Advice for SB + MIDI on a dos-box.... \ VOGONS

Advice for SB + MIDI on a dos-box....

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First post, by keropi

Posted on 2006-08-28, 20:11

keropi Offline

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Howdy! 😁

after all this time, I am finally ready to make a descent DOS machine for old games... I have gathered some hardware, and recent I got for free a pentium166mmx machine in excellent condition! So I decided to finally build a pc to play all those old dos games of the 90's... The p166 is nice, under 200mhz so the runtime errors stay away , it has pci (using a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 pro 4MB) and isa slots and finally has the option for SDRAM, so I put a 128MB stick I had ... installed win98SE, and made it boot straight to DOS (tried PC-DOS7, but FAT16 sucked , too many partitions, plus windows are nice to extract and do gui stuff , or network it...) anyways, I need advice on the sound part... here is what I have here, all ISA:

2 x generic ALS1000+ cards with wavetable connectors
1 x SB16 ISA PNP
1 x AWE64 PNP
1 x YAMAHA SW20-PC
1 x TurtleBeach Wavetable card (can't remember model, I bet it sucks as a SB)
1 x SoundCalland SC8000 Wavetable
and...
1 x YAMAHA DB60XG
1 x Wavetable DB 512kb? with Dream chipset (unknown model/make)

I tried the als1000+ cards with the Dream DB, but the quality is very low... the DB is OK, but the SB part under DOS has probs too...

Then I plugged the SW20 , which is excellent in quality, but again the SB part was flacky, as this card works 100% on 386/486 machines due to adress conflicts...

the awe64 is nice as a SB, but the midi part sucks in DOS...

also I remember on my 386sx back then before the sw20, I had an ESS688 card, which never gave me probs with SB emulation AFAIR, are these good?

If I get a SB16 that has a wavetable connector will things work better? Is the DB60XG nice for DOS games? does it have any roland fallback mode? it would be nice to have mt32/ect compatabillity...
what do you suggest I should get/use ???

Reply 1 of 6, by keropi

Posted on 2006-08-28, 21:26

keropi Offline

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I grabbed 2 SB16's off ebay:

Creative Sound Blaster 4 Ch ISA Card CT2970 (6866175461)
Creative Sound Blaster ISA Card Vintage CT2980 (6866175516)

so I guess the SB part is gone, both have wavetable connectors.
so what do you recommend for a DB ? the DB60XG?

Reply 2 of 6, by aleksej

Posted on 2006-08-29, 17:36

aleksej Offline

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What do you mean with DB? Daughterboard connector?
Then...
Of course DB60XG (or DB50XG, DB51XG - in native GM mode used in dos games all these cards sounds identical)
Look for your Turtle Beach DB - whats your model? I have TB Rio - superior sound! I put this card on third place right after DB50XG and SCB-55.
Actually DB50XG/Rio sounds better in games later than '93 (especially fps - doom/duke3d/descent). Midi tunes in early games sounds better with Roland midi cards.
Really strange suituation with Blood - this tunes sounds way cooler with native AWE32 wavetable synth (EMU800) - seems like these tunes optimized special for this synth. Try listen first tune in Blood alpha ver. No other synth (even yamaha & roland) which can beat that cool EMU800 sound in this game.

Reply 3 of 6, by keropi

Posted on 2006-08-29, 21:22

keropi Offline

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oh nice...
I was worried about roland mt-32/scc1 compatibility...
The turtlebeach is a standalone card, the TBS-2000 tropez 32 ??? with wavefront technology apparently and also has a reference in mt-32 mode on a small manual I have for it...

Reply 4 of 6, by keropi

Posted on 2006-08-29, 21:30

keropi Offline

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Actually the small manual with mt32 comp. seems to belong to the DREAM WAVETABLE DaughterBoard... not the tbs2000 ...

Reply 5 of 6, by keropi

Posted on 2006-08-29, 23:37

keropi Offline

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emu8000 sounds great, I agree too, but unfortunatelly only in specific games...
maybe the ideal setup is :

SB16 + DB50XG & Roland SCC1/LAPC1
or
SB16 + SCB-55 & Yamaha SW60XG

any thoughts on that? 😁

Reply 6 of 6, by aleksej

Posted on 2006-08-30, 06:57

aleksej Offline

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SW60XG has awesome feature - two line-in inputs with effect precessor for this signals (echo, reverb). I have this card too and i used it for sfx sounds from my awe and gus simultaneously. Just great. But unfortanatelly SW60XG is a incredible noisy card. Signal to Noise ratio - very very low. Even lower than early 8-bit soundcards have.

I also have MU-10 & MU-15 modules - but this both babies have only MONO inputs instead of SW60XG with their 2 STEREO inputs. This is a Yamaha's great fault with these products:
SW60XG with stereo inputs but lowest S/N ratio
MU-10/15 - with excelent S/N ratio but mono input (electro guitar related in mind).

Right now i use such sound setup:
1. AWE-32 with 28mb and SCB-55 - has given me FM, EMU8000, GM synthesis both in real DOS, DOS under Win9x and Windows applications - what i want at moment.
2. Gravis Ultrasound MAX with MU-10 connected to gameport - has given me GUS WT, and GM synthesis. Available only in real DOS and DOS appclications under Win9x).
3. Turtle Beach Santa Cruz (PCI card) with daugherboard connector and DB50XG connected to it - has given me windows native WT synthesis with DLS banks and real GM/XG. Available in Windows application only.
4. Covox (SoundJr module with minijack output) hooked to LPT - has given me... Covox 😀
http://www.siliconsoft.com/sndjr1.htm

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