Hello lads, could you help me identify this Aureal Vortex 2 card.
Is it worth to replace my SB Live! 5.1 with this baby?
And most important - could anyone get me a working drivers for it?
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hi
go here for information and drivers:
http://members.optushome.com.au/kirben/
i have a monster mx300, it's a good card but for a PCI
machine i find the terratec ESS solo1 a better option.
bye
Well it's both good and bad.
It's got some better DOS compatibility than the SB Live and much better FM synth emulation(though still bad), but it has much lower quality Digital sound in DOS.
It also has a wavetable header so you can plug in your wavetable card which is awesome, but it has a worse internal midi synth than the SB Live's.
Lastly, it's kind of a mess with the drivers, they're always kinda iffy, A3D rarely works for me and it sounds worse than EAX too.
That's that, it's up to you really.
Ok, so I checked the website and it seems to be a card made directly by Aureal. Unfortunatelly, all driver links are dead now, so if anyone have the latest drivers and could send me, I would really appreciate it.
not all the links are dead
reference 2048 drivers for win95/98:
ftp://ftp.eesnet.ru/drivers/audio/aureal/Win9x2048.zip
You may need to do some tweaking depending on what motherboard chipset you are using it on (I do for my intel 815)
> W98SE . P3 1.4S . 512MB . Q.FX3K . SB Live! . 64GB SSD
>WXP/W8.1 . AMD 960T . 8GB . GTX285 . SB X-Fi . 128GB SSD
> Win XI . i7 12700k . 32GB . GTX1070TI . 512GB NVME
wrote:not all the links are dead […]
not all the links are dead
reference 2048 drivers for win95/98:
ftp://ftp.eesnet.ru/drivers/audio/aureal/Win9x2048.zipYou may need to do some tweaking depending on what motherboard chipset you are using it on (I do for my intel 815)
This is why we need a VOGONS software and driver repository. All the old links go dead sooner or later and then this stuff becomes inaccessible forever.
wrote:hi […]
hi
go here for information and drivers:
http://members.optushome.com.au/kirben/i have a monster mx300, it's a good card but for a PCI
machine i find the terratec ESS solo1 a better option.bye
Why is that terratec better?
hi
it's hard to remember exactly why i preferred it but
for an quick overview the pci machine in question
is an AMD XP 2200+ running at 500Mhz on an
ASUS a7v8x-x. This is KT400 without ISA slots.
both cards have/had a db50xg attached.
is DOS 7.1 i seem to remember the vortex needs
a TSR, the solo1 just needs to be initialised.
the FM synth which you may not use anyway
sounds better on the solo1. Both cards allow access
to SBPRO+MPU+FM+GAMEPORT.
and now for the bit i don't remember very well
but the test i generally use for sound card compatibility
is the 2nd reality demo which works 100% on the solo1
and i suspect it doesn't on the vortex but i haven't
made any logs sorry.
btw, the onboard midi uart on the a7v8-x works well
with GSPLAY in DOS unlike other onboard uarts which
don't work such as a pc partner AP133AS13 i have
somewhere.
bye
PS. if you want more detail i can dig out the mx300
and test again.
PPS. with the PCI ess the DOS app `essvol' for the ISA
cards also works to set volume. I don't really remember
if that it was possible to set volumes on the vortex in DOS or not.
hmm. sorry for lack of clear info.
bye
The card you have is probably an Aureal SQ2500 SuperQuad (OEM version); I have two identical cards right here.
There is another version of this card with a coaxial digital output instead of the optical one, which was sold by Terratec (among others).
What strikes me is that the card is a Vortex 2 while the chip itself has a big printed "Vortex" written on it. As I've got 1 card with "Vortex 2" written on the chip I assumed the other couple I have, that have "Vortex" written on it, were automatically Vortex 1 cards.
I should go check what they really are, maybe I'll get lucky? 😁
I think it's the AU8830 that makes it a Vortex 2. Vortex 1's have the 8820. Or 8810 if such a thing exists.
