Reply 200 of 215, by Joseph_Joestar
- Rank
- l33t
I finally got a YMF 719E-S card so I thought I'd share some of my experiences. I'm currently using the official SETUPSA.EXE from the latest Win9x driver archive (95v2343.exe) and it works well enough for my needs. As per the instructions posted by James-F, I've adjusted the SB mixer settings, disabled the 3D/bass/treble stuff and lowered the WSS master volume to 12.
First thing I noticed was that the card kept producing loud hissing noises, even with the jumper in the Line Out position and using a (known good) set of powered speakers. Turns out the initial mixer settings (set by the installer) for the WSS WAVE VOL L/R sliders were way too high. They were originally at 60 (!) and lowering them to 12 got rid of the hiss, without adversely affecting PCM volume levels.
I also realized that CD audio was too quiet in WSS mode, so I had to raise the WSS AUX1 L/R sliders to about 28 to fix that. The FM synth volume was also slightly quieter than the PCM volume at the default settings, so I had to raise the WSS AUX2 L/R sliders a bit as well.
WSS compatibility seems to be pretty good overall. I had no problems running Sierra games like Gabriel Knight and King's Quest 6 (CD versions) in WSS mode. I did notice that Space Quest 5 needed both WSS and SBPro to use IRQ 7 and DMA 1 in order to work in WSS mode, but that might be an edge case. Miles Sound System games like Heroes of Might and Magic 2 ran fine in WSS mode, as did HMI Sound System games like Descent and Tomb Raider. This is all in pure DOS. Paradoxically, I couldn't get any of these games to work in WSS mode when I ran them from within Win98. 😁
All in all, this seems like an excellent SBPro/WSS card. I may try James-F's low pass filter mod at some point, but I'm not comfortable with (de)soldering SMD components at my current skill level. Lastly, here are a few screenshots of the mixer settings which worked well for me, in case they might be useful for someone else.
P.S.
The "XG Lite" softsynth that is available under Win9x is kinda interesting. If anyone is curious how that sounds, I've uploaded some samples of the YMF719E-S playing General MIDI music in Doom, Duke3D etc. using the softsynth. It's not as good as the DS-XG suite from the later PCI Yamaha cards, but I think it's still fairly decent for the time.