PeterLI wrote:I play GM games all the time and rarely notice the hanging note bug with my CTs to be honest.
I think it can depend on one's personal disposition towards occasional music malfunctions (OK or it ruins all impression of a game) and one's personal history and luck with Creative sound cards 😀
It also depends on one's favourite game, some are more prone to produce hanging notes than the other (given same Creative cards).
My gaming history is not in favour of Creative.
When I upgraded from some ESS SB-Pro clone to Creative Vibra I got stereo sound in Wolfenstein and it was great. Direction of shooting sounds is important. Unfortunately wavetables appeared and did NOT work OK. Malfunctions were in Heretic mainly and Doom was more or less OK but not always. I tried a "true" SB16 (non Vibra) and it was also bad with hanging notes.
The only good thing about it I was careful to arrange for its return. Already knowing what to expect with Creative Co, heh.
Since I had no solid advice on this matter I thought only a major redesign of the board would put the bug away. I saw that AWE32 are similar to SB-16 and did not buy any. When AWE-64 appeared on the market I risked that and "won", the bug eliminated. But I had to waste extra money on a retail German AWE64 box since there was no other quality offer.
Later I studied the vast experiment by Cloudschatze which dealt with different AWE-32 models. I adore his patience (he did not throw this stuff against a wall!) and I bless the moment I rejected paying anything (in the 90's) for this uhm, product.
As Cloudschatze has found only the first model (ct2760) to be more or less stable and still failing the hanging note test, sooner or later. Hexen was the test game. All later models (ct3980, 3990) and AFAIR ct3900 displayed hanging notes with Hexen.
To me, the moral of the story is, Vibras and SB-16 are a sort of sorry gambling. "Try it if you like it".
As for AWE32, they are good for adding Chorus and Reverb to Adlib/FM music in games 😀 That's their real (and only) advantage.
For their MIDI music I personally would not bother. Let Creative Co. choke on their bugs and their ill-gotten money for bad stuff.
How Cloudschatze could be so patient as to browse through -so- many buggy cards and test them all diligently... Jedi training perhaps ^___^
P.S.
As far as I have heard SB-32 budget/value models can -not- do even that one good thing, adding Chorus and Reverb to FM music.
And they all garble MIDI music. 😀 ct3600, ct3620... So the good thing they don't do, and the bad thing they have. 😀
Great job on fooling customers, Creative Co.
P.P.S.
anti-offtopic, the Clones of SB-16 are a -bright- alternative when we have such nasty originals. 😀
Perfection is the key. Fatality is the key. (c)