Honestly all of those cards should be pretty decent, in fact you will probably prefer the Yamaha cards over any Soundblaster card. EDIT: Atrend ATC-6631 with YMF715B-S chipset Found this thread on here, first google result searching for YAMAHA ATC-6631.

I think ESS cards are easier to work with under DOS — in fact, their configuration/drivers are dead simple. Yamaha cards have the benefit of "true OPL3", but you want to use the card for MIDI, so that shouldn't matter.

Been discussed before, but ESS is a bit more compatible wrt PCM while Yamaha cards are slightly better for OPL3. They're all fine chipsets.

thanks for your replies 😀 i decided to go with ESS card which should arrive today, internet says it has great compatibility in DOS, will verify that and go with Yamaha eventually 😁

Keep in mind, however, that all these cards will only do SB Pro 2.0. You'll lose SB16 compatibility.

i know that 🙁
Are there any SB16 compatible cards that have good DOS support, possibly OPL3 or compatible, mpu-401 interface and no hanging note bug?

I've got also other concerns now after weekend playing with my current DOS build, i feel my system is greatly unstable especially throwing later (96'ish) games at it like Nascar 2, Z, HOMM and HOMM2. It would freeze occasionally, especially in Z - every after few seconds after launch. Already found my cmos battery is dead, which is kinda quirky on my motherboard - dallas ds12887. Losing time settings after each reboot is not a problem here, however this rtc chip also contains NVRAM holding cmos settings. Right now i can't change anything in BIOS, settings wont save, after each reboot they go back to their previous state 🙁

heretic wrote:

i know that 🙁
Are there any SB16 compatible cards that have good DOS support, possibly OPL3 or compatible, mpu-401 interface and no hanging note bug?

Yes, ALS100(+) for example. Stay away from ALS120 cards however, as those no longer use real/unlicenced OPL3 but a rather bad clone.

Yamaha cards have the benefit of "true OPL3"

Some ESS ES688F cards have true OPL3.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Some ESS ES688F cards have true OPL3.

But no SB16 compatibility either.

These are worth considering: Sound Blaster 16 Clones

Not a real OPL3 but a decent clone, and the SB16 compatibility works pretty well. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the software too I recall.

Unfortunately can't get one of these now but i'll give a try Yamaha card now. ESS 1688F gave me hell, its much more noisy than SB16, in some games Soundblaster driver doesnt even work for sound effects (ie. Winter Challenge), Adlib driver gives turbo output - sound is played so fast only a hiss or zzz noise comes out of speakers. The Yamaha card i found has YMS-719E chip, however can't tell what card model it is actually, it looks like this:

heretic wrote:

ESS 1688F gave me hell, its much more noisy than SB16, in some games Soundblaster driver doesnt even work for sound effects (ie. Winter Challenge)

Yep. Had similar issues with a plain old ESS688, I recall. Some games just would not recognize the SB portion of it, or recognize it intermittently.

For the hanging notes bug Sound Blaster models you might want to consider this source (google translate-link):
https://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de?s … r-modellnummern

Did you also take Aztech sound cards into account for your decision?

Did you also take Aztech sound cards into account for your decision?

I picked only those cards available locally with affordable price (around $10). At the time i last checked there were no Aztech cards.
But i must report update on this topic, swapped the ESS 1688F for some OEM Yamaha YMF719E card, which is almost identical to Yamaha Audician 32 (its missing cd-rom interface).
This card sounds superb! Installation from Audician CD is as straightforward as it can be, i only had to move jumpers to disable onboard amplifier and disable all the 3d sound effects. Output is crystal clear + WSS compatibility makes it even more awesome! Obviously MPU-401 isnt bugged to hell like SB16: no hanging notes problem, no stuttering in build engine games and more importantly, MPU-401 doesn't hang my computer in Ecstatica 🤣

I used to be crazy about "True OPL3" because most people into retro computing are..

Then I sampled ESFM next to "True OPL3" and believe me it mostly sounds the same, and when it sounds different it sounds better.

So my vote is for the ES1688F. And I am really curious about the bugs you encountered as my experience with the ESS chipsets have always been flawless. You may have been using a wrong driver?

That said, the YMF-719 is also a great chip, if you don't mind dealing with its quirky dos drivers and mixer.

The ESS 1688F i used was PnP so it only needed ESSCFG to initialize, there were no drivers for it. MPU-401 worked well with this card, however it was really very noisy, plus in some older games Soundblaster driver wasnt working at all.
After a day of playing with the Yamaha card im really impressed, so believe me there is difference 😀

if you don't mind dealing with its quirky dos drivers and mixer

So far the opl3sax mixer works flawlessly and range of options is really great.

heretic wrote:

however it was really very noisy

Note that the ES1688F is only a sound chip, not a sound card. Noise comes from the sound card design and not from the chip. A very cheap, badly designed sound card with ES1688F might be noisy, a good one may not.

derSammler wrote:

heretic wrote:

however it was really very noisy

Note that the ES1688F is only a sound chip, not a sound card. Noise comes from the sound card design and not from the chip. A very cheap, badly designed sound card with ES1688F might be noisy, a good one may not.

Yeah, this. Sounds like the card OP had either had really bad amplification or filtering or both.

Yes, im not saying every ESS 1688F chip sounds the same, im referring to the exact card i was using.