Reply 16680 of 27625, by TechieDude
I decided to see (or rather hear) for myself just how bad CQM really is compared to OPL3, since I have a Sound Blaster Vibra 16 CT4170 that I bought dirt cheap about 4 years ago. So I installed it in my Win98SE Tualeron Voodoo 3 Rig, disabled it in Device Manager since I only wanted it in DOS Mode, made DOS Mode files using Phil's starter pack, copied a few OPL2 & OPL3 trackers (along with their modules) over to the HDD, and proceeded to set up the whole thing. It all went with minimal trouble.
I tried it, and surprisingly it wasn't all that bad, some tunes even sounded the same! Some others sounded comically bad, and some others just slightly different. Still, I think the OPL3 sounds much better, although CQM isn't that much of an abomination either, just, different. Still better than AudioPCI's 'emulation', that's for sure. The thing is, most OPL2/3 Tunes are meant for actual OPL2/3 chips, not loose reimplementations.
I also noticed that my CRT monitor's display was a bit off, like the actual shape of the image was weird. I was kinda worried at first that it had somehow gotten damaged or magnetised beyond degaussing, but as it turns out, it just needed to be reconfigured in the OSD. It gave me some trouble, but I managed to get the image just about right.