zuldan wrote on 2025-04-14, 09:52:
Yep that’s it.
Really happy with this card. Sounds great now, very compatible and you can still get them for pretty cheap.
That's strange but personnally, i prefer the card without the Low-Pass Filter mod like few people in previous messages (we are few 🤣).
And i think Yahama did that disabling on purpose and not for cut-down measures.
It's true it sound more "raw" but for most recents DOS Games (between 1995 and 1999) it sounds way more pleasant and clear.
With it, it sound muffled, indeed it's more Sound Blaster Pro so purist like it.
But the Sound Blaster Pro was not the best sounding for late DOS games, and even more when you compare to how it sounds on a Sound Blaster 16 or WSS processing.
So that disabled Low-Pass it's in the middle for me.
I'm so glad that Yamaha support WSS, even works in 48Khz mode (as long you have the second Crystal on the card, the 24.576 MHz one).
Very important when you buy that card, get the model with 2 crystals (24.576 MHz and 33.8688 MHz) ! Otherwhise you gonna miss some features sadly.
That WSS it's like having a Sound Blaster 16 (close enough), a huge advantage on the Yamaha side =)
Contrary to the ESS Audiodrive, who was a lot talked here and on youtube.
I've personnally tested the ESS Audiodrive too, the 1868F and 1869F models, and i was very very disappointed compared to the Yahama YMF719F i feel way superior.
OPL3 even if it's close, it's not same at all. For few games it's very noticeable that the ESS struggle to correctly emulate the OPL3 and for some others yeah it's close.
But most and foremost, the "ESS Audiodrive" driver for games is so so so bad (on almost 95% of games who support it, it's bad), they all sounds muffled/degraded.
And some others games, the card is just not detected in "ESS Audiodrive mode", a trick exist but anyway it sounds bad when using it.
Finally the ESFM, as far i'm aware, only 5 games really using his capabilities and they all support General Midi/Sound Canvas who is even far superior... so pointless.
Still to this day, i'm personnally thinking that the Yahama YMF718/YMF719 is the best ISA Card for DOS, way superior to the ESS Audiodrive without any doubt.
The only issue the card have is missing ADPCM support but that's only one game (Duke Nukem 2) and it's already fixed with a patch who restore sounds without that compression.
Luckyly as people are mindset by the ESS Audiodrive cards, the Yamaha prices are even lower to it theses days so good thing.
