The CT3600 is one of the most common and cheapest models of the AWE32. It isn't necessarily bad, though. The CT3600 card doesn't route FM through the EMU8000 chip, so no chorus/reverb on the FM. Furthermore, the CT3600 doesn't have onboard RAM, but that shouldn't matter, as you got 8MB with your card. The CT3600 has the hanging note bug, so it's not ideal for use with external MIDI synthesizers. Both the CT3600 and the CT4380 have CQM, so even if you cared, it wouldn't matter.

Check the prices on actual CT3600 or CT3620 offers on ebay (usually there are couple of them all around the world) to find out whether your deal was a good one.

mkarcher wrote on 2022-09-29, 21:23:

The CT3600 card doesn't route FM through the EMU8000 chip, so no chorus/reverb on the FM. Furthermore, the CT3600 doesn't have onboard RAM, but that shouldn't matter, as you got 8MB with your card. [...] Both the CT3600 and the CT4380 have CQM, so even if you cared, it wouldn't matter.

That all sounds fine to me, so I'm not going to make a stink about it.

mkarcher wrote on 2022-09-29, 21:23:

The CT3600 has the hanging note bug, so it's not ideal for use with external MIDI synthesizers.

That's actually annoying but it's just one of the several Sound Blaster oddities that I'll have to deal with. One day there'll be an Orpheus 2 in this box, and I can wait until then for MIDI games.

The prices are close enough - and the tech is close enough - that I can't really summon the energy to send it back and then get another one.

Thanks for the information, you made my life simpler 😀

I imagine an AWE64 also wouldn't come with RAM expansion, because those are kinda rare and expensive. And the stock AWE MIDI bank is pretty meh.

So your CT3600 is a lot more useful, you can use a lot of great soundfonts with it. I would even go so far as to say that 8MB is optimal, because larger soundfonts just take too long to load on each boot.