For me nothing beats a Sound Blaster with an external Sound Canvas connected to it.

Particularly the AWE64 Gold is a great Sound Blaster for pairing up with external MIDI devices. With SoftMPU this includes the MT-32 and CM devices.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

For me nothing beats a Sound Blaster with an external Sound Canvas connected to it.

Particularly the AWE64 Gold is a great Sound Blaster for pairing up with external MIDI devices. With SoftMPU this includes the MT-32 and CM devices.

Yeah my SB16 SCSI-2 [CT1770] has an NEC XR385 connected to it, and I also have an MT-32... i'm looking to get away from Creative based cards though since they are in reality so lack luster and noisy. I don't use my AWE64 though that damn TSR it needs is horrible.

It doesn't use/need a TSR 😀

It just needs to initialise. The AWE64 GOLD has worked with ANY Sound Blaster / Adlib game I have every tried. It's also much quieter than other cards.

For me it has to be a Sound Blaster. Even if it's a bit noisy like you say 😀

Dream SAM9407 based cards are quite interesting. Guillemot Maxi Sound 64 Home Studio series or Terratec EWS64L series work in DOS. They allow using loadable sound banks, while top cards of the series also allow installation of daughterboard, that would reside at another MIDI port.

But there're no YMF262 chip on them. OPL3 music is emulated. Another drawback is that they only support SB Pro standard, not SB16. So, if you want 16-bit sound, you are limited to WSS standard (which is supported by less games than SB16).

Another decent option is AWE64 Gold. Good output quality and lack of bugs that earlier Sound Blaster series had suffered from (save for muted OPL3 bug that is inherent for all EMU8000-based cards). But then you get no genuine OPL3 and no daughterboard.

Theoretically, you can keep both Dream-based card and AWE64 Gold in one system. They are both PnP, but I managed to get them working by initialising Dream card first and AWE64 second. But then I got no mouse, since PS/2 mouse fought with Dream card for IRQ12.

If you have a non-PS/2 mouse, or solved that conflict anyhow, you would get SB16 digital part, and many options for music: OPL3 (emulated), EMU8000 synthesizer, Dream internal synthesizer, Dream daughterboard (if applicable to the very card you get), Dream external MIDI output and AWE64 Gold external MIDI output.

The setup you have sounds perfect to me. Compatible with everything, easy to use mixer, excellent MIDI via the bug free interface, OPL3, can drive the MT-32... I guess it comes down to a choice b/w a setup that can play anything, and a setup that is less noisy but is not compatible with X, or doesn't have OPL3, etc. Someone' going to mention those damn OPLSAx cards any moment now I can feel it - but they're awful.

A bit of hiss and popping from the speakers is all part of the retro hardware experience!

Of what I have, I like Ensoniq Soundscape (original), Ensoniq Soundscape Elite, Roland SCB-55 (SCD-15), and Yamaha DB50XG. They all sound unique and wonderful, and as such are equally enjoyable. Ensoniq cards also have signal quality that embarrasses Creative ISA cards. Otherwise I go for OPL3 or ESS FM. I don't really like AWE cards because of their troublesome AWEUTIL, and difficulty using soundfonts with DOS games.

The Ensoniq cards really need an accompanying SB16 or SBPro though, for compatibility with games that don't have native Soundscape support for digital audio. The Sound Blaster emulation is only mono and it's flaky, and the OPL2 emu is horrific (if unique 🤣).

As you already have an XR385, mounting it on a YMF718/719 based card is about as good as it gets for a single card solution. Yet to see any specific criticism of these.

My opinion:

In system:
8086 / 80286 era: LAPC-I & SB (1 / 1.5 / 2)
80386+ era: SCC-1 or RAP-10 / SCD-10(15) & SB Pro (2) and/or SB16

Out system:
8086: MPU-401 (or alternative) & MT-32 (or alternative) & SB (1 / 1.5 / 2)
80386+: MPU-401 (or alternative) & SC-7 (or alternative) & SB (1 / 1.5 / 2)

For gaming Roland is the way to go (in my opinion). The 2 eras are very different. External is cheaper (Roland cards are rare / expensive) but external takes up a lot of room and has lots of cables. I play around with both.

I take no interest in wavetables other than gaming so that is why I do not consider anything than SB and Roland myself. OK: the FB-01/IMFC is the exception for Sierra gaming. And the DB50XG for kicks.

bristlehog wrote:

(save for muted OPL3 bug that is inherent for all EMU8000-based cards)

What are you referring to?

FB-01/IMFC is a FM synth, not 'wavetable' =)

Cloudschatze wrote:

bristlehog wrote:

(save for muted OPL3 bug that is inherent for all EMU8000-based cards)

What are you referring to?

OPL3 is muted on some EMU8000 cards until you execute 'aweutil /s' or otherwise flush the card. On some exemplars (including my AWE64 Gold CT4540) it is not muted, but accompanied by quiet clicks which disappear after 'aweutil /s'. Some cards are suffering from this bug right after boot, some just after listening to some EMU8000-synthesized music.

There is a mention of this in AWE32 SDK, but it doesn't cover the whole variety of misbehaviour.

This is no bug at all. Some AWE cards are designed the way that the OPL output is routed through the Emu8K. So if some application mutes this 2 channels, FM output will be silent. It's just Creatives way to save a few bucks on two additional DACs.

It's not so much a "muting of channels," but rather, the SDK blurb relates to the fact that some developers may provide their own initialization routines for the EMU8000 (Tyrian does this), which may not take the FM synth into account, and might therefore leave all 32 oscillators initialized for use by the "sound memory" upon exiting, unless the arrays are reloaded with the prior data, or something like the awe32Terminate API call is used:

awe32Terminate

WORD
PASCAL
awe32Terminate(VOID)

Actions Restore the EMU8000 chip to a known state.
Parameters None.
Return Return 0 if the EMU8000 subsystem had been properly terminated, and non-zero if
otherwise.
Remarks The EMU8000 will be initialized to process FM audio. The FM initialization has a
tight timing loop. It is recommended that all interrupts are disabled before calling
awe32Terminate.

elianda wrote:

It's just Creatives way to save a few bucks on two additional DACs.

Err... Yeah, darn those Creative imbeciles and their stupid design... giving us the ability to digitally apply the EMU8000 reverb/chorus effects to the FM output and making it available digitally through the S/PDIF header besides... 😉

badmojo wrote:

Someone' going to mention those damn OPLSAx cards any moment now I can feel it - but they're awful.

A bit of hiss and popping from the speakers is all part of the retro hardware experience!

No doubt that the hiss and popping is part of the retro experience, but i'm wondering why you think the OPL-SAx cards are awful. Have you had any bad experience?

The ones I've tried (3 differnet ones) haven't been 100% SB compatible. Duke 2, Rapter are a couple of examples of games I had trouble with, but I assume that means there are more games it struggles with.

Most of them are not full height cards, so a full sized DB doesn't fit on, you need to make a cable.

But my main issue is the mixer software, which is confusing at best.

When compared to a real sound blaster, they just can't compete for ease of use which ranks high on my list of requirements.

Guillemot maxi sound game theater 64 is a cool sound card, it have the dream chip, 4mb onboard ram, and it can get extra 16mb.
The FM synth quality is really good, much better from my old aztech (for me it looks like a low end wavetable, since some of the instruments makes the right sound (like piano making piano sounds,...))

But the only problem I had is pure dos, the board works fine with dos games, but only on windows, It say it's 100% dos compatible, but I don't know if it's in dos mode or windows mode :s, I recorded in fm synth and wavetable some musics if you want to listen the quality 😀 http://www.mediafire.com/download/mgy909p389h … _theather64.rar

EDIT:for working the wavetable you can use the general midi 330 or roland mt32.
The only problem I see with some old dos games is that they only work wiht one "sound card" like you cant select sound blaster for sound or mt32 for music =/ (the oldest game that I tested and the wavetable worked is from 1984-86).

hmm what's TSR? :s

badmojo wrote:

The ones I've tried (3 differnet ones) haven't been 100% SB compatible. Duke 2, Rapter are a couple of examples of games I had trouble with, but I assume that means there are more games it struggles with.

Give me more games to try. I just tried those 2 and they work perfectly with all my cards based on YMF-719 and YMF-718 chipsets.

badmojo wrote:

Most of them are not full height cards, so a full sized DB doesn't fit on, you need to make a cable.

Agree that is one disadvantage. But if you do make a cable, which is not so difficult, it works perfectly and there is no hanging note bug. Works well with all ports available, and absolutely no problems using a joystick and MPU at the same time.

badmojo wrote:

But my main issue is the mixer software, which is confusing at best.

I agree the software is not the best or the most good looking, but it works. You can always edit the .ini file manually. All in all, it's not that hard to configure and it works well enough.

badmojo wrote:

When compared to a real sound blaster, they just can't compete for ease of use which ranks high on my list of requirements.

I disagree, it is pretty easy to use, SETUPSA is pretty straight forward to configure the ports for initialization. Then all you need is run SETUPSA /S in AUTOEXEC.BAT and SET BLASTER. Which SETUPSA does automatically when you exit the program after configuring.

I accept that some people don't like the cards, but these cards are certainly not awful. In my opinion, the YMF-71x chipset deserved a better PCB design, with higher quality components. The only reason i would use a Sound Blaster 16 over a OPL3-SA would be nostalgia, which fortunately i don't feel for the SB 16.

For nostalgia reasons i would have to use my Aztech Sound Galaxy ProII 16, which with the exception of Covox/DSS support loses against the OPL3-SA in everything.

The Sound Blaster 16 is the symbol of sound card massification, in my opinion. A cool analogy would be comparing it with the MiG-21 fighter. The most produced fighter ever, with tons of variants, served in so many nations, was a simple design that worked and was not maitenance intensive. Worked well and it was pretty much fuel and go.
However, it is probably the most shot down type ever in jet history. Very nostalgic, but i would rather fly something else. 😀

Ops, the maxi sound game theater 64 works at pure dos 😁
I discovered how to do it using this tutorial :Guillemot Maxi Sound home studio 64 pro - no music in pure DOS

We had covered some questions like this in the past, so if you dig in this forum you will discover some more Gold