appiah4 wrote on 2022-05-28, 10:55:

Here is a proper recording with the 3D Spatializer disabled: […]
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Here is a proper recording with the 3D Spatializer disabled:

MK8330 - Arrakeen Palace

For comparison:

YMF719 - Arrakeen Palace
ES1868 - Arrakeen Palace

That took a while but I think I finally did it.. I think.. 😅

Anyway, like I said:

- ES1868 has great filtering, a soft sound and ESFM is fairly damn close to OPL3, though not exactly the same
- YMF719 appears to have a (mostly?) unfiltered FM synth so it sounds somewhat harsh and electronic, but is genuine OPL3
- MK8330 (at least to my ears) appears to have some kind of a low-pass filter that makes it sound pleasant like ES1868, and its FM Synthesis (again to my ears) indistinguishable from genuine OPL3.

As a final note, MK8330 and Terratec Gold also have WAY lower background noise levels than the YMF719 (-56dB vs -47dB in my recording setup).

keropi wrote on 2022-05-28, 10:51:

thanks! truth be told the original CMI driver package is not bad - it initializes the card and mixer and quits with no memory co […]
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appiah4 wrote on 2022-05-28, 09:55:

My recording was made with unisound and therefore 3d spatial effects, apparently. I will rerecord with official cmi drivers/mixer in an hour or so.

thanks!
truth be told the original CMI driver package is not bad - it initializes the card and mixer and quits with no memory consumption
if/when unisound implements switches for the other options it will be great but I am not sure how easy is this because there is no real tech docs for the CMI8330

For now I am using UNISOUND to initialize followed by CMMIX.COM to set the mixer volumes and disable 3D, Gain and SB Mixer options.

I'm not using CMINIT.EXE because the DOS driver installer actually froze on this system during post-install testing, probably due to the same reason YMF719 cards freez when I try WSS on this system - a hardware resource issue that UNISOUND doesn't care about but the official drivers get stuck on. Regardless, this way seems to work fine 😀

Thanks a lot. It's great to get such an in-depth, real world handle upon exactly what kind of experience can be expected when directly compared with other popular cards.

This card clearly does a good enough job to be better than most, with respect to FM "accuracy" and general sound output quality, and now we can hear exactly how.

well a box of factory half-assembled cards will travel in the next days towards us and I just put an order for the brackets
things took longer than expected and there were always delays but such is the state of the world now I guess...
thanks all for the kind words of encouragement 😀

I do like this.

Seems reasonably priced. Might grab one!

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-06-02, 20:48:

appiah4 wrote on 2022-05-28, 10:55:

Here is a proper recording with the 3D Spatializer disabled: […]
Show full quote

Here is a proper recording with the 3D Spatializer disabled:

MK8330 - Arrakeen Palace

For comparison:

YMF719 - Arrakeen Palace
ES1868 - Arrakeen Palace

That took a while but I think I finally did it.. I think.. 😅

Anyway, like I said:

- ES1868 has great filtering, a soft sound and ESFM is fairly damn close to OPL3, though not exactly the same
- YMF719 appears to have a (mostly?) unfiltered FM synth so it sounds somewhat harsh and electronic, but is genuine OPL3
- MK8330 (at least to my ears) appears to have some kind of a low-pass filter that makes it sound pleasant like ES1868, and its FM Synthesis (again to my ears) indistinguishable from genuine OPL3.

As a final note, MK8330 and Terratec Gold also have WAY lower background noise levels than the YMF719 (-56dB vs -47dB in my recording setup).

keropi wrote on 2022-05-28, 10:51:

thanks!
truth be told the original CMI driver package is not bad - it initializes the card and mixer and quits with no memory consumption
if/when unisound implements switches for the other options it will be great but I am not sure how easy is this because there is no real tech docs for the CMI8330

For now I am using UNISOUND to initialize followed by CMMIX.COM to set the mixer volumes and disable 3D, Gain and SB Mixer options.

I'm not using CMINIT.EXE because the DOS driver installer actually froze on this system during post-install testing, probably due to the same reason YMF719 cards freez when I try WSS on this system - a hardware resource issue that UNISOUND doesn't care about but the official drivers get stuck on. Regardless, this way seems to work fine 😀

Thanks a lot. It's great to get such an in-depth, real world handle upon exactly what kind of experience can be expected when directly compared with other popular cards.

This card clearly does a good enough job to be better than most, with respect to FM "accuracy" and general sound output quality, and now we can hear exactly how.

You're welcome, I hope it helped convince anyone into a buying decision because this card is awesome. I put it in my 5x86 system for testing and I'm not taking it out, ever 😁

If you want me to record any more specific games/tracks from it just let me know.

Considering I already have the 3 tracks, I may as well make a YouTube video and upload it sometime. Might be a good way to start a YouTube channel 😁

I'm also excited for one of these cards. I was thinking about having both an Orpheus and MK8330 in one machine; the Orpheus would have a X2GS on it and the MK8330 would have a McCake. Between the 2 cards, there would also be SB/SBPro/SB16/WSS support in DOS and Windows driver support from the MK8330. Any thoughts on this potential combination?

appiah4 wrote on 2022-06-03, 06:01:

You're welcome, I hope it helped convince anyone into a buying decision because this card is awesome. I put it in my 5x86 syste […]
Show full quote

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-06-02, 20:48:

appiah4 wrote on 2022-05-28, 10:55:

Here is a proper recording with the 3D Spatializer disabled: […]
Show full quote

Here is a proper recording with the 3D Spatializer disabled:

MK8330 - Arrakeen Palace

For comparison:

YMF719 - Arrakeen Palace
ES1868 - Arrakeen Palace

That took a while but I think I finally did it.. I think.. 😅

Anyway, like I said:

- ES1868 has great filtering, a soft sound and ESFM is fairly damn close to OPL3, though not exactly the same
- YMF719 appears to have a (mostly?) unfiltered FM synth so it sounds somewhat harsh and electronic, but is genuine OPL3
- MK8330 (at least to my ears) appears to have some kind of a low-pass filter that makes it sound pleasant like ES1868, and its FM Synthesis (again to my ears) indistinguishable from genuine OPL3.

As a final note, MK8330 and Terratec Gold also have WAY lower background noise levels than the YMF719 (-56dB vs -47dB in my recording setup).

For now I am using UNISOUND to initialize followed by CMMIX.COM to set the mixer volumes and disable 3D, Gain and SB Mixer options.

I'm not using CMINIT.EXE because the DOS driver installer actually froze on this system during post-install testing, probably due to the same reason YMF719 cards freez when I try WSS on this system - a hardware resource issue that UNISOUND doesn't care about but the official drivers get stuck on. Regardless, this way seems to work fine 😀

Thanks a lot. It's great to get such an in-depth, real world handle upon exactly what kind of experience can be expected when directly compared with other popular cards.

This card clearly does a good enough job to be better than most, with respect to FM "accuracy" and general sound output quality, and now we can hear exactly how.

You're welcome, I hope it helped convince anyone into a buying decision because this card is awesome. I put it in my 5x86 system for testing and I'm not taking it out, ever 😁

If you want me to record any more specific games/tracks from it just let me know.

Considering I already have the 3 tracks, I may as well make a YouTube video and upload it sometime. Might be a good way to start a YouTube channel 😁

Descent 1, please.

Please delete this, double post

mrzmaster wrote on 2022-06-03, 17:37:

I'm also excited for one of these cards. I was thinking about having both an Orpheus and MK8330 in one machine; the Orpheus would have a X2GS on it and the MK8330 would have a McCake. Between the 2 cards, there would also be SB/SBPro/SB16/WSS support in DOS and Windows driver support from the MK8330. Any thoughts on this potential combination?

I don’t see any benefit here
Yo can load McCake also with Yamaha GS Bank

It can do every Synth you have a bank for.

So are you saying the X2GS and McCake are duplicative? If I understood correctly, the X2GS has a licensed Roland bank.

mrzmaster wrote on 2022-06-03, 18:31:

So are you saying the X2GS and McCake are duplicative? If I understood correctly, the X2GS has a licensed Roland bank.

Unless you specifically need the Roland GS sound bank, the McCake can use obscenely large SF2 files to output fantastic GM/GS music.

I'm a little late getting back to this, but I thought I'd expand on the samples posted a few weeks ago. As already mentioned, these samples consisted of recordings from two different cards, each mixed down to a monaural track, normalised for volume levels, then the two (almost) exactly aligned into a single stereo track. The left channel is Orpheus YMF289, and the right is the prototype MK8330 card. If you put away the magnifying glass and stop dissecting for a minute, you will notice how close the sound of the CMI8330's FM block comes to genuine OPL3.

In particular, the recording of FMHOUSE2.A2M shows that even the percussion mode is quite close; that is something that other clones don't do so well (CrystalFM, among others). Really, if you postpone the inspections and listen to only one of them, I don't think it would be so easy to identify the CMI8330, versus the genuine OPL3. For casual listening, it is that close. That isn't to say that it is perfect, however, and there are differences. On a quality card bearing an OPL3, I find that the signal is generally cleaner and clearer, and the low-end bass-type instruments, as well as the high end of the frequency spectrum, are better-defined; the differences are more obvious in the uncompressed stereo recordings, in spite of the fact that I don't have a high-end recording setup.

Nonetheless, as keropi mentioned, this was more of a budget chip. When you consider that, the compatibility and faithful FM reproduction they managed to stuff into this little chip are impressive. As with every card, even "genuine" Sound Blaster-branded units, there will be the odd problem or incompatibility, but I predict that these two chaps will have trouble keeping up with demand (again!). Still have nagging questions? Ask away!

640K!enough wrote on 2022-06-09, 03:29:

If you put away the magnifying glass and stop dissecting for a minute, you will notice how close the sound of the CMI8330's FM block comes to genuine OPL3.

Better than that, the two channels were so similar that even by using the magnifying glass we couldn't tell if it's because of compression or for another reason.

I've tried making some Orpheus - MK8330 comparison. Can you help fill the blanks? Anything you feel should be added?

CMI8330 has no 'native' low-bit ADPCM support. But their Windows drivers contains required layer of compatibility, so the Duke 2 will sound absolutely fine if launched from a windows desktop.

GL1zdA wrote on 2022-06-09, 06:20:

I've tried making some Orpheus - MK8330 comparison. Can you help fill the blanks? Anything you feel should be added?

Good work. I haven't checked it for accuracy (I'll leave that to the better-informed) but it's a real useful data collation.

GL1zdA wrote on 2022-06-09, 06:20:

I've tried making some Orpheus - MK8330 comparison. Can you help fill the blanks? Anything you feel should be added?

Hello!
Intelligent midi is optional on MK8330, on Orpheus is standard.
I would change that for now 😀

Thanks !

Marmes wrote on 2022-06-09, 08:30:

Hello! Intelligent midi is optional on MK8330, on Orpheus is standard. I would change that for now :) […]
Show full quote

GL1zdA wrote on 2022-06-09, 06:20:

I've tried making some Orpheus - MK8330 comparison. Can you help fill the blanks? Anything you feel should be added?

Hello!
Intelligent midi is optional on MK8330, on Orpheus is standard.
I would change that for now 😀

Thanks !

I've listed the CMI8330/CS4237 and PC-MIDI as separate devices, each with their own "compatibility" row. Only the PC-MIDI does intelligent mode, yes?

GL1zdA wrote on 2022-06-09, 10:03:

Marmes wrote on 2022-06-09, 08:30:

Hello! Intelligent midi is optional on MK8330, on Orpheus is standard. I would change that for now :) […]
Show full quote

GL1zdA wrote on 2022-06-09, 06:20:

I've tried making some Orpheus - MK8330 comparison. Can you help fill the blanks? Anything you feel should be added?

Hello!
Intelligent midi is optional on MK8330, on Orpheus is standard.
I would change that for now 😀

Thanks !

I've listed the CMI8330/CS4237 and PC-MIDI as separate devices, each with their own "compatibility" row. Only the PC-MIDI does intelligent mode, yes?

Yes, Only PCMIDI does Intelligent midi.

Thanks 😉

Hello!
If there is interest in these boards, you can now start to contact us via email. First boards are ready and available.
Thanks!

Marmes wrote on 2022-06-20, 21:27:

Hello!
If there is interest in these boards, you can now start to contact us via email. First boards are ready and available.
Thanks!

Sent an email to Keropi. You aren't opening order forms?