Riikcakirds wrote on 2023-12-19, 00:46:

I'm wondering for all Dos games that natively support AWE32/64, would I hear better quality sample music using a 64AWE Gold card that has 4MB ROM (i;m not talking about uploading sound fonts, just the samples it shipped with in the 4MB ROM ?
Or are all dos games limited to use the 512KB part of all AWE32/64 cards.

The game Eradicator has two soundfonts. A smaller one which takes up 512 KB, and a higher quality 2 MB version. It will automatically detect the amount of memory that your card has and load the appropriate soundfont. More details here.

I'm not sure if the soundfonts in Eradicator are used for music though. At the very least, it has some special sound effect handling on AWE cards.

I think your confused. All AWE32+AWE64 had the same ROM. the AWE64 Gold had 4mb RAM, not ROM!

for games that uploaded samples, if they worked on the 512kb card, they will sound the same on the 4mb. I know of no games that downsampled to fit lower memory.

Most DOS games with native AWE support for MIDI music just uses the samples stored on the EMU8011 chip, so it won't make any difference between the regular AWE64 and the Gold variant.

This table has a field showing if a game loads custom soundfonts
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … pport_AWE_synth

AFAIK only Eradicator uses more then 512kb

BloodyCactus wrote on 2023-12-19, 01:18:

I think your confused. All AWE32+AWE64 had the same ROM. the AWE64 Gold had 4mb RAM, not ROM!

for games that uploaded samples, if they worked on the 512kb card, they will sound the same on the 4mb. I know of no games that downsampled to fit lower memory.

What still confuses me is the cards with no ram expansion and only a 512KB ROM, how can the games upload samples, to where? The ROM is read only and no other memory is on the card?

Riikcakirds wrote on 2023-12-21, 00:14:

BloodyCactus wrote on 2023-12-19, 01:18:

I think your confused. All AWE32+AWE64 had the same ROM. the AWE64 Gold had 4mb RAM, not ROM!

for games that uploaded samples, if they worked on the 512kb card, they will sound the same on the 4mb. I know of no games that downsampled to fit lower memory.

What still confuses me is the cards with no ram expansion and only a 512KB ROM, how can the games upload samples, to where? The ROM is read only and no other memory is on the card?

You are confusing RAM with ROM and what was offered with each variant/model.

All AWE based cards came standard with sampled sounds (for MIDI playback) that was stored in a 1MB ROM.

Most games that natively supported the AWE32/AWE64/SB32 (i.e., you had an option in a game's setup menu to select AWE32 as your music playback device) simply utilised the sampled sounds stored in that 1 MB ROM, regardless of the amount of RAM installed. In other words, having RAM on your card provided no additional benefit under DOS for games that natively supported the AWE cards, since they only utilised the samples in the 1MB onboard ROM.

As previously mentioned, there were exceptions (like Eradicator) that uploaded their own samples into the onboard RAM of your card (provided your card had enough RAM) for better music playback.

Regarding RAM. When the first batch of AWE32 cards were released, it only had 512KB of onboard RAM but the user had the option to upgrade the memory capacity (RAM) via the onboard simm sockets to a maximum of 28MB of RAM. SB32 cards (released in 1995) had no onboard RAM but the user still had the option to install RAM via the onboard simm sockets which would then give the user the same capability as that of an AWE32 card.

AWE64 cards (released in late 1996) had a value card with 512KB of RAM and a Gold card with 4MB of RAM. However, this still didn't provide any additional benefit under DOS (as explained above).

The only time where RAM could provide some additional benefit (under DOS) was if the game uploaded its own samples or, the user loaded a custom GM soundbank (with better quality samples) via the Aweutil utility to be used with a real mode game (i.e., a game that didn't natively support the AWE card and wasn't a protected mode game).

jesolo wrote on 2023-12-21, 00:48:

The only time where RAM could provide some additional benefit (under DOS)

or mod players! the more the bigger mods/s3m/xm/it you could play

BloodyCactus wrote on 2023-12-21, 01:06:

jesolo wrote on 2023-12-21, 00:48:

The only time where RAM could provide some additional benefit (under DOS)

or mod players! the more the bigger mods/s3m/xm/it you could play

True. Forgot to mention that.

Riikcakirds wrote on 2023-12-21, 00:14:

What still confuses me is the cards with no ram expansion and only a 512KB ROM, how can the games upload samples, to where? The ROM is read only and no other memory is on the card?

With the exception of few variants, AWE64 cards has non-standard headers for RAM upgrade. To easily get around this, things like SIMMCONN and AWESIMM exists.

BloodyCactus wrote on 2023-12-19, 01:18:

I think your confused. All AWE32+AWE64 had the same ROM. the AWE64 Gold had 4mb RAM, not ROM!

for games that uploaded samples, if they worked on the 512kb card, they will sound the same on the 4mb. I know of no games that downsampled to fit lower memory.

So to clear this up, all AWE32/64, even value cards like CT4520 have a minimum of 1MB, split between 512kb ROM and 512KB ram. Some Dos games can upload samples in the 512KB RAM portion but the default 512KB instruments shipped with the card in ROM stay untouched.

Riikcakirds wrote on 2023-12-26, 15:52:

So to clear this up, all AWE32/64, even value cards like CT4520 have a minimum of 1MB, split between 512kb ROM and 512KB ram. Some Dos games can upload samples in the 512KB RAM portion but the default 512KB instruments shipped with the card in ROM stay untouched.

eh. sorta. your nearly there!

SoundBlaster32 - NO onboard RAM. (came with simm sockets, so no gauruntee of ram would be on the card!), 1MB rom
AWE32 - 512kb RAM, 1MB rom.
AWE64 - 512kb RAM, 1MB rom
AWE64 Gold - 4mb ram, 1MB rom

All of them could use a max of 28mb of ram (you actually had to load 32mb, as the bottom 4mb was ROM space, even when not used).

To confuse things, the RAM and ROM are addressed as WORDS by the EMU8000 chip, so you often see mention of like 512kb words rom, or 256k words ram in their docs and stuff.

BloodyCactus wrote on 2023-12-26, 18:04:

eh. sorta. your nearly there! […]
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Riikcakirds wrote on 2023-12-26, 15:52:

So to clear this up, all AWE32/64, even value cards like CT4520 have a minimum of 1MB, split between 512kb ROM and 512KB ram. Some Dos games can upload samples in the 512KB RAM portion but the default 512KB instruments shipped with the card in ROM stay untouched.

eh. sorta. your nearly there!

SoundBlaster32 - NO onboard RAM. (came with simm sockets, so no gauruntee of ram would be on the card!), 1MB rom
AWE32 - 512kb RAM, 1MB rom.
AWE64 - 512kb RAM, 1MB rom
AWE64 Gold - 4mb ram, 1MB rom

All of them could use a max of 28mb of ram (you actually had to load 32mb, as the bottom 4mb was ROM space, even when not used).

To confuse things, the RAM and ROM are addressed as WORDS by the EMU8000 chip, so you often see mention of like 512kb words rom, or 256k words ram in their docs and stuff.

Ok, the default soundfont in ROM that Dos games actually use is 1024KB (not 512KB), aka 512kb words (and some dos games will load samples in to the 512KB ram). Pretty confusing but I hope that is it.
Also I read you can rename the three dos soundfont 1 files (synthmt.sbk, synthgm.sbk and synthgs.sbk) with better sbk soundfonts and load them with aweutil /em:xx).
I've been searching for a better GM SBK soundfont with a max file size of 512KB that is better than the onboard 1MB ROM soundfont.

there are very few alternate .sbk format soundfont files out there, but they do exist. i don't remember any of them being less than 512kb though and the upper limit is well below 28mb due to aweutil memory limitations.

if you want to use .sbk soundfonts (>512kb) you'll need to purchase a non-value awe64 or a simmconn or an awe32 with ram.

the awe 1mb rom is respectable when compared to its peers of wavetable soundcards with 1mb rom or less.