So, I can finally, nervously introduce a new init tool for Orpheus. To avoid polluting this thread, it is here: ORPHINIT: New Init Software For The Orpheus Sound Card. Please keep your complaints about, and discussions of, the software to that thread, unless it specifically relates to a hardware problem or issue with the board.

amazing news 640K!enough - thanks for making this awesome tool for us!!!!

CarlosTex talks a little about Orpheus and showcases his multi-soundcard setup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk6nyrX4DK8&f … =youtu.be&t=239
some sound rarities in there...!

I just wanted to chime in that, having played with it for a few weeks, I really love the Orpheus. The extra granular control that Orphinit allows in DOS essentially makes it perfect .

It is impressive to see how good a chip the CX4237B can be when built into a well designed (thank you again, marmes and keropi) card and when initialized optimally (thank you again, 640K!enough).

Unfortunately, the Windows drivers are far from perfect, but that is Crystal Semiconductor/Cirrus Logic's fault . See Re: ORPHINIT: New Init Software For The Orpheus Sound Card
Luckily, the main use case for the card is DOS and it really shines .

I've FINALLY gotten some time with the card tonight and oh man - I'm blown away.

I also agree that ORPHINIT makes things just so straightforward; I went for everything straight away and said give me the PCMIDI (with a Yucatan FX attached), the real OPL3, and you know what? Output it all over SP/DIF 😀

The card is running through my receiver and out some meaty speakers..and it just sounds fantastic. Well done all involved.

I have only been messing with the card for about an hour, but the one problem I'm having is with digital sound in Tyrian (not that this game isn't problematic normally)..MIDI works as expected however when selecting Sound Blaster audio, what comes out my speakers is a loud consistent buzz alongside a really distorted version of the game's normal audio. The game also supports WSS, but I have not managed to get anything out of that setting yet.

Has anyone had better luck with this game in particular? Everything else is working great.

doogie wrote on 2020-11-13, 04:30:

I have only been messing with the card for about an hour, but the one problem I'm having is with digital sound in Tyrian (not that this game isn't problematic normally)..MIDI works as expected however when selecting Sound Blaster audio, what comes out my speakers is a loud consistent buzz alongside a really distorted version of the game's normal audio. The game also supports WSS, but I have not managed to get anything out of that setting yet.

This is a known issue (reported by keropi) that I forgot to mention in the ORPHINIT thread. There are only two known work-arounds for this problem:

1. Disable digital output. Using analogue line out only allows it to work "normally" in Sound Blaster mode.
2. Set the playback DMA to 0 and use WSS mode. This allows the game to work correctly with or without digital output (solution provided by keropi as well).

It is a strange problem that occurs whenever the hardware necessary for digital output is enabled, and there is no "proper" solution at the moment. I should mention that this is not an ORPHINIT issue; it happens with UNISOUND and CWDINIT with S/PDIF enabled using another one of my (unreleased) tools.

Yes tyrian and tyrian2k behave like that - and it's the same with the Turtle Beach Malibu that is also based on CS4237 and has s/pdif output...
I was really annoyed by it when I discovered it 🤣 but it's just the way it is for now....
on the WIP site I have listed the game under "Known Issues"

thanks all for your kind words !

Pretty cool. If you still need a patched Windows driver I can patch your driver for you.

furan wrote on 2020-11-18, 11:13:

Pretty cool. If you still need a patched Windows driver I can patch your driver for you.

oh this is great if it can happen - what is locked away in 9x driver is that CrystalFM is used and the external OPL3 is ignored
do you think it's something that can be patched in the windows driver?

keropi wrote on 2020-11-18, 11:59:

oh this is great if it can happen - what is locked away in 9x driver is that CrystalFM is used and the external OPL3 is ignored
do you think it's something that can be patched in the windows driver?

Well I took a look at the assembly in CWDAUDIX.VXD. You are right in that it doesn't read the config EEPROM on the card. Luckily there is an easy fix - it doesn't require patching the driver itself, just a change to the .INF file:

At line 442 in cwdaudio.inf, add:
HKR,Config\SNDSYS.DRV,IFMToggle,,0

If it can't find this key it defaults to 1 for this value and enables IFM. For existing installs I need to double check where this goes 😀

Here's what this looks like in the driver:

Hope this works. Enjoy if it does. 😀

thanks furan for looking into it!
sadly this way also does not work... I tried adding the missing key and re-installing 98SE from scratch with the addition in cwdaudio.inf - in both cases IFM was still being used

this is what registry looks like after a fresh install:

Hmm. It should work, at least that is the code in the driver I downloaded from http://orpheus-soundcard.eu/. But maybe it has other code to still enable IFM. 😀

Can you try some additional DWORD values (leave the original one there):
EnableAutoAcquireOPL3 = 0
OPL3FullPowerDown = 0

furan wrote on 2020-11-19, 07:18:

Can you try some additional DWORD values (leave the original one there):
EnableAutoAcquireOPL3 = 0
OPL3FullPowerDown = 0

I just tried with those 2 extra keys, it did not work
doesn't really surprise me 🤣 , with crystal docs many things that should easily work according to them instead required heavy investigation and experimentation to get them going

One more thing to try - change all 3 to a REG_SZ/string type registry value, with "Off" as the value. I misunderstood what the call was doing just after reading the value - they parse it as a string.

furan wrote on 2020-11-19, 13:05:

One more thing to try - change all 3 to a REG_SZ/string type registry value, with "Off" as the value. I misunderstood what the call was doing just after reading the value - they parse it as a string.

I realized that once I found the SOUNDSYS.DRV section in registry and all other settings are strings - so I always used strings for testing
I cannot test atm the "OFF" value as I left my office where the 98SE test system is... I will report later on it!

I tried all the ways.
Still nothing . Maybe there is something else...

yeah maybe those strings are not even obeyed due to a bug in the driver
noone noticed or complained because... well I don't know any other CS4237 card using a real OPL3 and back in 1997 OPL3 was something noone cared about IMHO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9swHDYrB7Cc

New video from RMC

Orpheus I + Dreamblaster X2 - A new ISA Sound Card for Retro PC Gamers - Tech Nibble

I bumped into the RMC video as well - I've been looking for a SB16 compatible card with OPL3 and clean noise. I'm very interested in this card BUT I can't seem to find any solid info on how compatible it is.

I recall Phil's Computer Lab raving about how good Audician 32 was but when I tried it, I ran into countless issues on all three machines I tested it on - huge compatibility issues even with the bigger titles like Duke Nukem 3D where I had to drop back to Sound Blaster Pro and 8bit modes to get stereo or any sound at all so you can understand my scepticism at people claiming this card is great when the biggest draw, high compatibility, is not yet been mentioned. A card can have amazing sound but if half the games don't support it ... well you get my drift.

So has anyone done some thorough testing with this card? Are the typically "difficult" titles working? Could software upgrades improve compatibility or are there hardware limits that will mean some games will never sound right? I think these are important questions to ask.