appiah4 wrote on 2020-12-03, 12:35:

Isn't Audician a YMF71x card at the end of the day? I use YMF 71x cards in a lot of PCs and can easily tell you that I am 100% sure half of the stuff on that list is wrong, you are either using a wrong DOS driver or your card is fucked.

Some of the problems may be tied to the version of the games I'm trying (they're original copies mostly) and some sound problems I DID fix by using later or older versions - UFO Enemy Unknown worked fine once I installed the CD version. For the rest, I found others who had very similar issues so it's not the card - most likely the lack of compatibility that may have been fixed in certain game updates.

DOS gaming is a bit of a minefield with stuff like that. It's just the nature of it. It makes us appreciate what DIrectX has done for us.

Velociraptor wrote on 2020-12-03, 18:46:

DOS gaming is a bit of a minefield with stuff like that. It's just the nature of it. It makes us appreciate what DIrectX has done for us.

Hah, I recall when I bought my Pentium 166 and it came with an Aztec card - first non Creative card I had. Stupid thing crashed on Direct X 5 games such as Magic the Gathering - drove me nuts until I spent all my allowance of a year on a Creative Labs set with a CD drive, speakers and ... a SB AWE64. Boy was I happy to have that card. So let's say, even with DirectX, we still had some problems 😉

Velociraptor wrote on 2020-12-03, 18:46:

DOS gaming is a bit of a minefield with stuff like that. It's just the nature of it. It makes us appreciate what DIrectX has done for us.

What abolished all sort of synth and midi playback eliminating the possibility of variety to how music and sound is played back? Bah I'll take DOS gaming over that any day.

Well I don't play DirectX stuff, I play DOS stuff - but DirectX solved a lot of hardware problems by acting as a middle man.

Pierre32 wrote on 2020-12-03, 11:45:

As for being on Blerbs, that could be a time availability thing, as there is far less production & editing required for the vlog style vids. They still get tons of views.

This x1000

keropi wrote on 2020-12-03, 12:25:

I have some of these in my 200mx system: […]
Show full quote

I have some of these in my 200mx system:

Duke Nukem 3D: no slowdowns with 44100hz selected
Cannon Fodder 1 : could never run this well on this system - setup detects and beeps with SBPRO, after L1 cache disabling the intro works but the main game always crashed for me with any soundcard in this system edit: confirmed working on 386DX , game is speed sensitive and does not like more than 16mb of ram
Pinball Illusions: no problem
Pizza Tycoon: no problem
UFO Enemy Unknown: no problem
Innocent Until Caught: game loads CT-VOICE.DRV , it works fine - double checked with dosbox and it is the same because I could not trigger a SFX to play , where are they used?
Heart of China: it's OK after L1 cache disabling
Dune: I have no idea how to trigger speech - have the floppy version

hope this helps!

I would do the testing myself but Keropi did the debunking himself.

I've had the privilege to be a beta tester for the Orpheus, for a few months, and i have to say: it's the best all rounder DOS card ever made. This is my opinion of course.

But, after years of using the 3 main contenders for SB Pro: ESS Audiodrive, Yamaha YMF-71x and Crystal CS423x i have to say my favorite is still the Yamaha YMF-71x. It's lack of ADPCM modes is the greatest disadvantage, but come on people, there's workarounds for this, patches made available by the community.

It's the only chipset of the 3 to be capable of mixing SB Pro Stereo at 44khz: Try a good MOD player like Inertia, select SB Pro Stereo and force mixing at 44khz. Try it on the YMF chipsets and enjoy the clarity. Then do the same on the other chipsets and watch (listen) them fail.

The software is kind of lame, but Tiido has made really nice software for these cards. Which reminds me...

Talking about MOD players… open cubic player supports WSS natively, so that would make the Orpheus even more interesting.

Why use SB Pro mode in a mod player when Inertia Player and others support WSS mode for 16-bit 44.1KHz or 48KHz stereo output ?
I mean, it's great if the YMF-71x can do 44.1KHz stereo in SB Pro mode, but I just don't see a use case since the chip supports WSS mode anyway .

EDIT : Orpheus works great in WSS mode in Open Cubic Player and so does my YMF715 based Audiotrix 3D/XG . IMHO, Orpheus has cleaner sound, subjectively (I have taken a break from quantified measurements and comparisons).

Keep those reports and questions coming people they help answer questions others might have! I would rather prefer someone reading for example "adpcm sounds in nukem2 are not supported" and not spend their money rather than getting disappointed afterwards 😀

I was thinking... the CS4232 has an external OPL3, and the Windows drivers readily utilize this OPL3 chip for FM. Why not compare how the CS4232 drivers work with the CS4237 ? ... Perhaps it would shed some light on how to force OPL3 sound.

carlostex wrote on 2020-12-04, 01:40:

It's the only chipset of the 3 to be capable of mixing SB Pro Stereo at 44khz: Try a good MOD player like Inertia, select SB Pro Stereo and force mixing at 44khz. Try it on the YMF chipsets and enjoy the clarity. Then do the same on the other chipsets and watch (listen) them fail.

Officially, the actual Sound Blaster Pro doesn't offer stereo PCM playback at 44.1 kHz either. So really, if it's supposed to be emulating a Sound Blaster Pro, it shouldn't work.

YMF71x goes to 1MHz on SBpro if the DMA can keep up 🤣. Real Sound blasters have the sample rate wrap back once 45KHz is reached, the next step won't produce a higher but a lower rate instead while Yamaha goes up to the maximum possible. I can do 500KHz on Intel 420EX board but sound is jittery then, most other things I have tried crap out at beyond 111KHz speeds.

640K!enough wrote on 2020-12-05, 16:45:

Officially, the actual Sound Blaster Pro doesn't offer stereo PCM playback at 44.1 kHz either. So really, if it's supposed to be emulating a Sound Blaster Pro, it shouldn't work.

I know, SB Pro 2 is Stereo at 22Khz, but just because Yamaha supports higher rates doesn't make it a bad SB Pro clone. In fact it should be a bonus. What we should say is that if other clones do not support higher rates they aren't flawed.

@Tiido

That is very impressive!

Does anyone have an exact link of where to order this? The instructions state "there is an Orpheus item in the drop-down product list" I don't see any such list on either serdashop.com or pcmidi.eu. What am I missing?

McDaddyMark wrote on 2020-12-07, 20:36:

Does anyone have an exact link of where to order this? The instructions state "there is an Orpheus item in the drop-down product list" I don't see any such list on either serdashop.com or pcmidi.eu. What am I missing?

It's via the contact form, which is linked in the How to Order section from either of these sites:

http://pcmidi.eu/

http://orpheus-soundcard.eu/

yeah sorry if this is not a real webshop but for the moment you fill that form and your data gets entered in a "order/waiting list" and you get contacted when your turn comes... there is no way to do a full-automatic assembly for these so we can offer for example 100pcs at once - at least not at a sane cost - so 60% is still hand-soldered ...

keropi wrote on 2020-12-03, 12:25:

I have some of these in my 200mx system: […]
Show full quote

I have some of these in my 200mx system:

Duke Nukem 3D: no slowdowns with 44100hz selected
Cannon Fodder 1 : could never run this well on this system - setup detects and beeps with SBPRO, after L1 cache disabling the intro works but the main game always crashed for me with any soundcard in this system edit: confirmed working on 386DX , game is speed sensitive and does not like more than 16mb of ram
Pinball Illusions: no problem
Pizza Tycoon: no problem
UFO Enemy Unknown: no problem
Innocent Until Caught: game loads CT-VOICE.DRV , it works fine - double checked with dosbox and it is the same because I could not trigger a SFX to play , where are they used?
Heart of China: it's OK after L1 cache disabling
Dune: I have no idea how to trigger speech - have the floppy version

hope this helps!

I'm late to reply but thanks - that does sound good. My system has 16MB of RAM for max compatibility so hopefully Cannon Fodder will work as well.

And IUC is a bitch to run with anything except a Sound Blaster and even then you need to have lots of memory - there's sound all over the intro so it's easy to test. It's too bad because this is one game I have yet to finish.

Well I could not trigger any SFX with dosbox too, I will try later with my original CD - maybe it will make a difference as I cannot vouch of the origin of the game currently in my HDD 🤣

keropi wrote on 2020-12-07, 22:48:

yeah sorry if this is not a real webshop but for the moment you fill that form and your data gets entered in a "order/waiting list" and you get contacted when your turn comes... there is no way to do a full-automatic assembly for these so we can offer for example 100pcs at once - at least not at a sane cost - so 60% is still hand-soldered ...

OK. Thank you for the response. I completely understand you're situation. I have submitted my information in the form as you explained and will wait patiently to be contacted.

Thanks.