Reply 220 of 330, by SavantStrike
wrote:In native DOS you'll be limited to using the Creative software synthesizer that comes with the SBLive. It doesn't use SoundFonts […]
wrote:So a Live! is actually making sense in any retro rig that's modern enough to use a PCI sound card?
In native DOS you'll be limited to using the Creative software synthesizer that comes with the SBLive. It doesn't use SoundFonts, but rather those Ensoniq "ECW" wavesets that you may know about... and there has only been three of those wavesets ever released (2MB/4MB/8MB versions).
The Creative Labs software synthesizer is not only limited by those three ECW wavesets, but it's extremely "dry" as well... no MIDI reverb or chorus support whatsoever.
On a powerful enough or modern PC, the SBLive or Audigy is a good choice, as you can use the SoundFont MIDI synthesis in Windows with DOSBox... that's exactly what I do now, I have Windows XP Pro SP3 installed, along with my SBLive, and all of my old DOS games I run under DOSBox; works like a champ 😀
BTW, also, under W98SE almost all DOS games are fairly well behaved when run under a DOS shell. In that case you can shell to DOS and if the game is configured for General MIDI music output, the game will use the SBLive/Audigy with it's loaded SoundFont.
wrote:Are there any other expandable PCI soundcards? How do the Vortex, Yamaha and ESS Solo1 (just to name a few) fit into these?
I know little about those cards, but AFAIK none of them support SoundFonts.
wrote:I'm going to regret asking this, but did that work at all under the Win9x version of DOS? Twin soundcards with 28MB of ram each sounds pretty hot...
I used to run a rig like that with Windows 98SE (I think it would work under W95 as well). It didn't work under a native DOS bootup though. Mostly what I used all three AWE32s for was recording my music to MP3s within Windows, with custon SoundFonts loaded into the AWE32s.
With most any MIDI sequencer (I *still* use the old Cakewalk Professional v3.01, you could select which MIDI track was piped to which MIDI device (which AWE32 card), providing a musician with 96 MIDI channels, and access to three sets of ~28MB SoundFonts 😀
Anyhow, like I said, this was mostly all geared towards music composing (with a MIDI sequencer)... it was rather useless for games and such, as they can only access one MIDI device at a time (under DOS, Windows, or otherwise).
Okay, no regrets (I'm not buying more sound cards).
I was half expecting you to say that Creative had some crazy driver implementation where one IRQ would get mapped to multiple cards via some sort of software interface, and you could have 2+ cards worth of sound fonts for games run under the Win9x DOS shell.
I probably will set up with DOSbox again at some point, but I kind of enjoy putzing around with older hardware (though I have my limits, I only run 98SE and PnP hardware with USB emulation support).