a) I am trying to understand what is better? 718 or 719 ? what are the differences between both as the pcb seems to be the same?
This lists at least some of the differences, main one seems to be 718 has OPL3-SA2 which lacks power management vs 719'sOPL3-SA3
https://dosdays.co.uk/topics/retro_review_aud … 32_plus_pt1.php

b) why one comes with 2 crystals and the other with just 1 crystal?
again, from the dosdays website seems like the missing crystal was common.
"This tells me that some of these YMF718 cards that do not have the lower crystal will not support the higher 48 kHz frequency."

c) I have seen some topics at vogons where there are diagrams on how to add the IDE pins to the card that does not come with IDE from factory by adding some components, is that worth it?
Only if you want to attach a CD drive to the soundcards rather then the motherboards IDE connector. Not the best setup but somewhat typical on 486 and earlier computers that only had 1 IDE channel.

d) I have also seen topics at vogons on how to increase the sound quality of the cards by adding some capacitors near the wavetable header, that might be a must do mod right?
Full respect for people that do but I don't have the time or skill to do this. and truth is dos sound is such low quality and compressed it's never going to be CD qualility.

please share your thoughts
I doubt you'll notice much difference between the 2. I'd happily use either in a build

Well said chinny22. Dosdays has a very good write up !
I have a Atrend ATC-6631 (ymf719e) in one my 486dx2-66 computers, works very well for DOS and Win3.1 stuff.
If they were both same price would get the 719 version over a 718 ... just because 😀

Horun wrote on 2025-05-05, 01:57:

Well said chinny22. Dosdays has a very good write up !
I have a Atrend ATC-6631 (ymf719e) in one my 486dx2-66 computers, works very well for DOS and Win3.1 stuff.
If they were both same price would get the 719 version over a 718 ... just because 😀

... because of the double can (48kHz support = full Windows WSS spec) more than anything else. I'd go for that and 718 over 719 with a single one any day - but here you don't have to choose 😀

There's a wikipedia page on the YMF7** cards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_YMF7xx

"YMF715+ (OPL3-SA3): Based on OPL3-SA2, the OPL3-SA3 family adds 3D audio support via DirectSound3D and QSound."