Woah, having the Gerber files for one of these cards is pretty insane. Being able to DIY an OPL4 card could be really fun.

I have a Megaimage-32 card (OPTi based) with an OPL3 on it, and it gets the job done for SB16 compatibility, but the FM is SO LOUD!! I haven't looked into it yet, but i'm sure some choice of components on the board is not ideal, since the FM is so loud even when mixed to a lower volume and distorts quite easily.

I have these two ALS 100 Cards With Onboard Crystal/Dream Synth. 1MB Rom i think. They sound really really good for an ALS card. Not noisy at all!

Bancho wrote on 2020-06-27, 16:12:

I have these two ALS 100 Cards With Onboard Crystal/Dream Synth. 1MB Rom i think. They sound really really good for an ALS card. […]
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I have these two ALS 100 Cards With Onboard Crystal/Dream Synth. 1MB Rom i think. They sound really really good for an ALS card. Not noisy at all!

Those look awesome!

Bancho wrote on 2020-06-27, 16:12:

I have these two ALS 100 Cards With Onboard Crystal/Dream Synth. 1MB Rom i think. They sound really really good for an ALS card. […]
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I have these two ALS 100 Cards With Onboard Crystal/Dream Synth. 1MB Rom i think. They sound really really good for an ALS card. Not noisy at all!

They also look really good. However, they seem to lack OPL3...

TechieDude wrote on 2020-06-28, 17:12:

They also look really good. However, they seem to lack OPL3...

Having collected over 100 sound cards in my search for the Bestestest sound card I can clearly tell you that genıuine OPL3 is the most overrated ISA card feature. I would rather have that clear Crysatl PCM audio and CrystalFM over most OPL3 card's shitty noise floors.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-06-29, 06:39:

Having collected over 100 sound cards in my search for the Bestestest sound card I can clearly tell you that genıuine OPL3 is the most overrated ISA card feature.

I agree with this in general, but there's that rare situation where you've played a certain game on OPL3 so many times that you've practically memorized the songs. Under that scenario, using even a slightly different FM synth will sound wrong to you.

I would rather have that clear Crysatl PCM audio and CrystalFM over most OPL3 card's shitty noise floors.

Yeah, most ISA cards with genuine OPL3 tend to be somewhat noisy. For a noise-free OPL3 experience, a PCI Yamaha YMF 7x4 card is probably the best, since they generally have a low noise floor and even come with a SPDIF header on some models.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-06-29, 06:39:

Having collected over 100 sound cards in my search for the Bestestest sound card I can clearly tell you that genıuine OPL3 is the most overrated ISA card feature. I would rather have that clear Crysatl PCM audio and CrystalFM over most OPL3 card's shitty noise floors.

I don't think it's because of the OPL3 itself, but rather the shitty design of the cards themselves, and if you don't really care about FM accuracy, CrystalFM would be just fine. However, I prefer accurate OPL3 because I like to listen to Adlib Tracker files, so to me, it is a bit more important.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-06-29, 06:39:

TechieDude wrote on 2020-06-28, 17:12:

They also look really good. However, they seem to lack OPL3...

Having collected over 100 sound cards in my search for the Bestestest sound card I can clearly tell you that genıuine OPL3 is the most overrated ISA card feature. I would rather have that clear Crysatl PCM audio and CrystalFM over most OPL3 card's shitty noise floors.

That's why CS4232 cards with genuine OPL3 are so prized.

I tested my ALS100 today.

Have not tested sound floor today, but doesn't seem unusually bad so far. Will need to plug headphones in and test.

One thing i noticed is that it automatically outputs PC speaker sound without a PC speaker cable. It must be listening on the timer ports and generating PC speaker output using that.

K, the Yamaha SoundEdge is a Soundblaster 16 clone, and not a Soundblaster Pro clone. I reviewed the manual, which is available for free from Yamaha, and the OPL4 synthesis chip (described on the wikipedia) that comes with it has a General MIDI mode.

Sound Edge (SW20PC) most definitely has no SB16 support, only WSS and partial SBpro support. I never got it to make stereo with any SB game, even though the DSP reports back 3.x and overall SB support on the OPTi MAD16 (82C928) is very hit and miss with quite poor compatibility from my experience. It also is a speed sensitive card and will barf on a fast 486 machine or a faster Pentium, I even had trouble getting it work stable on a 386DX40 (main problem is the effect processor chip YSS205 which needs quite slow timings to receive its conf data properly and on faster hardware it usually fails, resulting in no sound or odd noises or just strange reverb effects as the coeffs get corrupt along the way).
GM support is done via a TSR + MPU401 emulator chip YMZ290 which sends an IRQ every byte written, that the TSR catches and turns into sound. OPL3 IRQ is also used as a timeout and some games like Tyrian which disable the IRQ will fail to make sound with this method. Many other games work fine though, including protected mode ones.

Oops. It takes a 16 bit ISA slot. I got confused. And I never saw the WSS acronym before. Windows Sound System?

dnewhous wrote on 2020-08-31, 14:14:

Oops. It takes a 16 bit ISA slot. I got confused. And I never saw the WSS acronym before. Windows Sound System?

If a sound card's datasheet states that it's capable of delivering 16-bit sound, that doesn't necessarily mean that it is SB16 compatible.

Most non-Creative cards use (Microsoft) Windows Sound System for this purpose. However, certain cards use their own proprietary approach, like ESS cards with their native AudioDrive mode. Popular setup programs like the Miles and HMI sound systems often support these alternative options for getting 16-bit sound in DOS games.

16bit slot doesn't mean 16bit audio. WSS is Windows Sound System indeed, which most non-creative cards support but unfortunately most games don't. It provides 16bit stereo audio with up to 48KHz sample rate (while not using 16bits ISA but only 8bits of it 🤣)

Tiido wrote on 2020-08-31, 15:11:

WSS is Windows Sound System indeed, which most non-creative cards support but unfortunately most games don't.

Mobygames lists nearly 200 games which support WSS.

From my experience, as long as a game uses the Miles sound system, you can copy SNDSYS.DIG to its directory and get fully functional WSS support, even if that game's setup didn't originally include it.

I found this for sale, anyone seen this strange card before? It looks like it got a crystal cs4236 chip and a modem with game/midi port and a wavetable header(?).

SVD wrote on 2020-10-30, 18:21:

I found this for sale, anyone seen this strange card before? It looks like it got a crystal cs4236 chip and a modem with game/midi port and a wavetable header(?).

There's plenty of info on the IBM mwave, as far as I'm aware it's not a good dos sound card.

Ahh okay, i have never seen one before^^ Yeah i found some info on it now, it is apparently not very good x) Wont be buying that then.

Is Orchid a Yamaha brand?

SVD wrote on 2020-10-30, 18:21:

I found this for sale, anyone seen this strange card before? It looks like it got a crystal cs4236 chip and a modem with game/midi port and a wavetable header(?).

It's also not an SB16 clone per se, rather, an SBPro clone, maybe with WSS support, though I don't know which chip introduced that, so take that with a grain of salt. From what I've read around here, it shouldn't be a bad card, at least as far as the chip is concerned. Since it includes a modem, it must be some kind of OEM card, and your mileage may vary.