Curious quality issue with AWE64 Gold + Impulse Tracker \ VOGONS

Curious quality issue with AWE64 Gold + Impulse Tracker

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First post, by habys

Posted on 2024-06-08, 20:01

habys Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 4
Joined: 2018-03-26, 05:35

Impulse Tracker sounds garbled -- playable but tempo is too slow and the sound is corrupted. A work around is to set the output to mono within Impulse Tracker. I don't have an issue with Scream Tracker, Open Cubic Player, or any games. Anyone experienced this or anything like it?

I've really only tried removing various parts of my startup to make sure they aren't causing troubles, but to no avail.

Thanks for any suggestions.

system

1PII 450MHz
2Video: Number Nine Imagine 128
3IDE: XT-IDE v1.1.5
4PSU: Seasonic Snow Silent AT
5Extended Memory: 393216K
6OS: MS-DOS 6.22

autoexec.bat

1@ECHO OFF
2CTTY NUL
3C:\CMD\EMM386.EXE AUTO
4SET SOUND=C:\SB16
5SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6
6SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E MODE:0
7SET CTCM=C:\CTCM
8SET TEMP=C:\TMP
9SET TMP=C:\TMP
10SET COPYCMD=/Y
11SET MTCPCFG=C:\MTCP.CFG
12
13C:\SB16\DIAGNOSE /S
14C:\SB16\AWEUTIL /S
15C:\SB16\MIXERSET /P /Q
16C:\CTCM\CTCU /S 
17LH C:\SDD\UNIVBE.EXE
18
19LH C:\CMD\CTMOUSE.EXE /P /B
20LH /L:0;2,45456 /S C:\DOS\SMARTDRV.EXE /X
21LH C:\DOS\SMARTDRV.EXE 8192 16 A+ B- C+ D+ E+ F+ /N /E:32768
22LH C:\CMD\ZENO\ZENO174.EXE /Q
23LH C:\CMD\DOSKEY
24
25PROMPT $p$g
26PATH C:\VIM73;C:\DOS;C:\CMD;C:\EXT
27LH APPEND C:\EXT
28MODE CON: RATE=32 DELAY=1
29CTTY CON

config.sys

1SWITCHES=/F
2
3DEVICE=C:\CTCM\CTCM.EXE
4DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS /NUMHANDLES=128 /TESTMEM:OFF /Q
5DEVICE=C:\CMD\EMM386.EXE X=B800-C7FF I=B000-B7FF RAM A=64 H=128 D=256 AUTO NOTR
6
7DEVICE=C:\CMD\DOSMAX\DOSMAX.EXE N+ P- R- U02 U08 U09 U0A U0B U0C U0D U0E U70 U72 U73 U74 U76 U77
8
9DOS=HIGH,UMB
10BUFFERS=11,0
11LASTDRIVE=H
12FCBS=1,0
13STACKS=0,0
14DEVICEHIGH /L:1,12048 =C:\DOS\SETVER.EXE
15DEVICEHIGH /L:1 C:\CMD\NANSI.SYS /X
16FILES=40

Reply 1 of 2, by habys

Posted on 2024-06-08, 21:39

habys Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 4
Joined: 2018-03-26, 05:35

So after some experimentation, I noticed the card is normally detected as "Soundblaster 16"

starting with this driver:
/sITAWE32.DRV

I'm able to fix the sound quality. That was simple, sorry for the noise..

Reply 2 of 2, by alvaro84

Posted on 2024-06-17, 02:46

alvaro84 Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 440
Joined: 2007-05-24, 05:04
Location: Hungary

Nah, it wasn't noise, the other software you mentioned use the card in SB16 mode and having troubles to do so in Impulse Tracker shows that something is indeed wrong, somewhere in the system.

EMU8000 driver comes with some limitations BTW, like the inability to play notes above 176kHz (2 octaves above the "base" for 44.1kHz samples that many modern modules contain). Also the samples have to fit into the RAM of the AWE Gold and with AWE it sometimes needs more memory (4 times as much in corner cases) than with GUS or Interwave that support 8-bit and pingpong looped samples.

With that 4MiB you're covered for everything a GUS Classic can contain in its 1MiB though, even in the worst case scenario where each and every sample is 8-bit and a full length pingpong loop (and they can fit nicely in the GF1's 256k banks leaving no wasted space) ... which is not typical to say the least.

Shame on us, doomed from the start
May God have mercy on our dirty little hearts

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