I switched from Windows ME, to pure DOS 6.22 and made a couple of recordings using the EWS64XL sound card. I initialized the card at the C:\ DOS 6 prompt with this command:

ewsinit.exe F V B gssbk320.94b M default.ttn

This sets up the card for use in pure DOS, and loads in the 4MB .94b sound bank file in to the card's stick of RAM. The default.ttn file is empty, and I'm not sure why this is. There is a default.mix file in the EWS64 folder, which is not empty. If I use this .mix file in the command line above, I get a low MIDI volume output. If I use the empty default.ttn file in the command line, I get a high MIDI volume which distorts the music. Because I could not understand how the .mix file works, I had to use the .ttn file instead. Therefore, the recordings sound distorted, especially Descent.

http://www.mediafire.com/?rjel1aubali2s9u (Doom E1M1)
http://www.mediafire.com/?mtt7jgpaaiya75v (Descent Pilot screen)

I believe it may be possible to use the sound card with a wavetable daughterboard inside pure DOS. It might test this out sometime, but loading in sound bank files in to the card's stick of RAM seems to be more important. I mean, most sound cards have wavetable header pins on them.

ftp://ftp.terratec.de/Audio/EWS/64XL/ for terratec downloads, in cae you hadn't found that.

I think this card cannot do dos sound together with a daughterboard for MDI music. I think silent loon posted about this, but I had my own nugatory experiences too.

Edit: this contains the post I was thinking of:

SC8500 sound card - what does it do?

OK, thanks a lot for the info. Ah yes, it's the SBPro mute bug, I think. I just tried it. I got the wavetable daughterboard working OK in pure DOS 6, but getting that to work makes the SBPro sound effects go completely silent. Tsk! - bloody sound cards, there's always something wrong with 'em!

Edit: Sorry. Got myself tangled up. It's the other way around. The music goes silent.

The SB Pro Mute bug was already solved awhile ago. Just run cs32mix afterwards and its fixed.

You can use a daughterboard in DOS and infact I use a daughterboard (Roland SCB-55) and a MT-32 on MIDI-2 and I have a 32 MB stick attached as wavetable to the Dream part on MIDI-1. Everything works fine.

Check this thread: Re: SC8500 sound card - what does it do?

There is the SB Pro Mute solution explained and some more info about the EWS64XL.
You can use also all of the 94B soundfonts with the EWS64XL.
ewsinit loads only one Soundfont from the commandline while you can load several in Win9x.

Make sure your set routing in the ttm file you load is suitable for dos games.

Thanks very much elianda! 😁 I have got everything working, using these 2 command lines:

ewsinit F V B gssbk320.94b
cs32mix /M=13,13 /W=13,13 /L=13,13 /X=0 /F=13,13 /C=13,13 /I=L

I have some questions, please. 1) If you run Descent (free download demo) sound setup.exe utility, and listen to the 94b GM music, it sounds loud, to the point where it sounds distorted. If you select wavetable DB GM music, it sounds much quieter, and there is no distortion. Looking at the 2 command lines above, I abandoned the use of the M <settings file>, because I didn't understand how it worked, and also, the <settings file .TTN> was reduced to 0 bytes everytime I tried to use it. The <settings file .MIX> remained untouched (its contents were not deleted), but I couldn't get the 94b music volume to be lowered. Is the best way to lower the very loud 94b GM music, to simply reduce the /M master volume value in the cs32mix command line?

2) Is the best pure DOS soundset music bank to use gssbk320.94b? At 4MB, is it the largest valid DOS soundset music bank file?

3) For Windows 9x, can I buy any larger soundset music bank files? I like the idea of using Chorium 28MB .sf2 for my AWE64. Is there a big MB soundset file for the EWS64XL?

4)

elianda wrote:

Make sure your set routing in the ttm file you load is suitable for dos games

What does your ewsinit.exe command line look like, and how do you initialise your EWS64XL card for use in pure DOS?

5) Thanks! 😉

I made 2 more recordings using the EWS64XL in pure DOS, using the 4MB 94b sound bank loaded in to the stick of RAM. I think they sound OK.

http://www.mediafire.com/?t14z4gy4owovzcw (Doom, includes some gun shots etc!)
http://www.mediafire.com/?7gu2giumcdhljg9 (Descent)

Edit: I understand you can use "effects" in DOS. What does this mean? Does it mean things like reverb and chorus? Surround sound, perhaps? If this is true, how can I program the EWS sound card to use these effects, inside pure DOS? Maybe you can only do this inside Windows 9x? Thanks a lot for any help.

Sounds excellent!

One of, if not the best non-Roland synths I heard so far...

elianda wrote:

The SB Pro Mute bug was already solved awhile ago. Just run cs32mix afterwards and its fixed.

Wow, many thanks for that - I obviously missed that thread when it was new, but I recently got an ews64xl to play with so that is great to know!

retro games 100 wrote:

Edit: I understand you can use "effects" in DOS. What does this mean? Does it mean things like reverb and chorus? Surround sound, perhaps? If this is true, how can I program the EWS sound card to use these effects, inside pure DOS? Maybe you can only do this inside Windows 9x? Thanks a lot for any help.

Unfortunately I have not installed the card currently, so this is all from my fading memory...:

If you haven't allready done it, read this carefully:
http://www.studio4all.de/htmle/welcomeewst.html
Especially this part:
http://www.studio4all.de/htmle/main33.html#ews64inst11

What it doesn't say is how to avoid the "SBpro mute bug".
The solution described above is done by routing the digital sound through the codec (crystal) chip, leaving the dream synth aside. So you can't use "effects" in dos when using a daughterboard, because the effects processor is bypassed.

But you can use nearly all effects the dream chip offers as long as you use the onboard wavetable synth. The easiest (or acceptable) way to do this is to open the confusing control / mixer panel in Windows from where you can also access the synth's control panel and reverb, chorus and even some kind of "suround" (4-channel) effects. You can save your new settings in a new *.ttm mixer file. This file you can load at (dos) startup together with / after the initialization.
As far as I remember *.mix files are older mixer setting files belonging to an older version of the ewsinit.exe. So if you use the newer version (which is recommended) it will only work with *.ttm files.
But I'm not sure about this and as I don't have the card ready, I can't test it for you.
Just try!
Good luck

p.s.: You can even add chorus and reverb effects to fm music, as long as it comes from the 4opl part of the dream synth. Sounds pretty weird!

Thanks very much Silent Loon! 😁 Unfortunately, I seem to have the a problem. I have downloaded the latest versions of all software from Terratec's FTP website. (However, this does not include the updated version of SetManager.exe, because I am not using it at the moment.) I am using Windows ME. Perhaps I should use Windows 98? I run EWSMixer inside WinME, and save my EWS mixer settings as a .TTN file. I then copy this mixer settings file to my DOS 6 HDD. I then run the following command line at the DOS C:\ prompt:

ewsinit F V B gssbk320.94b M me.TTN

Afterwards, I do a DIR of *.TNN. On the screen, it says that my me.TTN file is 0 bytes. The problem is that ewsinit decides to delete this file each and every time I try and use it! 😕

retro games 100 wrote:

Thanks very much elianda! :happyhappy: I have got everything working, using these 2 command lines: […]
Show full quote

Thanks very much elianda! 😁 I have got everything working, using these 2 command lines:

ewsinit F V B gssbk320.94b
cs32mix /M=13,13 /W=13,13 /L=13,13 /X=0 /F=13,13 /C=13,13 /I=L

I have some questions, please. 1) If you run Descent (free download demo) sound setup.exe utility, and listen to the 94b GM music, it sounds loud, to the point where it sounds distorted. If you select wavetable DB GM music, it sounds much quieter, and there is no distortion. Looking at the 2 command lines above, I abandoned the use of the M <settings file>, because I didn't understand how it worked, and also, the <settings file .TTN> was reduced to 0 bytes everytime I tried to use it. The <settings file .MIX> remained untouched (its contents were not deleted), but I couldn't get the 94b music volume to be lowered. Is the best way to lower the very loud 94b GM music, to simply reduce the /M master volume value in the cs32mix command line?

2) Is the best pure DOS soundset music bank to use gssbk320.94b? At 4MB, is it the largest valid DOS soundset music bank file?

3) For Windows 9x, can I buy any larger soundset music bank files? I like the idea of using Chorium 28MB .sf2 for my AWE64. Is there a big MB soundset file for the EWS64XL?

4)

elianda wrote:

Make sure your set routing in the ttm file you load is suitable for dos games

What does your ewsinit.exe command line look like, and how do you initialise your EWS64XL card for use in pure DOS?

5) Thanks! 😉

Regarding 1)
I am currently not at home, but I can't remember having such problems. The point is that you can not skip the mixer setting file of ewsinit completely. It sets all of the EWS64XLs specific parameters while cs32mix sets only the average crystal codec volumes/inputs. The EWS64XL is from software side a Win9x oriented card and the ttm file can only be created with the ews64 mixer from within win9x. I have saved a suitable ttm file for DOS though and when CptKlotz got his new EWS64XL he used a template setup I gave him and it worked right away (without Win9x).
Just think of the EWS64XL as multiple soundcards on one PCB with reconfigureable signal routing. So you have to set output volume and input volume/gain so that it fits together. I also think you have some software version problem, since you talk always of ttn and mix files?!?
Please contact me by ICQ, so I could transfer you some setting file and maybe some more stuff to get it working.
Beside using the default Mixer app from TerraTec in Win9x for saving the settings file, I strongly recommend for everyday use o switch to ProMix.

2) I have some archive of 94B soundfonts. There are larger than 4 MB. If you want to know if your loaded SF resembles the Roland SF, go to swaayes comparison page and hear the maxisound with 4 MB ROM. Since the ROM SF there is the roland like SF, if yours is the same it should sound identical.

3) Yes, though there are also programs, where you can build your own soundfonts. At least the one that came with the maxisound can load dls files and save them as 94b. Downside is that probably alot of information is lost on this conversion, since the 94B format can save much more. So the final quality of the SF could be better if it would be done in 94B format natively.

4) seen 1) contact me 😉

Thanks a lot for the info! I don't know what ICQ is, but I have another idea! When you have the time, please upload your setting file to Vogons as an attachment, or upload this setting file to your web hosting site - the website where you host your sound card recordings.

Alternatively, you could just "copy and paste" the contents of this text file to a Vogons message post. This way, everyone can get access to this very useful information, because I'm sure other people will benefit a lot from this information. Thanks a lot if possible! 😀

Yes, it's weird that inside the EWS64 folder, I can see both .MIX files and also .TTN mixer files. I downloaded the driver and application .zip files from Terratec's FTP server. In order to simply my folder structure, I copied everything in to one single folder, and called it EWS64. Perhaps that is why I have .MIX files in there. Maybe they should be tucked away inside some other sub folder, never to be used?!

I've just had an idea! Here's my Me.TTN EWS (win9x) mixer settings file. I wonder why, when I run ewsinit at the pure DOS 6 C:\ prompt, that this file gets reduced to 0 bytes in size?

The file can be found on my MediaFire account, or from the Vogons attachment. For the Vogons attached file, it needs to be renamed back to me.TTN

Edit: problem solved. My mistake. The file needs the .TTM extension, not .TTN. And this fixes the whole problem.

http://www.mediafire.com/?w5a24772l36w99o (me.TTN EWS Mixer settings file)

As elianda allready mentioned - I have never heard of *.ttn mixer files - perhaps you got the wrong drivers (for nt / xp?)

Mixer files should have the ending *.ttm or *.mix.

Try to rename it to me.ttm or me.mix and look what happens.

Check if you have two folders in your ews64 directory containing the ewsinit.exe.

Ah sorry. I meant .TTM. I save my mixer settings inside the EWSMixer utility as a .TTM file. It's always been .TTM. Sorry, I always meant to say .TTM. 😦

Edit: note to self. go and see an optician.

BTW, on terratec's website, there is a downloadable file called EWS_MixerSettings.exe. All the files inside the self extracting .exe file are of type .MIX. However, when I save my mixer settings, I use the newer and hopefully less buggy .TTM file extension.

http://ftp.terratec.de/Audio/EWS/64XL/Applications/ (EWS_MixerSettings.exe)

Following on from my stupidity above - the reason why I was seeing files inside my EWS64 listed as me.ttn 0 bytes is because ewsinit was searching for a .ttn file, and not finding one, and then a new empty file was being created, 0 bytes in size.

I think I may have solved this problem by simply getting my ewsinit command corrected. Now, I use .ttm, not .ttn.

note to self. have you made that appointment to see an optician yet?

retro games 100 wrote:

Following on from my stupidity above - the reason why I was seeing files inside my EWS64 listed as me.ttn 0 bytes is because ewsinit was searching for a .ttn file, and not finding one, and then a new empty file was being created, 0 bytes in size.

I think I may have solved this problem by simply getting my ewsinit command corrected. Now, I use .ttm, not .ttn.

note to self. have you made that appointment to see an optician yet?

My startup:
c:\ews64\ewsinit -f -v -b gs_10mb.94b -m micha.ttm
c:\ews64\fmon
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4
C:\EWS64\CS32MIX /M=15,15 /W=15,15 /L=15,15 /X=1 /F=12,12 /C=15,15 /I=L

CS32MIX version 2.60 was used.
/F= input has FM and external Wavetable routed, what basically means that you might have to adjust the volume if you use the OPL3.
It might be problematic if you use OPL3 and the external wavetable at the same time (quite unlikely though)

Some other notes that come to my mind:

Disabling features like f.e. the 4 band equalizer frees voices on the Dream Chip.
Additional Effects means you can add the Dream chips effects like Reverb and Chorus to anything you route through it. This can f.e. be Audio-In. I use this sometimes carefully for C64 SID music that is routed in my setup through the EWS64XL. (I have another one in my oldschool video/transfer PC)
If you have downloaded the PDFs in the help folder from the terratec ftp, take a look into EWS64_Praxistips_DE.pdf. There some routing is described with the corresponding switch settings for the terratec mixer application. Though the picture in the hardware manuel pdf is closer to the hardware, since some mixer switch setting will change two hardware routing switches at the same time.

note: the attached txt file should be renamed to ttm for proper use

Edit: I have checked your mixer setting file and I think the cause of your distortion is mainly due to the setting that
SynINPUT=CoDec
means that you route the codec through the dream chip that's output itself is routed again to an input of the codec. So if you don't use Out2, but Out1 you probably have enabled codec playback from the codecs input. This obviously results in some kind of feedback loop.

Thanks very much for the info! 😁 BTW, I was intrigued by your ewsinit "gs_10mb.94b" initialisation file. I did a search on the net for this file name, and found a copy to download. I'll check it out tomorrow...

I would like to upgrade the stick of RAM, which is on board the EWS64XL card, because I would like to experiment with loading a large 94b sound file. I understand that it's possible to use one stick of 64MB memory. Is the following memory compatible? Thanks a lot for any advice!

Copied and pasted from an ebay advert:

EDO, 60 ns, non-parity, non-composite, 16Mx32 = 64MB, 72-pin SIMM, with 8 Samsung chips, 4k refresh, tin leads.