I really can't chime in specifically about the 3930 but i can say if you have a spare card with genuine opl, pairing the 3600 with it makes for a nice setup but on its own the fm synth is lacking.

I also find that the ct3600 is very listenable compared to most cards I've tried, and doesn't have that high pitched scream I hear from some other vibra cards. Just noise at high volume.

Just to check the obvious first.. have you made sure you're using line out and not speaker on the 3930?

Also, have you considered recapping your 3930? I did so on my ct2260 and there was quite a bit of improvement on line noise, so you may just be suffering from poor filtering due to 20+ year old caps.. just a thought.

BeginnerGuy wrote:

Just to check the obvious first.. have you made sure you're using line out and not speaker on the 3930?

😊
🤣. I guess I didn't look closely enough, turns out I was using speaker out on both. Thanks for that. Using line out makes a big difference... no more whine. 😀

I also had a better look with mixerset -- I'd just used my saved settings (mixerset /p) but those don't actually include bass & treble, and I hadn't tweaked them as much on the 3600 as I thought I had (~60% each) which explains why there wasn't much difference in tone. Since those aren't important to me (will be going through a mixer anyway), that means the 3930 is the better card. Non-PnP SBs are preferable too.

Yes the FM is lacking on the 3600 but it's not terrible, at least not compared to other cards I've heard. The real OPL3 on the 3930 is better, subjectively, but I'm not sure how much better yet -- need to do more testing sometime.

PS nice avatar too... one of my favourite Sierra games.

InbetweenDays wrote:

*^_^* LOL. I guess I didn't look closely enough, turns out I was using speaker out on both. Thanks for that. Using line out mak […]
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BeginnerGuy wrote:

Just to check the obvious first.. have you made sure you're using line out and not speaker on the 3930?

😊
🤣. I guess I didn't look closely enough, turns out I was using speaker out on both. Thanks for that. Using line out makes a big difference... no more whine. 😀

I also had a better look with mixerset -- I'd just used my saved settings (mixerset /p) but those don't actually include bass & treble, and I hadn't tweaked them as much on the 3600 as I thought I had (~60% each) which explains why there wasn't much difference in tone. Since those aren't important to me (will be going through a mixer anyway), that means the 3930 is the better card. Non-PnP SBs are preferable too.

Yes the FM is lacking on the 3600 but it's not terrible, at least not compared to other cards I've heard. The real OPL3 on the 3930 is better, subjectively, but I'm not sure how much better yet -- need to do more testing sometime.

HA, I do that all the time too with these old cards. I always thought the 3930 would be nice to own because it has genuine OPL3 and vibra boards have really low line noise, I'm actually quite fond of some of the vibra 16s (as long as they don't squeal)

I wonder why the wikis say you can't adjust bass and treble on the SB32s? It seems to work fine on my 3600 using AWECP32 under 9x, unless that's just some software trick.

Conquests of the Longbow is one of my all time favorites, used to play it constantly and talk about any relevant lore I could find with my older brother when it came out. Even read a bunch of the books in the bibliography Roberta Williams listed as her research for the game 😎 .. Funny how such a little game could get you thinking and reading back then.

InbetweenDays wrote:

the CT3600 has CQM, the CT2502 chip, and is PnP.

CT2502 Vibra Pro chipset is often said to be the most quiet SB16 implementation. You are now confirming it again. CT2504 Vibra 16S is OK but has some ringing problem if you pay attention to it. I don't have any CT2501 Vibra based card myself.

BeginnerGuy wrote:

I wonder why the wikis say you can't adjust bass and treble on the SB32s? It seems to work fine on my 3600 using AWECP32 under 9x, unless that's just some software trick.

Seems the CT2501 doesn't support bass/treble/gain. The 3600 has the CT2502 chip, which does support them.

BeginnerGuy wrote:

Conquests of the Longbow is one of my all time favorites,...

Mine too because it was the game on which I set my best time for completing a Sierra game (8 hours of playtime), though I did set the arcade slider fairly low. Otherwise some parts were too hard -- eg scaling the tower wall IIRC. 😀

Just to echo what BeginnerGuy said, consider recapping that 3930. I recapped mine and have noticed no hiss or whine, just pure sound output.

I think card whines are because of aging caps...

The AWE32 and some of its variants always had a notably bad noise floor, even in '94... The CT3600 is also noisy

Thanks everyone. I won't be recapping any of my cards though. The CT3600 is pretty good considering I was using the speaker out, and it's only the 3930 that has the whine -- again, only with speaker out (so re the capacitors I assume it's the amp section of the board). Using line out, but cards are quiet.

Years ago I used to have a Pro Audio Spectrum 16, and that thing was noisy, even though the PAS16 was meant to be a quiet card. Not sure whether it was because it was in an EISA bus machine or not. I got a GUS after that which was nice & quiet... but still in terms of SnR, nothing compared to the AdB Multi!Wav Pro24 I had later (home studio). Now THAT was a quiet card!