DB50XG recordings added. Nice DB with some great sounds.

swaaye wrote:

Hey RG100 why are they mono and only 80kbps OGG??? Can you make them better quality and in MP3?

Oops, sorry! I'll get this redone later today...

swaaye wrote:

Hey RG100 why are they mono and only 80kbps OGG???

Oh no, I just realised something. When I was making the recordings in Audacity, I wondered why the left channel was active, but the right channel was dead/silent. It seems that the GUS line out jack was providing sound in mono only. Does anyone know a bit more about the GUS, and its line out capabilities? I could use the speaker port on the GUS, if the line out is not able to output in stereo...

The GUS is stereo for sure. Wiggle the jack, old soundcards can be a bit flakey...

Oh drat. The GUS isn't the problem. I tried making a recording from my walkman. I connected the audio cable to its headphone port, and connected the other end to the X-Fi soundcard. If I make a recording, it's always in mono. Perhaps the cable is defective?

Yup that's possible!

try another cable first. 😀 Every now and then I run into a minijack cable that doesn't work very well. Bad connectors probably.

swaaye wrote:

try another cable first. 😀 Every now and then I run into a minijack cable that doesn't work very well. Bad connectors probably.

Hehe, I've bought 2 now, both for my first retro soundcard recording experiments. I'm not having much luck with these tests. I might look around some stores in town rather than use ebay, and see if I can get a third cable to get these tests up and running successfully... 😀

Are you plugging into the recording sound card's mic input instead of its line-in input? The mic inputs on sound cards are almost always mono-only and often have preamps that make them bad for recording anything but microphone inputs.

Almost all sound cards have both a mic and line-in input.

Also, make sure your recording software is set to record stereo.

Hot damn! The ES1869 sounds EXACTLY like my OPTi 929A! I found a few of ES1869 sound cards sitting inside a bin at a family friend's pawn shop. I'd better go snag one of those before they're taken! Considering I have an ESS Maestro-2, whose FM Synthesis leaves a little to be desired, it's quite a pleasant surprise to hear the ESS AudioDrive ES1869's FM Synthesis sound just like the real YMF262 on my OPTi 929A.

Also, for some reason, whenever I listen to Doom E1M1 played on the SoundBlaster AWE32, it reminds me of the music in the Super NES port. To my ears, the instruments sound quite similar at times.

It's not just the 1869. It's the ESFM synth and it's in a lot of their chips including the PCI Solo1.

Yeah the AWE32 does have a SNES-like sound to some of its instruments. It reminded me of SNES too.

The Solo-1 has ESFM??? Holy crap, I have that sound chip integrated on a motherboard that was in an IBM Aptiva computer I have lying around! Couldn't get that motherboard to work, but I will most certainly give the ESFM a test myself once I fix that board(I believe I was trying to use a faulty CPU to test the motherboard, though). OFF TOPIC: how long can a Slot 1 Pentium III with only a huge heatsink on it stay without a fan before it dies?

http://alsa.cybermirror.org/manuals/ess/DsSolo1.pdf

Well this sucks. The motherboard is dead. Crap. Say, would it be possible to remove the Solo-1 from that motherboard and rebuild the circuitry around the chip as shown in the diagram on page 2 of the PDF?

Now, may I make a request? Record Star Wars X-Wing on the SoundBlaster AWE32 using the General MIDI and AWE32 MIDI sound options for the music.

Ace wrote:

Well this sucks. The motherboard is dead. Crap. Say, would it be possible to remove the Solo-1 from that motherboard and rebuild the circuitry around the chip as shown in the diagram on page 2 of the PDF?

No, but look at pages 72-75.

Yes, I've been looking at that for a while. The big problem is trying to solder wires on that damn chip. Surface-mounted chips hate me; it is GUARANTEED that some pins will be shorted on the chip while I solder on it. I think I'll spare myself the trouble and pick up one of the ESS AudioDrive ISA sound cards at that pawn shop.

Now, I've seen both the AudioDrive ES1869 and at least two AudioDrive ES1868s. Are there any differences between those sound cards?

You've got nothing to lose by trying to solder it if the board is dead, maybe try Googling SMD soldering.

ES1869 has 3D spatialization whereas ES1868 does not. Configurable in the DOS driver. I haven't tried it myself. I haven't even bothered to get the DOS driver.

It might be a little checkbox in the Windows 9x volume control too. Didn't look. Win9x has drivers for these cards. So easy to get up and running!

HunterZ wrote:

Are you plugging into the recording sound card's mic input instead of its line-in input? The mic inputs on sound cards are almost always mono-only and often have preamps that make them bad for recording anything but microphone inputs.

Almost all sound cards have both a mic and line-in input.

Also, make sure your recording software is set to record stereo.

That's a good point. I will double check the X-Fi's "versa jack" configuration, to make sure that it's set to record using line-in input, and not mic input. I'll do this as soon as I can...

Ok I added a few more recordings

-Roland SCD-15 (aka SCB-55)
-Ensoniq Soundscape Elite in FM mode 😵