If you're running games from Win98, the card's actual DOS compatibility doesn't really matter. What does matter is using vxd drivers, not wdm drivers, and how well those drivers work. An SBLive would be a good choice in theory for a Win98 card.
What makes the sound quality of the Vibra so horrible?

Both cards will not be good for older DOS games that depend on a good OPL implementation. For old DOS games nothing beats pure DOS with an ISA sound card.

Oetker wrote on 2020-05-01, 07:16:

If you're running games from Win98, the card's actual DOS compatibility doesn't really matter. What does matter is using vxd drivers, not wdm drivers, and how well those drivers work. An SBLive would be a good choice in theory for a Win98 card.
What makes the sound quality of the Vibra so horrible?

Both cards will not be good for older DOS games that depend on a good OPL implementation. For old DOS games nothing beats pure DOS with an ISA sound card.

Yes, I'm using WXD drivers not WDM, forgot to mention that. Installed it from original CD.

What makes the sound quality of the Vibra so horrible?

See for yourself in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AZI07_qts8

I Thought it is a joke, but no, this card sounds like that and I tested it myself.

So I guess PCI sound cards are really not meant for DOS games and ISA cards are just the way to go?

> WXD drivers

This is surely the problem.

Da Playa wrote on 2020-05-01, 08:15:

See for yourself in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AZI07_qts8

Ok, so you mean the OPL emulation. The SBLive won't have great OPL emulation either, but I'm not sure if it'll be worse. I think that when I used a SBLive with Win98 I was mostly playing later DOS games that supported General Midi. And that made me suspect my assertion that you need to use VXD drivers was wrong - afaik VXD drivers don't have the GS Wavetable Synth, and I remember using it with DOS games in Win98. According to this thread How to get Sound Blaster Emulation in Win9X/ME via live!5.1 with newer-current mobo's (no nmi-ddma) it is possible to get DOS sound using WDM drivers on the SBLive.

You could try finding a YMF based PCI card or a Solo-1. Both can be made to work in pure DOS depending on your motherboard and the games you want to play. But again, playing in a Win98 DOS box is another thing entirely. In my experience ISA cards that work fine in pure DOS might not always work in a Win98 DOS box (perhaps due to sound blaster VS windows sound system mode being active), while the opposite is true for PCI cards.

PCI support for sound cards in DOS isn't great, can depends heavily on how each motherboard assigns resources and handles PCI , Would really recommend getting a board with an ISA slot for an ISA Sound card for DOS

I've had minimal luck with C-Media based cards (CMI chips like the 8738 etc) I have the muse 5.1 dvd which is the same chip as your Muse XL iirc

I've had limited success with the ForteMedia FM801, Soundblaster Live! and Audigy 1/2 and SB Audio 128/PCI but experience in general wasn't great especially in the older DOS games. There can be memory manager issues and also game detection problems.

Been tempted to try those cheap CMI based cards on amazon / aliexpress / ebay etc although I'd guess I'd run into the same problems.

I've not tried any crystal based PCI cards, but there's also the ESS cards may be worth trying. oh and the Yamaha based cards 😁

CMI8378 is a perfectly good Windows chip, indeed its drivers are far easier to work with than those SBLives. Sound quality depends on the card, the very best (Terratec designs in particular) come close to SBLive, the worst are awful. I'd expect Hercules to be among the better ones.

There are also DOS drivers, but don't expect too much:
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/c-media-cmi8738.html

As for what the best option would be... DOS is challenging on a chipset (i865) that not only lacks ISA, but also doesn't do DDMA or TDMA, the two commonest ISA/DOS DMA workarounds for PCI. I couldn't really recommend a card, although in general ESS Solo-1 is the least problematic PCI chip. Ruthan seems to recommend the Fortemedia FM801-AU for i865 or X58 chipsets. It's not as common as the SBLive or CMI8378, but it can be found and found cheaply, so something you could consider.

Edit:
Hadn't seen synrgy87 before clicking 'send'. Sounds like the FM801-AU isn't a magic bullet either.

Oetker wrote on 2020-05-01, 08:27:

Da Playa wrote on 2020-05-01, 08:15:

See for yourself in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AZI07_qts8

Ok, so you mean the OPL emulation.

Probably, I'm not really familiar with all the technicalities. Vintage DOS hardware is a total mystery to me.

I have managed to boot my PC into windows. It was a problem with my video card which I didn't expect. Somehow it lost contact and therefore, windows was complaining about videocard missing and bios beeping like a madman.

Tested some games, it's not great, but at least something. Don't know why prince of persia defaults to PC speacker (both music and sound effects), wolfenstein works better than on my test PC where I first tested the card (the sound effects didn't work and were just a loud noise). Commander Keen 4 still don't play all sound effects but only some.

Is there a way to fix this? Or is this just the fact that I'm using a modern PCI sound card?

If you are limited to PCI get a ForteMedia FM801 card they are incredibly simple to set up and possibly the most compatible PCI DOS sound chip I know of.

ESS Solo-1 is a close second but that one is more picky about what motherboard you put it in; on some systems it really requires an SB-Link header.

Finally, there are the YMF724/744 cards but these in my experience are even worse than ESS Solo-1 and flat out won't work in DOS without the SB-Link header, although their FM Synth is genuine OPL3.

Note that he is trying to play on Win98, not pure DOS.

Some of your sound issues might be speed related, your computer is quite fast and PoP and Keen are old games. I haven't tried the exact cards you have, but I have encountered opl/adlib music breaking on faster machines depening on the card and game.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-05-01, 12:06:

Finally, there are the YMF724/744 cards but these in my experience are even worse than ESS Solo-1 and flat out won't work in DOS without the SB-Link header, although their FM Synth is genuine OPL3.

The YMF 7x4 cards work fine in pure DOS if the motherboard supports either SB-Link or DDMA (might need modified drivers for the latter). Otherwise, they fall back on a TSR program which can cause issues with some games.

Most people never bother with DDMA or SB-Link and only ever experience the crappy TSR compatibility which is not indicative of what the card is capable of. I'm not 100% sure, but I think something similar to that TSR program is used under the Win98 DOS prompt, so compatibility there is pretty crappy as well.

Based on your system specifications, I would have to say that your system is actually too "modern" for playing DOS games.
If you intend on playing DOS games, then a Pentium III or AMD K6-2 (with ISA slots) is probably a better option.

Alternatively, try perhaps looking at emulators. PCem, Dosbox & ScummVM are just a few.

More like a pentium mmx or k6+, both of which can be slowed down with setmul to slow 386 speeds.

I'm not sure I would touch those cards from China. Let us know how it works when you get it.

Probably the best OPL3 you will get with that system is going to be with one of those Parallel port OPL3 adapters.
https://www.serdashop.com/OPL3LPT

You can also use a Yamaha YMF7x4 card for OPL3 and that part will work on any system as it only uses a memory address and not IRQ or DMA.
If you want digital sound from one with DOS on one of those with your system, you will need to use the DSDMA TSR which doesn't have near the compatibility that DDMA or SB-Link has.

For DOS through Windows 98, I would have to test as it has been quite a while and I don't remember exactly how the YMF7x4 cards do the DOS support through Windows.

Really though, any PCI card that installs a "legacy" audio device in Windows should work fine for the digital audio part in DOS through Windows though it will also depend on how it sets up the address, IRQ, and DMA portion of it.

Ok, I'm back and I tested some games.

After fixing all the video card nonsense I had (which I thought was sound card related), everything seemed to work fine. Sound now works in DOS games (under win 98) with sound blaster live SB0100.

It's not perfect and it doesn't run on all games, but I expected that I will have some issues with some games, since the PC is a little bit too modern for DOS.

The only issue I have now, that in some games I don't get SB sound effects and it automaticaly switches to PC speaker. Mostly I see this issue in Apogee games (cosmo cosmic, Major Stryker) and in Prince of persia and commander keen. The music works great, but the sound effects are in PC speakers.

What could be the problem? Is there a way to fix it? Is there a problem with configuration with my sound card?

Da Playa wrote on 2020-05-04, 07:55:

Ok, I'm back and I tested some games. […]
Show full quote

Ok, I'm back and I tested some games.

After fixing all the video card nonsense I had (which I thought was sound card related), everything seemed to work fine. Sound now works in DOS games (under win 98) with sound blaster live SB0100.

It's not perfect and it doesn't run on all games, but I expected that I will have some issues with some games, since the PC is a little bit too modern for DOS.

The only issue I have now, that in some games I don't get SB sound effects and it automaticaly switches to PC speaker. Mostly I see this issue in Apogee games (cosmo cosmic, Major Stryker) and in Prince of persia and commander keen. The music works great, but the sound effects are in PC speakers.

What could be the problem? Is there a way to fix it? Is there a problem with configuration with my sound card?

I don't think those games have digitized sound effects...

Those games most certainly have digitized effects

Keen definitely does not, it's adlib only.

jmarsh wrote on 2020-05-05, 01:19:

Keen definitely does not, it's adlib only.

Yeah.. wrong term. The sound effects should be Adlib if Adlib is selected.

Music working and sound not working doesn't make sense.

I thought Keen was pc speaker.