Reply 40 of 84, by Ace
Deary me, I didn't think this whole thing would blow up into a huge argument. All I wanted to do was to let it be known there is a SUBTLE drop in sound pitch on the YMF289 and any ISA and PCI Yamaha audio chipset as those incorporate YMF289 cores. I'm not trying to IMPOSE which one is better, I'm just a picky bastard who will spot the smallest of differences in anything, especially audio, and I tend to gravitate towards the original design. It's the same thing with the Sega Genesis/MegaDrive, which originally used the YM2612 until Sega changed the FM chip to the YM3438 (the difference is much less subtle in certain circumstances as it's the overall output that sounds different between these two due to their altered DACs).
wrote:He has none.
You want samples? You've got samples!
This also includes some OPL2 samples from the YM3812 on a 1990 revision of the AdLib. Also, the Vibra16 I used is VERY noisy (I was going to use a SoundBlaster Pro 2.0 CT1600, but decided not to because of its extremely heavy low-pass filter that the SoundBlaster 16s, YMF719 and AdLib don't have, which makes the sound much more muffled - it's my sound card of choice for DOS, but for consistency's sake, I left it out of this set of samples).
I will note that out of the games I sampled, Doom seems to make the lower sound pitch virtually impossible to hear. I can definitely hear it in X-Wing and a bit in TIE Fighter and Test Drive III, though it does seem some notes are more noticeably lower pitched than others. Depending on how sensitive your ears are, the difference may be so small, you can't even hear it.
Again, I just want to let the sound pitch difference be known. It's still genuine OPL3 (with a slightly lower sound pitch, but it's still genuine OPL3), and I will still recommend Yamaha YMF7xx cards as alternatives to a SoundBlaster, but for those who are INCREDIBLY anal like I am about even the most minute differences (minus low/high-pass filtering, that's personal preference - I prefer muffled FM Synthesis, which is why I like the SoundBlaster Pro 2.0's FM output over the SoundBlaster 16), I feel they should know about this so they can get a card with a YMF262 or CT1747. For those who are not as picky, by all means, get a card with a discrete YMF289 or an ASIC implementation of the YMF289 core.
Creator of The Many Sounds of:, a collection of various DOS games played using different sound cards.