First post, by Maraakate
- Rank
- Oldbie
Finally got a working GUS with 1MB RAM and having it coexist fine with my SB16. After playing many of the iD and Apogee titles that supported it I can for certain say the MIDI is excellent on it. My favourite is to use ProPatches Lite with the TR909 drum sound bank.
However, there are a few things that can be annoying to newcomers. First starters, there is no mixer to adjust the volume. It's all done via the games. The manual even recommends you plug it into powered speakers or headphones with a volume control! I believe because of this it may also cause the clipping I get on ROTT and Duke3D digital sounds for certain sound effects. The sounds will be too loud and it will have digital clipping, and turning the volume down in the game isn't going through a hardware mixer somewhere so the clipping will stay.
To rectify this in those two games, I took the CD in of the GUS and made a cable that has a headphone jack on the other end and plugs into my SB16. This way I can use the SB16 for the digital voices and still keep the MIDI. Best of all I can have both cards coexist and the sound will come out of the GUS.
You have to do this through the CD in though, using the Line in or Mic in will use the internal amplifier and make it sound muffled with way too much bass. To keep the CD just simply plug your CD in to the SB16. You don't even need the drivers for the SB16 to get the CD audio if you do this.
Overall, I'm impressed with the card. But, it's definitely not perfect. If you're not willing to mess around knowing your IRQs, DMAs, and wiring up some way to have both the SB16 and GUS (highly recommended so you have the ability to play all your games) then it's probably best to stick with your SB16.