Cybersphere should be heard.

Descent also used stereo OPL3 to nice effect.

Descent is one of my all-time favorite games, especially multiplayer against live opponents! I used to play it constantly on the now-defunct Sega-sponsored HEAT multiplayer online gaming network.

With all of the DOS DOOMs (v1.9) as well as Heretic (and Hexen, I think), setting the DOS environment variable "SET DMXOPTION=-opl3" would cause the OPL music to play in stereo 😀

(edit)

Oh, and also; although not a game (but used by several of the oldies) Creative Labs' "SBFMDRV.COM" (such as used by their CMF music file player "PLAYCMF.EXE") had a version that supported stereo.

The specific one was (directly from the COM file) "Sound Blaster Pro 2 / MCV Creative Sound Blaster FM-Driver Version 1.32" (SBFMDRV.COM - 7,276 bytes).

AFAIK, *none* of the other versions of the driver supported stereo music playback (including much newer versions of the driver; such as what shipped with the SB16 and AWE32 sound cards).

System Shock:

Intro music OPL2 vs. Intro music OPL3

Level 1 music OPL2 vs. Level 1 music OPL3

According to the setup progam, the game supports dual OPL2 chips (can't test because I don't have a card with dual OPL2). Theoretically it should sound the same as OPL3.

An OPL3 should sound the same as dual OPL2's? Is that true? I thought that was the whole idea, that the dual OPL2's played certain pieces in stereo, whereas the OPL3 would not.

Or am I thinking of certain sound effects that dual OPL2's played, that were not present with the OPL3? Seemingly, as I recall, there were "footsteps" in one of the Ultima Underworld games that could be heard while using an SBPro1, but not an SBPro2...isn't that right?

This is only the case when a game supports dual OPL2, but doesn't know about OPL3 (there are very few of these).

Ahhh...I see.

So I guess the games that know about "dual OPL2s" yet don't know about OPL3 were produced during a fairly brief period (games developed between the beginning of SBPro1, and the beginning of SBPro2...roughly speaking).

It would be interesting to know all the names of such titles. In addition to the Ultima Underworld title(s).

digitaldoofus wrote:

So I guess the games that know about "dual OPL2s" yet don't know about OPL3 were produced during a fairly brief period (games developed between the beginning of SBPro1, and the beginning of SBPro2...roughly speaking).

Exactly. I haven't found first-hand info on the net, but the time span between the release of the 1.0 and 2.0 SB Pro versions may be as short as three months. 🙄

digitaldoofus wrote:

It would be interesting to know all the names of such titles. In addition to the Ultima Underworld title(s).

I'm not sure if there even are more titles with the problem. You might want to check out this thread on the QuestStudios forums (takes some time reading, but there is a lot of useful information hidden in there, including hints of how to fix Ultima Underworld for OPL3).

Interesting. I have read that the SB Pro 2 came shortly after the first SB16, in Fall 1992. By comparison, SB Pro 1 was released in May 1991. Of course, please correct me if I'm wrong.

I have no idea exactly what was the "time gap" between SBP1 and SBP2's releases. I do know that when "new" (or revised) hardware is being released, software and game developers get some "lead time" to add support to their products.

That being said, the most salient point would be when the developers were put on notice that they would be needing to support each of the hardwares. But the actual release dates would give us at least some idea, and may be the best data that we can realistically hope to know (unless some former Creative techs are out there somewhere and willing to comment?).

pianoman72 wrote:

Interesting. I have read that the SB Pro 2 came shortly after the first SB16, in Fall 1992. By comparison, SB Pro 1 was released in May 1991. Of course, please correct me if I'm wrong.

From what I've been able to gather:

SB Pro 1 - Announced May 1991, shipped Aug/Sep 1991
SB Pro 2 - Announced "Winter" 1991/1992, shipped May 1992
SB 16 - Announced June 1992, shipped Dec 1992

Sierra was already supporting a stereo OPL2 configuration, via the Pro AudioSpectrum, before the SB Pro 1 had even been announced.

Thank you for the clarification. It makes more sense to have the SB16 released after the SB Pro 2.