retro games 100 wrote:

^ Yes that's right! I remember now, when you actually play the game (hehe, I don't play games much these days, just mess about with old hardware) you can choose to reverse the stereo in the options.

I just looked again and it's only for digital sounds not midi 🙁

I just made a recording on my AWE64 (not GOLD): http://www.mediafire.com/?zpi1oyfc3037k0b

I have to say I'm mighty impressed. It sounds really good and nothing sounds out of place. In way I like it better than the Roland version.

I guess the AWE32/64 synth isn't all that bad 🤣 or is really suited to this kind of techno style music.

Mau1wurf1977, I just need to clarify something. Are you using "pure DOS", or a "dos box" inside Windows? For all of my sound card recordings, I have used "pure DOS".

Pity about the Descent "reverse stereo" option.

I "gave up" on DOSBox...

Pure DOS 6.22 all the way 🤣

Your 1MB "standard edition" AWE64 sounds good. I'm impressed by that. 😀 Considering that the Yamaha (and I think Roland) DBs are 4MB!

Also, when I said "dos box" inside Windows, I meant that "C:\ prompt command shell thing", not the DOSBox emulator for modern systems.

Yea no windows on my flash drive whatsoever! DOS 6.22 and FAT16 FTW 🤣

PS: I believe the AWE64 only has 512 of wavetable memory onboard. When you run DIAGNOSE.EXE it tests the memory and counts to 512 😀

EDIT:

Also I noticed that my ESS AudioDrive card also has Stereo reversed. I saw this posted by someone else this week, that a lot of SB Pro clones have Stereo reversed.

I believe with this cards that OPL3 AND digital sound is reversed, so you can just swap the RCA cables at the AMP...

No, it's 1 MB ROM and 512 kB RAM. So if the game loads the gmsbk soundbank it will be 1.5 MB.
Diagnose.exe only tests the RAM.

Oh thanks for pointing this out!

elianda wrote:

No, it's 1 MB ROM and 512 kB RAM. So if the game loads the gmsbk soundbank it will be 1.5 MB.
Diagnose.exe only tests the RAM.

When you say "the game loads the gmsbk soundbank", can this only occur inside Windows - either for Windows games, or DOS games run inside a "C:\ command prompt DOS box". In other words, a DOS game run inside "pure DOS" can only use the card's ROM. ?

Depends on the support of the game. There are even a few games that bring own sounds.
But just take a look at aweutil that loads the additional soundfonts to the 512 kB RAM if you emulate GM or MT-32.
Someone here pointed out that you might replace these SFs with larger custom ones when loading AWEUTIL to enable some kind of Soundfont loading within DOS. Though its quite limited since it requires AWEUTIL running.
On the other hand there is also Midplay that has own support for AWE sondfont loading as DOS program.

So if these programs can do this, a game can also support this.
I haven't seen a test yet, where someone checked which games that support AWE32 nativly don't work with a SB32 (the card without 512 kB RAM). This could clarify if the game requires to have a card with 512 kB RAM.

Thanks for the info elianda.

Has anyone come across this kind of problem - recently, I made a recording using an ESS AudioDrive (ES1688F chipset). The recording was Doom E1M1, using a Yamaha daughterboard. The L and R channels sounded "reversed". Now, I have revisited this hardware, to run some more tests. If I listen to Doom E1M1 again, the channels are not reversed, but they do not have good "stereo seperation" either.

Before, you could hear that music was coming from the Left and then the Right channel. Now, the music is mostly coming from the "middle". Does that make any sense? I don't know what I have done between testing sessions, to make this ESS AudioDrive + Daughterboard sound different! All I do is run esscfg.exe, and then run essvol.exe, and then run Doom.

Hmm didn't you use the MPU401AT for this?

I have a test for you that is 100% easy but you need to test with the MPU401AT because Wing Commander doesn't work otherwise.

Start Wing Commander with MT-32 sound (run SETUP and don't worry about having a Yamaha DB, the sounds will sound off, but we are interested in what channel they come out).

And once you are on the space ship, go the next room on the right. There is a bucket with water dripping. The dripping sound should come out from the left speaker!

And when you are in a fighter, pressing C (for communicate) will trigger the right HUD screen and W (for weapons) the left screen. There will be a sound matching your key strokes either from left or right.

Space combat is also full Stereo. So the missile lock sound can move from left to right if the enemy does the same...

gerwin wrote:

On the bottom of this topic you can find one solution:

Another solution:

I also noticed that my ESS AudioDrive has digital speech reversed (test this with DESCENT shareware or full game SETUP.EXE). So that card should be perfect for the YAMAHA DB as now Voice and Midi will be reversed, meaning you just need to cross the cables 😀

Another note: My AWE64 GOLD cards have 4MB onboard RAM! The 512KB was the non gold version...

Glad to see that you're making some Descent recordings, as I just realized over the weekend that a lot of Descent's music sounds quite different on my SC-88 when I switch between SC-88 mode and SC-55MkII mode.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Hmm didn't you use the MPU401AT for this?

I have a test for you that is 100% easy but you need to test with the MPU401AT because Wing Commander doesn't work otherwise.

Earlier on in this thread, I used an ESS AudioDrive. Later on in this thread, I used a Roland MPU-401AT. I then revisited the ESS AudioDrive hardware, and it sounded different.

I tried WC, with the MPU-401AT. The drips in the bucket can be heard in the left channel, which seems wrong. The W button for "Weapons" can be heard in the left channel, which seems correct. Pressing the C button seemed to do nothing, both visually and audibly. I was running the "flight sim" found inside the bar at the beginning of the game.

retro games 100 wrote:

The drips in the bucket can be heard in the left channel, which seems wrong. The W button for "Weapons" can be heard in the left channel, which seems correct

Perfect! That's how it should be!

So now you have an easy test for every future wave table board 😀

PS: What wavetable did you use now? The Roland or Yamaha?

Better try both and see if one is reversed or not (though I believe we established that the Yamaha are indeed reversed)

For the WC test, I used the Yamaha DB. I was going to try the other DB (Roland), but my ears can't take any more GM music ATM! 🤣

retro games 100 wrote:

For the WC test, I used the Yamaha DB. I was going to try the other DB (Roland), but my ears can't take any more GM music ATM! 🤣

Well that would point to the board not being reversed or you had the cables reversed or the MPU401AT reversed it for you...

You are confusing me 🤣

I will unconfuse myself once my NEC/Yamaha clone arrives...

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

(though I believe we established that the Yamaha are indeed reversed)

The yamaha DB has a different Left/Right pinout then the Roland DB. But then some soundcards have different Left/Right pinouts too. Example: if you put the DB50XG on a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz soundcard stereo is fine again.
If you put a Roland DB on that card stereo is reversed.

On a MPU401AT it should have been reversed though. His other midi adapters won't work in Wing Commander (no intelligent mode...)

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

On a MPU401AT it should have been reversed though. His other midi adapters won't work in Wing Commander (no intelligent mode...)

We are talking about daughterboards here?

retro games 100 wrote:

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

On a MPU401AT it should have been reversed though. His other midi adapters won't work in Wing Commander (no intelligent mode...)

We are talking about daughterboards here?

Nope...

MPU401 adapters. The cards you put the wavetable boards on!

The MPU401AT supports the intelligent mode which Wing Commander (and some other games) use. The MPU401 port on other sound cards (SB16, AWE32 and most / all others) do not support the intelligent mode.

Wing Commander will just hang at the loading screen (where you see the memory message)