First post, by p6889k
I see many people posting that they have dual sound cards in their PCs. I would like to try it out and am curious about what are the best practices to get it setup, what kind of problems should I expect and in general is it worth it. At high level my assumption is that PCI cards are of higher quality than ISA cards for Windows and therefore should be used for Windows. ISA cards have better compatibility with pure DOS. Is that what drives dual sound setup in general? let's ignore for a moment the topic of multiple ISA cards or multiple PCI cards, just 1xISA + 1xPCI.
I have a dual boot (BootMagic7) Pentium 4 PC (i875P chipset with 2x ISA slots), Win98SE and XP SP3. I have at my disposal AWE64 Value (CT4520 ISA), Ensoniq AudioPCI, ESS-Solo1. The AWE64 Value works great in the P4 ISA slot under pure DOS and also Windows. It just has rather noisy output.
I'm thinking the setup would work something like this:
Pure DOS:
Games would use AWE64. Set Blaster settings in Autoexec.bat.
Games would not see PCI Sound as I would not load PCI DOS drivers.
DOS games in Windows 98 DOS Window"
Hmm, how would this work? Should I disable the AWE64 in Device Manager to force Windows to use PCI Audio?
Windows 98 Native Games
Disable AWE64 in Device Manager and enable only PCI Audio?
Windows XP
Disable AWE64 in Device Manager and enable only PCI Audio?
Questions:
Are there ever problems where SW sees both cards and doesn't work properly?
If I disable AWE64 in Device Manager, do I keep it disabled permanently or is there ever a need to use AWE64 in Windows instead of PCI sound?
How do you physically switch audio input between the two cards to your speakers? Do you have some sort of external splitter or switch? Is there perhaps a way to route audio from ISA card to PCI card and use the PCI card in a sort of pass through mode so that only one audio cable is coming out of PC? I assume this could work in Windows by connecting it to AUX In, but not sure about DOS - But it's pointless in Windows as I want PCI in windows, not ISA.
Which of the two PCI cards I have (Ensoniq AudioPCI, ESS-Solo1) would be better for Windows only? Is any of them higher quality than the other or offers better features?
If I go the dual sound route, should I eventually change to better PCI card - which one? What would they get me over what I have? In general for Windows games I play pretty much everything except first person shooters type of games. Love flight sims, racing sims, etc.
Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k, 48k+, 128k, +2
Amiga 1200, 68030/40mhz
386DX/33, ET4000, SBPro2, MT32
Dual PPro/200, Millennium II, Voodoo 2, AWE32, SC-55
etc.