The Okey Dokey Sound Card

leileilol wrote on 2022-11-17, 20:23:

The Okey Dokey Sound Card

😁

Funny thing is I was reading old CGW issues and came across this. I was thinking of starting a thread on it to try to find out if this card ever even existed or was it just vaporware?

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2022-11-17, 19:46:

Hey Guys, I would like to know what is you Favorite ISA sound card ?
Personally I can’t decide on just one.

Same.

No single sound card does it all. It also depends on the era of gaming and what is supported at that time.

Late 80s: Roland LAPC-I + Adlib (or Thunderboard or modern SB clone)

Early 90s: Roland LAPC-I + SB Pro clone (e.g. Orpheus I)

Mid 90s: Gravis Ultrasound Extreme + Roland MPU-401 AT & wavetable daughterboard + external modules (CM-32L, MU2000, JV-1010)

The latter combination of the GUS Extreme and MPU-401 AT has been my single favorite setup so far. I installed it into a 486 DX-2/66 and was amazed at how seamless it was to setup and everything just worked with zero issues.

I've also discovered through trial and error that I am NOT a fan of Creative Labs cards, at least not from the ISA era. It seems like every single Creative Labs card from the ISA era has shortcomings in one respect or another including the much-lauded AWE64 Gold.

I do like some of Creative Labs PCI and PCIe based cards. But for ISA, I have no found any use for them. In every case there is a better alternative.

A Labway OPLSAx YMF719, with the filter mod and new caps + X2GS with custom mixer settings to sound more like a real SC55.

- Great sounding SB Pro 2 (thanks to the filter mod)
- OPL3
- WSS
- The best sounding GM I've heard
- No nasty pops on startup / shutdown

The AWE64 is about as good as it gets for an ISA sound card for me. It has excellent 16-bit audio quality, great compatibility since it runs pretty much as a Sound Blaster 16, and decent enough wavetable support. It also works extraordinarily well under Windows 9X. If it had actual OPL3 and a Waveblaster header, it would be perfect, but since the AWE64 Legacy is sold out and more than I can spend on a retro soundcard it takes a lot for me to take it out of my retro Windows 98 PC.

Difficult choice , there's too many interesting options I'm also going to agree that sound blasters are a dime a dozen though a necessary evil.
But the quality just isn't super great so I might skip mentioning any creative products.

Primax Soundstorm m16C (Gus GF1 clone) , games support is awful but the tracker music more than makes up for it.
Some games that natively do support it like Turrican 2 do sound pretty mint though.

Diamond monster MX300 (Aureal Vortex2) , The directional audio was quite good for its time and the fact it offloads alot of the processing to the card helps not hamper the perfomance of your pc.

PAS16 for actually having some well thought out software to go with the card.

MadMac_5 wrote on 2022-11-17, 23:10:

The AWE64 is about as good as it gets for an ISA sound card for me. It has excellent 16-bit audio quality, great compatibility since it runs pretty much as a Sound Blaster 16, and decent enough wavetable support. It also works extraordinarily well under Windows 9X. If it had actual OPL3 and a Waveblaster header, it would be perfect, but since the AWE64 Legacy is sold out and more than I can spend on a retro soundcard it takes a lot for me to take it out of my retro Windows 98 PC.

I like to combine an AWE64 with a secondary sound card which has genuine OPL3, bugfree MPU-401 and proper SBPro compatibility. Examples would include cards from Yamaha, OPTi, Aztech etc.

That way, it's possible to get the best of both worlds, albeit with some hassle from having to configure two sound cards on the same system.

What are some of these good audio programs that came with the cards? Anything worth playing with today? I bought my first computer in the XP era, so I missed the early Sound Blaster stuff.

I have a lot of cards, but one that comes to mind is this one:

Telewave Audio 32 - its onboard wavetable sounds weird!

Telewave32 with onboard Midi. It configures easy, compatible with everything, sounds good, can switch easily between on board midi and external, real OPL3. It's become my sort of go-to card.

I think the upcoming Orpheus II would be my choice if I only could have one ISA card. But the systems for which it matters often have plenty of ISA slots available.

MK8330

ESS 1869. Perfect Sound Blaster PRO comp. ESFM is OPL3 sounding. No fuss drivers. No midi bugs. Nice aditional 3d effects, that you can control even in dos.

PAS16, because
a) it was my first sound card
b) it has a clean sound
c) it's still not emulated (sadly)

SB16 CT17xx, because
a) it has the old DSP (no hanging-note bug)
b) uses jumpers/needs no Creative software
c) has that fat, bassy Noise Blaster sound (like old Genesis/Mega Drive) 🥲

Both have the real OPL3, also. And a primitive MPU-401 (except early PAS16).

What's interesting about the PAS16 is its 3D sound, the software configuration (no ISA PnP), the cool software package (Win31+286), the good dynamic mic amp.

Edit: The EMU8000 isn't bad, either.
It's supported by Impulse Tracker, for example.
Because of this, I've got a Gold Finch card still.
I planned to used it in tandem with a PAS16..

Also havea lonely SB32 soundcard in a box somewhere, I believe.

If it's OPL3 is muted/deactivated (the PnP cards can do that, afaik), such an SB32/AWE should be able to co-exist with a PAS16, too.

That's a problem I facec in the past, btw.
The PAS16/SB16 can coexist with each other, but the OPL3 is a problem.
The PAS16 uses its base address as control port.
A special circuitry in the PAS16 takes care of it, but not in the SB16.
So there's a noise coming out from the SB16 OPL3 after the PAS16 initializes.
Running diagnose.exe gets away with it, but the noise during bootup isn't nice.
Being able to disable the SB16 OPL3 would be nice, thus.

Jo22 wrote on 2022-11-18, 06:56:

So there's a noise coming out from the SB16 OPL3 after the PAS16 initializes.
Running diagnose.exe gets away with it, but the noise during bootup isn't nice.
Being able to disable the SB16 OPL3 would be nice, thus.

I know many people hate PnP, but this is one of the situations where ISA PnP is the cure and not the disease. Given proper initialization software, you can disable the OPL3 port on SB16, SB/AWE32/AWE64. I'm unsure whether CTCM rejects a configuration like that, but UNISOUND sound be able to do that, and if not, JazeFox will have not serious problem to add it.

My favorite is the Sound Blaster Pro 2 (CT-1600), for compatibility reasons and the fact that it doesn't require a bunch of drivers and / or utilities loaded in at boot. I like to keep things simple.

I'd have preferred it to be the original Sound Blaster Pro (CT-1330) because of its dual YM3812 chips, but that card's noise problem was absolutely unacceptable for me.

If either card had Game Blaster support they'd be even better, because I really enjoy listening to so-called "bee-in-a-box" music... when it's done right. Thankfully the SAAYM sound card exists now, so I may have to pick one up.

Although I used to own both an LAPC-I and a SCC-1, they didn't get a lot of use because Ad Lib is what I grew up with, and thus what always sounded "right" to my ears. Only in rare instances (LSL3 immediately springs to mind) was the LAPC-I my "go-to" music card. I eventually sold both cards when the prices skyrocketed. Score!

AWE32
Mid/late 90's when dos was still the gaming OS of choice I didn't know about Roland, external MIDI devices, etc That AWE option in sound setup seemed like the best option so what I dreamed about.
even though now I'm older and better informed it doesn't change the fact this is the card I wanted for so long and therefore my default choice .
And even though some AWE32's have proper OPL chip is just a bonus, really the reason I like it over the 64 is having proper 30 pin ram modules on the card looks so much cooler!

digistorm wrote on 2022-11-18, 06:00:

I think the upcoming Orpheus II would be my choice if I only could have one ISA card. But the systems for which it matters often have plenty of ISA slots available.

Do you have a link to info about this New version card ?

Aren't sound cards supposed to make noise?

Love the various YMF719xxx variant cards, I have a couple which have a YMF719E-S on them and they are just great for both Windows 9x and DOS.

Except of course for the current issue I have in my Socket 462 system where they are apparently slightly incompatible with VT82C686 chipsets (tried across 3 different mobos, same issues). Grrrr. Oh well.