Well, I am getting rid of my AWE32 anyways and getting an AWE64 Gold instead. Nothing I hate more than a full-length, extra wide card, especially when I have to gut my system to use it.

On the other hand, I am thinking about some kind of hardware workaround for this lacking OPL emulation. Why not use a true OPL chip instead?

1. ISA-based OPL
Now, most, if not all OPL2 and OPL3 chips are found on ISA cards. Systems with ISA slots aren't exactly the greatest performing DOSBox machines, but my P2B-based motherboard with a PIII @ 1GHz can run EGA games and earlier VGA games quite well (I think.)

2. Waveblaster-based OPL
Some waveblaster cards contain the OPL4 chip, which combines OPL3 with wavetable synthesis. Many PCI cards support a waveblaster interface. I wonder, however, as you must access the OPL through a midi interface, I assume the data must be sent in a different way. Can you access all the registers through the midi interface?

3. PCI-based OPL
The Yamaha YMF-xx4 chips are found on many inexpensive PCI cards, and have true OPL3 support. Why not use them, they would be very easy to access in Windows.

Bumping an old thread.

Great Hierophant wrote:

Well, I am getting rid of my AWE32 anyways and getting an AWE64 Gold instead. Nothing I hate more than a full-length, extra wide card, especially when I have to gut my system to use it.

I owned an SB32, which wasn't full height. Somehow, it's gone missing unfortunatly.

On the other hand, I am thinking about some kind of hardware workaround for this lacking OPL emulation. Why not use a true OPL chip instead?

1. ISA-based OPL
Now, most, if not all OPL2 and OPL3 chips are found on ISA cards. Systems with ISA slots aren't exactly the greatest performing DOSBox machines, but my P2B-based motherboard with a PIII @ 1GHz can run EGA games and earlier VGA games quite well (I think.)

Or use a, rather expensive, ISA to USB converter (see one of my earlier posts in this thread). One would need to program a driver for it though.

2. Waveblaster-based OPL
Some waveblaster cards contain the OPL4 chip, which combines OPL3 with wavetable synthesis. Many PCI cards support a waveblaster interface. I wonder, however, as you must access the OPL through a midi interface, I assume the data must be sent in a different way. Can you access all the registers through the midi interface?

There is no need to access the chip through a MIDI interface. If an OPL4 is present, one can use the OPL3 as-is. Unfortunatly, you'd need to write a driver.

3. PCI-based OPL
The Yamaha YMF-xx4 chips are found on many inexpensive PCI cards, and have true OPL3 support. Why not use them, they would be very easy to access in Windows.

Same as option 2. They are not easy to access in Windows, unless you create your own soundcard driver. Not very difficult to do if a pass-through is all you're going after, but not trivial either.

JAL

As on adlib again, does somebody have digital recording equipment to
do some tests? And/or detailed information about the waveform selection
stuff (precise timing when the different waveform IS selected)?

I have an old 486 with SB16 next to me, and I could do some test with recording from output (not digital snapping). I would be happy to do that 😀

NewRisingSun wrote:

As for the two FM cores in the AdPLug Winamp plugin, Tatsuyuki Satoh's core, which seems to be the one DosBox uses, imitates the AWE sound, whereas Ken Silverman's core goes for the real OPL3 sound. Basically, Ken Silverman's core seems to be perfect except for the fact that it resets the Waveform position to zero every time a new note is started, which the real OPL3 doesn't do. This is most obvious in Ultima VI's "BRIT.M" and "DUNGEON.M" songs. Otherwise, it's perfect, as far as I can tell.

Tatsuyuki Satoh's core doesn't sound any similiar to an AWE64, (wich I got, and used several months ago, I just can't bring the computer here) is just opl2 pretty good emulation, but Ken Silverman's core is the real deal, but, I must say that some instruments miss some type of.... filter... and it misses something called "vibrato". About AWE64, some sound are very similiar or = to a real opl3, then some are VERY different (try listening duke3d's theme on both sb16 and awe64, which sound different from dosbox anyway 😁 )

I'll post some old recording I have.

These attachments did not fit and I post them here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/52055303/wolf3d_sb16.rar

Wolf 3d by SB16! Since dosbox 0.1 I notice a missing instrument (some kind of flute I guess), and now, in dosbox 0.72 the situation hasn't changed!
Ken Silverman emulator rocks on this one too 😀