Both great options - the Audiodrive is better for earlier stuff IMO because it has heavier filtering than the YMF card, so it sounds better with the lower quality samples from older games, like the original Sound Blasters did. Also Duke Nukem 2 won't sound right on the YMF without a patch, if you care about that.

The filter on the YMF card can be modded to sound like a real SB Pro, and then it's the better card because it has a real OPL3. But yeah, either card is great.

Owning both of these cards, the Yamaha is easily my favorite — especially once you manage to tame that mixer that only seems to cooperate through black magic.

The OPLSAx initialisation / mixer software in DOS is a bit challenging - I ended up hex editing it to stop it from updating my autoexec.bat every dang boot. Unisound works with them of course but it doesn't set up the mixer properly either - Wolf3D doesn't have stereo for example.

Both are excellent.

I do prefer the YMF chipset, and in my case i actually do not enjoy the filtering so much. One thing that got me so passionate with this chipset is how clean it sounds. It has other surprises like its ability to play much higher sampling rates without issues, even though this is out of spec for real SB Pro 2 with 8-bit Stereo at 22KHz, it is a nice surprise when you bump the sampling up to 44KHz and there's no playback slowdown whatsoever. I remember Tiido mentioning it could go as high as 96Khz or something.

Both have good UART MPU-401, both have good joystick support, YMF might be harder to find in full ISA height to support a "normal" sized daughterboard, where its quite easier to find that for ESS cards.

ESS fully supports all ADPCM modes, but YMF only supports 4:1. ESS has a register compatible and excellent enhanced OPL3 that on some occasions does not sound equal to the real thing, but ESFM is genuinely good.

So it comes down to preference, i liked the way the YMF chipsets sound so much that i never looked back. The holy grail for YMF, until Tiido's card is out, is probably the MediaTrix AudioTrix 3D-XG. For ESS, my favorite card is the Guillemot Sound MAxi 64 with a ESS1868. The holy grail for it now is MK1869 xTreme by Keropi and Marmes.

So it seems that compatibility-wise they are about the same, since no one mentioned anything about it.

I am planning to use UNISOUND, I'm sure there must be a way to adjust the mixer while initializing it with some switches. Isn't that the case?
I am not interested in Wavetable addons, so yes both cards are not full height but it doesn't really matter for me.
I just want a hassle-free plug'n'play experience for the most part and enjoy the games. I know this is not the case for DOS and a lot of different eras of software, but I want to make it as simple as it can be. 😀

I know (and hate) the CQM that replaced OPL by Creative, but honestly the ESFM is a good implementation, I don't mind using that instead of "being true and faithful".

About filtering, I guess I didn't notice it so much, maybe I need to try both cards one right after the other to listen to the differences.

GeorgeMan wrote on 2026-03-02, 11:01:

So it seems that compatibility-wise they are about the same, since no one mentioned anything about it.

3 people replied, 2 mentioned a compatibility issue.

Apologies about that, since English is not my primary language maybe I misunderstood something.

badmojo wrote on 2026-03-03, 03:21:

3 people replied, 2 mentioned a compatibility issue.

If you'll go for the YMF card definitely use Tiido's software for initializing and managing the mixer, the original Yamaha drivers are a total clusterfuck. I use one of these cards in my 486 system because I used to own an SB Pro back in the day, and in terms of features and sound that is the closest.

That said, the ESx688 cards are definitely my favorites among the ISA sound cards.

I prefer the ES1868F: it is not as sensitive to CPU speed as the YMF719.

Some of the games I play won't work with YMF719 if the CPU frequency is above 333MHz - and they work with ES1868F above 333MHz.

A couple of examples (including, but not limited to): Indiana Jones and Fate of Atlantis, X-Wing 1993, Lemmings, Prince of Persia.

Both cards are great, and this is something that you must have in mind depending on which machine you want to install them. Both CPUs you mentioned are above 333MHz, and it might be a problem depending on the games you play.

I hope it helps.