jheronimus wrote:Hi, everyone […]
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Hi, everyone
Tomorrow I'm going to get an AOpen AP5T motherboard and while I'm at it, I have a chance to pick a ESS sound card. I have no experience with those and not even sure if they have any value, given that I already have some soundblasters, and two cards with Yamaha chip. Here are two cards:
- AudioDrive ES1868F
- Solo-1 ES1938S
I can also get a Cirrus Logic Crystal CX4237B-XQ3.
Is there anything these cards can do that an AWE64/Vibra16 can't?
BTW, can I have two sound cards in my system at the same moment? Say, an AWE64 and a MediaMagic ISP-16 with AdLib support.
Thanks!
If you have an ISA slot available, go with the ES1868F. It has good 8-bit Sound Blaster compatibility and a very nice FM Synth (ESFM). The Solo-1 is very much the same, but in PCI form. Don't bother with the Crystal card, DOS compatibility is good, but the FM synth is quite bad.
The benefit of an AWE64 would be wavetable synthesis, and 16-bit Sound Blaster Support in DOS. The FM Synth is okay, but uses CQM, a Yamaha OPL3 clone.
As for the Vibra 16, it depends on which model you're referring to, there were quite a few variations. But again, it has the benefit of 16-bit Digital Audio in DOS games which support it.
My Retro Gaming PC:
Pentium III 450MHz Katmai Slot 1
Transcend 256MB PC133
Gigabyte GA-6BXC
MSI Geforce 2 MX400 AGP
Ensoniq ES1371 PCI
Sound Blaster AWE64 ISA