The AWE's and SB32 have the fine EMU8000 synthesizer chip by EMU systems.
It's being supported natively by Protected-Mode games (DOS4GW games) that use third-party sound/music systems (MILES etc).
On such games, the EMU8000 can sound like a nice, entry class wavetable card.
The downside is the sound font here. On plain DOS, there's no utility supplied to upload a better sound font.
The only use that extra AWE RAM has is for playing back Amiga modules, I think.
Impulse Tracker and other MOD programs do support the EMU8000 natively and can use it to provided high-quality mixing.
To anyone into MOD music, the EMU8k is a really really nice thing.
If a dedicated EMU8000 card is being used (Goldfinch), the EMU8000 can have all 32 channels for free use (if software supports it).
On regular the AWEs, though, merely 30 channels are being available, due to the OPL3 chip "stealing" 2 channels (left/right) of the DAC.
I'm just saying, because some complex MOD files use 32 channels.
They usually won't sound as nice as they could on EMU8000, because of this circumstances.
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