VOGONS


Reply 240 of 1060, by Boohyaka

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Have finally been able to play a bit more with the Orpheus yesterday - the sound quality is nothing short of spectacular and probably the lowest noise floor of any card I tried. Ace job keropi and Marmes 😀

Reply 241 of 1060, by keropi

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

thanks for the kind words and support Boohyaka!
I am glad you can finally enjoy it!

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

Reply 242 of 1060, by Lennart

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Received my Orpheus card in the mail today. Such a pretty looking card! Looking forward to putting it through its paces soon 😁 I'm especially curious to find out how it compares to some of my other cards, like the Turtle Beach Tropez Plus.

Btw, what is the purpose of the header/jumper labelled "PCS" near the MIDI Out connector? Is this an input or output for a PC speaker perhaps? Also wondering what the jumper labelled "P" does in the IRQ jumper block.

Reply 243 of 1060, by carlostex

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
Lennart wrote on 2020-10-19, 18:51:

Received my Orpheus card in the mail today. Such a pretty looking card! Looking forward to putting it through its paces soon 😁 I'm especially curious to find out how it compares to some of my other cards, like the Turtle Beach Tropez Plus.

Btw, what is the purpose of the header/jumper labelled "PCS" near the MIDI Out connector? Is this an input or output for a PC speaker perhaps? Also wondering what the jumper labelled "P" does in the IRQ jumper block.

PCS: PC Speaker input

P jumper on: 330h for Intelligent MPU
P jumper off:300h for Intelligent MPU

Reply 244 of 1060, by Lennart

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
carlostex wrote on 2020-10-19, 19:18:

PCS: PC Speaker input

P jumper on: 330h for Intelligent MPU
P jumper off:300h for Intelligent MPU

Great, thanks for the information! 👍

Reply 245 of 1060, by ReeseRiverson

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

I'm actually looking forward to the Orpheus Soundcard when I can get my hands on one. I've already told keropi how I liked the fact it offers S/PDIF output.

Great work on putting this together, guys! I'm thrilled to see such dedication put into these kind of projects for our retro computing hobbies!

Reply 248 of 1060, by darry

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

I just received my Orpheus yesterday (very happy and grateful) and will be testing it later today. I was looking at the docs page and have 3 related questions.

Which mixer input is the Wavetable header connected to ("line" or "CD" or something else not shown in the UniSound example) ?

If it is not "line" or "CD" is it controllable with UniSound ?

If it is "line" or "CD" does having a waveblaster daughterboard installed preclude the use of the corresponding external line input or CD input header ?

Reply 249 of 1060, by keropi

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Orpheus is like other cards in that regard, meaning OPL+ Wavetable are tied to the same mixer "channel/setting" (original Crystal mixer names it "Synth" , Creative names it "MIDI" and so on) meaning it's the /VFxx option in UniSound ...
LINE-IN and CD-IN are completely different mixer channels

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

Reply 250 of 1060, by darry

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
keropi wrote on 2020-10-27, 09:53:

Orpheus is like other cards in that regard, meaning OPL+ Wavetable are tied to the same mixer "channel/setting" (original Crystal mixer names it "Synth" , Creative names it "MIDI" and so on) meaning it's the /VFxx option in UniSound ...
LINE-IN and CD-IN are completely different mixer channels

Thank you very much for the information . The only card that I have recently (less than 15 years ago!) used a waveblaster daughtercard on is an Audiotrix 3D/XG which is wired in a bit of a special way, so I guess had forgotten how it typically work .

A last (I hope) question, if I may .

I see that the Orpheus uses 2 DMA channels . I imagine that the first one is used for SB or WSS playback and that the second one is used for WSS recording . Is my assumption correct ?

Reply 251 of 1060, by appiah4

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

I believe the second DMA (High DMA) is for full duplex operation regardless of standard.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 252 of 1060, by keropi

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

yes exactly, LOW and HIGH DMA like a SB16 for example, for playback/recording full duplex operation
not needed for gaming

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

Reply 255 of 1060, by keropi

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
Spazilton wrote on 2020-10-27, 22:13:

Still waiting on mine, haven’t got any tracking or shipment info yet.

you should have an email from marmes about tracking number since yesterday

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

Reply 256 of 1060, by darry

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

I did some preliminary tests on my new Orpheus (without PC-MIDI, but with a DreamBlaster X2) and I love it !

- Analogue out is nice and clean (subjectively better than my Audiotrix 3D/XG , though I don't think that I will bother with a quantative comparison) .
- External OPL3 sounds great .
- Everything works great in DOS (SB Pro and WSS)
- Digital out sounds great with 2 possible caveats (see below)
- I was able to get sound working under Windows 98 SE, but it took a bit of fiddling (see below)

Questions/caveats/workarounds (may be specific to my setup)

- I am using Windows 98 SE and the drivers provided on http://orpheus-soundcard.eu/ do not want to install . I get 2 error messages of which the first complains about cwdfm.drv not being compatible with one of the vxd files and second one complains about another drv file not being compatible with on of the vxd files (if useful, I should be able to provide exact error messages once my backup finishes) . This Orpheus specific driver looks like it is based on the reference pv2860.zip driver set, so I tried to install that instead and it works fine for me, AFAICT (the only change I made is a registry key to enable digital output). I als0 tried the driver included with Windows 98 SE and iusw301r.zip (which is a reference WDM driver) but both of those make my Windows 98 SE setup extremely unstable . I have read somewhere that mixing WDM and VXD audio drivers on the same system is not recommended. Since I also have the AWE64 VXD driver loaded on my system, that might explain the instability .

- When using digital output under DOS, the mixer settings in UniSound for WAVE and MIDI seem to have no effect . I do not know if this is expected or not . When using digital out with the pv2860.zip driver under Windows 98SE, the master mixer output has no effect and the SRS slider controls synth volume (the synth mute checkbox does work, however, AFAICR), among other oddities . I imagine that this due to me not using the Orpheus specific drivers .

- The digital out sounds great, as mentioned before, except for the aforementioned mixer behaviour and one other oddity . The DreamBlaster X2, when playing through the Orpheus digital out actually has more audible noise than when playing through the Orpheus analogue out . To be clear, I do need to apply a high degree of gain on my headphone output to perceive a difference. The noise, which is present even when nothing is playing and muting the synth mixer input eliminates it (all other analogue inputs are already muted). Now, this may just be a false impression due to me not having accurately matched analogue levels to that the digital ones on my mixer (VX-880EX in lossless mode), but it may be due to the CX4237B ADC being noisier than expected . I do not intend to use the Orpheus' digital out anyway as the analogue out is great, and I can easily record externally using the VS-880EX (or from the VS-880EX's out) but I thought that it might be worth mentioning .

EDIT: See my next post in this thread which corrects erroneous assumptions and adds extra precision .

That all being said, my main use case for the Orpheus is under DOS, so I do not mind some quirkiness under Windows . I am, however, curious by nature and a bit of a perfectionist at times when playing with hardware, but I am no expert in audio matters, so I apologize if I have misunderstood something or am simply doing it wrong .

Thanks again for all the hard work put into the Orpheus. I feel extremely lucky to have been able to purchase one and will put it to good use .

Last edited by darry on 2020-10-30, 01:29. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 257 of 1060, by static-

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
darry wrote on 2020-10-29, 01:58:
I did some preliminary tests on my new Orpheus (without PC-MIDI, but with a DreamBlaster X2) and I love it ! […]
Show full quote

I did some preliminary tests on my new Orpheus (without PC-MIDI, but with a DreamBlaster X2) and I love it !

- Analogue out is nice and clean (subjectively better than my Audiotrix 3D/XG , though I don't think that I will bother with a quantative comparison) .
- External OPL3 sounds great .
- Everything works great in DOS (SB Pro and WSS)
- Digital out sounds great with 2 possible caveats (see below)
- I was able to get sound working under Windows 98 SE, but it took a bit of fiddling (see below)

Questions/caveats/workarounds (may be specific to my setup)

- I am using Windows 98 SE and the drivers provided on http://orpheus-soundcard.eu/ do not want to install . I get 2 error messages of which the first complains about cwdfm.drv not being compatible with one of the vxd files and second one complains about another drv file not being compatible with on of the vxd files (if useful, I should be able to provide exact error messages once my backup finishes) . This Orpheus specific driver looks like it is based on the reference pv2860.zip driver set, so I tried to install that instead and it works fine for me, AFAICT (the only change I made is a registry key to enable digital output). I als0 tried the driver included with Windows 98 SE and iusw301r.zip (which is a reference WDM driver) but both of those make my Windows 98 SE setup extremely unstable . I have read somewhere that mixing WDM and VXD audio drivers on the same system is not recommended. Since I also have the AWE64 VXD driver loaded on my system, that might explain the instability .

- When using digital output under DOS, the mixer settings in UniSound for WAVE and MIDI seem to have no effect . I do not know if this is expected or not . When using digital out with the pv2860.zip driver under Windows 98SE, the master mixer output has no effect and the SRS slider controls synth volume (the synth mute checkbox does work, however, AFAICR), among other oddities . I imagine that this due to me not using the Orpheus specific drivers .

- The digital out sounds great, as mentioned before, except for the aforementioned mixer behaviour and one other oddity . The DreamBlaster X2, when playing through the Orpheus digital out actually has more audible noise than when playing through the Orpheus analogue out . To be clear, I do need to apply a high degree of gain on my headphone output to perceive a difference. The noise, which is present even when nothing is playing and muting the synth mixer input eliminates it (all other analogue inputs are already muted). Now, this may just be a false impression due to me not having accurately matched analogue levels to that the digital ones on my mixer (VX-880EX in lossless mode), but it may be due to the CX4237B ADC being noisier than expected . I do not intend to use the Orpheus' digital out anyway as the analogue out is great, and I can easily record externally using the VS-880EX (or from the VS-880EX's out) but I thought that it might be worth mentioning .

That all being said, my main use case for the Orpheus is under DOS, so I do not mind some quirkiness under Windows . I am, however, curious by nature and a bit of a perfectionist at times when playing with hardware, but I am no expert in audio matters, so I apologize if I have misunderstood something or am simply doing it wrong .

Thanks again for all the hard work put into the Orpheus. I feel extremely lucky to have been able to purchase one and will put it to good use .

Appreciate you taking the time to post your experiences! Thank you. I just received my card and can't wait to try it out.

Reply 258 of 1060, by Marmes

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
darry wrote on 2020-10-29, 01:58:
I did some preliminary tests on my new Orpheus (without PC-MIDI, but with a DreamBlaster X2) and I love it ! […]
Show full quote

I did some preliminary tests on my new Orpheus (without PC-MIDI, but with a DreamBlaster X2) and I love it !

- Analogue out is nice and clean (subjectively better than my Audiotrix 3D/XG , though I don't think that I will bother with a quantative comparison) .
- External OPL3 sounds great .
- Everything works great in DOS (SB Pro and WSS)
- Digital out sounds great with 2 possible caveats (see below)
- I was able to get sound working under Windows 98 SE, but it took a bit of fiddling (see below)

Questions/caveats/workarounds (may be specific to my setup)

- I am using Windows 98 SE and the drivers provided on http://orpheus-soundcard.eu/ do not want to install . I get 2 error messages of which the first complains about cwdfm.drv not being compatible with one of the vxd files and second one complains about another drv file not being compatible with on of the vxd files (if useful, I should be able to provide exact error messages once my backup finishes) . This Orpheus specific driver looks like it is based on the reference pv2860.zip driver set, so I tried to install that instead and it works fine for me, AFAICT (the only change I made is a registry key to enable digital output). I als0 tried the driver included with Windows 98 SE and iusw301r.zip (which is a reference WDM driver) but both of those make my Windows 98 SE setup extremely unstable . I have read somewhere that mixing WDM and VXD audio drivers on the same system is not recommended. Since I also have the AWE64 VXD driver loaded on my system, that might explain the instability .

- When using digital output under DOS, the mixer settings in UniSound for WAVE and MIDI seem to have no effect . I do not know if this is expected or not . When using digital out with the pv2860.zip driver under Windows 98SE, the master mixer output has no effect and the SRS slider controls synth volume (the synth mute checkbox does work, however, AFAICR), among other oddities . I imagine that this due to me not using the Orpheus specific drivers .

- The digital out sounds great, as mentioned before, except for the aforementioned mixer behaviour and one other oddity . The DreamBlaster X2, when playing through the Orpheus digital out actually has more audible noise than when playing through the Orpheus analogue out . To be clear, I do need to apply a high degree of gain on my headphone output to perceive a difference. The noise, which is present even when nothing is playing and muting the synth mixer input eliminates it (all other analogue inputs are already muted). Now, this may just be a false impression due to me not having accurately matched analogue levels to that the digital ones on my mixer (VX-880EX in lossless mode), but it may be due to the CX4237B ADC being noisier than expected . I do not intend to use the Orpheus' digital out anyway as the analogue out is great, and I can easily record externally using the VS-880EX (or from the VS-880EX's out) but I thought that it might be worth mentioning .

That all being said, my main use case for the Orpheus is under DOS, so I do not mind some quirkiness under Windows . I am, however, curious by nature and a bit of a perfectionist at times when playing with hardware, but I am no expert in audio matters, so I apologize if I have misunderstood something or am simply doing it wrong .

Thanks again for all the hard work put into the Orpheus. I feel extremely lucky to have been able to purchase one and will put it to good use .

As always , thanks for your feedback, it's important to us. We will analyze these matters and try to correct them.
About windows. It works the way it works. Drivers are the latest we could find for it. Audio routing is like a normal CS4237 card in terms of audio. The only thing that still doesn't work is the Yamaha OPL , that W98 Driver insists in using Crystal FM, but in windows, it's only used in midi if you have no WT card on header. Also, for SPDIF output you need to have SRS activated, if you don't want to use it, just set it to 0.
More news will come soon 😀
Thanks for your support!

Reply 259 of 1060, by keropi

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

weird about win9x driver not wanting to install - I use the same
I will check with a fresh 98SE installation over the weekend
thanks for the input darry really appreciated!

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