Yea I'm a bit disappointed. Here my Monkey Island 2 recording...

http://www.mediafire.com/?czdrzqbd97a6xh1

Keen to hear yours and compare...

PS: Recording my 2nd card just in case this one has issues...

2nd card: http://www.mediafire.com/?wpgmso45jgsn0mh

No clicks, but just as noisy 😵

I have a ct2800 and works really great. I'm wondering, for the cards that have speaker and line output, if the speaker out is suitable for small and non-amplified speakers. If that is so, then it's normal to have a lot of noise if you connect it to a line level input. I have some older cards that have just one output, and it's jumber selectable line or speaker.

Yea speaker output should be avoided...

I can probably arrange some recordings. what are you using to record the old dos machine?

A good program to test sound clarity is Halloween Harry/alien carnage. I find the intro songs can cause a lower quality card to obviously crackle. They are both the same game and alien carnage is availble as freeware from 3drealms.com
if you can track down a copy of Halloween Harry it comes with a studio.exe which let's you play all the music tracks in the game. There are a few tracks that can cause a crackle. Plus this game actually has excellent music for a dos game with no midi support 😀

Reason I recommend Monkey Island 2 is because I have recordings from all my cards. I use Audacity to record and use a netbook with a USB soundcard.

Well I tried out the CT2800 with the XR385 and instantly got hanging notes in Hexen level 2 🙁

I'll see what I can do about a recording.

EDIT: posted some recordings in the sound card recording thread.

retro games 100 wrote:

Have you tried the "Hexen hanging note bug test"? To do this, download the free to download Hexen shareware demo. Then, run He […]
Show full quote

megatron-uk wrote:

Mine arrived last week - hooked it up to my CT2290 SB16 and it works perfectly.

Have you tried the "Hexen hanging note bug test"? To do this, download the free to download Hexen shareware demo. Then, run Hexen at the DOS prompt like this:

Hexen -warp 02

Do you hear a stuck music note, when you have configured your SB to play digital effects and also General Midi using the NEC DB? Most of the time, this stuck note can be heard immediately, when this Hexen warp test is run. Sometimes, it takes a minute or two for the problem to occur.

If the problem has occured, there is a workaround, of sorts. For the General Midi / DB music, you can use a SB clone card. I've tried several, and my favourite is the ESS ES1686F chipset based card. The wavetable header is clear on these cards - better than all Creative cards that I've used, and I've tested over a dozen of them. For the SB digital effects, you can still use your SB card. Of course, you'll need 1 extra ISA slot for the SB clone card, and 1 stereo mixer, because of the 2 soundcards.

(Another option is to ditch the CT2290, if it causes General Midi music problems, and just use the SB clone card for both effects and music.)

Just tried it - I can't hear any notes/keys stuck on. I tried with both SB effects & GM music 0x300 and SB effects + Wave Blaster music @0x300 (with the same XR385 card). The music sounded no different to choosing SB effects and the Sound Canvas @0x330 option using my Midiman MM401 card.

megatron-uk wrote:

Just tried it - I can't hear any notes/keys stuck on. I tried with both SB effects & GM music 0x300 and SB effects + Wave Blaster music @0x300 (with the same XR385 card). The music sounded no different to choosing SB effects and the Sound Canvas @0x330 option using my Midiman MM401 card.

Are you running Hexen from within Windows 98?

No. The system boots to command prompt as standard.

(How long is the track? Should I leave it for the music to wraparound to see if it occurs later?)

megatron-uk wrote:

No. The system boots to command prompt as standard.

(How long is the track? Should I leave it for the music to wraparound to see if it occurs later?)

With that particular test, usually the problem occurs immediately. Occasionally it takes a minute or two. I think if you can't detect anything odd within about 10 minutes, your CT2290 is probably OK regarding this problem. If you run Creative's Diagnose.exe DOS utility, what DSP version does your card have? Diagnose.exe says this info on one of the Diagnose screens.

I have a CT2230, and I think my DSP version is a "bad version", but I still get no stuck notes for the Hexen -warp 02 test. I haven't run these tests for probably over a year now, and so my memory isn't 100%. However, I remember Vogons user Keropi also saying that he has a CT2230, and he gets no stuck notes.

The CT2800 is a stuck note problem card, although the output quality is good. I have a couple of CT2800s, and I am glad I have them. (I will just use a workaround with a clone card for the DB stuff.)

Made recordings of all the music options on my DOS gaming machine:

Soundblaster 16 FM (CT2290, real OPL3)
http://targetearth.dyndns.org/www/gaming/orig … 02_sb16opl3.mp3

Gravis Ultrasound Max 1Mb (standard patch set)
http://targetearth.dyndns.org/www/gaming/orig … _warp02_gus.mp3

Yamaha DB60XG clone (SB16 Waveblaster header @ port 0x300)
http://targetearth.dyndns.org/www/gaming/orig … arp02_xr385.mp3

Roland Sound Canvas SC55 mk2 (Midiman MM401 MPU @ port 0x330)
http://targetearth.dyndns.org/www/gaming/orig … p02_sc55mk2.mp3

Roland MT32 mk1 (via SC55 midi-thru on Midiman MM401 @ port 0x330)
http://targetearth.dyndns.org/www/gaming/orig … warp02_mt32.mp3

I can't seem to pick up any 'stuck' notes on any version; the track has long-sustained notes in all versions, but none that stick. At least to my ears, anyway.

These are all on the end of my 512k-up ADSL line, so may take a while if more than one person is getting them at a time.

Edit: Have left the GM/Waveblaster version playing several times over now, and have not experienced any stuck notes; diagnose.exe reports my SB16 as having DSP version 4.13.

Got me one of these NEC XR385 cards. The problem is I can't seem to get it working properly. I have it mounted on a Turtle Beach A3D card which works perfectly. When I try to play a song using the internal wavetable MIDI on the Turtle beach the song plays fine. Using the MPU-401 MIDI interface I can only hear faint scraping noises.

I also tried it on a Soundblaster (CT2980) but didn't work on that one either, so I suspect the card is defective.

Any bright ideas?

Mine was also defective...

Are you using it under DOS or Windows?

Win98SE

I'd try under DOS to eliminate any sort of windows driver problem. With your SB16 install the DOS drivers then point a DOS game at the MPU401 port, most likely 330h.

storhemulen wrote:

Got me one of these NEC XR385 cards. The problem is I can't seem to get it working properly. I have it mounted on a Turtle Beach A3D card which works perfectly. When I try to play a song using the internal wavetable MIDI on the Turtle beach the song plays fine. Using the MPU-401 MIDI interface I can only hear faint scraping noises.

Oh dear... I bought one of these XR385s last week(it's about to leave Hong Kong as we speak). Hope mine doesn't end up being a defective board.

To the people who bought these daughterboards, can you remember what the packaging was like? Was the DB not wrapped in anything, but simply placed in a small box, with "broken up chunks" of polystyrene as padding? (Can polystyrene cause ESD damage BTW?)

While on the subject of shipping from China, has anyone noticed this curiosity - the shipping envelope is marked "signature required", but the postman doesn't ask for one. I've got an idea why this happens, but I'll leave it up to your imagination to figure out why.

I just ordered one yesterday. I figure that there isn't really any other way to get these so a risk has to be taken. I'll report back on the packaging when it arrives (of course that will be a good long while)

Mine was folded in newspaper and then in a padded envelope. Works fine, but it wasn't very much so I was prepared for a dead one.