Some people swear by Sound Blaster Pro. Some people swear at Sound Blaster Pro. Some people swear by Sound Blaster 16. Some people swear at Sound Blaster 16.

but generally, compatibility-wise, it's more often Sound Blaster than anything else. Many competing cards (mostly ESS and WSS cards) try to TSR that with varying results.

Also it's never a PCI card that's going to be recommended for DOS, so your computer is null and void for any "best DOS soundcard" since all the best ones are ISA.

You could try an ESS-solo PCI soundcard. It uses TDMA emulation when needed so it has high compatibility with mobos. It has really good fm synthesis.

There's the Vortex 2 which is pretty good too from the sounds of it. I personally never got one working in real-mode DOS but it's supposedly very compatible with mobos. The SB resources are odd so it might give problems with some games. I'm not sure if it has very good FM but otherwise it seems like the next best option.

leileilol wrote:

Some people swear by Sound Blaster Pro. Some people swear at Sound Blaster Pro. Some people swear by Sound Blaster 16. Some people swear at Sound Blaster 16.

but generally, compatibility-wise, it's more often Sound Blaster than anything else. Many competing cards (mostly ESS and WSS cards) try to TSR that with varying results.

Also it's never a PCI card that's going to be recommended for DOS, so your computer is null and void for any "best DOS soundcard" since all the best ones are ISA.

I agree, I have two Sound Blaster AWE64 Value lying here, I have used them when I had my old 486 (It really was an Intel RapidCAD), I remember I was able to run any of my games flawlessly in pure DOS and in a command prompt in Windows 95/98/Me. But my current PC does not have ISA slots. 🙁

Holering wrote:

You could try an ESS-solo PCI soundcard. It uses TDMA emulation when needed so it has high compatibility with mobos. It has really good fm synthesis.

There's the Vortex 2 which is pretty good too from the sounds of it. I personally never got one working in real-mode DOS but it's supposedly very compatible with mobos. The SB resources are odd so it might give problems with some games. I'm not sure if it has very good FM but otherwise it seems like the next best option.

Thanks! I will search locally for a SOLO-1 (ES1938S) soundcard, wish me luck, it's really difficult to get old hardware (Standard PCI cards) here in Lima. As far as I know, all shops are selling PCI-Express-only soundcards.

I have never heard of the Vortex 2. I will investigate about it 😀

Aureal Vortex 2. SB Pro under DOS + wavetable MIDI header or external MIDI device.

First, welcome "officially" to the board! What do you guys think about the Ensoniq/Creative AudioPCI as an option for him? It uses the 1370 chipset, has OPL emulation and seems to be lighter-weight than the Aureal cards in terms of memory footprint in DOS. Or something a YAMAHA chipset?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Yamaha-PCI-Sound-Card … =item2c88b19561

Info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_YMF7xx

Holering wrote:

You could try an ESS-solo PCI soundcard. It uses TDMA emulation when needed so it has high compatibility with mobos. It has really good fm synthesis.

There's the Vortex 2 which is pretty good too from the sounds of it. I personally never got one working in real-mode DOS but it's supposedly very compatible with mobos. The SB resources are odd so it might give problems with some games. I'm not sure if it has very good FM but otherwise it seems like the next best option.

Vortex 2 is the best DOS and Windows combo PCI card I've found so far. As Maur1wurf1977 says it has SB Pro compatibility, mixer, MIDI external and internal wavetable. Easy to get it working in pure DOS, just search Vogons (on Google) if you need help.

Artex wrote:

First, welcome "officially" to the board! What do you guys think about the Ensoniq/Creative AudioPCI as an option for him? It […]
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First, welcome "officially" to the board! What do you guys think about the Ensoniq/Creative AudioPCI as an option for him? It uses the 1370 chipset, has OPL emulation and seems to be lighter-weight than the Aureal cards in terms of memory footprint in DOS. Or something a YAMAHA chipset?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Yamaha-PCI-Sound-Card … =item2c88b19561

Info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_YMF7xx

Hi Artex, thanks for the welcome, this is a great forum, there is always something new to learn. I want to tell you that Early today went to a site in Lima called Paruro, a friend of me told me about ir: it is a place where you can find used electronics, and some pc parts too 😀 there were several sound cards, but either they were based on chips CM8738 or CS4281. I was searching in every stand, but it seems that they are the only options available. I could not find any other card with anoter chip. So I bought a card with the CS4281 chip (it was the cheapest card among the sellers). Bad news: some of the games detected it... but there are not digital sounds, only FM synthesis. And the volume is too low. Well, I think that's better than nothing. Maybe.

vetz wrote:

Holering wrote:

You could try an ESS-solo PCI soundcard. It uses TDMA emulation when needed so it has high compatibility with mobos. It has really good fm synthesis.

There's the Vortex 2 which is pretty good too from the sounds of it. I personally never got one working in real-mode DOS but it's supposedly very compatible with mobos. The SB resources are odd so it might give problems with some games. I'm not sure if it has very good FM but otherwise it seems like the next best option.

Vortex 2 is the best DOS and Windows combo PCI card I've found so far. As Maur1wurf1977 says it has SB Pro compatibility, mixer, MIDI external and internal wavetable. Easy to get it working in pure DOS, just search Vogons (on Google) if you need help.

Hi vetz, thanks for the recommendation. But i have searched in my city, but only found CM8738 OR CS4281 cards. Does any one here has a an Aureal Vortex 2 to sell me? I can pay via Paypal.

Thanks for you help again. And excuse my english too, I'm trying not to use google translator. 😊

Hi, Welcome, and your English is fine.
Maybe you can find a Vortex 2 card on Ebay USA and post across? They aren't very rare but not mainstream either plus being out of production for along time now I can imagine being quite hard to find in Peru.

An easier option is a SBLive! or Yamaha YMF7xx Both of these are far more common. The SBLive! can work in DOS but is a real challenge. The Yamaha may not work in DOS at all. BUT! if you play your DOS games from Windows both will work fie and a P3 1GHz should have enough power to play just about any game. Its not ideal but without an ISA slot no setup will be perfect.

I like the little Deskpro EN's I have some at home, but they are limiting. If you can find a full size P2/P3 even from someone like Compaq, Dell, etc they usually had an ISA slot

chinny22 wrote:

Hi, Welcome, and your English is fine. Maybe you can find a Vortex 2 card on Ebay USA and post across? They aren't very rare but […]
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Hi, Welcome, and your English is fine.
Maybe you can find a Vortex 2 card on Ebay USA and post across? They aren't very rare but not mainstream either plus being out of production for along time now I can imagine being quite hard to find in Peru.

An easier option is a SBLive! or Yamaha YMF7xx Both of these are far more common. The SBLive! can work in DOS but is a real challenge. The Yamaha may not work in DOS at all. BUT! if you play your DOS games from Windows both will work fie and a P3 1GHz should have enough power to play just about any game. Its not ideal but without an ISA slot no setup will be perfect.

I like the little Deskpro EN's I have some at home, but they are limiting. If you can find a full size P2/P3 even from someone like Compaq, Dell, etc they usually had an ISA slot

Hi chinny22, thanks for your suggestion, I searched in Ebay USA, I found a Yamaha YMF724F as you suggested, and the price is very low, but the shipping is expensive: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Yamaha-XG-YMF724F-V-P … =item33941ad291 ¿Why is so expensive shipping such small item? Does the shipping cost differ between the states of USA?

I found a similar card from UK: http://www.ebay.com/itm/YAMAHA-SV550-PCI-Soun … =item20ebafc4a7 but the shipping is even pricier that shipping from USA.
The seller told me that shipping will cost 40 pounds sterling plus the price of the card. 😢

Trying to find these Yamaha PCI cards here is difficult (The same goes for the Vortex 2), seems that peruvian retailers only were selling cheap OEM cards, such as C-Media or Crystal (I found a lot of the cards in a second hand market).

Oh man I would steer clear of that Yamaha card. I can't get it to work with half my games, it may just be my Packard Bell though. But I've had horrible luck with that card. If I were you I would avoid the Live! cards too, I have quite a few problems with that card as well. I have a few different versions but all of them have been trouble (SB0200,SB0060, and CT4780).

King_Corduroy wrote:

Oh man I would steer clear of that Yamaha card. I can't get it to work with half my games, it may just be my Packard Bell though. But I've had horrible luck with that card. If I were you I would avoid the Live! cards too, I have quite a few problems with that card as well. I have a few different versions but all of them have been trouble (SB0200,SB0060, and CT4780).

Hi King_Corduroy, what card are you using now? I tried with a Crystal CS4281, but there's no digital audio, only (a very quiet, poor and tinny) FM synthesis.

Currently unfortunately I'm stuck using the SB0060 LIVE! PCI card, it would be great except the emulated SB16 is SLOOOOOOOW and strange sounding at times, the CD Music in video games cannot use the volume adjusters in game (all games that use CD audio I've had this problem on all the Live! cards on 2 different computers), and if you have a super picky video game like Earth 2140 it will not properly be able to use the Sound Blaster Live! card's emulated SB16. If I were you I would try a PCI 128, I used to have one a long time ago on my old Packard Bell and it worked like a charm for all my DOS games and windows games. They are pretty inexpensive too but unfortunately I don't remember which model is the full retail version so proceed with caution.

The Yamaha card I have works great for all of my windows games and lacks the issues I had with the Sound Blaster Live! cards. However, it seems to be picky on which games it wants to work with. I cannot get Blood to recognize the sound card and if I set it to certain IRQ and DMA values I can crash the whole system. 🤣
Naturally Earth 2140 will not work on this card either, I'll probably play around with the card some more tomorrow and I'll let you know if I can get it working (since it has FANTASTIC XG FM synth) but as of now I'm not really having that good of luck with it. So yet again your discretion on that one. (But in my opinion it's a pain in the arse and you should steer free).

It sucks that you don't have any ISA slots since personally I'm done messing around with these PCI cards and I'm going right to using the SB16 ISA. Although I saw there was a SB16 PCI but in all honesty it looks like a cut down version of the 128.

Before you give up on PCI cards, do try a Aureal Vortex 2 card. I found it to be an excellent card, for Windows, as well as DOS.

I admit I have never tested the CD volume thing though. What game would be suitable for that? Hopefully I got it then I could try it out for you...

Well there are quite a few games that use CD music the ones I was playing were: Total Annihilation, Rocket Jockey, Earth 2140 (although it doesn't work on any of my cards I know it uses CD audio and that would be the same issue) and POD. Although come to think of it Warcraft 2 should suffer from this problem too as long as you use the CD music and not the midi.

Here is a Aureal Vortex 2:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Turtle-Beach-TB400-33 … =item1e8dd7ec78

Just use shipito.com for cheap shipping to Peru.

Or this one from the UK:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-5931D-Turtle-Bea … =item35cb297139

International shipping is 5 GPB

King_Corduroy wrote:

Well there are quite a few games that use CD music the ones I was playing were: Total Annihilation, Rocket Jockey, Earth 2140 (although it doesn't work on any of my cards I know it uses CD audio and that would be the same issue) and POD.

Bugger I don't have any of these. Are any of these on GOG.com and can be turned into a CD?

🤣 If you want I could "lend" you an ISO of Rocket Jockey or something. (That's a really fun game btw, everyone should play it.)
Personally I wouldn't bother with GOG, just get a slightly less than kosher version off of pirate bay for testing or I could give you an ISO copy. I hate that they are charging for these old games, not to mention they completely butchered Earth 2140 with their XP "fix". It just feels like I'm being forced to buy the white album again if you know what I mean. Except in the case of the GOG version of Earth 2140 it could be akin to buying full album price for only one song off of a completely different album that was advertised as the whole the white album, sure on the surface it looks like the white album but when you play it, it certainly IS NOT. 😜