I would be interested in that as well. I too had bought the "ASP upgrade" for one of my SB16's way back when (and I think that several of the SB16's that I had actually included the chip as well).

I remember about the Q-Sound thing:

The demo version of Terra Nova (which, at the time, I found on a PC Gaming World mag CD), mentioned that the final release of the game would include Q-Sound support. I was so exicted that FINALLY something would have support for that, so's I bought a copy as soon as it hit the store shelves.

Low and behold, the release version of Terra Nova did indeed included Q-Sound support; but, it was all done via software... it did NOT require Q-Sound compatable hardware (i.e. the ASP chip) <aarrgghh> 🤣!

Anyhoo, the little DOS (was there one for DOS, I don't even really remember?) and Windows Q-Sound demo that came with the SB16 and ASP upgrade was a cool little thing.

Anyways, I have to check to be sure, but I think that theh SB16 that I mounted in my old AMD500 (so's I could have a box/home for my Wave Blaster I) might just have the ASP chip... so's I'm interested as well 😀

it's been many years since I messed with this, so what I'm about to say goes off memory and I don't really have a way to verify the accuracy of this

what you need:
-obviously the CT1748 ASP chip
-Win9x or NT4 (it might work with NT 3.x also but I never used NT 3.x so I can't test this)

Assuming you have a FRESH install of Windows:
1) use/install whatever default drivers that comes with Windows
2) Download and install CSPU.EXE (or install directly from CSPU directory on my compilation CD) in real DOS (reboot and use the F8 menu to do this)
3) Reboot into Windows, then download and install SBW95UP.EXE revision 5 (or SBW95UO.EXE on my compilation CD)
4) Copy all extra .csp files from the SB16 directory (somewhere in there) to the Windows System directory (or unzip scodecs.zip from my compilation CD)
5) Run QSound Control Panel from Windows and enable "Automatic Pan" for "L <- R" for left speaker and "L -> R" for right speaker. Set the duration to something "ridiculously high"... I've been using 50 secs.
6) Move the "Position" sliders slightly off center by a couple of notches. I believe I had left slider set directly above the "P" and "a" in the word "Pan"
7) Minimize this app, DO NOT close it and then play some wave file that's a good stereo test of your liking to test this

hopefully that should work... I told people this "recipe" on an IRC channel more than 10 years ago and they reported it to work
I believe I tried the revision 6 drivers before and it didn't sound right... I believe creative removed the code to allow this to work... I think it's safe to assume it won't work with the last revision 16 drivers

this ONLY works in Windows and with wave audio output only... it worked fine for me in NT4 also using the latest drivers (earlier drivers causes random BSODs)
I never really noticed it working in DOS, so I declared it broken
if you want QSound MIDI, use either a WB2 or early AWE32 drivers/AWE Control Panel... I don't know which version got the QSound functionality removed... probably sometime in 1995 when Creative stopped licensing QSound... and as for the "Reverb/Chorus" only bullet option in AWE Control Panel many of you have only seen, this is why... because QSound used to be a selectable option.... the QSound MIDI option doesn't disappoint if you don't really need to pump up Reverb/Chorus for certain songs!

it's really broken also in Windows as Archer Communications (before they were called QSound Labs) had a hell of a time writing the QSound algorithms for Creative because those dickheads wouldn't give them all the hardware info... this is why you have to jack the settings way up to get any effects

don't expect crazy stereo spatialization like SRS or even the shitty Binaural 3D Sound bullshit... for one thing, this QSound is "broken" and is not quite up to par to their standards, but it works pretty good for the most part and the audio sounds pretty natural like a true working QSound instead of the overdone garbage you hear from SRS or Binaural... I barely been able to notice much difference between my AWE32's "broken" QSound and the QSound from my Via Envy24 sound card

regardless, the QSound implementation from these drivers are for speakers only... all this stuff was written before the headphones variation of QSound came out (I think it was 1996 or 1997 when it finally came out with the QSurround software remixer... was a CPU/memory hog)... I've included a scan of the Creative Labs QSound manual on my CD... the first few pages will show you correct speaker positioning for you to achieve desired effects... poor/incorrect speaker positioning will give you no effects

you can try the revision 6 drivers to see if it breaks the QSound, but I wouldn't go any newer than that as I am very certain QSound stops working from there... I just don't remember for sure if it was rev 5 or 6 that was the stopping point... all I know is I saved these older drivers for a good reason

Thanks so much, TheMAN! WIll try it soon!

Same here, and much thanks for the info! 😀

TheMAN wrote:

...overdone garbage you hear from SRS...

Used SRS much?

As an expansion effect, SRS is remarkably decent, in my opinion, and isn't plagued by the early QSound limitations (narrow listening area, and requiring programmed positional cues for the greatest effect). The "auto-panning" QSound, as found in TFX, isn't terribly exciting, to be honest. 😀

Here are a few recordings utilizing SRS:

The first is a stereo wavetable example, recorded from a MediaVision Pro-3D card (with built-in SRS functionality). If you ask me, the center, or L+R, could do with a bit of volume boost. The inability to adjust the effect settings is an unfortunate problem with most SRS-integrated products. Fortunately, a number of external SRS solutions, including the Hughes AK-100 and NuReality Vivid 3D Plus, resolve this limitation with additional controls.

http://www.symphoniae.com/misc/SRS/CRANIUM.mp3

(Apologies for not having dry recordings for comparison.)

Mono-to-Stereo capabilities have been found in "gaming" soundcards going back as far as the original Pro AudioSpectrum and Ad Lib Gold. SRS is similarly capable, but is somewhat exceptional in its treatment of most monaural sources. Here are some Ad Lib tracks that have been "stereo-ized" by an AK-100 unit:

http://www.symphoniae.com/misc/SRS/CB.mp3
http://www.symphoniae.com/misc/SRS/HERO.mp3
http://www.symphoniae.com/misc/SRS/EP.mp3
http://www.symphoniae.com/misc/SRS/BATTLE2.mp3

Not as ideal as having a true stereo source, but interesting, nonetheless.

not very impressed at the mediavision recording at all... the qsound off my WB2 blows it out of the water

the mono upmixes are quite impressive however and I admit defeat there... though still over spatialized to my liking

Sorry for necroresurrecting the thread but I didn't want to make a new Topic just for this. I've just got a CT3980 which has the ASP chip and I'm interested in trying Q-sound, but the thing is that my card is PNP. Would the method mentioned above to enable it work with my card?

Thank you all.

My turn to necro.

This is an awesome thread but there's a gap or 2 in the instructions that's causing me problems. My system was fine until I ran CSPU and it asked me if I wanted to install windows 3.1 drivers even though I think most of us are in the w95 case. I figured saying yes would be better than saying no because otherwise where would the QSound and other apps come from? So I said yes, then it started throwing big red boxes about replacing newer drivers with older ones and again I'm like yes, because the older version is supposedly what still works (according to this thread). After all that I tried to launch windows and it gave me a critical error window and just hung. Couldn't get past that. My guess is the mishmash of drivers caused some problem.

Going into safe mode, for some reason the "have disk" option isn't there so I can't even complete the remaining steps. I could just blow away the drivers altogether and it might band-aid the problem enough for me to get back into windows but by that point there's no way of knowing if I've disturbed the ASP installation process to the extent that it won't work.

So what's the detailed procedure for this? Should I do these steps first thing after installing windows? Should I say no to windows 3.1 drivers? Any clarification would be appreciated, as I think I'm stuck re-installing windows now, to ensure I get it right.

And... if doing this on a truly fresh install, how do you prevent stuff like DirectX or other updates from overwriting the older drivers you deliberately put there? Because I can tell you my version of sb16 drivers were pretty new after all was said and done, probably why I got the warnings installing the old ones.

>QSound

Wow. I had a deep dive into this. QSound itself looks mildly interesting, adds delay and slight filtering between L-R channels to better simulate sound direction. Not even close to A3D HRTF, but cool enough as a gimmick and maybe/arguably better than nothing. Then I had a look at QSound Labs and oh boy, Larry Ryckman the founder, what an operator! He teamed up with Michael Ovitz (CAA, entertainment industry 800 pound gorilla) and other marketing heavy hitters (Jimmy Iovine) and managed to push QSound into places where it had little business existing. As soon as company started making profit he unloaded it becoming multimillionaire 😀 After 10 year pause spent owning and managing football team Ryckman started another string of audio companies with more dubious "inventions". He has patents for magic boxes doing volume normalization 😮 https://uspto.report/patent/grant/10,483,934 😀), "echo/chorus, but in a box with a microchip and HDMI plug", "equalizer, but inside a Microchip", setting up green screen booth ("Studio booth configured to produce illusion that customer is photographed in different locale"), or "X-Factor the TV music program audition recording booth apparatus/method". He even patented look and feel of an Ipod .. in 2016 😀 Its as close to scam city central as you can imagine https://patents.justia.com/inventor/lawrence-g-ryckman

His 2006 AfterMaster company went all in on dynamic range compression adding fuel to already raging loudness war.
"AfterMaster hardware and software process creates an audio process and master recording with a loudness, fullness and clarity which AfterMaster claims is unachievable through traditional mastering techniques"
This guy has balls and some heavy pull, ill give him that.

So no comment on how to handle the above instructions? Bunch of people said they followed the formula and it worked so... what did they do?

I managed to get everything installed without any "permanent" errors in windows but now the QSdemo doesn't run and complains that "low level drivers" are not loaded. Is this related to the autoexec/config setup of the CSP chip or something?