Sound Blaster Live! CT4830 - Will it work with DOS games? \ VOGONS

Sound Blaster Live! CT4830 - Will it work with DOS games?

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First post, by Yasashii

Posted on 2013-09-06, 10:35

Yasashii Offline

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I'm almost finished setting up my Windows 98 SE build. I got all the drivers, all the issues fixed and a 4:3 screen is on it's way to my house as we speak.

I still need to buy a sound card. I installed Windows 98 SE to run some old windows games that wouldn't work on new systems at all or would work but not without much hassle (such as The Need for Speed Second Edition). I also hoped for Win98's decent support for DOS games. Of course, since I only have a horrible integrated Via vinyl AC'97 right now, there are issues with sound.

So, I've been looking for a sound card that would sound decent, provide support for DOS games and work ok with windows games. Unfortunately, I can't plug in an ISA card because the motherboard is too new to have ISA ports. So, I need a PCI solution.

After some research, I've narrowed down the list to SB Live! and PCI 128. Unfortunately, I've read that PCI 128 sounds horrible in some games.

Would SB Live! be better?

My motherboard is msi pt8 neo-v, if it makes any difference.

Reply 1 of 6, by keropi

Posted on 2013-09-06, 10:38

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Inside the 98SE environment the Live! will provide SB16 compatibility and it will work nicely.
In pure DOS mode on the other hand it will be on the unusable side of things...

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Reply 2 of 6, by Yasashii

Posted on 2013-09-06, 10:47

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How about OPL3? Does it have it?

Because the main downside of the PCI 128 was that it didn't have real OPL3 and as a result some DOS games sounded badly.

Reply 3 of 6, by keropi

Posted on 2013-09-06, 11:57

keropi Offline

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nope, no OPL3 on live! as well, only emulation

🎵 🎧 ⏳ ⚡ MK1869, PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 4 of 6, by Yasashii

Posted on 2013-09-06, 12:05

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A quote from Wikipedia:

The Live! implemented DOS legacy support via Ensoniq's AudioPCI DOS TSR program. Creative acquired Ensoniq in 1998 and, as part of the deal, made use of this highly-compatible ISA sound card emulator with their newer cards. In fact, the Live! uses ".ecw" (Ensoniq Concert Wavetable) files for the wavetable emulation in DOS. The program enables support for many standards, such as Sound Blaster 16, General MIDI, AdLib (OPL3), among others.

Would that make it work properly or just as "well" as on the PCI 128?

Reply 5 of 6, by pyrogx

Posted on 2013-09-06, 14:55

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Yasashii wrote:

Would that make it work properly or just as "well" as on the PCI 128?

This driver is similar to those DOS drivers of the SBPCI cards. However, the OPL3 emulation sounds much "better" (not perfect!) than with a SBPCI128, as the Emu10k chip on the SBlive seems to take care of the OPL3 stuff.
There are some problems with the SBlive DOS driver:
- EMM386 is *required*
- Many modern mainboards are incompatible with it (nForce-based boards are an example)
- MIDI through gameport is not suported AFAIK

Reply 6 of 6, by Yasashii

Posted on 2013-09-06, 19:20

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I gave my friend a call before ordering the card online because I know his dad had some old hardware and I hoped that he might have a soundblaster. Turns out he has a giant stash of old hardware that neither me or my friend knew about until today. Apparently, he never thought it was worth mentioning because as far as he cares that's a pile of old useless junk that might just have some worth if somebody wanted to buy it for re-melting. Imagine a 2x1x1 meter box filled up the edges with old computer stuff and another full crate on top of that. My jaw dropped to the floor when I looked upon this mountain of retro gold.

We couldn't dig through all of it today (although I'm working on getting his parents to let me do that) but we didn't have to dig down deep to find a SoundBlaster Live! 5.1. Unfortunately, it's not completely functional. I only get sound when the 5.1 mode is enabled and only out of the rear speaker output. Still, in that setting, the card sounds rather nicely even though not as loud as it could be (probably due to the rear speaker output).

So I fired up Wolfestein 3D to check if it detects it ok. And it does detect a soundblaster but it doesn't detect adlib. I thought that if the card can emulate it at least on some level, it would show up but it doesn't. Is that normal? Do I have to enable something in the driver settings or something?

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