Thanks, filled out the form.

Thanks keropi, I've just filled out the form. Hope to be contacted soon. Cheers 😀

Just got my Orpheus Sound Card today. This is a super cool sound card with the awesome sound quality. Still doing some tweaking between the DOS and Windows environments, but overall it's working great in my Pentium MMX 233 build!

Awesome project! 😀

I have a few (possibly rather odd) questions:
1. Unlikely, but let me ask anyhow: Is it 8 bit ISA compatible?
2. Can you use the HardMPU portion of the card as a standalone MPU401 and disable the rest of the soundcard functions?

thanks for the kind words and support jasa1063! wish you many hours of enjoyment out of it 😀

@Hezus
1. I have not tested with a 8bit slot but keep in mind you need at least a 286 to use the sound card portion of Orpheus
2. the PCMIDI part of the card is standalone so you can just use it without initializing the sound portion - PCMIDI will work in a 8bit slot without issues since it's a 8bit card to begin with

Got the package from keropi today! Paired the card with my Gravis Ultrasound and they work nicely together.

Got mine a few days ago, too. It's beautiful and definitely will find its place in my daily driver retro pc 🤩 Too much work right now but as soon as I have time I will install it and make some recordings for my channel.

Got mine setup today! I haven't tested every feature yet but the digital out sounds amazing! I am so impressed! I have roland emulator hooked up with the UM one and the line in and it sounds exactly the way it should. The OPL3 sound is perfectly crunchy and twangy. Compared to my emulation setup with high quality digital out of a modern PC with an x-fi card, it sounds just as good, maybe even a bit better. Awesome.

The line in adds a tiny bit of noise but I can only hear it when everything is dead silent. I am looking forward to experiencing WSS for the first time. Great work guys! So pleased with it so far!

thanks for the kind words guys!
hope you all get many hours of enjoyment out of your cards 😀
and thanks for your support - it's ultimately what makes things happen!

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-04-14, 04:56:

the digital out sounds amazing!

I remember being very enthusiast about the digital output of soundcards and searching in every way possible to tap in the pcm signal before the DAC my vintage soundcards. Eventually someone challenged me about it and made me realize pcm is not always the best way to go. The most important question to be ask, beside internal routing, is "does the DAC of your receiver/amplifier is better than the one on your soundcard?". While this might be true for many commercial soundcards, I believe Marmen and Keropi put alot of efforts and attention to details at having a DAC on the Orpheus that most certainly beat the one on the Onkyo tx-8140 on which it is currently connected. That is why, while I could use the digital output of the card, I went the analog route there.

ElBrunzy wrote on 2021-04-14, 19:35:

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-04-14, 04:56:

the digital out sounds amazing!

I remember being very enthusiast about the digital output of soundcards and searching in every way possible to tap in the pcm signal before the DAC my vintage soundcards. Eventually someone challenged me about it and made me realize pcm is not always the best way to go. The most important question to be ask, beside internal routing, is "does the DAC of your receiver/amplifier is better than the one on your soundcard?". While this might be true for many commercial soundcards, I believe Marmen and Keropi put alot of efforts and attention to details at having a DAC on the Orpheus that most certainly beat the one on the Onkyo tx-8140 on which it is currently connected. That is why, while I could use the digital output of the card, I went the analog route there.

I use SPDIF because it doesn't have any noise or extra resistance when run through a switch. I have three other sound cards spread out over two computers in my setup.

I ran into a couple of small issues I wanted to report. Maybe you guys have some tips for how I can fix them.

In Might and Magic III the line-in is muted, probably because it messes with the SB registers. The kludges in orphinit don't seem to help. The midi commands are being received and if I listen in directly the music sounds fine. Can this be fixed?

In Pinball dreams (demo-one-table version) the midi tracks play great on the title screen, but then when I get into the table no midi commands are sent. The same files are working fine in dosbox. Nothing I have tried seems to help that one.

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-04-23, 21:09:

I ran into a couple of small issues I wanted to report. Maybe you guys have some tips for how I can fix them.

In Might and Magic III the line-in is muted, probably because it messes with the SB registers. The kludges in orphinit don't seem to help. The midi commands are being received and if I listen in directly the music sounds fine. Can this be fixed?

In Pinball dreams (demo-one-table version) the midi tracks play great on the title screen, but then when I get into the table no midi commands are sent. The same files are working fine in dosbox. Nothing I have tried seems to help that one.

With MM3 all we can do atm is wait and see if 640k!enough finds a way to "lock" the mixer or something so that the games don't mess with it. It may be possible, it may not.
Personally things like this made me move to using an external mixer ages ago (with the added benefit of balancing pcm/midi on the fly) , I know this is not a solution but rather an workaround 🤣
I keep my fingers crossed that maybe some future orphinit can fix this games misbehavior.

I had no idea Pinball Dreams supported midi? My retail version is all about tracked music, did they made a demo with midi support?

keropi wrote on 2021-04-24, 07:13:

With MM3 all we can do atm is wait and see if 640k!enough finds a way to "lock" the mixer or something so that the games don't m […]
Show full quote

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-04-23, 21:09:

I ran into a couple of small issues I wanted to report. Maybe you guys have some tips for how I can fix them.

In Might and Magic III the line-in is muted, probably because it messes with the SB registers. The kludges in orphinit don't seem to help. The midi commands are being received and if I listen in directly the music sounds fine. Can this be fixed?

In Pinball dreams (demo-one-table version) the midi tracks play great on the title screen, but then when I get into the table no midi commands are sent. The same files are working fine in dosbox. Nothing I have tried seems to help that one.

With MM3 all we can do atm is wait and see if 640k!enough finds a way to "lock" the mixer or something so that the games don't mess with it. It may be possible, it may not.
Personally things like this made me move to using an external mixer ages ago (with the added benefit of balancing pcm/midi on the fly) , I know this is not a solution but rather an workaround 🤣
I keep my fingers crossed that maybe some future orphinit can fix this games misbehavior.

I had no idea Pinball Dreams supported midi? My retail version is all about tracked music, did they made a demo with midi support?

It's Roland/MT 32. The retail version butchered the music and the physics so I just play the one table.

I have tried an external, passive mixer but I just ran into too many issues with noise and impedance. My roland powered speakers are so sensitive to any noise. I really have to baby them a lot. Another reason why I really appreciate the SPDIF out.

Got my Orpheus card with an X2 last week. Lovin' it so far!!
I have what may be a stupid question. How do you choose whether MIDI plays through the x2 or not? I have an external midi device but the sound in a game plays through the external device and the x2. I can unplug the external device and still hear the x2. I tried muting the WT header ( with WTHeaderVol=mute;31 in orpheus.ini) but that does not seem to do it.
These are games that do not let you specify an address in the setup, like Sierra games and Duke3d.

Wall_Fodder wrote on 2021-04-25, 11:14:

Got my Orpheus card with an X2 last week. Lovin' it so far!!
I have what may be a stupid question. How do you choose whether MIDI plays through the x2 or not? I have an external midi device but the sound in a game plays through the external device and the x2. I can unplug the external device and still hear the x2. I tried muting the WT header ( with WTHeaderVol=mute;31 in orpheus.ini) but that does not seem to do it.
These are games that do not let you specify an address in the setup, like Sierra games and Duke3d.

there is no solution atm other that use than activate the CS-MPU and use the jumper block to make the WT header be controlled by CS-MPU
then you have:
- PCMIDI at port 330 controlling external devices
- CS-MPU at port 300 controlling the WT header

so in games you want to use the X2 you select MPU-401/GM at port300 and everything else you select port330

btw, DUKE3D lets you chose the midi port, it has many choices from 220 to 360

I guess another option is to route the external midi device in through Line/In, then have batch files for CSMIX that mute the wavetable and enable L/I, or vice versa. That's what I do with my CS4232 card with an onboard wavetable and a Pi-32 connected to the gameport.

Wall_Fodder wrote on 2021-04-25, 11:14:

How do you choose whether MIDI plays through the x2 or not? I have an external midi device but the sound in a game plays through the external device and the x2. I can unplug the external device and still hear the x2.

If my guess is correct, you're referring to games that use either Sound Blaster or Sound Blaster Pro for sound, correct? If that is the case, and you're also using ORPHINIT, you should have a fairly simple solution available. The key is that the WTHeaderVol setting is only for WSS mode; if you're not choosing "Windows Sound System" (or similar) in your software, then you need to make sure that you have the setting "Mode=sb", and look for the sb-mode section in the INI file. Because of the limitations of the Sound Blaster Pro mixer, the wavetable header and FM are controlled by the same setting: FMVol. Change that to FMVol=0, and you should silence both FM and the X2. Then set LineVol between 1 and 7, to your taste, and you should get the results you seek.

keropi wrote on 2021-04-25, 13:03:

btw, DUKE3D lets you chose the midi port, it has many choices from 220 to 360

You're right it does, but not with the OG release. I think that was added in the atomic edition.

I stand corrected. Just had another look at the duke setup and it does let you choose port.

640K!enough wrote on 2021-04-25, 14:39:

If my guess is correct, you're referring to games that use either Sound Blaster or Sound Blaster Pro for sound, correct? If that is the case, and you're also using ORPHINIT, you should have a fairly simple solution available. The key is that the WTHeaderVol setting is only for WSS mode; if you're not choosing "Windows Sound System" (or similar) in your software, then you need to make sure that you have the setting "Mode=sb", and look for the sb-mode section in the INI file. Because of the limitations of the Sound Blaster Pro mixer, the wavetable header and FM are controlled by the same setting: FMVol. Change that to FMVol=0, and you should silence both FM and the X2. Then set LineVol between 1 and 7, to your taste, and you should get the results you seek.

Aha...This does it. Yes, games that have one choice for audio and one for music. I set the audio to Sound Blaster and music to MT-32. Now I just set FMVol to 0 with orphinit and the x2 is muted.
I actually prefer the sound of the x2 for general midi games, but games that only let you choose MT-32 it sounds just a bit off.
Thank you all so much for all the suggestions. I really appreciate it.