Got one in my 386 build. Works perfectly in Dos. No official OPL3 chip but close enough. Forgot how it performed under Windows 95 but it did work. Mostly used it under Windows 3.11 were it worked without problems.

I heard people say it does not have 16-bit DMA,
"You can only set the low and high DMA channels to 1 or 3, preventing 16-bit sound in BUILD engine games."
Does that mean you get so sound in Duke Nukem 3D?

it is the "plain" ALS100 that allows HDMA
ALS100+ does not allow it - from what I read as well, I have no experience with it , only with ALS100
AFAIK you will have sound just fine with duke3d by selecting SBRPO or plain SB

You always can get sound because if needed you can select adlib or normal sb as an option. For games who don't support a selectable high DMA channel in the setup program you sometimes can just manually modify their config file.

But indeed it sometimes can be an issue. That's why I put it in a 386. Not a lot of games on that platform that need high DMA (if any?). Sound wise I really like the card. But the real "experts" will probably disagree. 😀

keropi wrote on 2022-04-06, 11:40:

it is the "plain" ALS100 that allows HDMA
ALS100+ does not allow it - from what I read as well, I have no experience with it , only with ALS100
AFAIK you will have sound just fine with duke3d by selecting SBRPO or plain SB

It's this one, I have no idea but it seems to be the plus?

That's indeed the Plus+ model. Not the plain model.

So, it does not have High DMA?
What does that mean for me?

plain ALS100 looks like this:

Is the Sound Blaster Vibra 16 a better card even though it will be much more expensive?
Does the SB Vibra 16 have High DMA?

koleq wrote on 2022-04-06, 12:03:

Is the Sound Blaster Vibra 16 a better card even though it will be much more expensive?
Does the SB Vibra 16 have High DMA?

Thing is that everyone has a different opinion what a better card is. So it's not easy to answer.

Both cards have "high DMA" but the Sound Blaster Vibra 16 can use DMA channels that are better supported. The ALS100+ only support DMA channel 0, 1 and 3 for this.

In your case I think a Sound Blaster Vibra 16 is a better choice as you're using a newer pc.

I think I will go with the ALS100 Plus+ cause it's really cheap

koleq wrote on 2022-04-06, 12:03:

Is the Sound Blaster Vibra 16 a better card even though it will be much more expensive?
Does the SB Vibra 16 have High DMA?

Maybe a step back:

This High DMA is about (full) Soundblaster 16 compatibility. Originally, Soundblaster and Soundblaster Pro only used one DMA channel. Soundblaster 16 added a second one. Creative's cards used high DMA for the second channel, but for reasons only known to ALS, after having a fully compatible ALS100, they only allowed low DMA for the second DMA channel on the subsequent ALS100+ and ALS120 chips. This breaks compatibility with some games. In games that don't mind, you get full 16b sound.

But...

Most DOS games only use 8b 'Soundblaster Pro' sound anyway, so you're only missing a subset of a subset of games. Worst case, you need to choose SBPro2 and still get 8b, max 22kHz sound. SB16 compatibility in clones is very rare as it is - basically only these three ALS and two CMI chips offer it.

Apart from SB16, there are other considerations. A lot depends on exactly which Vibra 16 you have.

- All Creative SB16 cards and derivatives have MIDI bugs, some worse than others (see here: Sound Blaster: From best to worst ). ALS100+ has a relatively bug-free MPU401 implementation, and this card has a waveblaster header to match.
- The ALS100+ has a 1:1 Yamaha OPL3 clone (that "LS262" chip to its left). Some Vibra cards also have one, others have Creative's own CQM that sounds similar but not quite as good.
- Most Vibra cards suffer from clipping and hissing. This ALS100+ card won't.
- SB, SBPro2 and SB16 compatibility in Vibra cards is basically impeccable. The ALS100+ isn't bad, but as already mentioned, SB16 compatibility is incomplete and some old and very picky SB titles might also not like it.
- Self-noise and sensitivity to noise on the bus differs from card to card. Generally Vibra cards are quite good in this respect. Most ALS100+ cards are nasty, cheap and can be noisy.

Personally I prefer to use two cards in most systems, to avoid the worst SB16 bugs. If you combine the ALS100+ card with OPL3, no DA clipping in compatible games and good MIDI with the Vibra 16 with perfect SB(Pro/16) compatibility, you get the best of both worlds.

Does anyone know when was the Avance Logic ALS100 Plus+ REV 2.0 released?

koleq wrote on 2022-04-06, 12:03:

Is the Sound Blaster Vibra 16 a better card even though it will be much more expensive?
Does the SB Vibra 16 have High DMA?

It depends on the Vibra 16 model. The cheapest Vibra 16 variants didn't support using a "high DMA" channel for 16-bit azdio., just like the ALS100+. Possibly the cheap Vibra variants inspired Avance Logic to drop high DMA support.

dionb wrote on 2022-04-06, 15:14:

for reasons only known to ALS, after having a fully compatible ALS100, they only allowed low DMA for the second DMA channel on the subsequent ALS100+ and ALS120 chips.

Most likely a cost factor. Adding high DMA support to a single-chip audio card requires at least 10 extra pins on that chip: D8-D15, DREQ5, DACK5. If you want to support DMA6 and DMA7 as further options, as the SB16 did, it's another 4 pins. Furthermore, the logic is slightly more complicated if it has to handle both 8-bit DMA and 16-bit DMA for receiving 16-bit sound data.

Using 16-bit DMA was a good idea when the SB16 was introduced, because it cuts ISA bus usage in half compared to 8-bit DMA. On most 286 and early 386 computers, the processor is blocked from any kind of memory access during ISA DMA, so running high rate (like 16-bit stereo at 44kHz) sound over 8-bit DMA hampered processor performance . 486-based computers were much more forgiving on high ISA load, because the 486 could execute code and reas data from the L1 cache, as well as buffer write cycles. This allowed the computer to continue execution even if the bus is unavailable.

Analog Devices AD1848, the prototype for Windows Sound System cards, showed that using 8-bit ISA DMA for 16-bit stereo sound is perfectly possible and doesn't hurt performance as much as people were afraid of, and kind-of pushed the low end market into cheaper 8-bit-only solutions.

mkarcher wrote on 2022-04-12, 07:04:

[...] […]
Show full quote

[...]

Most likely a cost factor. Adding high DMA support to a single-chip audio card requires at least 10 extra pins on that chip: D8-D15, DREQ5, DACK5. If you want to support DMA6 and DMA7 as further options, as the SB16 did, it's another 4 pins. Furthermore, the logic is slightly more complicated if it has to handle both 8-bit DMA and 16-bit DMA for receiving 16-bit sound data.

Using 16-bit DMA was a good idea when the SB16 was introduced, because it cuts ISA bus usage in half compared to 8-bit DMA. On most 286 and early 386 computers, the processor is blocked from any kind of memory access during ISA DMA, so running high rate (like 16-bit stereo at 44kHz) sound over 8-bit DMA hampered processor performance . 486-based computers were much more forgiving on high ISA load, because the 486 could execute code and reas data from the L1 cache, as well as buffer write cycles. This allowed the computer to continue execution even if the bus is unavailable.

Analog Devices AD1848, the prototype for Windows Sound System cards, showed that using 8-bit ISA DMA for 16-bit stereo sound is perfectly possible and doesn't hurt performance as much as people were afraid of, and kind-of pushed the low end market into cheaper 8-bit-only solutions.

Thanks, very illuminating technical-commercial reasons. Once ISA bus wasn't needed for performance, it was fine to hog it. Shame software didn't share this love-in with low DMA 16b transfers though.

I have this card now in my PC and the sound works under Windows 98SE, midis play wav plays, but DC audio does not play and I can't get music in DOOM2 or DUKE3D, what em I doing wrong?

koleq wrote on 2022-04-13, 15:10:

I have this card now in my PC and the sound works under Windows 98SE, midis play wav plays, but DC audio does not play and I can't get music in DOOM2 or DUKE3D, what em I doing wrong?

Yeah, well, did you bother to check out the drivers?
http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=98&menustate=0

I've installed the 98 driver.