VOGONS


Reply 120 of 136, by keropi

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yes it's like you glued a soundcard and latest pcmidi together
- if pcmidi part is populated them CS4237 mpu is disabled , pcmidi controls wt header and all midi i/o
- if pcmidi is not present then CS4237 mpu is enabled and controls wt header and midi i/o

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 121 of 136, by bjwil1991

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Huh. That is really interesting.

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Reply 122 of 136, by mattrock1988

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Hi keropi!

I love the new update you've shown here of your sound card. Let me know if you are willing to issue review samples once you have the card fully finalized as well as a complete driver pack. I'd like to do a review of the card for a YouTube channel I'm thinking of starting.

Retro PC: Intel Pentium III @ 1 GHz, Intel SE440BX-2, 32 GB IDE DOM, 384 MB SDRAM, DVD-ROM, 1.44 MB floppy, Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti 4600 AGP, Creative SoundBlaster AWE64 Gold, Aureal Vortex 2
I only rely on 86box these days. My Pentium 3 PC died. 🙁

Reply 123 of 136, by SirNickity

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Hey, just curious -- what's the fascination with SPDIF out in DOS? The way I see it, it's technically not a very good option. Lots of weird sample rates that external SPDIF receivers won't accept without a sample-rate converter on the card. And since the SRCs weren't very good back then, is that really an improvement? Especially when you add analog-in. Now you've got bad SRC and analog noise in your pristine digital output. 😉 May as well just stick to analog out, no?

Reply 124 of 136, by Tiido

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SRC is the main reason why I think SPDIF is a can of worms. It is not trivial to do decent SRC and especially not when you have to support a wide variety of sample rates.

T-04YBSC, a new YMF71x based sound card & Official VOGONS thread about it
Newly made 4MB 60ns 30pin SIMMs ~
mida sa loed ? nagunii aru ei saa 😜

Reply 126 of 136, by keropi

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Well for people that wanted spdif under DOS now there is a card that does that. If you don't want any analog sources mixed then just mute them.
Is this card for everyone or the next sound messiah? nope 🤣 but I hope some people will like it and use it along with all the limitations and low-quality source material that comes with the DOS gaming world. ... and in the end of the day the analog side of it is as good as we could make it with marmes so you are not limited to spdif-only if the card interests you 😀

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 127 of 136, by SirNickity

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Ah, don't mind me, guys - this is not a criticism for new sound hardware. That's always welcome -- even if just because it's fun to build something. I was just curious what made DOS-era cards with SPDIF I/O so appealing, since all of the methods the original hardware designers would have used at least partially negate the advantages of a 100% digital signal path.

Reply 128 of 136, by keropi

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no no those were valid concerns and I just replied - I know all that is posted here is with good nature 😀
in the end it's all about options... you want spdif? There is a card . You want great YMF card? There is a card. You want a sb1.5 replica? There is one too. You want sb core ported to atmega? Well there is one too! 🤣 🤣 🤣

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 129 of 136, by hard1k

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What we still need is a One Card to rule them all...

Fortex, the A3D & XG/OPL3 accelerator (Vortex 2 + YMF744 combo sound card)
AWE64 Legacy
Please have a look at my wishlist (hosted on Amibay)

Reply 130 of 136, by keropi

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there is no such thing , doubt it will exist anytime soon
"rule all" what does it mean? for me it's a 100% sbpro + midi interface, for the next person it's sb16 and cms and weird obsure format, the next one wants spdif, another person wants 1GB of sample memory... 🤣 🤣 🤣 you see where I am going with this

unless someone makes an fpga soundcard that mimics a bazillion formats 🤣 but development time would be monstrous not to mention it will go unrewarded compared to the effort spent

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 131 of 136, by 640K!enough

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keropi wrote:

but development time would be monstrous not to mention it will go unrewarded compared to the effort spent

That, I think, is the perfect summary of such an endeavour. You can also bet that someone would still find something to complain about. We have decades of Apple versus PC, GUS versus AWE, etc. as evidence; people like to voice their opinions and complaints and argue about what is "better". I don't think we'll ever change.

Reply 132 of 136, by Tiido

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A card that approaches ultimate for many people is in my todo list 🤣. The things I'm doing now pave way to it, it is definitely a lot of work...

T-04YBSC, a new YMF71x based sound card & Official VOGONS thread about it
Newly made 4MB 60ns 30pin SIMMs ~
mida sa loed ? nagunii aru ei saa 😜

Reply 133 of 136, by ruthan

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For me much bigger deal that some piece of HW, ISA / LPT soundcards, is compatibility and software..

Im not sound expert but integrated Realtek HDs killed majority of external sound cards.. so probably their sound capabilities are good enough, and some Dos media players and Q2DOS are able to make them working in DOS.. so in theory is possible to write some TSR SB / Adlib emulation layer for them, 90% of people have them and they dont need to buy or wait for any new piece of HW.

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 134 of 136, by Tiido

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As far as emulation goes I will just whip up DOSBOX or VDMSOUND instead, I don't see a whole lot of point trying to do it in DOS where the point for me is letting hardware do it all.

T-04YBSC, a new YMF71x based sound card & Official VOGONS thread about it
Newly made 4MB 60ns 30pin SIMMs ~
mida sa loed ? nagunii aru ei saa 😜

Reply 135 of 136, by 640K!enough

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ruthan wrote:

Im not sound expert but integrated Realtek HDs killed majority of external sound cards.. so probably their sound capabilities are good enough

Frankly, integrated audio isn't the only thing that "killed" the sound card industry. Creative trying to strong-arm/weasel everyone else out of the market didn't help, then they sat around trying to over-charge for mediocre hardware without innovating. Given that on-board audio was becoming ubiquitous, why would people bother paying Creative prices for hardware that never delivers on its promises?

Nonetheless, I wouldn't necessarily say that the sound capabilities are "good enough". My old UltraSound still produces more pleasant sound than a number of the on-board audio implementations I have. I have never encountered one that didn't have some level of noise in the signal or audibly poor frequency response. It really depends on the manufacturer doing a decent job on the audio section, and they (somewhat justifiably) tend to focus on other aspects of the motherboard.

In that respect, I am in full agreement with Tiido. For real DOS, quality hardware is always the way to go. While emulation and TSRs tend to work sometimes, they are never my preferred solution, so I will read any development/progress reports for such projects with great interest, even though I can't always afford the end product.