First post, by Mau1wurf1977
- Rank
- l33t++
Firstly I would like to thanks a few people for pointing me into the right direction!
rfnagel from VOGONS for his excellent information about SoundFonts in general and specifically how the work on Creative Labs cards.
retro games 100 from VOGONS for doing some recordings on his pimped out 28MB AWE64 GOLD which was an eye / ear opener and showed me just how good these SoundFonts can sound!
erwin, HunterZ and swaaye from VOGONS for their general contribution regarding Retro soundcards.
If I forgot anyone else I apologize in advance...
Okidoki so firstly what is this thread / post about:
rfnagel and RG100 have already provided us with excellent information and recordings regarding SoundFonts for Creative Labs AWE64 GOLD and Live!: AWE64 with 32 (28 really) MB of RAM
I would like to expand on this and provide some information and recordings with Creative Labs X-FI cards. The card I am using is a PCI X-Fi Xtreme Audio (thanks to mootant for hooking me up).
My hardware setup:
- Asus AM3 mainboard
- Phenom II Quadcore
- 4GB DDR3
- X-FI Xtreme Music
- Windows 7 Pro 64bit
- D-Fend 1.0.3
Card:
Creative Labs PCI Xtreme Audio
Drivers:
All the drivers are available from the Creative wesbite. I did not install any software from installation CDs (I don't have any). I installed:
- Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi series driver 2.18.0015
- Creative SoundFont Bank Manager 3.21.02
- Creative Console Launcher 2.61.09
And that's it!
The installation went very smooth. No errors or anything else to report.
SounFont used:
Copy LinkChoriumRevA.SF2: http://www.mediafire.com/?9hyw44c7c6jfo8d
Loading the SoundFont:
- Launch Creative SoundFont Bank Manager, press Bank, Press Load and point to LinkChoriumRevA.SF2
You will get this screen:
I have also ticked the Box "EAX: in the X-Fi driver. These applies Reverb and/or Chorus and adds life to the music. Otherwise a lot of Songs sound very dry / flat.
Configuring D-Fend reloaded to use the X-Fi card + SoundFont:
D-Fend reloaded has a nice button called "Select Midi Device from Device Manager" in the Midi section. Click on it and you will get a list for all the Midi devices on your machine. The SoundFont we loaded can be accessed through SB X-Fi Synth B. So in my case just type in "2" into the box "Additional settings" as per screenshot:
That's it!
Now just select "General Midi" in your DOSBox and enjoy the music!
My verdict:
I'm blown away by the quality of this General Midi implementation. I personally prefer it over a real Roland Sound Canvas.
My impression is that this General Midi implementation brings something new to the table. A lot of other cards and SoundFonts "just" try to get as close to a Roland Sound Canvas and often fail miserably.
The X-Fi + LinkChoriumRevA.SF2 aims for something "beyond" a Roland Sound Canvas.
Sample recordings:
This file is rather large. It includes recordings from Doom (4 levels), Doom 2, Dark Forces, Descent, Descent 2 and Duke Nukem3D.
You can download it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?al4pe54f6kmzgvf