Great Collection, Cloudschatze! This Audiotrix Pro makes me envious - and reminds me of another curious card:

The "Toptek Golden Sound Pro 16 Plus" (what a name!) - it has a somehow similar design: you'll find the Yamaha OPL4, the Yamaha effects processor (the green daughterboard), the Crystal CS4231 codec. But it lacks the microcontroller, instead there are lots and lots of jumpers and a second daughter board (right) with Topteks DSP and - even stranger - a small IC that should provide "surround sound" (but only becomes hot).
To cut a long story short - I never got this thing runnig properly. I also fear that you can't use the OPL4 for GM in DOS (only Win3.1.).

This is a Yamaha SW20-PC soundcard. It's not as "exotic" and rare as some of the interesting soundcards already mentioned in this thread. I think this sound card is "speed sensitive". What I mean is that it won't function correctly if you put it in a machine that is faster than a Pentium 1, for example.

ah, the SW20-PC. I got mine when it was brand new, and worked fine until pentiumII mobos, AFAIK some of it's DSP addresses are used in newer mobos...
The SW20-PC has an onboard FULLY programmable dsp, that can alter sound in real time, and it works in both windows and dos. There is a graphic app in windowsa that lets you choose dsp type+settings, and you save .kps (IIRC) files with the config. Dos gets a prog to upload such files to the DSP.
It had some demo app too , that you spoke to a microphone and your voice came out altered, there where "alien", "children" , "old-man" etc presets 🤣
It has an OPL4 + 2MB ROM , and 128kb of SRAM to upload user samples...
and all that worked without any cpu load in a 386xs/20 😀

Also regarding the ATI stereo/FX... I happen to have it's bigger brother, the "ATI VGA STEREO/FX" , a full length ISA 16bit card that is a combo of VGA + SOUND card! It would be a great slot saver in 386 machines with 2-3 ISA slots, but it's ATI 28000 (IIRC?) chip has some lame bug that makes jerky scrolling in games like Commander Keen etc...

The SW20 has an atrocious signal-to-noise ratio, primarily due its "Karaoke Processor" DSP. Depending on which DSP mode/algorithm is in use (including the default initialization settings), the YSS205B generates absurd, and varying, amounts of noise. Tragically, because all of the audio on the entire card is routed through this chip, bypassing or disabling it isn't an option.

(I did find a way to substantially lessen the noise, by creating a "dry" EffectGear file (Mode 3) that loads at boot with the KPLOAD utility. This, however, defeats the entire purpose of even having the effects chip, which is about the only interesting thing the SW20 offers, in my opinion.)

Suddenly, owning an SW20 now feels much less special. 🤣

Edit: What's wrong with an atrocious signal-to-noise ratio? No hang on a minute, I can't win this argument.

How exactly does the Stereo FX simulate stereo if it's an SB (not SB Pro ) clone?

Anonymous Coward wrote:

How exactly does the Stereo FX simulate stereo if it's an SB (not SB Pro ) clone?

If this is at all similar to the "Stereo Enhance" feature of the Pro AudioSpectrum(16) cards, then:

"This is a feature of your sound card that makes all sounds being played more rich and full. It does this by phase shifting the left and right channels by a small degree. The result is a "spatial separation" that makes mono sounds seem to be stereo, and stereo sounds to be more dynamic."

Not a wholly uncommon effect for that timeframe - the Ad Lib Gold also provides similar features (via the TDA8425).

Bah, this wasn't supposed to be a reply... Can't delete my own posts either... fantastic.

Regarding the SW20 - there were many other cards that used Yamaha's OPL4. But many had also the disadvantage that you couldn't use the GM synth in dos. Like this one:

The one I found that finally worked (with the OPL4 as GM synth in dos) was the Mirosound PCM12. But I had some difficuties with its SBPro compability - first, sound quality was very bad, then, on a second install it was okay - I don't know why (@Cloudschatze: Maybe the same effect you mentioned for the SW20?)
Otherwise a good card: GM, SBPro, WSS and "true" Adlib compability - and an additional Wavetableheader!

Silent Loon wrote:

...there were many other cards that used Yamaha's OPL4. But many had also the disadvantage that you couldn't use the GM synth in dos.

I wonder if these cards need a driver, or some sort of utility, to enable the OPL4 wavetable playback. (For example, the SW20 requires the use of both a TSR and a secondary utility to do this.)

(@Cloudschatze: Maybe the same effect you mentioned for the SW20?)

No amount of re-installing can cure the SW20's problem, I'm afraid. I'd be curious to know if the SW60XG is similarly affected, given that it has the same effects chip...

here are some pics of the ATI VGA STEREO/FX card... there is a jumper in the middle to enable/disable the sound portion of the card, and in the backplate the vga-out port, the joystick port in the middle that needs an adaptor , and the sound in/out port in the right that needs ANOTHER adaptor ... bah

here are some pics of the ATI VGA STEREO/FX card... there is a jumper in the middle to enable/disable the sound portion of the card, and in the backplate the vga-out port, the joystick port in the middle that needs an adaptor , and the sound in/out port in the right that needs ANOTHER adaptor ... bah

I wonder who put that blue heatsink on the card? 😁

I've seen them before 😉

that bugger was TOO hot inside my A4000D :p
one other ineresting thing I remember about it, is that the card uses almost NO initialization progs: it has it's own "bios" thing, you run a prog to access it, and save the configuration in it's flashrom! IRQ/DMA/etc are hard-coded then... never saw that in another card

keropi wrote:

that bugger was TOO hot inside my A4000D :p
one other ineresting thing I remember about it, is that the card uses almost NO initialization progs: it has it's own "bios" thing, you run a prog to access it, and save the configuration in it's flashrom! IRQ/DMA/etc are hard-coded then... never saw that in another card

Cool, almost like the Gus PnP then

Or the AWE32.

Amigaz wrote:

keropi wrote:

that bugger was TOO hot inside my A4000D :p
one other ineresting thing I remember about it, is that the card uses almost NO initialization progs: it has it's own "bios" thing, you run a prog to access it, and save the configuration in it's flashrom! IRQ/DMA/etc are hard-coded then... never saw that in another card

Cool, almost like the Gus PnP then

Or the AWE32.

Or, better yet, the Ad Lib Gold, which (unlike the other two) stores its configuration in EEPROM. 😉

I own also one of those Mozart WaveTable cards. I really would like if such a TSR for DOS exists that makes the OPL4 GM compatible (at least in real mode).
On the other hand I haven't tested the OPL4 driver behaviour in Win9x. Maybe it does GM Emulation in a DOS-windows like the AWE32 driver does?
In Win 3.x it is Windows only.

@Silent Loon:
Could you read the chip notation on the ASB64 please?
I would like to know which solution was used. It looks like a combination of the Crystal Effect and Wavetable DSP (maybe the 9203 / 8933 ?!?). And what is the name of the ROM Soundfont? Is it GMS960400 ?

Its a 9233 / 8905 combination. ROM has no GMS number but Crystal ones instead: 4111-CS and 4110-CS (followed by long "T" numbers, but I think that's not the one your're looking for).

This chipset looks pretty similar to a Terratec Maestro 32/96 card (and even sounds so), but has a weird "3d"-feature, that seems to be unique.

BTW - that some cards can't use the OPL4's GM capabilities (in dos) seems to be a problem of the codec chip and / or MPU-401 interface that it used on the card.