SB16 support was more widespread in later DOS games. However, WSS does have a few interesting features.

For example, the WSS driver in some Sierra games like King's Quest VI and Space Quest V seems to be more stable than their Sound Blaster driver. On faster Pentium CPUs, Sierra's Sound Blaster driver can lock up, while their WSS driver runs fine. Additionally, there was at least one game where using WSS could give you a 48 KHz sampling rate in DOS games, that being Turrican II.

There were also games like Aladdin which didn't support stereo music in SB16 mode, but did so in WSS mode. Music samples can be found here: Aladdin (DOS) music - SB16 vs. SBPro vs. WSS

Lastly, WSS game compatibility seems to vary from card to card and also from the IRQ and DMA parameters used. From my experience, OPTi cards with the Analog Devices chip (or an integrated version) seem to be more compatible with WSS than Yamaha YMF 71x cards.

P.S.

In games that use the Miles Sound System, you can often transplant the WSS driver from other, similar games if it isn't supported natively. Mortal Kombat 3, Jagged Alliance and Master of Orion 2 are some examples of this. You can do it by copying SNDSYS.DIG to the relevant folder where the other .DIG files reside. I describe that in more detail here.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-06-20, 12:54:

Lastly, WSS game compatibility seems to vary from card to card and also from the IRQ and DMA parameters used.

So true - see my recent struggle with Aztech:
Sound Galaxy Waverider Pro 32-3D - how to init WSS mode?

Also, some cards use the same IRQ for both SB and WSS modes...
- for SB, the most useful is IRQ 5
- genuine WSS only supports IRQ 7, 9, 10, 11 - can't expect every WSS-compatible program to support other IRQs
just can't catch them all 🤣

Grzyb wrote on 2024-06-20, 12:40:

Quite contrary with PCI - there was a bunch of SB16 compatibles, but not a single WSS compatible, right?
Anything to add to the above lists?

ESS Solo and Maestro (at least "1") seems to be WSS compatible:
http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/ … s/ESS_Solo1.pdf
https://dosdays.co.uk/media/ess/Maestro-1_Datasheet.pdf

Ydee wrote on 2024-06-20, 15:25:

ESS Solo and Maestro (at least "1") seems to be WSS compatible:
http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/ … s/ESS_Solo1.pdf
https://dosdays.co.uk/media/ess/Maestro-1_Datasheet.pdf

They aren't.

The datasheets for all ESS cards falsely claim WSS compatibility. In practice, this means "we have a 16-bit Windows driver". Those cards don't have a WSS mode and don't work with DOS WSS games. The Solo-1 doesn't even support the native AudioDrive mode in DOS games.

Oh yeah, the neverending confusion about ESS WSS compatibility...

By now, it's pretty obvious that the "Supports Microsoft® WindowsTM Sound System®" claim means that it's compatible with the WSS *SOFTWARE*, which - in version 2.0 - contained drivers for certain non-Microsoft cards, including ESS.
But no ESS chip is compatible with the WSS *CARD*, period.

See for example the following table - note the presence of SB ports, but total lack of anything WSS:

Uh, I hope at least that SB Pro support is true...
Thank you for info, never know this before.

Grzyb wrote on 2024-06-20, 15:55:

Oh yeah, the neverending confusion about ESS WSS compatibility...

By now, it's pretty obvious that the "Supports Microsoft® WindowsTM Sound System®" claim means that it's compatible with the WSS *SOFTWARE*, which - in version 2.0 - contained drivers for certain non-Microsoft cards, including ESS.

And just to have this information in the same thread: ESS is not the only offender in this regard. Analog Devices (who started the whole WSS hardware stuff with their AD1848 chip) claims in the AD1816 datasheet that this chip is "Windows Sound System 2.0 compatible", again aiming only at the software side. The AD1816 has a quite good SBPro hardware compatibility mode (although their OPL3 substitute is one of the worst), and it uses base ports that look a lot like standard WSS for its native mode, but the AD1816 native mode has nothing in common with the AD1848 interface (WSS).

mkarcher wrote on 2024-06-20, 20:52:

The AD1816 has a quite good SBPro hardware compatibility mode (although their OPL3 substitute is one of the worst), and it uses base ports that look a lot like standard WSS for its native mode, but the AD1816 native mode has nothing in common with the AD1848 interface (WSS).

OK, edited the original post to include that info...

So, who was first to clone the SB16 ?
Looks like ASC (Ant Systems Corp.), with the TROUPER 4x4 chip - their version 1.6 software is dated March 16, 1995, with 1994 copyright.

ALS007 is from 1996, CMI seems even later.

The original SB16 was from 1992.
Probably the only challenge for clone makers was the DSP 4.x firmware - that must have been the reason for the 2+ year delay.

On the other hand, nothing Microsoft-specific on the WSS card - everybody could purchase AD1848 and OPL3 chips, stick them together, and voila: it's WSS-compatible!

Grzyb wrote on 2024-06-20, 22:43:

So, who was first to clone the SB16 ? Looks like ASC (Ant Systems Corp.), with the TROUPER 4x4 chip - their version 1.6 software […]
Show full quote

So, who was first to clone the SB16 ?
Looks like ASC (Ant Systems Corp.), with the TROUPER 4x4 chip - their version 1.6 software is dated March 16, 1995, with 1994 copyright.

ALS007 is from 1996, CMI seems even later.

The original SB16 was from 1992.
Probably the only challenge for clone makers was the DSP 4.x firmware - that must have been the reason for the 2+ year delay.

On the other hand, nothing Microsoft-specific on the WSS card - everybody could purchase AD1848 and OPL3 chips, stick them together, and voila: it's WSS-compatible!

IIRC Creative Labs had agreements on allowing other companies Sound Blaster (Pro) compatibility, but they wanted to keep Sound Blaster 16.just for themselves.

Reading this is so unreal. Back in the 90s, - I was a PAS16 user -, the Sound Blaster standard seemed like a legacy.

The "SB emulation" of my card model and that of others looked like a fallback solution for outdated software that hadn't been properly updated yet.

Back in the day, I hadn't been imagining in my wildest dreams that the Sound Blaster standard would still continue to matter.

Except for hearing 8-Bit mono SFX of some old games from the late 80s/early 90s, maybe.

No really, it's a bit unreal. In early-mid 90s, it was all about multimedia and CD-ROM technology. Philips CD-i, Photo CD, MPEG, 44,1 KHz 16-Bit Stereo sound or quadro sound (Dolby Surround) etc.

Sound Blaster looked so dated by then.

Not that the SB16 wasn't notable, I do like my CT1740 "Noise Blaster".

It's just like that it compares like BNC ethernet in the days of RJ45 networks: It's so out of place, kind of.

That's why the sheer existence of the SB32, AWE32 and AWE64 is such an oddity, I think.

Normally, something like PAS16, GUS or WSS should have completely superseded the SB or SB Pro by 1995 or so.

Grzyb wrote on 2024-06-20, 12:40:

Anything to add to the above lists?

Few more to add to the neither SB16 nor WSS list:

Roland RAP-10
AMD Interwave (GUS PnP and compatibles)
Nvidia NV1
Ensoniq SoundScape
Ensoniq SoundScape AudioDrive
NewMedia WaveJammer
Guillemot Maxi Sound 64

Source
Re: 16 bit sound in DOS games, was that 'a thing'?

chinny22 wrote on 2024-06-21, 00:29:

AMD Interwave (GUS PnP and compatibles)

Interwave is supposed to be a superset of CS4231, which is WSS compatible.
Yes, I understand that it's enough to use a wrong address to make an incompatible CARD based on a compatible CHIP.
But I don't want to list all cards - a list of chips (or even chip families) should be enough for now.

Ensoniq SoundScape
Ensoniq SoundScape AudioDrive

They all have AD1848/1845 chips, right?

Guillemot Maxi Sound 64

There's a CS4236.

I'm going to look closer at the remaining ones later, and probably add them...

Grzyb wrote on 2024-06-21, 01:22:

Ensoniq SoundScape
Ensoniq SoundScape AudioDrive

They all have AD1848/1845 chips, right?

The Soundscape S1000 (I don't know whether this was a commercial product at all, or just a reference design for the main interface chip of the Soundscape card) did not include the AD codec - all ISA sound had to go through the MIDI processing section. The MIDI processing section supports processing sample data received through ISA DMA. The well-known S2000 uses this data path mostly for soundblaster emulation, and uses the AD codec for DMA sound. It is likely that everyone talking just about "SoundScape" is referring to the S2000.

Furthermore, the first PCB revisions of the S2000 design had the AD codec at an unconventional address. It was packed either with the MIDI bases or the SB base (like MIDI base plus 8 or SB base plus 16). This revision is rarely found in physical hardware. The common later revisions put the CD interface on that address (which is decoded by the main interface chip) and used an external PAL to decode the AD codec base address, this time using the standard WSS base addresses. Nevertheless, the official tool for the SoundScape (SSINIT) never included a mode to configure the interface into WSS mode. Instead, applications were supposed to get the SOUNDSCAPE variable from the environment, parse the INI file (SNDSCAPE.INI IIRC to find the base, IRQ and DMA info) and temporarily enable the IRQ and DMA while the application is running. This is why you have a dedicated SoundScape digital audio driver in later games. I hacked a tool MFX2MSS (MFX = MediaFX, a rebranded Soundscape S2000) which I IIRC posted in some newsgroup around 1999, which just activated the AD codec IRQ and DMA channels to user-provided values and exited, so a lot of WSS sohftware could be used with the S2000.

That reminds me, I think the first Ensoniq Audio PCI sound cards (from before Creative bought them) could support Ensoniq Soundscape (for digital audio) when using their DOS emulation drivers.

At least that's what I heard, I don't have an Ensoniq branded card myself, just a later Creative branded Sound Blaster PCI 128.

Hi, I think the AudioPCI 3000 could do that, at least. 😀

Re: Games that sound best with GUS?

I also remember seeing a Media Vision Jazz 16 sound card being supported in some games.

Not sure if that has 16-bit audio though, maybe someone more familiar with it can clarify.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-06-21, 00:29:

Roland RAP-10

Added.

Nvidia NV1

Now that's something special - AD1845 (totally WSS) on a PCI card.
But is it possible to use that card with any WSS software?
Note that there are programs that can use a WSS codec located at non-standard addresses (other than 530h, 604h, E80h, F40h), but there are also other problems related to PCI...

NewMedia WaveJammer

PCMCIA - skipping for now.
Same with LPT, MCA, and other oddballs.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-06-21, 00:29:

Few more to add to the neither SB16 nor WSS list: […]
Show full quote

Grzyb wrote on 2024-06-20, 12:40:

Anything to add to the above lists?

Few more to add to the neither SB16 nor WSS list:

[..]
Nvidia NV1
[..]

Yeah, about that. I've noticed the Analog Devices AD1845JP chip on NVIDIA NV1 cards, such as notably the Diamond Edge 3D cards, which indeed offered both video and sound on a single PCI card. But that always made me wonder how that worked, since it's essentially a chip meant for ISA sound cards with Sound Blaster and WSS compatibility, and DMA support is explicitly mentioned in the datasheet. So how would it ever work on a PCI card? Was it wired up in a way that it could only be programmed through direct I/O? How did the Windows drivers for the NV1 cards interact with that chip?

NewMedia WaveJammer

Interesting. Another notable sound device in that it's the only PCMCIA card (at least to my knowledge) that ever had native support in at least a few DOS games. But given how it's a 16-bit PCMCIA card, and thus Intel 8237 (ISA) DMA would not be available through this interface either, the same question comes up here: how was the AD184x chips programmed in such sound devices where ISA-style DMA wasn't available and couldn't be wired up? Would it be used in a direct I/O mode only? And would there at least be some kind of buffering, like with the Disney Sound Source?

(Hmmm... The same datasheet also mentions "On-Chip Capture and Playback FIFOs", so I guess the answer to my latter question would be yes? But was this chip initially developed with both ISA and non-ISA interfaces in mind?)

EDIT: 🤣, I see that @Grzyb just beat me to it with essentially the same questions. 😅