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Dreamblaster X2GS on a Crystal audio ISA sound card (4239-KQ)

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First post, by eightbit

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Hi all,

Maybe someone can help. I just received a Dreamblaster X2GS and was planning on using it with my Crystal 4239-KQ sound card which has a wavetable header.

Very odd results. The Dreamblaster absolutely works. I connected it direct to my receiver while connected to the card via the 3.5mm headphone jack to confirm it is indeed working, but I could not get any MIDI out of the speaker out port. This card has three ports. Speaker out, line in and mic in.

Well, just testing around as to why I was getting no MIDI music out of the speaker out (everything is set right in software for MPU-401...330...etc) and then I moved the audio cable to the LINE IN on the card and MIDI music is coming out of it! WTF?

So, normal SB16 sound effects are coming out of the speaker out, but MIDI music via the Dreamblaster coming out of the line in.

There must be something that needs to be changed in the Crystal audio ini file but I have no idea what. Anyone here using it with a Crystal 423x card that can maybe give me some advice to mix the MIDI music and sound effects out of the speaker out on this sound card?

Maybe that is the way it is supposed to work? Am I thinking incorrectly that MIDI music and sound effects would automatically be mixed out of the speaker out when using the MIDI wavetable header?

Reply 1 of 4, by SuperDeadite

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Most soundcards mute the wavetable audio output by default. You probably have to go into the driver's mixer settings and enable it. The audio coming out of the LINE IN is probably just due to poor shielding/dirt/dust/aging parts.

Modules: CM-64, CM-500, SC-55MkII, SC-88 Pro, SY22, TG100, MU2000EX, PLG100-SG, PLG150-DR, PLG150-AN, SG01k, NS5R, GZ-50M, SN-U110-07, SN-U110-10, Pocket Studio 5, DreamBlaster S2, X2, McFly, E-Wave, QWave, CrystalBlaster C2, Yucatan FX, BeepBlaster

Reply 2 of 4, by eightbit

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SuperDeadite wrote on 2022-04-15, 03:45:

Most soundcards mute the wavetable audio output by default. You probably have to go into the driver's mixer settings and enable it. The audio coming out of the LINE IN is probably just due to poor shielding/dirt/dust/aging parts.

I have two of these 4239-KQ cards. One is new....I just opened it to test a spare 😀 So, it is not dust/dirt/old. It works the same way as the other. Perfect MIDI music playback out of the line in. Really odd.

I can just mix the speaker out and line in to the speakers with a 3.5mm splitter, but I just find this really odd.

The mixer settings have nothing I can see to enable it.

Reply 3 of 4, by 640K!enough

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Some designs of the time used to share the line-in port for the wavetable header, and you were only supposed to use the line in jack if you didn't use the header. This implies that the card and X2GS are working as they should, but that the signal is muted or routed incorrectly. For DOS, as part of your Crystal software installation, you should have CWDMIX (or similar, depending on the version). Try that, and bring up the line volume, then try again.

In Windows, it may not be intuitively labelled in the mixer, so try a few different sources. Also, some versions of the Windows drivers won't give you proper playback from some sources if SRS/3D enhancement are disabled. A little experimentation should get it working as you expect, with no need to mix them externally.

Reply 4 of 4, by eightbit

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Thanks for the tip. It was indeed a mixer setting. It maps the MPU-401 wavetable header to LINE IN on the mixer . I needed to not only adjust the LINE IN volume but to choose line in as the source (it was set to CD). Works great now!

Thanks everyone for the help!

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