We shall see...

I am currently playing around with the OPL3 registers trying to get dosbox_hardwareFM version to communicate with it via porttalk, still setting it all up.

ZanQuance wrote:

I used to work for Staples so the first thing I'd do is take it into the Copy/Print center and digitize it to PDF lickity split. Then make a bunch of paper copies, but if there are any issues with that method I'll for sure send it your way.

I'll cross my fingers that it's looseleaf or stapled in a corner or ring binder - and thus easily sheetfed. But please contact me if it's bound, I have options. 😀

Found an interesting fix for the pop and click issue under XP. It's caused by the driver polling all DMA buffers even if they aren't used and causes sample misses. It's even worse when the Sample Rate Converter is pitch adjusting sounds higher causing more frequent sample polls, thus we get the clicks and pops in the WaveTracing reflections.

But if you have a MIDI (can be muted) playing out the WaveTable they go away, and games sound normal with Reflections again.
Perhaps some of you can verify this works for you also?

There is also a neat thing I found while playing with the Sample Rate Converter registers and watching a youtube video, youtube syncs with the cards sample speeds, so if you slow down the Sample Rate the video also syncs and slows down, likewise you can speed it up chipmunk style. It sounds super clean and is fun to play with so long as you also have a midi playing to fix the buffer errors.

ZanQuance wrote:

Found an interesting fix for the pop and click issue under XP. It's caused by the driver polling all DMA buffers even if they ar […]
Show full quote

Found an interesting fix for the pop and click issue under XP. It's caused by the driver polling all DMA buffers even if they aren't used and causes sample misses. It's even worse when the Sample Rate Converter is pitch adjusting sounds higher causing more frequent sample polls, thus we get the clicks and pops in the WaveTracing reflections.

But if you have a MIDI (can be muted) playing out the WaveTable they go away, and games sound normal with Reflections again.
Perhaps some of you can verify this works for you also?
(...)

Really? I am eager to test it but I will be able to do so only on Thursday 😒
If it works I guess I will have to replay some A3D games again to be sure the effects are the same 😎

Maybe this also works on the 32-bit version of Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 with the edited driver for those OS?

Yeah it works in Win7 also but I could only test it by upping the sample rates with my new control panel, as wavetracing doesn't enable since it wants hardware DS3D buffers. Another method is to use VMPK and put it on a continuous wave sound like square wave and press a note using the keyboard then click off the app while still holding the key, this will make the note stuck and fix the pops and clicks. Then go and mute the wavetable audio. I tested a few games and it seemed to eliminate all the problems. Tested Alice where it was usually really bad, Unreal and Half-life1. Quake3 for whatever reason has massively distorted audio, might just be a bad patch, I'll check it again later.

I was able to test it today. Sadly it did not work for me on my Dell Turtle Beach Montego II 😒
I am using a Pentium 4 651 with 865G mobo, maybe it has something to do with this? I also have the control panel patch applied.

Any news?.. 😀

Yeah sorry about the lack of timely updates. This College semester just wrapped up and I'm getting ready to move, so for now it's on hold until I can get everything set back

Reversed most the windows driver code and referenced the ALSA drivers for any unknown tidbits. Progress is being made, albiet slowly.

Wow, great news!
Is there any way that I could somehow help you?
I feel a little bit reluctant about lending the original SQ3500 DSP board, but if that's needed for the sake of the project, I can think about it.
Also, when will you be accepting donations again? I'm willing to increase my first one 😀
And as I wrote before - do you need any SQ2500 for the project? I can provide any reasonable quantity of any version, free of charge.

Hmm not sure there is anything at this point that multiple people could help with as I've gotten most everything done so far in an orderly fashion.
I'll reopen donations for my efforts once the site launches, I certainly appreciated the ones I've received and am always thinking of good rewards to offer you donators.

I am okay with hardware so far, I've gotten an SQ2500 (COAX) and SuperQuad (TOSLINK) cards on hand, along with an MX300 and Montego II. If I manage to fry my SQ2500 I'll let you know 😉 but so far it's okay.

Once the drivers are solid, I'll be looking into the CoProcessor aspects of it, and honestly I won't need the daughterboard since I don't know how to reverse engineer the hardware parts :p someone else will need to spearhead that effort. I can at least write the interface routines for it and if it works great, if not then we need to make a new one :p (But as an Aureal fan I would love to at least hold it once and see if it works)

I do have some delays non project related going on, but hopefully they wont keep me from my coding much.

Aureal resurrection will be the best reward for us! 😀

I guess, one day I'll try to present you an opportunity to hold it. I'm now preparing to move abroad, and I'll leave all my collection at my parents' place in Russia, but I'll be coming back for vacations once in a while, and so I'll be able to organize some testing and/or taking it with me. Where are you located by the way?

Sure, the product should be finalized before release, otherwise the drive for it may dry up leaving it in alpha/beta for ages. So take your time and count on us if you need any support 😀

I'm in Southern California here in the U.S.

Did you ever get a chance to install the 2050 drivers with the SQ3500 card and see if it worked?

I love your region, been there 3 times already, so one day I'll come with my wife and baby girl, and take the SQ3500 with me 😀

Not really - absolute lack of time due to work and baby.

Did someone knew why this project been on held temporary. 😕

Apparently I only mentioned the reason in a pm and could have sworn I made a post, sorry about that!

I recently moved and everything is a mess and packed up right now, once I get settled in properly I'll get things rolling again with the project. Also have a few other things going on that are taking up all my time.
Sorry about the delays!!! I really do want to get it done ASAP, there is so much going on right now that I had to put it on hold albeit temporarily.

Thank you for your continued patience.

Take your time, O, Brave ZanQuance... And may the Spirit of Aureal be with you, your ears, your fingers and your keyboard!

It would be cool if one day we could put hands on old Aureal.com domain (like OpenAL guys did).
So that we can have our own robots.txt file with blackjack and hookers, and get old Wayback Machine archived pages back.

Too bad its registration will last for long.
At the moment it just seems to host scam offers and porn advices though.. So I'm hopeful it's not going to cost an eye.

EDIT: is this finally noob-proof and technically-accurate enough?

mirh wrote:

It would be cool if one day we could put hands on old Aureal.com domain (like OpenAL guys did). So that we can have our own rob […]
Show full quote

It would be cool if one day we could put hands on old Aureal.com domain (like OpenAL guys did).
So that we can have our own robots.txt file with blackjack and hookers, and get old Wayback Machine archived pages back.
Too bad its registration will last for long.
At the moment it just seems to host scam offers and porn advices though.. So I'm hopeful it's not going to cost an eye.

I asked about it eariler this year when I registered the current ones, the person(s) who owns it and A3D.com both want $120,000 for them, I promptly said nope and registered the others instead.
That's way too much for a poor cup-o-noodles eating college student such as myself.

mirh wrote:

EDIT: is this finally noob-proof and technically-accurate enough?

Looks okay to me.

Zan can I send you an energy drink to keep you going? 😀

As of last weekend I am back to work on this full steam ahead. I didn't want to tease anyone just incase I had to suddenly drop the project again, my schedule is currently unpredictable. Been pulling a few all nighters to play major catchup, I'm so far behind my schedule. The DOS drivers currently have my attention as they are a good place to test features on the card before migrating into the windows ones.

Tons of coffee is my thing, so thanks but no thanks 😉
Did you guys want the new dos audio mixer util? I can clean up its output and post it, its functional but debug plain jane. I'll be looking into a graphical version in a few days to spiffy things up. The audio emulation drivers are still WIP, but I've repurposed parts of the chip to do hardware emulation of the OPL3 ADSR envelopes, and have been making some interesting sounds feeding back the IIR filters in an unstable loop as oscillators for input.

The hardware OPL3 cell in the chip only captures mixer commands up to SBpro, so no hardware capture of SB16 commands 🙁 still need to write in the capture routines, been working on the DMA unit and TSR interrupt routines. The card detects with the test-sbp util and a few games like descent now.

What DOS features would you like to see make it in? I can make the chip emulate like a SID if you wanted it to.