My recommendation is if you have two ISA slots, use the SB16 and another ISA card that has dedicated MPU401. Creative never fixed the MPU401 slowdown issue in any SB16 core even up to the AWE64.

If you have only one ISA slot, use a PCI card for high quality windows audio and a good compatible ISA card like CMI or ESS which doesn't have MPU401 issues

NeoG_ wrote on 2025-12-22, 00:05:

My recommendation is if you have two ISA slots, use the SB16 and another ISA card that has dedicated MPU401. Creative never fixed the MPU401 slowdown issue in any SB16 core even up to the AWE64.

If you have only one ISA slot, use a PCI card for high quality windows audio and a good compatible ISA card like CMI or ESS which doesn't have MPU401 issues

Thinking on it that would give me pretty good support. The Vibra 16 is integrated into the motherboard and can be turned on or off in the bios. Instead of replacing it, grabbing an ESS card to pair with it would give me good MPU401 support as well as decent OPL if it was ever needed. I haven't messed around with multiple sound cards in windows 95 much before, can I still use unisound options in the autoexec file to setup the pnp cards?

FinalJenemba wrote on 2025-12-22, 03:50:

Thinking on it that would give me pretty good support. The Vibra 16 is integrated into the motherboard and can be turned on or off in the bios. Instead of replacing it, grabbing an ESS card to pair with it would give me good MPU401 support as well as decent OPL if it was ever needed. I haven't messed around with multiple sound cards in windows 95 much before, can I still use unisound options in the autoexec file to setup the pnp cards?

SB16 Vibra + ESS would be a great combo

SB16 for 16-bit/44kz in supported games
ESS for single cycle DMA games with ADPCM and bug free MPU-401

Unisound works with ESS PnP cards, but you can also use ESSINIT which is the native initializer

In terms of having a combo win95/pure DOS environment, windows drivers will auto-configure the cards to available resources. Personally I would put the ESS card on IRQ7, DMA1, ADD220 MIDI330 and the SB16 on IRQ5 or IRQ10 (depending if you need LPT port active) DMA3 HDMA5 ADD260 MIDI300 so older games with hard coded irq/dma values which are usually single cycle DMA games will pick up the ESS card by default. And also set IRQ 5/7, DMA 1/3/5 to legacy ISA mode in the bios. And as a last step use windows device manager to override the sound card resources to the ones used in DOS. That way the sound cards will be aligned in windows and DOS and you don't have to change sound setups in games if you want to run them inside 95 or in pure DOS.

NeoG_ wrote on 2025-12-22, 04:11:

SB16 Vibra + ESS would be a great combo […]
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FinalJenemba wrote on 2025-12-22, 03:50:

Thinking on it that would give me pretty good support. The Vibra 16 is integrated into the motherboard and can be turned on or off in the bios. Instead of replacing it, grabbing an ESS card to pair with it would give me good MPU401 support as well as decent OPL if it was ever needed. I haven't messed around with multiple sound cards in windows 95 much before, can I still use unisound options in the autoexec file to setup the pnp cards?

SB16 Vibra + ESS would be a great combo

SB16 for 16-bit/44kz in supported games
ESS for single cycle DMA games with ADPCM and bug free MPU-401

Unisound works with ESS PnP cards, but you can also use ESSINIT which is the native initializer

In terms of having a combo win95/pure DOS environment, windows drivers will auto-configure the cards to available resources. Personally I would put the ESS card on IRQ7, DMA1, ADD220 MIDI330 and the SB16 on IRQ5 or IRQ10 (depending if you need LPT port active) DMA3 HDMA5 ADD260 MIDI300 so older games with hard coded irq/dma values which are usually single cycle DMA games will pick up the ESS card by default. And also set IRQ 5/7, DMA 1/3/5 to legacy ISA mode in the bios. And as a last step use windows device manager to override the sound card resources to the ones used in DOS. That way the sound cards will be aligned in windows and DOS and you don't have to change sound setups in games if you want to run them inside 95 or in pure DOS.

I may end up going that way. I did some looking and my Vibra uses DSP 4.13, so it def suffers from the bug. As a follow up option, if I got a second card like an AWE, couldn't I also just use the Vibra to output midi only if I didn't initialize the rest of the card? My understanding is the midi output only has issues if its also playing digital sound correct?

FinalJenemba wrote on 2025-12-22, 18:48:

I may end up going that way. I did some looking and my Vibra uses DSP 4.13, so it def suffers from the bug. As a follow up option, if I got a second card like an AWE, couldn't I also just use the Vibra to output midi only if I didn't initialize the rest of the card? My understanding is the midi output only has issues if its also playing digital sound correct?

Yes that also works, the MIDI bugs aren't present without digital audio being sent to the same DSP so the onboard vibra will be fine if only using it for MIDI duties