Yea sound very Monkey Islandish 🤣

OK here's the CT2900, a Vibra 16S with the low voltage/mobile OPL3 chips ( YMF289B-S)

Monkey Island 2
Halloween Harry

Sounds pretty similar to the 2800 to me. I think some of the noise might be from the PC I'm recording with, if I plug in headphones and turn the volume up I can make it out without anything connected to the line in. I'm just using Realtek ALC1200 onboard audio on my windows machine.

I can't get my CT1600 to work, I can sort of make the beat out that its trying to play but its very quiet and there's heaps of static. I think the card is rooted. I'll have to get the CT1690 out of my 386 system.

Also, tried with an XR385 daughterboard and I get hanging notes immediately in Hexen level 2 with the CT2900.

OK here's the Sound Blaster Pro 2 CT1690:

CT1690 Halloween Harry
CT1690 Monkey Island 2

As far as I can tell, this does seem to be less noisy than the 16s/Vibras I've tested. It is also a bit louder, I had to actually lower the recording volume on my PC to stop it clipping. However the sound is filtered a lot, making higher pitched sounds like cymbals sound not quite so good. I'd be eager to hear other's opinions compared to the other recordings I've made.

I've also tried out he CT2740 with the XR385 daughterboard and did not get the hanging note bug in the hexen test. DSP version is 4.11.

So that card might actually be good for MIDI modules/daughterboards if the quality wasn't so poor.

Yea it's just as noisy. Looks all these cards have the same level of noise...

The SB Pro you have sounds a lot better!

Just for reference I attached a DOSBox recording. It's totally clean, no noise whatsoever 🤣

You must have better hearing than me, its still difficult for me to discern much hiss/noise even with headphones. I think its not so much the cards but the PC I'm recording with. That recording you attached sounds pretty similar to my SB Pro recording, as far as I can tell.

Personally I'm a bit undecided on the SB Pro sound, I think I prefer the less filtered sound of the SB Vibra 16's.

And that's all that matters in the end!

Monkey Island 2 support MT-32 anyway... So us "Elite" Roland owners can just bypass all these issues 🤣

Apparently MI2 is infamous for having some sounds that are only played in Adlib mode and others that are only played in MT-32 mode. ScummVM is the only way to hear the superset of sounds...

I think there's a few games like that actually... only let you use one sound device and Adlib has extra sound effects while MT32 has better music but no sound effects. I noticed this with another game recently but can't remember what it was.

So us "Elite" Roland owners can just bypass all these issues

🤣.... I've got an SC55 on the way too 😁

Betrayal at Krondor annoys me for making you choose between SB digitized sound effects with crappy OPL2 music, or MT-32/GM music with no digitized sound effects. Maybe if I ever get that SCI01 MTBLAST.DRV written (yeah right) I will take a look at B@K's sound drivers.

Monkey Island 2 even has some sampled sound effects on a Soundblaster.

IMO it was likely time constraints or pure laziness because they could have easily added some kind of effect on the MT-32. E.g. there is a good bat noise on the cemetery screen, but no bat noise whatsoever on the swamp screen.

Very shortly after Monkey Island 2, Wing Commander 2 started the trend of supporting 2 soundcards. Fate of Atlantis also supports MT-32 for Music and Soundblaster for Speech / Sound effects. At least the talkie version.

I remember that Dune 2 got a patch that included a new setup utility that let you pick different cards for music, musical sound effects (like the little clinking noise when you earn or spend money), and digitized sound effects.

I guess 1993 is around when the industry started thinking about such things.

Yea that sounds right!

And as you said for Monkey Island 2 just use ScummVM. Works great with mixed Adlib mode.

And there is also Monkey Island 2 special edition. While it doesn't have iMuse, the music is of very high quality.

I picked up the Monkey Island remakes as a pack on Steam during the holiday sales. Haven't installed them yet, though.

I quite like them. Not only do you get upgraded graphics and voice acting (as far as I know, there was never a talkie version of MI 1 & 2 until the special editions) but if you hit F11 you get the original VGA graphics and text dialogue.

MI2 SE has old graphics + speech! That's how I played it recently...

Just want to let you guys know I got two new sound cards to test out:

-SoundBlaster 16 Value model CT2770
-An unknown sound card which I've never seen before

I will give a general evaluation of each before I go ahead and record some games using those sound cards.

SoundBlaster 16 Value model CT2770:

This is one of those SoundBlaster 16s with the CT1747 combo YMF262/YAC512/ISA interface chip. Much to my surprise, it actually works BETTER than any other sound card with real YMF262s. Unlike the sound cards I've used with YMF262s on them(SoundBlaster Pro 2.0 model CT1600, SoundBlaster Vibra16 model CT2260, OPTi 82C929A), even though this SoundBlaster 16 Value has a true OPL3 chip integrated within the CT1747, it DOES NOT output a mess of scrambled notes out of the CT1747 with the floppy disk edition of X-Wing. I'm currently using the SoundBlaster 16 Value on a computer running a 400MHz Pentium II using the SoundBlaster Pro sound option in X-Wing and the game doesn't care, it's pumping its OPL2 music out of the CT1747 with absolutely no issues.

The best part about this SoundBlaster 16 Value, though, is the overall sound output. I currently have headphones plugged into the sound card's Speaker Out, and the sound output is clean; no hissing, no "computer thinking" noises, none of that. Just the pure sound of OPL2/OPL3 FM Synthesis and SoundBlaster digital sound. Awesome.

The one thing I'm not too crazy about with the SoundBlaster 16 Value is the digital sound, which is quite muffled. My SoundBlaster Vibra16 model CT2260 has clearer digital sound than this SoundBlaster 16 Value model CT2770. Maybe the DSP version has something to do with it because the SoundBlaster 16 Value model CT2770 has DSP version 4.12 whereas my SoundBlaster Vibra16 model CT2260 has DSP version 4.13. Oh yeah, since the SoundBlaster 16 Value has DSP version 4.12, it's prone to the hanging notes bug. It also lacks a WaveBlaster header, so the only way you can hook up MIDI devices to the SoundBlaster 16 Value model CT2770 is to use the Game port.

Unknown sound card:

This sound card left me scratching my head when I saw it. There is absolutely no indication of who made the card and there are 7 chips with some codes on them that I don't recognize. It's also old enough that its base address, IRQ and DMA settings are done via jumpers, and there isn't a single surface-mount resistor or capacitor on the sound card to be found. This thing doesn't even have anything I can recognize as a YMF262 or a surface-mount version of the YM3812.

Well guess what? It turns out this sound card is a clone of the ORIGINAL SoundBlaster Pro. There are 4 chips on the sound card which led me to believe this is quite possibly a clone of the SoundBlaster Pro model CT1330 as two chips say MK6264 on them and the other two say MB4063 on them. Using LucasArts' SETMUSE program provided with the Collector's CD-ROM edition of X-Wing, the program recognized the card as a SoundBlaster Pro with DSP version 3.01. It set the digital sound to SoundBlaster Pro, but instead of setting the music to 4-Op FM, it set the music to AdLib! The sound card also output messed-up notes when using 4-Op FM as music. This served as a definite confirmation that the sound card is a clone of the original SoundBlaster Pro.

So how does this sound card perform? It really impressed me, actually. Its FM Synthesis has absolutely no differences compared to real OPL2 and has less filtering than any SoundBlaster with a YMF262, so the sound output is more raw. The digital sound is also very clear, quite similar to a SoundBlaster Pro 2.0 with the sound filter disabled.

It also works exactly like a SoundBlaster Pro in the sense that you don't need drivers to make the card work. You can simply use SET BLASTER in Autoexec.bat set to the card's base address, IRQ and DMA and off you go.

What I am curious to know is just how this sound card manages to pull off OPL2 with perfection without even using real YM3812s. I actually compared the MK6264s on the sound card to a real surface-mount YM3812, and the pin count doesn't match between the two chips, so clearly, this sound card doesn't use real YM3812s. The MK6264s have 28 pins whereas the YM3812 has 24 pins. Either the MK6264 is a YM3812 with 4 extra pins or the MK6264 is an exact clone of the YM3812.

Now I'd like to know something: which games are known to support Stereo OPL2 from the original SoundBlaster Pro?

The general sound output, though, isn't too spectacular. It has a noticeable hiss and on my Packard Bell Legend 316SX, the amount of background noise was absolutely insane. Not only was the hissing louder, but along with the hissing was an INSANELY LOUD "computer thinking" noise. I could hear EVERYTHING going on inside the computer through the sound card from the hard drive getting accessed to data being loaded, etc. It was nasty. This is with headphones plugged straight into the sound card, mind you, so it might be less audible through speakers.

Before I provide a recording of the unknown sound card, it needs a bit of repair work. The volume knob is quite bad, the output jack is EXTREMELY finicky and there is no digital sound whatsoever from the left audio channel.

I will take a picture of the unknown sound card a little later so someone can let me know exactly what SoundBlaster Pro 1.0 clone I got.

EDIT: Here's a rather crappy cell phone picture of the unknown SoundBlaster Pro clone:

[/img]

Anyone know anything about this sound card?

Ace wrote:

"computer thinking" noises

PMFJI, but I just had to 🤣 at that one... definitely seen (heard) that on more than one occasion throughout the years <grin>.

Never mind that, I can even hear the floppy drive and CD-ROM drives whenever the head/laser moves on any computer where I put in that unknown SoundBlaster Pro clone.

Would you happen to have any idea what sound card that unknown SoundBlaster Pro clone actually is? I'd like to get some Windows or DOS drivers for it.

What's that small text on the top left? NU30D?

The small text reads AV300. I don't know what good that will do. I haven't found any information regarding this unknown SoundBlaster Pro 1.0 clone.

Now for a quick question: how uncommon is it to find a clone of the original SoundBlaster Pro? I know it's already quite uncommon to find the real original SoundBlaster Pro, and the last thing I would expect to find is a clone of the original SoundBlaster Pro. Every SoundBlaster Pro clone I've come across is a clone of the SoundBlaster Pro 2.0, not the SoundBlaster Pro 1.0.