Some of these cards (Crystal) just use a DLS format general midi soundbank. This DLS bank can be extracted from the driver and used on any system, with Winamp for example.

If you want to improve the midi output of your YMF724, search for 'PowerYMF'.

Stay away from the 4DWave-NX for MIDI purposes. It's a shame that it works so bad as it's the only sound chip I know of that can load soundfonts (.SF2) in pure DOS mode. The 4DWave-DX might work better, but I think it only supports the proprietary .SLB format

Whats wrong with 4Dwave-NX?

Doppler wrote:

Whats wrong with 4Dwave-NX?

Wrong instruments (it often replacese other instruments with the piano), missing instruments and hanging notes. In Windows it actually works better with some 3rd party soundfonts like the "Masterpiece.sf2".

I supplied a recording of Doom E1M1 running in pure DOS using the supplied "GM50NX.SF2" soundfont, I tricked it into sounding about right. 😜

Doppler wrote:

...
VLSI ThunderBird128
...

Made a recording of my Philips Acoustic Edge PSC706 that should be a close relative of the VLSI ThunderBird128, even it's sound bank it's called TBIRDHD.DLS. The Acoustic Edge is the first sound card I tried that automatically plays whatever you put into the MIDI in of the board, this happens on both Windows and DOS drivers.

Hi everyone!

Don't know if you already know this, but these sites also have a sound card comparison (incl. Doom songs).

http://www.amoretro.de/soundkarten-und-wavetable-recordings

http://sound.dosforum.de/

Anyway, I 'm looking forward to see err... I mean "hear" some nice recordings here. 😀

Jo22 wrote:

Don't know if you already know this, but these sites also have a sound card comparison (incl. Doom songs).

There was this initiative from vogons users to gather some midi recordings for comparison. It has actually been shrinking since then. But the main effort can still be found here: Vogons: Sound Card Recordings (by Swaaye)
My effort is somehow missing there, but zipped up for download in this vogons topic.
Also there are quite a few midi recordings on Salient's site.
Altogether, that is lot more info compared to a decade ago. Back then I just had to blindly trust the reviews without actual midi recordings. 🤣

Thank's a lot, gerwin! I wasn't so much around at vogons at the time! 😅
So I've got "to make up leeway" (yikes! hope that's the right term-my English dictionary says so.. 😊 )

thank you very much for such great sources!

does anyone have some ess maestro-2 demos? Could buy because its nearby but dont know if its worth.