Stretch wrote on 2021-01-19, 12:40:

Have you tried a newer ESFM.MDI driver? Maybe that will fix the music.

Just tried that. I overwrote ESFM.MDI in the WarCraft2 folder with the one from the Heroes2 folder.

No change. WarCraft2 with ESFM Enhanced music still sounds bad.

ESFM Enhanced works even on my ES1688 based PCMCIA sound card. Tried it in HMM2 and it sounds exactly like the sample above.
That's really cool to learn about such features. Did not really expect any surprises form such a boring hardware as ES sound chip.
There have to be more games that support the enhanced mode, I guess.

Bondi wrote on 2021-01-22, 09:11:

There have to be more games that support the enhanced mode, I guess.

Magic Carpet 2 seems to support it as well.

I'm not familiar with that game, so I can't really tell if the implementation is good or bad. The music is very unusual, no matter what sound card you play it on.

Found two more games which support ESFM Enhanced music:

• Z - https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/z
• Theme Hospital - https://www.mobygames.com/game/theme-hospital

Granted, I'm not familiar with either of these, but it seems like the implementation was handled properly. The music sounds much nicer using the ESFM Enhanced setup option, when compared to the Generic OPL3 option.

Theme Hospital music is great in ESFM mode - I released a video with the complete soundtrack here:
https://youtu.be/T_EqeRV0W7g

Very nice, it does indeed seem like a nice FM synthesizer in its own right.

I just noticed another advantage of native (enhanced) ESFM over OPL3.

In some games like Heroes of Might and Magic 2, music in OPL3 mode is dual-mono (same on both channels) while it is stereo in native ESFM mode. You can check the differences in the recordings that I previously posted here.

Not sure if you guys are aware that DOSBox-X can now emulate the ESS1688 and ESFM in "native mode".

I went through most of the DOS games starting from 1995 that support the Miles Sound System, and I found a few more that let you select the "ESS Enhanced FM" music driver.

Here's the complete list of games with ESFM support so far:

- 11th Hour, The
- Advanced Civilization
- Callahan's Crosstime Saloon
- Gene Machine, The
- Heaven's Dawn
- Heroes of Might and Magic II
- Magic Carpet 2
- Settlers II, The
- Shannara
- Theme Hospital
- WarCraft II
- Z

I was quite impressed by The Gene Machine and Heaven's Dawn—those are definitely some hidden gems! Then in some games the driver kinda works, but after a while it starts playing horribly out-of-tune notes (e.g., Shannara). As people have noted, Magic Carpet 2 sounds comically bad too.

I've also experimented with "retrofitting" ESFM.MDI into Miles Sound System games that don't have it, and it miraculously works! Just copy over the driver from another game and you'll have an extra "ESFM" option as the last item in the music driver menu.

I really like how Discworld sounds with the ESFM.MDI driver copied over from Heaven's Dawn.