Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-05-18, 05:26:

I honestly have no idea what the Audigy2 ZS uses for FM synth, but it does an ok job most of the time. […]
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SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-05-18, 02:58:

Is this emulation or does the Audigy actually have some kind of CQM inside it? Joestar's linked post actually sounded kinda decent for CQM.

I honestly have no idea what the Audigy2 ZS uses for FM synth, but it does an ok job most of the time.

However, if you have an ISA sound card as well, you can use that for SB16 + FM synth and just have the Audigy2 ZS do General MIDI using sound fonts. This is doubly useful as the Audigy's SB16 emulation isn't 100% compatible with some older games.

But if you're looking for something with digital output and genuine OPL3, try to track down one of the Yamaha YMF 7x4 cards with SPDIF. Their DOS compatibility is pretty good if your motherboard supports either DDMA or SB-Link.

Is the "Creative SB16 Emulation” under win98 dos boxes(when using the VxD drivers) any better than the sbeinit driver used in real dos when selecting OPL FM music in games. I assume win98 vxd driver use some .sys driver for emulation instead of sbeinit in win98 dos boxes.

I was thinking of comparing the Audigy2 FM/OPL music emulation options, to find which produces the best quality for Dos games using OPL music:
1. Sbeinit pure dos emulation
2. Win98 vxd driver 'sb16 emulation' as shown in device mananger
3. Win98 WDM driver - I think this uses some form of 'Sb pro' emulation.

AvalonH wrote on 2020-05-19, 17:36:

Is the "Creative SB16 Emulation” under win98 dos boxes(when using the VxD drivers) any better than the sbeinit driver used in real dos when selecting OPL FM music in games. I assume win98 vxd driver use some .sys driver for emulation instead of sbeinit in win98 dos boxes.

FM synth on the Audigy2 ZS sounds exactly the same in pure DOS as it does under the Win98 DOS prompt. Note that installing DOS mode support automatically adds SBEINIT.COM to your AUTOEXEC.BAT so I'm assuming that it runs under Win98 as well.

Now, if we look at General MIDI, that is a different story. In pure DOS, the Audigy2 ZS can only load those weird .ECW files which sound kinda crappy, even with the 8 MB version. However, under the Win98 DOS prompt, it will happily use any .sf2 based soundfont while running DOS games that are set up for General MIDI.

Win98 WDM driver - I think this uses some form of 'Sb pro' emulation.

I don't know what happens when using WDM drivers, never tried DOS games with those. And due to the Audigy2 ZS drivers being a major pain to (re)install, I'm not too keen on attempting this.

Justin1091 wrote on 2019-02-12, 11:50:

Yeah I use my Audigy 2ZS in DOS and Win98 dos prompt, works fine with the patch. For Win98 Dos prompt you need to do this though […]
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MKT_Gundam wrote:

PARUS wrote:

No, it is not. Live model doesn't matter, they all (Live+Audigy1) have identical 40-pin pinouts. All Live/Audigy1 front panels are compatible with each other and have a same pinouts. The Audigy2 front panels are different compared to Live/Audigy1 and aren't compatible, have another pinout scheme. By the way X-Fi has identical compatible pinout to Audigy2.

I just cheked a older thread and for pure DOS has a patch to use the Audigy 1 driver: Making Audigy 2 work in DOS
Also this guy use one in pure DOS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=261nKIdJhKw

Yeah I use my Audigy 2ZS in DOS and Win98 dos prompt, works fine with the patch. For Win98 Dos prompt you need to do this though:

When using the WDM drivers, Windows itself will emulate a Sound Blaster Pro. Nothing needs to be done and nothing special will s […]
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When using the WDM drivers, Windows itself will emulate a Sound Blaster Pro. Nothing needs to be done and nothing special will show up in Device Manager.

SB16 emulation requires the .vxd driver set. Additionally, a change to the registry is needed and the driver needs to be installed twice.

The Creative inf files do not install SB16.inf and can’t correctly install it by any method until you add an entry to the registry.
REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\CreativeTech\Emu10kx\Emulation]
"EnableSB16Emulation"=dword:00000001

You can either create an SB16.reg with the above lines and double click on it, or manually add the entry to the registry. Once this is done and you reboot, the system will try to install SB16 emulation from the SB16.inf. Typically installation will fail and you will see a yellow ! with Device Manager. Don’t worry, just go to Control panel / Add New Hardware and reinstall the emulation. When using Add New Hardware, make sure to select manually from a list of Sound Devices / Creative Technology LTD the SB16 emulation drive with the most recent date if more than one is present. After a reboot, a second entry will appear in Device Manager for emulation, it will work, and you should ignore the original non-functional entry still present.

I don't remember who wrote that, but it was on Vogons I think. Credits and thanks to whoever wrote it as it works perfectly!

Thank you so much for posting that. My Audigy 2 now works with dos under windows me. 😁