I have an Iwill KK266 Plus here with onboard CMI8738. The manual lists some " legacy audio SB Pro support". I wonder if this will be worth using over my ESS Audiodrive? I'm not good at all when it comes to old sound cards.

javispedro1 wrote on 2022-04-15, 12:29:

Sorry... what? I am utterly confused, that is an mp3... […]
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Reticular wrote on 2022-04-14, 13:09:

I was wondering, would you be willing to record this track thru 686B?
https://www.mediafire.com/file/r2y18devw6668j … cotex1.mp3/file

Sorry... what? I am utterly confused, that is an mp3...

This thread is about FM synthesis (or rather the software emulation of FM synthesis in these VIA chipsets). We are not really comparing the quality of the PCM output.
But if you want my opinion, the cards you already have are miles better for PCM. They just lack FM synthesis.
But if good quality FM synthesis is what you want, this is not really the good thread either!
Better get a nice software synthesizer (e.g. NukedOPL) or another card with actual hardware FM synthesis (e.g. ISA SoundBlasters).

I am catching the stereo out out of the menitioned soundcards(PCM) and i have a processing technique for finishing a track, but for some reason the sounds you attached sound so good i started wondering how would some of my tracks sound thru that motherboard/chipset/soundchip. That is why i attached an mp3, i would hear the difference for sure but maybe you need a wav or you cant play it thru DOS(now that i am thinking about it).
(i dont need the synth right now, but i will get an OPL3 for sure..)

Anyway, i plan to record outputs from Amiga/Atari etc., but i liked how 686B sounds.

sorry for parachuting in a thread

Hi. I have Matsonic 7188D motherboard but cannot install sound in dos. After running INSTALL it says that there is no VIA sound device detected and VIAUDIO tells that i should enable sound blaster in bios but everything is enabled. No clue what is wrong.

VIA 686B AC'97 audio can't handle too many channels in DOS. Apart from that it isn't bad at all. Definitely usable if ISA slot is not available. Those highly integrated boards are a good choice for DOS games and early Windows 98 games up to about 1999 (which still had software rendering).

javispedro1 wrote on 2022-02-10, 16:46:

Did anyone notice how terrible Monkey Island 2 sounds with VIAFMTSR ?

It sounds like if it was saturated or being clipped, even with everything set at the lowest volume. I'm unsure if this is a VIAFMTSR issue or something else in my setup (it's a T5710).

I think the VIAFMTSR is a very shonky TSR to be honest. It's very unusual for anything AC'97 to have SB Legacy support at all, and we're in SB PCI 128 territory here.
I have had a lot of compatibility issues with VIAFMTSR even on a true EPIA board.

Having said that I haven't had issues with Monkey Island 2 - have you tried forcing a different sound mode on startup?

Just in case someone stumbles upon this like I did, while the documentation says VIAFMTSR.COM is just for FM emulation, in my case without the TSR I did't have FX sounds either (tested this with Duke Nukem 3D setup program).