Gold standard of simple DOS games sound.

Maybe for an older DOS machine? I've always considered the OPL3 Sound Blaster 16 to be the gold standard.

Of course, you also have the added effort of finding one with an OPL3 chip and navigating the models with the hanging note bug.

16-bit samples are not really a thing for most DOS games, except later ones. Add to that the fact that for 8-bit the SB16 is no better than a regular SB, and it has bugs like the "DMA click" which do not occur on an SBPro. That's why it's considered the "gold standard" as mentioned above.

By the way, it's the rare SBPro1 (CT1330) that uses 2 OPL2 chips, not the common SBPro2 (CT1600) which has a single OPL3.

Regarding your original question: it's so expensive because everyone that sells old PC hardware nowadays thinks they're sitting on a gold mine. Heck, right now I'm browsing eBay for a simple ISA I/O card and most of them are 40, 50, 60+ dollars despite being generic garbage. Ridiculous. As you said, the CT1600 is really nothing special (besides nostalgia) and it's horribly noisy (you can't even disable the internal amplifier). But as long as people keep paying $100+ prices will keep rising. I have 2 of them which I bought for less than $10 each years ago, and I had one back in the early-mid 90's, but despite my nostalgia for it I would never pay current prices.

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-07-23, 06:43:

I bought two of these a couple of year ago and was very disappointed with them, relegating them to my collection at the bottom of a bin. The dual OPL3 chips are interesting but nothing uses them. And the card itself is pretty lackluster with plenty of better (and cheaper) alternatives.

There's no dual OPL3 card, only dual OPL2 and it's on the first SB Pro.

I agree, though, I also have only one SB Pro 2, which I bought when they were still very cheap (I paid $10 for it in my country). I tested it once, and it's been sitting in an antistatic bag ever since.
Anyway, its price, as most prices, is influenced by supply and demand. There are fewer and fewer such cards in the wild, but demand is very high (because it's a "cool"/nostalgic card to have in a period correct system). The fact that it's noisy doesn't even matter, many people actually want that, it has an "authentic" feel to it. 😀

What I will say is that, in a period correct system, the card is as compatible as it gets - it. just. works (well, as long as you are lucky and have a good period correct system, with fewer quirks - don't even get me started with that 😁 ).
It's not as good for DOS compatibility on newer systems, though, the card is much more speed sensitive than other newer cards (like ESS AudioDrive 1688/1868).
And, yeah, since I got to ESS AudioDrive ES1688... these cards (the non-PNP versions that I have, at least) are my favorite ISA cards: loud, crips, crystal clear sound, very low noise, extremely good compatibility (with less speed sensitivity), and ESFM - which, to my ear, always sounded very good, just like the Yamaha OPL3.

When compared with following SB cards, SBP2 has the respective advantage:

SB: Stereo OPL3+ CD-ROM (Panasonic / Matsushita) interface
SBP1: Single OPL3 chip instead of dual OPL2 chips
SB16: No DMA click bug
SBAWE32: Much smaller card (most AWE32 revisions were full-length 13" Baby-AT and not compatible with many shallower ATX / mATX chassis, or might conflict with CPU heat sink on many Baby-AT MB designs)
SBAWE64: Physical OPL3 chip
Later SB on PCI interface: Full DOS compatibility

In summary, I'd say SBP2 is THE most compatible (not the best quality) sound card with minimal bugs or conflicts for DOS-era games.

Yes you can replace them with one computer with ESS Audiodrive card and one computer with OPL-SAx card. then you also have the same compatibility. Because both have one or two games that crap out. Some have remedies. some don´t. Well that´s what i have done. Well i do have some SB16 and SB32 too. But mainly exploit those cheap ESS/Yamaha cards.

People are buying up these Old ISA cards and VLB cards and reselling it for allot of MONEY.
They are Dealers looking to profit off of the retro computer community.

But I would NOT waist my time with the Sound Blaster Pro 2.0
Better sound out of the “DreamBlaster X2 GS” wave table
Google it.

Just get a ISA sound card with a Wave table header and add the Dreamblaster.
It is Roland General Standard audio. Better than Sound Blaster. Clear sound.

Its just like the Video cards today.
People are buying them up just because they want to control the PC market.
Computer WARs.

Creative suffers from a lot of over hype in general both positive and negative.
Most of the bugs I don't see as big issues. MPU-401 hanging/stuttering? non issue if you don't have external midi. use a 2nd card if you do
DMA click? I prefer this to the Yamaha Duke Nukem 2/ADPCM bug.
How bad CQM sounds compared to OPL comes down to personal choice.
The broken SBPro Stereo is my main complaint but even then most my games are new enough for SB16 support and the few that aren't I don't really notice.
But then you have the other extreme
People paying crazy prices for a AWE32 Gold which the only difference over a standard AWE32 is a marginally better snr.
or specific CT number cards as they have the least bugs, OPL chip or whatever but can be noisy or poor choice for games the person actually plays.

I like Creative, they were the cards I desired back in the 90's and still hold the most nostalgic value. I don't think I'm alone especially with people just getting into the hobby and SoundBlaster been the default choice BIN prices are always over inflated but I'd also never spend more then about £20 on an ISA card. EVERY card is noisy, and has its bugs/incompatibilities. no matter what you get your compromising on something.

I am starting to see prices getting more reasonable for the "normal, but perfectly usable" stuff. The Rarer and more sought after (for whatever reason) parts are getting higher. A lot of people about now with expendable cash who want to see what they could not afford back in the day.

All of this free money through government handouts has really messed up the collector's market. A lot of stuff definitely shot up in price with more people bidding on things.

Even as a collector myself, I won't even bid on a lot of things now because they the prices they're selling for are unreasonable. This is for things that aren't particularly rare or valuable but are vintage nonetheless. I hope these things will eventually make their way back onto the market at some later time and not get thrown away.

In my country businesses are closing because they can't hire workers because they can't compete with what the government is handing out in unemployment. There is visible inflation and yet the average wage has decreased. This is very bad for our economy and it is clearly reflected in our luxury goods.

I'm Guessing its down to compatibility , the CT1600 isn't the greatest card of all time but from what I've seen it mostly works fine with everything at least from what I've played.
Also it seems like all the old models of sound blaster : 1.0 , 1.5 , 2.0 , Pro 1 , Pro 2 and I need not mention the original Creative Gameblaster fetch silly amounts maybe due to increasing scarcity.

Price you see on ebay is list price, not "real" price. Everyone who wants to sell a similar card will look at that price and sell at a similar price. But they can be waiting for years until they sell it. Real price is determined only once someone buys it. The bottom line is do not buy the expensive stuff unless it's really worth it for you. For most people it's not.

AlexZ wrote on 2021-07-25, 10:57:

Price you see on ebay is list price, not "real" price. Everyone who wants to sell a similar card will look at that price and sell at a similar price. But they can be waiting for years until they sell it. Real price is determined only once someone buys it. The bottom line is do not buy the expensive stuff unless it's really worth it for you. For most people it's not.

That's true for some items, but not the Sound Blaster Pro 2 cards - which actually sell for those prices (you can easily check the sold items on eBay). Some of them are sold for $170+.

bloodem wrote on 2021-07-25, 11:01:

That's true for some items, but not the Sound Blaster Pro 2 cards - which actually sell for those prices (you can easily check the sold items on eBay). Some of them are sold for $170+.

This just indicate that at the moment, demand exceeds supply significantly. There are more people wanting to buy "the ultimate retro SoundBlaster", i.e. the CT1600 (depending on what you call "retro", the SB16 might be seen as "modern uninteresting stuff") than people wanting to sell CT1600 boards. So only the people that are ready to spend insane amounts of money on CT1600 boards obtain them. Maybe this is a bubble that will burst in some years, and CT1600 boards go down to $50 again, but maybe retro fetishists keep pushing prices, and "normal retro users" just learn which SB Pro compatible clone cards (which there are lots of available) satisfy the retro gaming well enough.

mkarcher wrote on 2021-07-26, 00:35:

and "normal retro users" just learn which SB Pro compatible clone cards (which there are lots of available) satisfy the retro gaming well enough.

Yes there are ! BTW are there any good Vogons threads that have good lists ? Did a quick search but stumbled a bit [but remember seeing one that had some good lists, just could not find it 🙁 ]😀

Me sitting here with my collection of all the different revisions of the SB Pro 2.0:

And no, I did not pay silly prices for them either. Probably have a couple extra I don't actually need.

Prices might come down a bit, when they go sky high it pulls more "stock" out of the woodwork. So there will suddenly be a lot of competition and they'll start undercutting each other to shift them. Though they'll probably reach a bottom not even halfway down, then climb slow and steady still. So if you're wanting to buy one, look for the price flattening out at the bottom, before they go up again.

I don't know why it's such a hot card really, all I looked for in the day was SBPro 2 FALLBACK mode and something 16bit for actual decent sound. I didn't appreciate my Aztech enough though with covox, dss, mss/wss, SBPro2, adlib... I gotta dig it out and wire it up to my CT1920 and then I've got EMU soundfont midi too.

I'm glad I got mine when I did. I'm sorry I didn't get more. (Same with Voodoo cards.)

It's the last good Sound Blaster Creative ever made. That said there are SB Pro clones that are better than the SB Pro anyway so I would never pay the street prices for these. Despite being the only model lacking in my modest collection I won't get one unless I stumble on it for cheap somehow.