Actually never tried soundbanks out my self. I find the standard "settings" good enough.
On the other hand. I have thought about trying it from time to time.

brostenen wrote:

Actually never tried soundbanks out my self. I find the standard "settings" good enough.
On the other hand. I have thought about trying it from time to time.

Do you use extra memory? Does Doom sound more like the first video for you or the second?

jheronimus wrote:

Or is the author referring to an 8MB soundbank that he loaded before taking a recording? Why is the output so much better?

Yes, he's referring to a 8 Mb E-MU sound bank he loaded.

jheronimus wrote:

- if I add 32 MB of RAM to AWE32 (or any RAM), I'll need to disable the card's internal 512KB ROM via jumpers. Does that mean that the default soundbank will be loaded into the external RAM on each reboot? Will it be the same soundbank?

The default sound bank is located in ROM. It is thus never loaded to any RAM.

jheronimus wrote:

- how will I benefit from expanded RAM under DOS?

You probably won't. Very few games can take advantage of AWE32's RAM in DOS. Some of them only need 512 Kb of internal RAM. You can find more info here.

However, in DOS you can load SF2 banks and play MIDI files with AWEPLAY by Günther Klaming or XMI files with SFXPLAY by me. Also, you can play MOD and XM files with AWEPLAY by Thor (this is different from AWEPLAY by Guenther Klaming) - here AWE32's memory is used to load MOD/XM embedded samples into it.

jheronimus wrote:

So, in a nutshell I'm trying to understand if AWE32 automatically gets a better sound output with extra RAM and if 32MB can be useful if I don't want to bother with custom soundbanks or Windows

In a nutshell it doesn't and 32 Mb aren't useful.

Thanks a lot, bristlehog!

This is why I think the AWE32 Value cards are a good deal and can still be found for good prices on ebay (well for ebay)

Wasn't there a way to load a different, larger soundfont bank in DOS by substituting it for one of the default banks? Like, replacing synthmt.sbk and then loading AWEUTIL with the /EM:MT32 switch?

I have the CT3900, though I do not use mem upgrade, I keep holding on to it because of the OPL chip on it.

Jorpho wrote:

Wasn't there a way to load a different, larger soundfont bank in DOS by substituting it for one of the default banks? Like, replacing synthmt.sbk and then loading AWEUTIL with the /EM:MT32 switch?

Yes, provided you can find GM (or MT-32) compatible soundfonts in the version 1 format (*.sbk), then you can replace the synthgm.sbk (the one used for GM compatibility mode) or the synthmt.sbk (the one used for MT-32 compatibility mode) files by renaming your soundfont to match the names as mentioned above.
When you then load Aweutil with the /EM:GM (or /EM:MT32) parameter, it will then load that soundfont.
Just ensure that you rename and place your files in the SFBANK sub directory under your main Sound Blaster folder (normally C:\SB16\SFBANK).

However, this is only useful for games that are not running in protected mode (i.e., does not use a DOS extender like DOS/4GW).
Aweutil does not support protected mode games and those games must natively support the AWE32 (i.e., in the game's setup menu, you must choose AWE32 for MIDI playback). This means that, in most cases, protected mode games will simply use the standard 1MB GM ROM sample set that is found on the AWE32.
You can, however, play most protected mode games from a command prompt (from within Windows 95 or 98) and then load any soundfont you want under Windows (can be either a version 1 or version 2 soundfont).
In doing so, you can expand your options (since there are quite a number of good soundfont version 2 formats out there, which uses the extension *.sf2).
In such a case, you would then select General MIDI (not AWE32) in the game's setup menu.