First post, by Farfolomew
- Rank
- Newbie
Ok, so I just found out my Sound Blaster Live! does a pretty good job in DOS with General Midi and nice, clean, noiseless digital sound effects. I found this out after playing around with my AWE64 and getting nowhere with the PoS AWEUTIL program. I'll agree, the AWE64 sounds pretty good when the games support it, but I do play some older games like Privateer that do not, so I need General Midi support.
Here's my problem though: my Sound Blaster Live! will work great, but about 5-10 minutes into playing, the digital sounds turn to screeching, and I have to restart the computer to fix it. The GM still works fine though. I'm not done playing around with certain settings, but it keeps happening consistently, so i'm not sure what's up. Also, in Privateer2 (a "newer" protected-mode DOS game) the GM emulation of the SBLive has some weird problems that are hard to describe, but make it hard to enjoy the game.
So what this all boils down to is trying to find a nice and quiet sound card that will work with just about all 1994 and later games and offers good General Midi support.
I've narrowed it down to the Ensoniq AudioPCI and it's software GM synth or a Vortex2 with a DB60XG clone daughterboard. Most of the games I play will support the AudioPCI natively, so the digital sound effects should sound great, no (and in 16-bit)? But i'm unsure of the GM quality of the AudioPCI, especially if it's identical to my SBLive. It may give me the same strange problems i'm having now with the SBLive.
Ideally, the Vortex2+DB60XG would be better I suppose, but I also have to look at $. I don't want to spend a lot, and the AudioPCI would only cost around $15, where the DB60XG clone would cost $40.
Any help on the matter would be appreciated! Thanks.