Multiple channels being mixed sound much better in 16bit. I think that's what games like Doom used it for. They could of course downsample to 8bit for final playback, but why do that when you can play in 16bit and get better quality?

Very few games that supported the SB16 actually used it in 16 bit resolution and not one single game supported ASP at all. The SB 16 was a pointless card.

8bit sounds very flaky. SB16 wasn't pointless, 16bit mixing did make a big difference audiowise. Less noise and such, and not as much of a headache when using headphones either.

Fallout for dos needs 16bit
The sound configurator has SBpro and SB2 but they are not working
There is also option for GUS Interwave, WSS and ESS audiodrive.

Tomb Raider sounds ugly with 8bit

I still see the SB 16 as a pointless update for gamers, especially when compared to GUS support (hardware mixing vs SB 16 software mixing) - which was often available in games that supported SB 16 and always sounded better - DOOM II's effects for example sounded much clearer on GUS and even were positional. Even the PAS 16 made the SB 16 sound like the shite and hype it truely was - the PAS and PAS 16 both had lower noise floors and less bugs than the SB16. The SB AWE32 on the other hand was a great 16 bit card and it too proved the pointlessness of the SB 16 with it's SF2 loadable Synth and intergrated FX processor - making the SB 16's OPL3 FM synth and ASP FX processor (something you also had to pay a premium for) look pathetic by comparison.

Great Hierophant wrote:

But I am seriously doubting that you really need a Sound Blaster 16 for games.

...except for putting a MIDI daughterboard, but still, SB16 is not the only sound card you can put a WaveBlaster-compatible daughterboard on.

dh4rm4 wrote:

I still see the SB 16 as a pointless update for gamers, especially when compared to GUS support

GUS Support is quite the oxymoron. GUS was notorious for technical difficulties 😦

SB16 seemed to be the most compatible option in this case.

OPL3 isn't pathetic.

Not from my experience. I was a games journo at the time and personally new Jayson Lee Steere (creator of MegaEm) whom I met as result of reviewing a GUSMax. I found MegaEm, even it's infancy, was an impressive use of the GUS multisampler. I owned and promoted all manner of GUS cards and when supported properly as in Dark Sun : Shattered Lands, Magic Carpet 2 and Wing Commander III and IV it worked a treat. When not, it was certainly down to HLE software emulation of SB and Roland cards compatibility which can be random at times. Something that really hasn't changed these days with HLE emulation in general - emu authors still tweak the hell out of their code to cover every possible niche need or potential speedup.

Aside from games of course, there was the whole Demoscene side of things where GUS was undeniably well supported and king of mod playback. Most Demosceners hated the SB16 with a passion, preferring to stick their SB Pros and eventually paring them with a GUS of some sort.

Hmm, this discussion topic has changed from "Need for 16-bit digitized audio" to "Need for a Soundblaster 16" 😉

In my opinion a 16-bit card does make sense for later DOS games, because many of them support 16-bit mixing on WSS/ESS/PAS/GUS/SB16 cards.

I also agree that the SB16 has the worst sound quality of the cards mentioned. But while every game of that era works with a SB16, usually only a selection of the others is natively supported, which makes it difficult to decide which one to choose instead.

Actually, in the DOS world, there are two forms of 16-bit digitized sound, those devices that process the sound in stereo, which include the PAS16, SB16, WSS, ESS, and the GUS, which mixes multiple channels in hardware.

16-bit @ 44.1kHz is the best audio output that you will receive from any ISA sound card (though some cards boast 48kHz). The WSS, SB16, PAS16 and ESS all boast it, but the resulting audio quality varies widely among the cards. I think I read somewhere that the SB16, which has a noise level of about 75dB, cannot fully render 16-bit digitized audio playback. Apparently, a SnR of 90dB or higher is necessary to get the full effect. The GUS can reach the goal, but only if no more than 14 voices are used simultaneously.