If your SB16 has a 26-pin waveblaster header you can technically plug a midi daughterboard on it and run it without any drivers. Though some PnP SB16's do require an initialization after boot to work at all (Diagnose or CTCM). You may run into some hanging notes in the midi music though, which is an issue with about all SB16 and AWE32 variants.
The DB50XG/DB60XG is nice to have in any case, and there are quite a few soundcards with waveblaster headers out there.

Paraphrasing gerwin - the daughterboards themselves don't need drivers, it's the sound card that may need a driver for it's wavetable interface to work.

There's quite a few different midi daughterboards; apart from the yamahas which are fairrly common there's also the scd's and scb's from Roland - see wikipedia article on sound canvas - as well as all sorts of others less commonly seen.

It's a Sound Blaster 16 SCSI Sound Card Modle: CT1770

[bought it brand new/factory sealed off of eBay a few years back for almost nothing]. 😜

P.S. No hanging notes for me when I do add a daughtercard! My DSP version on this card is DSP 4.05. WOOT! 😁

I wouldnt bother with an SB16 for this. They have poor sound quality plus there is a 'hanging note bug' when using Midi with an SB16/awe32. Search these forums for info. Trust me I've been there and done that 😉

I gave up on SB16's of all types and am now using a Yamaha YMF719 card, with an XR385. Works perfectly and sounds great but I had to make a cable to fit the XR385 on it.

You could always try to find an external MIDI unit like a Roland sound canvas or Yamaha MU synth.

DonutKing wrote:

I wouldnt bother with an SB16 for this. They have poor sound quality plus there is a 'hanging note bug' when using Midi with an SB16/awe32. Search these forums for info. Trust me I've been there and done that 😉

Older DSP version 4.05 and newer DSP version 4.13 are not affected by the hanging note bug. My card is a CT 1770 SB 16 SCSI and doesn't have that nasty DSP bug due to the DSP being version 4.05 😀

Yea these NEC boards are quite popular. There is an eBay seller who ships them from Asia. I also have one it works fine. The first board arrived DOA however. The thing with SB16 cards is that even if you find one that has no hanging note bugs (I still believe that this is a bit of a myth) then you have to deal with the noise.

What you can do as an alternative (to avoid the hanging note bug and get a cleaner signal) is using an AWE64 for speech and the SB16+NEC for General MIDI. This avoids the hanging note bug. The GM might still end up quite noisy though...

But yes there is no ideal card. Some are still looking for one 😀 The more you try however the more likely you will find one that works well with your system (some Creative cards are noisier than others even my three AWE64 cards have different noises).

PhaytalError wrote:

DonutKing wrote:

I wouldnt bother with an SB16 for this. They have poor sound quality plus there is a 'hanging note bug' when using Midi with an SB16/awe32. Search these forums for info. Trust me I've been there and done that 😉

Older DSP version 4.05 and newer DSP version 4.13 are not affected by the hanging note bug. My card is a CT 1770 SB 16 SCSI and doesn't have that nasty DSP bug due to the DSP being version 4.05 😀

I had a CT1740 with 4.05 DSP and while it doesn't have the bug, sound quality was abysmal. You might not think its so bad but once youve heard a card with clean output you won't go back.

And I'm not sure why you think 4.13 DSP is not affected; I've tried multiple cards with that version and they all had the bug.

DonutKing wrote:

I had a CT1740 with 4.05 DSP and while it doesn't have the bug, sound quality was abysmal. You might not think its so bad but once youve heard a card with clean output you won't go back.

What card would you suggest then? The card must contain a real OPL3 chip, must have DOS compatability, must have 16-bit audio, must be at least SB Pro/SB16 compatible and must have a Waveblaster connector so I can connect my NEC-XR385 daughterboard to it.

The Yamaha card that DonutKing uses would be a good candidate. 16 bit audio, is this a requirement for DOS or for Windows? Because I am not aware of DOS games using such high quality samples.

If you plan on getting a MT-32 at any stage then look for a MPU401AT interface. This one has a wavetable header and supports the intelligent mode. Pair it with a Sound Card of your choice (set the midi port to 300) and you are set.

Hmm note though that there's no DOS installer for the DOS driver of that Yamaha card, you need to have at least Windows 3.1 installed. And you need to make yourself a connecting cable for the DB card, which is not as easy as it sounds.

Yes, I use th e YMF-719. Has a real OPL3, is DOS compatible (badmofo is correct that the installer requires Win 3.1 but after installation you don't require Windows at all. I'm certain I had the DOS driver uploaded somewhere; I'll see if I can find it).

It works with 16 bit sound in games that have the option, is totally SB pro compatible and has a working wavetable header, but you do require a cable to use the XR385 with it as the card is too small to mount the daughterboard.
I actually have an external MU-10 (external version of XR385/DB50XG) and used to have an SC55 so the wavetable header issue doesn't bother me.

If you think this is a lot of farting around just to get MIDI working with your DOS games then I must agree. But, I've done it and it works for me. Unfortunately I haven't found a simple solution for the complete triad of DOS digital, FM and MIDI sound. I tried a few clone sound cards as well; such as Crystal, OPTI and ESS cards and they all hard various issues (not compatible with certain DOS games, wavetable header soldered on but non-functional; lack of real OPL chip, and so forth).

You might be better off keeping the CT2800 for digital and FM sound, and have another card for MIDI, but this is a whole new can of worms as well. I believe SquallStrife had two sound blasters, one for FM/digital and the other with the XR385 and he never got them to behave together.

The ideal solution IMHO is to get a Roland MPU-401-AT ISA card and run your XR385 with that, then use whatever sound card you like for FM/digital... but those Roland cards aren't exactly falling out of the trees.

Mediatrix explicitly designed their YMF715E-based, "AudioTrix 3D" soundcard around the DB60XG, with the duo otherwise being known as the "3D-XG." This is the only host card I'm aware of that includes the ability to route the PCM/FM output through the XG daughterboard for effects-processing.

These cards are pretty uncommon, however, and are more likely to be found as the full 3D-XG pairing besides...

Another argument for the debate, and I do prefer external modules, is that if you use a wavetable solution you will have more noise. No way around it unfortunately it just seems that this is what you get with ISA cards 😒

DonutKing wrote:

The ideal solution IMHO is to get a Roland MPU-401-AT ISA card and run your XR385 with that, then use whatever sound card you like for FM/digital... but those Roland cards aren't exactly falling out of the trees.

Hmm this might be a good topic for a video project...

I've had "audiotrix" in my automated ebay search list for months and haven't seen any appear. Looks nice though.

There's a lot of information on these forums regarding which creative cards have the hanging note bug, but there's not much info on the implications of it. The thing I wondered while messing around with ISA sound options was - is this bug such a big deal? A Vibra16S has real OPL, sounds OK, and fits the XR385 fine. How often does MIDI actually hang?

I remember it happening in DOOM in the odd level but it wasn't too bad, and in fact it took me a little while to realise one of the notes had hung.

If it was chronic, surely creative would have been forced to fix it?

There are no real implications apart from hearing stuck notes. I had a SB16 and Sound Canvas wavetable board as a kid and I never knew about the issue. I just thought that sometimes things got "too much" and that's why some notes hung...

It was definitely not a huge deal and I only found out about this as an adult when reading up on all this stuff 😀

In your case I would just use another card as MIDI adapter like an ESS Audio Drive or any random Sound Blaster 16.

The CT2800 seems particularly affected by it though. I did notice trying to play Doom with the XR385 attached that there were a number of stuck notes and it was quite noticable. Some SB16's cards seem less inclined to the stuck notes than others.

How many people are using YMF719? I am using this card in my 486, along with an MPU-401AT and NEC XR385. Are there any known problems with the YMF-719 that I should be aware of?

+1 for the YMF719.

The only problems I found are that the SB volume control does not seem to work, and I haven't been able to use two of these cards together in the same system with different settings. Plus it probably does not support intelligent-mode MPU-401 compatibility.

And yes there are some DOS games that benefit from 16-bit audio, Dungeon Keeper is an example. I don't think it uses 16-bit samples but the 16-bit mixing does help reduce noise.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

How many people are using YMF719? I am using this card in my 486, along with an MPU-401AT and NEC XR385. Are there any known problems with the YMF-719 that I should be aware of?

I've got a YMF719 integrated in a small Panasonic laptop I use for DOS gaming on the go. Works with everything I've thrown at it with one exception: The Ultimate Doom using "set dmxoption=-opl3". The game will still output Mono OPL2 music (a lot of sound cards don't work with this option and will simply play back Doom's OPL2 soundtrack rather than the full Stereo OPL3 soundtrack). I'm also not too crazy about the quality of the digital audio, which, to me, sounds no different than DOSBox (and I don't like the audio quality of the emulator that much).

What I do like are OPTi sound cards based around the 82C929A. There are a lot of different types with various OPL3/audio amp combinations:

-True OPL3 with an LF347-based audio amp
-True OPL3 with a TL074-based audio amp
-Cloned OPL3 with an LF347-based audio amp
-Cloned OPL3 with a TL074-based audio amp

Depending on how you like your OPL3, you need to get a specific 82C929A. Those with LF347-based audio amps tend to have some distortion in the low frequencies, though it's more apparent when the cards use a real YMF262 and YAC512 than when it uses discrete clones of the two chips (it's also more apparent when games have loud OPL3). I personally prefer the added distortion in the OPL3 on my particular 82C929A, even though my sound card of choice for DOS games is the SoundBlaster Pro 2.0. If you need to have good-sounding OPL3, your best bet is to get a card with a real YMF262/YAC512 and a TL074-based audio amp.