Amigaz wrote:
You can always look into the Terratec cards which offer superb FM and digital sound quality compared to the creative cards which imho suck in comparison
Look for Terratec Gold 16/96 or 32/96
Terratec cards of that time have similar names for sometimes very different products, as far as I know:
- Gold 16/95 is an ESS chip based card with Adlib and SBPro compability; no midi synth onboard but a wavetable header and UART MPU-401, no "true" Yamaha Opl3
- Maestro 16/96 - not sure what chipset this card uses - possibly with 1mb GM compatible midi synth?
- Soundsystem Gold 32 - see above - possibly with 1mb GM compatible midi synth?
- Maestro 32/96 - Crystal based CS4232 chipset - adlib and truely SBpro and WSS compatible. 4 Mbyte Rom midi synth onboard (DREAM based) GM, GS and somehow MT-32 compatible (but no true Yamaha Opl3 -its function is integrated in the crystal chip.); wavetable header. 2 Midi / MPU-401 connectors (one external, one internal) This card is not very known, despite of its great features, and so if you find one, it might not be very expensive.
You can find some kind of "retro review" here: http://www.alasir.com/reviews/soundbench/index.html
This comparison is not made for retro gaming, but covers some cards by Turtle Beach. Also it is not mentioned, the Turtle Beach "Tropez" series could be interesting, as it is one of the few cards that has a GM compatible midi synth onboard (ICS chipset) and a true Yamaha OPL3. This is at least true for the "Tropez Classic". The Tropez Classic has a Crystal CS4231 which claims to be fully SBpro compatible, but I'm not sure if it is. The Tropez Plus has the CS4232 onboard that should be 100% SBpro compatible. It's basically a PnP version of the Classic but maybe it lacks the Yamaha OPL (because the CS4232 could emulate it)? (p.s.: Has anyone this card and can tell us more?)
There is also the Terratec EWS64 series with superb sound quality and the possibility to add effects in dos, that go far beyond anything an AWE32 (if you need effects) can do. But it is not easy to configure and the XL version can still be expensive.
By the way: the SPEA V7 media fx card uses an ensoniq chipset with 2 mb sample ROM (no DSP), that should be similar if not the same as the Ensoniq soundscape 2000. Maybe the converters are not that good but it seems to be not as rare as a "real" Soundscape card.