I remember even before those prices, back in 2012 you could get a AWE64 Gold for 30 USD on Ebay. I should've bought everything that was posted, but that is the value of hindsight.

For Yahoo Auctions Japan you can use a forwarder. There are many out there, buyee.jp is one of them.

Oh, and I probably should apologise if someone here was on these auctions and got bumped by me into his max. Just tryin'a get mine!

Why do you want the Gold in particular? Maybe an AWE32 3670 (which is basically an AWE64 with SIMM slots) is the cheapest option. Ordinary AWE64s are cheaper by themselves, but the ram expansion for them is expensive as heck.

I wanted the 4540 cause I had another STB Voodoo2 (have one already) and it was going to be a black and gold senseless waste of money inside 😀

I think a big part of it is that I want what I can't have...

Sounds like I need to dig out and sell my AWE gold if they fetch that much. I don't have much use for a good sound card, as am deaf in one ear and tone deaf in the other 😀

DraxDomax wrote on 2021-06-26, 20:31:

I wanted the 4540 cause I had another STB Voodoo2 (have one already) and it was going to be a black and gold senseless waste of money inside 😀

I think a big part of it is that I want what I can't have...

Hehee I did that with my newer i7: black corsair case, black asrock motherboard, black antec psu, black EVGA vid card. looks great inside !
Bought a ct4380 awe64 value back 6 months ago for $40, works fine and the gold versions were 4X in price at the time

Recently I saw a pack of Sound Blaster cards on sale with 2x AWE 64 and one was the gold version. It seems they got bought by a speculator who is now reselling them for higher price (AWE 64 Gold for €150). In the meantime I'm glad I bought my Yamaha ISA sound card recently for just €3 😀.

Being sold for $300 doesn't mean they have such value, that is only list price. Lot of sellers set price based on similar items being sold. Real value is determined only once someone buys it.

Patience is the key.

I always look in old computers i find at thriftshops. That’s how i got mine awe64 gold with spdif bracket for just 10 euro, since that was the price for the computer.

i was in the right place and time at a recycle store and bought it for $50 (plus some other nice things). Ive seen the prices on ebay and cant believe it.
But i have seen some of the awe64 value at a reasonable price, anyone know the key differences?

Everything is a bubble that will not pop. Houses. Cars. Hobbies. The pickers are buying up everything. It's only going to get worse as the world economy degrades further.

The AWE64 cards aren't even good. They don't have a real OPL3 for older games, require a TSR for the synth and use crappy soundfonts. For $300 you can get a good yamaha soundblaster clone and multiple external midi modules. And if you really want to play around with soundfonts you can also get a SB Live basically for free. Sure it will only work with soundfonts inside windows but at that price it's not that big of a drawback.

I gotta start taking a closer look at the local "box of parts" listings I pass over because they're all modems and sound cards

Schule04 wrote on 2021-06-28, 00:34:

The AWE64 cards aren't even good. They don't have a real OPL3 for older games, require a TSR for the synth and use crappy soundfonts. For $300 you can get a good yamaha soundblaster clone and multiple external midi modules. And if you really want to play around with soundfonts you can also get a SB Live basically for free. Sure it will only work with soundfonts inside windows but at that price it's not that big of a drawback.

It's over inflated in price sure but I would not go so far as to say it's "not good". Some of the SF2 sound fonts sound amazing and bug free SB16 and MIDI is worth something too

Schule04 wrote on 2021-06-28, 00:34:

The AWE64 cards aren't even good. They don't have a real OPL3 for older games, require a TSR for the synth and use crappy soundfonts. For $300 you can get a good yamaha soundblaster clone and multiple external midi modules. And if you really want to play around with soundfonts you can also get a SB Live basically for free. Sure it will only work with soundfonts inside windows but at that price it's not that big of a drawback.

I concur ! The best Creative ISA card for DOS gaming IMHO is the SB32 CT3930 with EMU8000, Yamaha YMF262, simm slots for up to 28Mb ram (for sound fonts) and is jumper set not plug and play..
The built in features make a AWE64 look like a value card in many ways IF all you are doing is DOS/Win9x gaming. Just my opinion....

maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-06-28, 02:15:

It's over inflated in price sure but I would not go so far as to say it's "not good". Some of the SF2 sound fonts sound amazing and bug free SB16 and MIDI is worth something too

Agree ! It is a good card but there are others that can be cheaper and do same if you stumble on them...

Schule04 wrote on 2021-06-28, 00:34:

The AWE64 cards aren't even good. They don't have a real OPL3 for older games, require a TSR for the synth and use crappy soundfonts. For $300 you can get a good yamaha soundblaster clone and multiple external midi modules. And if you really want to play around with soundfonts you can also get a SB Live basically for free. Sure it will only work with soundfonts inside windows but at that price it's not that big of a drawback.

Soundfonts require windows and thus don't need a TSR - they load using windows drivers, and there is no reason for them to be crappy. I use a very nice one. It's true the lack of OPL makes it less interesting for older games, but the Live! does not help you there either. And getting a Live! working with soundfonts for DOS games is a PITA, or just working reliably with DOS games in general. I probably wouldn't pay $300 for a Gold, but if you can get one affordably they are worth it.

i have a couple golds. they are over hyped.

Schule04 wrote on 2021-06-28, 00:34:

require a TSR for the synth

The TSR is only loaded in case a game you're playing doesn't support the AWE32 mode natively so you need to force the card to emulate General MIDI using AWEUTIL under pure DOS. On the other hand, if you're simply initializing the card in AWE32 mode, then AWEUTIL does not stay resident.

This is handled much better under Win9x where General MIDI works right off the bat in pretty much any game.

and use crappy soundfonts.

I kind of like GM35REVC.SF2 which is the default soundfont that ships with the AWE64 Gold. Here are some music samples. Then again, you can load that on a SBLive too.

Pickle wrote on 2021-06-28, 00:00:

But i have seen some of the awe64 value at a reasonable price, anyone know the key differences?

The Value models are slightly more noisy than the Gold cards, but that can be adjusted by tweaking the mixer settings. They also only have 512 KB of on-board RAM which limits you severely in terms of soundfonts that can be loaded, though there are third party RAM expansion cards which can work around that.

The latest Value model CT4520 is much more integrated than the rest and also lacks the oscillator crystal. It seems to handle resampling worse than the Gold and also suffers from the Vibra distortion bug. Again, this is likely only an issue with that particular model, since Creative used so many cost cutting measures on it.

On topic, you can still get an AWE64 Gold for a decent price if you look in your local classifieds instead of Evil Bay. I got mine for 45 EUR last year. I certainly wouldn't pay 100+ EUR for one, you're better off getting an SC-55 for that much.