Q1: Nothing
Q2: Nope

Perfect! 😁

Thanks!!!

SquallStrife wrote:

The hanging note bug presents itself when you are using FM and digital sound simultaneously, right?

What's stopping me from installing two SB16s, but configuring it in such a way that one provides digital audio on 220/5/1/5, and the other provides MIDI on 330?

(Also, the hanging note bug doesn't affect OPL3 audio on port 388 does it?)

What a good idea 🤣!

I´ll remember this one 😁

Pretty sure I've seen this done before on these forums...

Well, I got it working. Digital and AdLib sounds are coming from my CT2800, but the MT-32 is being driven by my CT2740's MIDI port.

I chose my CT2740 because it has the MIDI port set by a jumper, rather than through software.

One thing that I sort of had to guess was using the DIAGNOSE /S command appropriately.

My AUTOEXEC.BAT has the following lines in it:

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 T6 P300
C:\SB16\DIAGNOSE /S
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 T6 P330

The reasoning behind this is that it "activates" the Vibra 16S card with the MIDI port set to 300 as per BLASTER, but then changes the BLASTER environment back to using P330 so games will detect it and send their GM stuff thru the SB16's MIDI system. I originally tried a CT2940 as the secondary card, but it's a PnP card and CTCU wouldn't let me change anything.

Does that sound right? It seems to work OK so far...

Guess I'll dig up Hexen and try the warp 2 test.

Oh!

So you don't need a DB / wavetable header?

Well in this case the AWE64 GOLD is the ideal card for you!

It doesn't have any hanging notes, it's very quiet and because most games support the MT-32 or GM, the missing OPL3 isn't a big deal.

If you can't part with OPL3, I would still swap one of the cards for an AWE64 as they allow you to disable everything BUT the MIDI port.

I did actually want to get a DB60XG clone... And the CT2740 has a DB header... Would an AWE64 still sound ok in pure DOS?

The AWE64 doesn't have a DB header and no OPL3 chip.

BUT it doesn't feature the hanging note bug either.

Personally I love the combination of AWE64 GOLD + MT32 + SC-55. The only thing you don't have with this option is OPL3, but there aren't that many games that have NO Midi whatsoever. Only really old ones, so only you can decide if this is important to you or not.

One question: is adding a second sound card the ONLY solution to circumvene the hanging note bug, if I have a faulty rev. SB16 card ? Or could I simply use an I/O card (which has a gameport) to attach an MT-32...?

The usual method is to use an MPU-401 card, or one of the various separate MIDI cards like an LAPC-I or SW60XG. The trouble with that is, both of those solutions require finding one of those cards. The LAPC-I, SW60XG, etc are quite difficult to obtain, and the Roland MPU-401 cards are less rare but still expensive... clone MPU-401 cards can be found cheaper but even so they're pretty scarce on the ground compared to the huge supply of SB16s.

The gameport on an I/O card is just that... a gameport. No MIDI capability whatsoever.

OK, thanks for the info.
I will get 2 SB16s, then. Looks relatively easier and cheaper than the other solutions.

The ESS ISA cards have working DB headers. I tried both my Roland SCD-15 and Yamaha DB50XG on a cheap noname ES1868 card and they worked perfectly. Those cards also do a nearly perfect OPL3 impersonation and have essentially bulletproof SBPro PCM support.

The trick is to find one that's big enough to mount a full size DB. They are often slim cards and have the DB header at an inconvenient angle.

Also, a lot of the fullsize ESS 1868 cards are OEM deals with no wavetable header. They were a favorite of Compaq and Dell, so there's a lot of those stripped-down ones out there.

Might have better luck looking at the older ES1688 cards... I have one and quite like it. I haven't tried the wavetable header, but I have no reason to think it wouldn't work. The 1688 is also non-PnP, which is nice.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

Might have better luck looking at the older ES1688 cards... I have one and quite like it. I haven't tried the wavetable header, but I have no reason to think it wouldn't work. The 1688 is also non-PnP, which is nice.

I have one, and I like it too. I've tried the wavetable header, and it was excellent. I really couldn't tell the difference between it, and the Roland 401 AT card that I usually use. The AudioDrive card I have can be seen in the link below, at the bottom of the page. In the pic, it's the bottom left one.

Sound Card Recordings

I think I am still missing the point... 😮
Why do I need the daugtherboard header if I do not have a waveblaster of any sort? I only have an MT-32 and an SC 8820... the soundcards game/MIDI out will not be enough to connect either...?

I only wanted authentic, real OPL3 audio + fluid MT-32 connection.

So I have just bought two SB16s : a CT2800 PnP and a CT2230. Many people here wrote that audio quality is better with a CT2800 VIBRA but I thought (just to be on the safe side) I would buy an etalon CT2230 non-PnP for MIDI out reasons, if the VIBRA starts to hang notes or act funny. Did I make a foolish choice or what 😕

You'll still get the hanging note bug, with an external synth like the MT32 or Sound Canvas. But only if its attached to the same card that is doing digital effects.

How do those ESS cards go in DOS, are their drivers big/clunky? Compared to a CT2800 which doesn't need any memory resident drivers to function...

ESS are pretty good, but:

No real Yamaha OPL
99% compatibility (I documented this a while ago, no idea under what thread through 🤣)
Volume balance between FM and Speech is off and needs to be adjusted
Very very quiet card though!

Jolaes76 wrote:

So I have just bought two SB16s : a CT2800 PnP and a CT2230. Many people here wrote that audio quality is better with a CT2800 VIBRA but I thought (just to be on the safe side) I would buy an etalon CT2230 non-PnP for MIDI out reasons, if the VIBRA starts to hang notes or act funny. Did I make a foolish choice or what 😕

Those two models are very good. IMHO, you've made a good choice. I seem to recall that the CT2230 didn't make the hanging note bug too often either!

DonutKing wrote:

How do those ESS cards go in DOS, are their drivers big/clunky? Compared to a CT2800 which doesn't need any memory resident drivers to function...

Luckily, you just run an "init" program, which sets them up, and it doesn't take up any memory. Very nice.

Y'know, I never ended up getting this working properly.

My CT2740 has jumpers for Base I/O and MIDI I/O, but IRQ and DMA are soft-set, so I think it was causing conflicts with my CT2800, which is all soft-set. Also, I guess their OPL3 would be conflicting, both trying to use 0x388.

I bet an ESS would be a better option, I could use the ESS setup app to set it to non-conflicting settings, and use DIAGNOSE /S to initialise the CT2800. Does that make sense?