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S3 Sonic Vibes PCI - Any good?

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First post, by cj_reha

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There's a PC repair shop about 5 minutes from my house which is my primary source of parts besides eBay and just asking around for stuff. They sell parts, new and used, dating back to the early 2000s as well. They've even got a fair amount of stuff from StarTech!

Anyway, I was rummaging through their assorted PCI bins (wireless, NIC cards, RAID controllers) and came across the sound card bin. It looked like mostly Sound Blaster live! 24-bit cards, but I dug through and found an "S3 Sonic Vibes" PCI card for $5.

I bought it because it seems to be an interesting older card and it was $5 🤣

My question is: For Windows 98-era gaming, MIDI sound, and music listening, would this card be better suited than the Sound Blaster AWE32 Value currently in my Windows 98 box? Or is this a cheap, lower end card as a few old reviews say online? 😜

(I'll post pictures of it tomorrow, can't find it currently. 😒 )

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Reply 2 of 2, by boxpressed

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I have a couple of these cards, and one is a new in box Turtle Beach Daytona. I haven't had much time to play around with it, but it is one of the earliest PCI sound cards. They're less common than early cards such as the Ensoniq AudioPCI. I was interested in this card to see how it behaves in DOS and whether its GM is any good. It uses the .DLS soundbank format, and some of these banks can even be used with the Aureal Vortex line of cards. In DOS games, the GM is average for PCI cards like the Aureal Vortex 2 and SB Live!, perhaps slightly inferior to both. IMO, this is not a daily driver but a historical curiosity that interests collectors more than gamers.

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