voodoodrul wrote on 2026-06-13, 05:50:

I’ve experienced this with every sb live card I have, but I don’t hear much about the tempo/pacing/timing issues when people refer to sb live cards and the lackluster fm synth. Are certain models or hardware combinations more or less prone to this issue? I’ve tried a variety of drivers and some cause opl2 to run slow as well. Opl3 in Descent plays about 50% of the speed it should run at. This is on a p3 600 slot 1 with a 440bx.

I’m mostly just looking for context on the issue if anyone has the knowledge.

While the SBLive FM Synth emulation does indeed have slowdown problems (which may depend on the driver version), Descent is not a good example to test this. The music in that game slows down even on sound cards with genuine OPL3 hardware. Relevant info in these threads:

Anyone have a idea why the music tempo in Descent fluctuates so bad on OPL?
Re: Opti 82C929A - DOS driver anyone please?

As for the SBLive issue, I found that using the Audigy DOS drivers can mitigate the slowdown, at least in some games. See my guide for more details.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-06-13, 06:09:

While the SBLive FM Synth emulation does indeed have slowdown problems (which may depend on the driver version), Descent is not […]
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While the SBLive FM Synth emulation does indeed have slowdown problems (which may depend on the driver version), Descent is not a good example to test this. The music in that game slows down even on sound cards with genuine OPL3 hardware. Relevant info in these threads:

Anyone have a idea why the music tempo in Descent fluctuates so bad on OPL?
Re: Opti 82C929A - DOS driver anyone please?

As for the SBLive issue, I found that using the Audigy DOS drivers can mitigate the slowdown, at least in some games. See my guide for more details.

The legend himself 😂 - Thanks. I ended up going combo SB Live and YMF744 with SB-Link. I never used to have issues with OPL2 or 3 in Windows with the Live, but even that was getting laggy with weird instruments. So I decided to give up and let the Live do Windows only, YMF do DOS only.

I guess the part that was surprising to me is how different each model of SB Live (even with same EMU10k1) can sound and how unpredictable it can be. Previously I was not swapping between models to side-by-side compare, but CT4780 sounds very different from SB0060, even on the same driver versions. A table of best model + driver combos would be interesting, even if subjective.

voodoodrul wrote on 2026-06-13, 05:50:

I’ve experienced this with every sb live card I have, but I don’t hear much about the tempo/pacing/timing issues when people refer to sb live cards and the lackluster fm synth.

oh it's definitely a real issue. it's not real opl3 so it struggles emulated with huge timing. It definitely happens on live 5.1 and i've never recommended this card for dos. I got sick of this issue in 2001 (begrudgingly going GM where I can) and had started to hope for something like a dos emulator to exist as I feared these issues would get worse.

leileilol wrote on 2026-06-16, 04:27:

oh it's definitely a real issue. it's not real opl3 so it struggles emulated with huge timing. It definitely happens on live 5.1 and i've never recommended this card for dos. I got sick of this issue in 2001.

There is a significant improvement using the later audigy driver package for Live cards in DOS, it doesn't slow down OPL like the Live drivers

isn't it mentioned in old threads on Vogons that when using the sbeinit emulation picking OPL2 in games that offer it instead of OPL3 makes the sound more accurate ? (most dos games almost always use OPL2 anyway)/

i've heard the slowdown on opl2-stuck games, i don't think it'd matter. The slowdown's much like the earlier AudioPCI ECW-based TSR behavior.