I gave two PAS16 and both have a constant hiss, but otherwise they are very quiet.

How is the card in another machine?

I don't think I've tried them in anything else - though I have got 2 other machines with isa slots at present. One has a psu that I think doesn't have -5v [an sb2 failed to work with it], the other is an athlon [I wonder if that'll be too fast?].

I'll see if I can try the pas16 in these this weekend.

All of the PAS16/variants I've encountered have an ever-present, high-pitched whine in the FM output. Whether this is due to inadequate filtering, or otherwise poor design, I couldn't say, but the simple solution is to turn down the FM volume to a level where this noise isn't as noticeable.

Getting the best sound out of a PAS16 (or most soundcards, for that matter) requires some mixer tweaking, and often times requires that special combination of one part personal preference to two parts voodoo magic. You'll definitely want to familiarize yourself with the DOS graphical mixer ("PAS.EXE *"), as the default settings are hardly ideal. Here are a few suggestions as you explore:

- Mute any unused input/output sources
- Set all applicable mixer sources to "PLAY ONLY," thereby bypassing the recording bus
- Set reasonable, non-100% volume levels

Also, keep in mind that the Enhanced Stereo and Loudness features will perceptibly affect the S/N ratio. You may want to compensate by reducing the source and master volume levels, should you decide to use either setting.

Cloudschatze wrote:

All of the PAS16/variants I've encountered have an ever-present, high-pitched whine in the FM output. Whether this is due to ina […]
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All of the PAS16/variants I've encountered have an ever-present, high-pitched whine in the FM output. Whether this is due to inadequate filtering, or otherwise poor design, I couldn't say, but the simple solution is to turn down the FM volume to a level where this noise isn't as noticeable.

Getting the best sound out of a PAS16 (or most soundcards, for that matter) requires some mixer tweaking, and often times requires that special combination of one part personal preference to two parts voodoo magic. You'll definitely want to familiarize yourself with the DOS graphical mixer ("PAS.EXE *"), as the default settings are hardly ideal. Here are a few suggestions as you explore:

- Mute any unused input/output sources
- Set all applicable mixer sources to "PLAY ONLY," thereby bypassing the recording bus
- Set reasonable, non-100% volume levels

Also, keep in mind that the Enhanced Stereo and Loudness features will perceptibly affect the S/N ratio. You may want to compensate by reducing the source and master volume levels, should you decide to use either setting.

Hmm, I wonder if I have the right software. PAS.EXE on my system isn't graphical. It also doesn't change everything you tell it to, and sometimes when it does change things it doesn't report the changes.

I can't see how to change things to play-only [or at least my syntax didn't work]. You're right about enhanced mode, putting that on makes the background hiss worse.

Edit: Ok, setting left and right volumes to 49 more or less gets rid of the background hiss, at least with enhanced off. It leaves behind what sounds like a single frequency, more or less continuous signal. Quite irritating now I've tuned into it - can hear it behind the music now 🙁.

Setting everything to zero [fm, mic, pcm, speaker etc] doesn't kill this noise, only muting does. I suppose it won't be due to interference from other cards, but something in the card's own circuitry? Sad really because Lost Vikings music on it is really good imho, maybe not as good as mt-32 but a reasonable second choice if you cba to get the midi cables out. OTOH in wacraft 1 it sounded completely crap despite having specific drivers - maybe indicates something else up with my installation - the music was similar to the sbpro1.

ratfink wrote:

Hmm, I wonder if I have the right software. PAS.EXE on my system isn't graphical.

You did use the asterisk, right? 😉

Also, just for grins, try adding "t:1" to the end of the MVSOUND.SYS line in your CONFIG.SYS file. This tells the card to use its onboard crystal for the OPL3, rather than the system OSC signal, and supposedly helps with random noise in some systems.

Cloudschatze wrote:

You did use the asterisk, right? 😉

Haha, no I wondered what it meant. Works now of course 😁, so I have played around a bit. There seem to be settings that more or less mask the high pitched note, but then my headphones are deafening - maybe I'll try with speakers instead. If I put all component volumes to zero, it's still there. Play-only for everything.

Cloudschatze wrote:

Also, just for grins, try adding "t:1" to the end of the MVSOUND.SYS line in your CONFIG.SYS file. This tells the card to use its onboard crystal for the OPL3, rather than the system OSC signal, and supposedly helps with random noise in some systems.

Ok I tried that - not sure if it had any impact on noise generally - the high pitched signal is still there though.

Ok, so I tried this pas16 in a socket 7 box, 200mhz cpu, 66mhzbus. Interesting, the noise is still there but higher pitched and less intrusive. I wonder if the card is just picking up and amplifying the cpu or bus frequency.

Quake sound is mostly dropouts. Warcraft music is awful still 🤣 though that game doesn't seem to detect the card properly. Lost Vikings is fine - needed to start in command prompt mode, using a windows dos box I got no sound. Windows desktop sounds seem iffy [the startup chime was curtailed/foreshortened or something - too short anyway], but that doesn't matter.

Well, now my SB Pro 2 has this whine, and so does my SB Pro 1. The motherboard or PSU is generating it - quite audible without the soundcards picking it up and amplifying it.

Damn old rigs.