Wavetable Daughterboards Vs Sound Module Vs Upgraded Midi PCI soundcard \ VOGONS

Wavetable Daughterboards Vs Sound Module Vs Upgraded Midi PCI soundcard

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First post, by SETBLASTER

Posted on 2020-01-25, 01:13

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Hi all, this question might sound weird because i doubt anyone at the forum has all those 3 hardware and was able to compare the sound.
but you have different choices for midi on retro PCs:

1) Wavetable daughterboards (like yamaha DB60XG)
2) External Sound Module like the Yamaha MU50 or MU60
3) an Upgraded PCI soundcard like a Yamaha YMF744 with the XG chip.

What i want to know is , did each one of those gave a different sound?, or the sound is absolutly the same for all 3 choices?
Most of the later yamaha pci cards included the midi on ther cards and they had DOS drivers i belive, so was really a daughterboard usefull at all on a 486 computer with pci slot?

Reply 1 of 5, by cyclone3d

Posted on 2020-01-25, 05:08

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1) Don't have the daughterboard, but I do have the ISA SW60XG
2) No idea, don't have either of those modules.
3) For the Yamaha PCI cards, the wavetable is not available for use in pure DOS.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 2 of 5, by Warlord

Posted on 2020-01-25, 05:15

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idk also but may want to read this thread. My Wavetable Sample Thread

Reply 3 of 5, by derSammler

Posted on 2020-01-25, 08:45

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1 and 2 sound almost the same, but not exactly, as the sound goes thru different analog stages.

3 sound quite different; it's XG, but not using the same hardware and samples.

Last edited by derSammler on 2020-01-25, 15:07. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 4 of 5, by auron

Posted on 2020-01-25, 14:29

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DB60XG has clipping issues that MU50 doesn't, but otherwise they're very similar, just a few less patches on the DB60XG. pretty sure there is no such thing as MU60.

the YMF PCI cards are often said to have "hardware-assisted" wavetable, for whatever that's worth... i found the datasheets on the wikipedia page. the word order in the relevant part is a tad different for YMF754 and could make one think that only reverb/chorus is done in software, as i've read being claimed, but i think its a pure softsynth throughout the whole range. granted, their S-YXG50 (which might just be a relabel of what these cards came with) was pretty good for the day and sounds a lot like DB60XG as well, but unfortunately has even worse clipping issues. of course all of that puts you firmly in 9x VDM land where you really don't want to be running softsynths on something like a 486. at least they do apparently have MPU-401 support in DOS.

Reply 5 of 5, by boxpressed

Posted on 2020-01-25, 14:49

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I recorded some DOS games samples from Yamaha-based ISA, PCI, and daughterboard synths if you want to compare.

YMF-719B-S (ISA) and YMF-724F-V (PCI) in this post: Re: My Wavetable Sample Thread
NEC XR385 (clone of DB60XG) here: Re: My Wavetable Sample Thread

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