Paar wrote on 2023-02-24, 12:07:

Just watched LGR's blerb video about Orpheus 1 and noticed the card has a problem with default volume of OPL3 chip vs PCM sounds. [...]

This has been discussed in the past and several attempts were made to correct this with orphinit but without success.
OrpheusI cards exhibit this with some games when you use external OPL3 , if this is a huge issue then switching to CSFM fixes this.
There is no way to "fix" OrpheusI cards when it comes to this - this is just the expected a CS4237 behavior - it's a silicon thing and thus "it is what it is"...

OrpheusII variants fixed this by doing things differently from what Crystal envisioned OPL3 interfacing should be, that is why it is now possible to install a dedicated OPL3 driver and have YMF289 usable under windows.
CS4237 still controls YMF289 , we did not just add an OPL3 at $388 and called it a day - like I mentioned before this is a result of knowledge over time and better understanding of how the CS4237 works.
Before OrpheusI noone really considered CS4237 as a good option for a DOS soundcard and no other CS4237 out there even has an external Yamaha OPL3 to begin with, so several things were just unknown and/or undocumented.

Does the CS4237 handle digital-to-analog conversion internally for the external OPL3 chip? If so I assume it's not possible to just lower the strength of the external signal going into the codec chip.

But I'm glad you managed to fix it with the successor.

YMF289->CS4237 is a digital path, there is no external DAC to lower volume

That explains it. I was a little confused as CS4232 needs an external DAC but CS4237 is several generations ahead and has it's own internal one. At least you know how to put the external FM to the same volume level as CrystalFM with Orpheus II. Another step to perfection.

This is the reason I prefer to have a dedicated card for OPL and route it into my primary card via line-in. It's not the prettiest solution, but it works for me, and let's me max both the FM and Master volume sliders and then adjust it as needed at the input.

Any known hardware incompatibilities at the moment?

I'm currently running a dual sound card setup with a SB Live and a SB Pro 2 on a Pentium 3 and VIA motherboard running Win98. This would replace the the SB Pro 2 (I have only one ISA slot!) that I use for DOS games like Raptor and Duke3D.

only some early PnP systems do not like CS4237 for some reason, some DELL Optiplex 5xxx/6xxx ones, a Casio 486 and IIRC the 486SP3 motherboard are not compatible because they cannot detect the CS4237
this is a CS4237 and BIOS issue so nothing to be done in these cases - more info on this is on the original orpheusI page

keropi wrote on 2023-02-26, 07:57:

only some early PnP systems do not like CS4237 for some reason, some DELL Optiplex 5xxx/6xxx ones, a Casio 486 and IIRC the 486SP3 motherboard are not compatible because they cannot detect the CS4237
this is a CS4237 and BIOS issue so nothing to be done in these cases - more info on this is on the original orpheusI page

Other than patches to those BIOSes. ;P

Have people started to receive them yet? Looking forward to mine in a big way!

I just took received some RAM and some audio cables, so I think I’m ready to rock when it lands at my door 😀

due to real life shipping will begin this week... things are packed and ready to go now
it was just not possible to do it sooner :\

Thanks for your efforts. All of your projects have been absolutely awesome. Loving my I, II LT and very much looking forward to dropping the full-fat card in my Pentium MMX build (on a Gigabyte GA-586ATX). I feel like that should be the right spec or time frame to really maximize the card - PnP relatively sorted out, enough speed to play just about any demo or mod. I may be totally wrong as I did not own any UltraSound card back in the day, so I am very curious to hear opinions.

Thank you to everyone who has been involved in bringing this project to life. I’m looking forward for when my card arrives. Really excited to finally have a card that can meet all my retro gaming needs or at least most of them ahaha. Tbh I’m most excited cause I will finally have a proper MPU-401 card for my RA-50 (I still have to do the MT-32 mod.)

Thank you all for the kind words
As a sidenote orders have started shipping and apparently the factory is finally working on smd assembly of the next batch 😀

It has arrived!!!!

KuroHouou wrote on 2023-03-14, 02:43:

It has arrived!!!!

I'm jealous haha. I hope it sounds amazing 😁

Please somebody make a youtube-review of the card! Waiting my card from the second batch <3

I too am curious. Does it blend?

KuroHouou wrote on 2023-03-14, 02:43:

It has arrived!!!!

Beautiful, just beautiful!!!! Enjoy It!!!

Hi keropi, I was wondering if it would be possible to receive a confirmation regarding the pre-orders that have been placed for the second batch. I can imagine I'm not the only person here that isn't sure if you received their email, asking to be placed on the waiting list for the second batch. Maybe it ended up in your Spam-b0x, etc, no clue. Just a reply saying "received, will get back to you once we have news!" would be more than enough for me to wait patiently, without the urge of sending another email 😀 Thanks!

Running through the setup of my Orpheus II in Windows 98 but have some questions... Are we supposed to install the Windows 95 Plug and Play drivers, I assume so as they really are the only ones that would work in Windows 98. That said, it does install the ULTRASND Directory in the C:\ drive. But you also have your own version of ULTRASND for DOS and in turn DOS in Windows Mode. Should we not use the ones it installs I am guessing? So in the autoexec.bat, just point to the folder I copy from Orpheus?

So far I have been able to get GUS sound effects to work in Windows DOS Mode, but having some issues getting music to work. Been trying with Duke3D first.