retro games 100 wrote:

I wonder if I can answer my own question - the special routing of FM music to the AWE's EMU chip is just to add reverb and chorus to FM music, and that is all that it does.

I'm not sure about all of the various models of the AWE32 cards, but the ones that I use to have (CT2760 full AWE32 cards, as well as the CT1920 AWE32 "Upgrade Goldfinch" cards) all were like that... the routing of the FM chip to the EMU were simply to add reverb and chorus (via AWEUTIL).

P.S. Also note that the MP3 that I posted really doesn't do it justice, as it's simply a $hit-rig of a "simulation" <grin>... the true EMU reverb and chorus effects for the OPL music on a true AWE32 sound considerably nicer 😀 Can't really put my finger on it (since it's been so long), but maybe not quite as "ratty" sounding, I don't really remember.

(edit) :duh: brain death 🤣! The CT1920 doesn't have an OPL chip or FM synth of any sort :slap:

I was about to say.... the goldfinch card has nothing but the EMU8000 chip
makes me wonder if it outputs true 32 voices though....

the CT1910 has the same chip too, but I don't know if it does either (too few people care/have it)

TheMAN wrote:

makes me wonder if it outputs true 32 voices though....

With the Goldfinch cards that I had, I never noticed any clipping with any of my more polyphonic compositions (some of which I'm sure were close, if not exactly, 32 voices). So's, I'm pretty sure that it does 😀

I guess a real test is needed.... make some random crap and watch it go through cakewalk 😉

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

You got to start testing another game. Doesn't it get boring testing the X-Wing over and over again 🤣

I'm just posting the stuff I've already uploaded to YouTube, and I'm not done testing X-Wing on my sound cards.

However, I will soon upload more games played on my various sound cards: Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Star Wars TIE Fighter, Descent, Golden Axe, Red Baron, Aces of the Pacific and Aces over Europe just to name a few.

Looking forward!

(...) Thanks a lot for any help. I've had an AWE32 since 1995, and have never heard FM game music improved. I hope I won't die of old age before I get it working. Wink

Man, you are great! I can't help laughing. ^^

retro games 100 wrote:

C:\SB16\AWEUTIL /R:90 /C:90

Now this is a nice switch. I also never used it before, but now after trying it, I can only say that it sounds pretty awful with 90/90. With 50/100 even worse (I guess my taste is somewhat different). 60/60 gives nice results though, but I still prefer GM or FM with 0/0 in some cases.

Hehe. That "90 90" option was done deliberately, so that I could instantly tell if the effects were working, or not. I imagine that it did sound awful! 😉

It looks like that little experiment I had in mind for the SoundBlaster AWE32 CT3990 I had in mind won't happen anytime soon. The SoundBlaster AWE32 I found at the flea market is actually NOT a CT3990, but rather a CT3600. That one has no empty solder spot for a YMF289 and YAC516 anywhere, which means I would be stuck with the CQM YMF262 clone.

However, the booth owner did tell me he got an AWE32 with a CT1747 chip on it and some RAM sticks inserted into the sound card. I'll go pick it up next week since he didn't have the sound card with him. Hopefully, it has at least 4MB of RAM. Although, this would completely defeat the purpose of my experiment because the AWE32 would already have authentic OPL3 FM Synthesis on it.

the CT3600 is NOT an AWE32... it's a SB32

TheMAN wrote:

the CT3600 is NOT an AWE32... it's a SB32

Yep, it's the SB32PnP. I have the boxed unit.

Really now? Shows how little I know of the AWE32 and its variants.

Well, anyways, which models of the SoundBlaster AWE32/SoundBlaster 32 have a CT1747 or discrete YMF262/YMF289? I was told by the booth owner that the AWE32 he didn't have with him has true OPL3 FM Synthesis(he said there's a chip on the sound card saying OPL on it - most likely, it's a CT1747)?

I would just look up photos of the cards in Google Images. Easy enough to find usually. Look for an OPL3 chip.

any of the non-PnP AWE32s will have a real OPL3 chip
fortunately, there's only a handful of them:
CT2760, CT2760a, CT3780, CT3900, CT3910, CT3919

not all of these have the CSP chip or SIMM slots... it's pretty obvious when you see it though

Seems like the card I was told about can only be a CT2760 or a CT3900 as they're the only ones in that list with SIMM slots. Now for my last question: which has better audio output? By better, I mean with minimal hiss/hum. I don't mind muffled audio.

CT3900 has either the CT1745A-TBP (better) or CT1745A-S (best)... the CT2760 has the older/original mixer chip which is more noisy

Question about the mixer chips: do their pinouts match? If they do, I might swap out the mixer chip on the AWE32 if it turns out to be a CT2760 and sounds like complete crap to my ears with the mixer chip on my AWE64 model CT4500(that card was already abused: a corner of the card was cut so it can fit inside an IBM Personal Computer 300PL, which has the ISA slots placed so close to the CPU you can hardly fit ISA cards longer than the ISA slot itself. I don't even think the AWE32 would fit in there).

they should, but no one has ever swapped chips before and this isn't something you can easily find out about.... good luck!

for one thing, the early CT1770 cards (SB16 SCSI) had the CT1745A mixer chip (the noisiest), and I own a late production version (built in 1995) with the CT1745A-S chip... the boards are exactly the same, so I can't imagine creative changing anything for such a low sales volume SB16

It looks like you would be correct in saying all CT1745 mixer chips have the same pinouts. I just had a look at pictures of various SoundBlaster 16 SCSIs model CT1770 and saw both the CT1745A and CT1745A-TBP. Looks like a straight swap might very well be possible.

Now to figure out how to properly desolder a PLCC chip. *practices on broken Genesis Model 2 with PLCC 68000)*