bristlehog wrote:

Nerves of Steel seemingly supports soundfonts for music.

Completely crap game, but nice find, nonetheless. 😀

I've added it to the Wikipedia sandbox page I've been working on, concerning games with Soundfont support.

Also, I've pulled the Final Fantasy VII recordings I'd posted above. FF7.sf2 has variation instruments arranged in multiple banks, which assume Bank 1 as the base. AWEPLAY loaded the soundfont into Bank 0, so a number of these variation instruments were a bank off.

The AWE32 is simply amazing for Tyrian at the very least..

I'd really like to see the whole Tyrian soundtrack done by the AWE32 FLACIFED.

We could then upload it to Alex to store on his web page.

Cloudschatze wrote:

I've added it to the Wikipedia sandbox page I've been working on, concerning games with Soundfont support.

I think Lemmings 3 is missing, which has at least own instruments for GUS.

The AWE64 Gold installation CD includes a number of SoundFont demonstration tunes (MIDI + SF2) composed by various artists. Most of these stay within a 512K RAM limit, making them playable on the majority of AWE cards. I thought the following were some of the less-cheesy examples. 😀

"Only Choice" - Niko Boese
"Tekk Niko" - Niko Boese
"Surprise!" - Niko Boese
"The Gathering" - Björn Lynne

Again, along with the other AWE recordings that I've provided in this thread, these are S/PDIF captures.

Don't know if it is just me.
I keep thinking of depeche mode when listening to Sound Canvas.
Even though it's a game-music and not music.

I'd be interested to know what pieces of hardware one must obtain to use the SPDIF interface. Assuming one can't source the original parts.

The simplest approach is to use 2-pin CD-SPDIF cable to connect AWE64 digital out to i.e. Live! CD-SPDIF connector or to other sound card with SPDIF input. Drawback of this method is that all playback and recording must be done in multitasking OS (not to mention that machine must have PCI bus slot).

Good. What other solutions are there?

What if I have an external device with optical input, like a modern Sound Blaster Z or a USB Sound Card with optical input? Is there anything that can be done to connect them?

philscomputerlab wrote:

What if I have an external device with optical input, like a modern Sound Blaster Z or a USB Sound Card with optical input? Is there anything that can be done to connect them?

You can use some motherboard digital I/O bracket with an AWE32 to obtain Toslink output. I used a Gigabyte bracket:

This, however, won't work with an AWE64 since it has S/PDIF voltage too low to drive such a bracket.

The AWE64 Gold came with a coax SPDIF breakout cable (at least mine did). Also there were some audio tracks of the demo tunes on the installation CD for some reason. The Soundblaster Live! CDs continued the tradition of cheesy demo tracks.

This number called “Blood War” by Jess D Skov-Nielsen came with the Live! demos and has inspired cheesy YouTube videos to match. The video description says it came with the AWE32, but that is incorrect. It will play on an AWE32 with memory expansion however, Creative provided 4MB and 8MB sized sf2 files for it on the Live! CD.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GdhMpGU9RE

tyuper wrote:

The simplest approach is to use 2-pin CD-SPDIF cable to connect AWE64 digital out to i.e. Live! CD-SPDIF connector or to other sound card with SPDIF input.

This is also a good approach if there is any concern about the digital output of the AWE32 cards being 5V TTL, given that many digital CD input headers, including the one on the Live! card, are matched for this level. If the intent is to record the output of the AWE by this means, keep in mind that you won't get a "bit-perfect" recording, due to the 48kHz upsampling of the EMU10K1, but whether this is important or not is mostly subjective. For general listening though, and using a similar setup myself, I can't cite any fault.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Good. What other solutions are there?

What if I have an external device with optical input, like a modern Sound Blaster Z or a USB Sound Card with optical input? Is there anything that can be done to connect them?

For external connectivity, and in lieu of either the Creative bracket or other options, FrontX sells a pin-header-to-RCA(S/PDIF) cable that I'd used successfully for several years. It looks like coaxial-to-optical converters can be had for ~$20, though I have no experience with any of them.

It can't be that hard to convert a 5V TTL S/PDIF signal to the level necessary for one of those TOSLINK motherboard brackets. Does anyone have any of the specifications for either?

QBiN wrote:

It can't be that hard to convert a 5V TTL S/PDIF signal to the level necessary for one of those TOSLINK motherboard brackets. Does anyone have any of the specifications for either?

This idea definitely has merit. The ASUS brackets have been mentioned in past for this purpose, and it looks like they are a direct match for at least the AWE64 Gold cards. (A separate supply voltage is required in order to power the optical transmitter.) Here's a photo of one of the brackets that I own, edited with the pin and voltage information from the Foxconn datasheet. (It looks like ASUS motherboards supply +5V to Vcc.) I have no plans for this particular bracket, so if you would like to vet this out, I'd be more-than-happy to send it your way.

I tried ASUS and Gigabyte brackets with AWE64, and it's a no go. They only work with AWE32, and you get only optical output, the coaxial one won't work. At least, that was my case. There's a chance that my brackets were somewhat defective.

So the information out there is pretty good. This seems FAR simpler than previously thought.

http://www.epanorama.net/documents/audio/spdif.html

This particular document is fairly comprehensive. Bristlehog, were you only connecting the two Vin and Ground pins? Leaving the Vcc +5V disconnected? TOSLink would not worked because there was no power to the output circuit, and the AWE64 couldn't supply the current to drive the LED for the optical port by itself.

The ASUS bracket adapter looks like it may work as it's expecting an auxiliary +5V VCC in addition to the input signal. I can't see it in the picture, but I'm guessing the TOSLINK connector on the ASUS bracket has an integrated TOSLINK TX transmitter circuit being driven by that +5V. The RCA interface appears to be using a simple voltage divider circuit to step the TTL signal down from 5V to the 0.5Vpp level passively and doesn't use the supplied 5V Vcc at all.

So really... All one would need to have is an "active" S/PDIF / TOSLink bracket (like the ASUS one Cloudschatze has) and some place to tap +5V from (like a spare floppy power connector or a VCC pin somewhere on the AWE64 itself [memory header?] ).

QBiN wrote:

So the information out there is pretty good. This seems FAR simpler than previously thought. […]
Show full quote

So the information out there is pretty good. This seems FAR simpler than previously thought.

http://www.epanorama.net/documents/audio/spdif.html

This particular document is fairly comprehensive. Bristlehog, were you only connecting the two Vin and Ground pins? Leaving the Vcc +5V disconnected? TOSLink would not worked because there was no power to the output circuit, and the AWE64 couldn't supply the current to drive the LED for the optical port by itself.

The ASUS bracket adapter looks like it may work as it's expecting an auxiliary +5V VCC in addition to the input signal. I can't see it in the picture, but I'm guessing the TOSLINK connector on the ASUS bracket has an integrated TOSLINK TX transmitter circuit being driven by that +5V. The RCA interface appears to be using a simple voltage divider circuit to step the TTL signal down from 5V to the 0.5Vpp level passively and doesn't use the supplied 5V Vcc at all.

So really... All one would need to have is an "active" S/PDIF / TOSLink bracket (like the ASUS one Cloudschatze has) and some place to tap +5V from (like a spare floppy power connector or a VCC pin somewhere on the AWE64 itself [memory header?] ).

I think the PC speaker header on the card may provide the +5v you need.

I take +5V for the bracket from molex connector.

Great Hierophant wrote:

QBiN wrote:

I think the PC speaker header on the card may provide the +5v you need.

Good point (to Bristlehog as well).

bristlehog wrote:

I tried ASUS and Gigabyte brackets with AWE64, and it's a no go. They only work with AWE32, and you get only optical output, the coaxial one won't work. At least, that was my case. There's a chance that my brackets were somewhat defective.

Bah, I should have remembered that you'd mentioned them not working with the AWE64 (Gold). Not only that, but I apparently misread/misinterpreted Vin from the Foxconn datasheet, and also see now that the ASUS bracket is designed with only a +5V TTL signal in mind besides.

Interestingly enough, the coaxial TTL-to-S/PDIF circuit is pretty-much exactly as described here, and only seems to differ in its use of a 390 Ω resistor. Perhaps that difference is great enough to explain your non-working coaxial output?

In other news, I suppose this is as good a place as any to bid farewell to the VOGONS forum. I've accomplished just about everything I'd ever wanted to in the "vintage-computing and gaming" space, and am hoping to now (finally) shift the focus to primarily musical interests. Guess we'll see how well that works out... 😀

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Cloudschatze wrote:

In other news, I suppose this is as good a place as any to bid farewell to the VOGONS forum. I've accomplished just about everything I'd ever wanted to in the "vintage-computing and gaming" space, and am hoping to now (finally) shift the focus to primarily musical interests. Guess we'll see how well that works out... 😀

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

It's sad to hear that you leave, yet I respect your decision to move on. You made an invaluable contribution to the retro hardware community.

Where can one hear to the outcomes of your musical interests?