windows 3.1 drivers are located in the original Orpheus page: http://pcmidi.eu/orpheus.html
When it comes to win3x things will work the same as the original Orpheus , there is no way for improvement. Please read the installation/limitations notes on the page.
The drivers do come with the proper win3x installation program and that fancy configuration panel but it is almost useless and only available during installation.

THANK YOU!!!! This is what I needed to get everything working.

I put my Orpheus 2 (with 16Mb) and X2GS up for sale if anyone is interested. The card works great, I just don't have time to use it and hope someone else can enjoy it.

Hello everyone,

I recently got my Orpheus II. I'm building another machine (VIA C3 based) where I can enjoy it.
I also have a PC MIDI card in a K6-based system, I really love it. Thank you so much to the team for making these awesome cards!

I didn't have much time to play around with the Orpheus yet, but as a first step, I wanted to determine whether or not I wanted to connect the PC Speaker output to the Orpheus.
Unfortunately the answer to that question is a no for me.

I tested it with Budokan since the sound effects only come out of the PC Speaker, while you can configure Music over MT32, Adlib and PC Speaker.
So, I set the game to output everything through the PC Speaker. The sound effects in Budokan through the PC Speaker connection to the Orpheus were ok, but the music was pretty bad 🙁
I understand the PC Speaker functionality was added in the latest version of Orphinit, not sure if this bad result is because of my set up, or there are improvements planned on the Orphinit tool.

The thing is, playing the same game in the K6 machine with the PC Speaker output connected to a SoundBlaster 64 is way better. So, in the end I decided to hook up a classic beeper to the PC Speaker pins on the motherboard of the VIA C3 system. I don't think I'm gonna use it much as I have the K6 by its side, but at any rate I wanted to share my experience so far.

Thanks!

Am I to understand that on the target system a real speaker sounds fine but when Orpheus is passing the speaker the speaker music sounds bad?
This makes no sense, are you sure it's not the filtering that CS4237 is doing that you don't like? This is in the chip's design and it's not something that can be enabled or disabled...

First of all and just to be clear, it is not my intention to trash this great card or anything despicable like that.
I don't know what is going on, I don't like what I'm hearing, that's why I'm asking.

I have captured three samples in Budokan configured to output sound over PC Speaker, they are attached to this post.
- PC Speaker pins on the motherboard connected to the Orpheus II PC Speaker input (orpheus-pcspeaker.mp3)
- A simple buzzer connected directly to the motherboard (buzzer.mp3), like this one: https://shorturl.at/CMY03
- PC Speaker to a SoundBlaster AWE64 Gold (sb64-pcspeaker.mp3)
There is music at the beginning and sound effects at the end of these captures.
The Orpheus and the buzzer samples were captured in a VIA C3 based system, while the SoundBlaster one was captured in a K6 retro PC.

As you can hear, the difference is quite noticeable. Using the Orpheus PC Speaker input, it seems it is struggling with the music, like it cannot play part of the melody.
I have tried to adjust the volume of the PC Speaker in orpheus.ini config file, same result. The only difference is obviously volume, I continue to hear bad/choppy music all the time.
The sound effects on the other hand are just fine with the Orpheus.

I'm just wondering why this is happening and if there is anything that can be done to improve it.
Has anyone experienced something similar with their Orpheus card?

Thanks!

That is sounding like it could be a problem with the PC speaker on the VIA C3 system. To rule out the Orpheus II being faulty, try it in the K6 system.

If it still sounds bad, then something else is the cause, or perhaps your card has an issue.