/vr/ - Retro Games

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf0xZkANjDs

>>10255460
Gotta say, the venerable PC speaker always had its charm.

For me it was the generic vaguely triangle shaped card I harvested from the dumpster behind a Gateway Country circa 1999 because I needed something with a gameport

Ac97 gang.
>Pshhhkkkkkkrrrrkakingkakingkakingtshchchchchchchchcch

Any games that actually sounded better with XG MIDI?
Only titles I know of that even use it are Final Fantasy VII and VIII

Aureal Audigy's A3D sound in Half-Life.
https://youtu.be/AAOcdfCN-RU?t=425
This shit was the most immersive shit ever back when it came out. Never before had I heard audio that actually felt 3D and realistic in how it worked.

I feel like going down a DOS/early Windows sound rabbit hole. How do I into MIDI?

>>10255973
You can still buy those cards new for less than $10 on Amazon.

you plug your controller into the soundcard... WHAT WERE THEY THINKING

I have three Audigy 2 ZS cards, which is probably the only good card Creative ever made.

>>10255442
The SoundBlaster 2.0 followed me through a few machines so I am pretty fond of the OPL2 sound. I was told that OPL3 does the same but filters it better, but I just immediately remember the harsher sounds with the old DOS games. I always went with the SoundBlaster brand, but I did get tempted by the Gravis Ultrasound since it was advertised heavily in Zone 66. Continued on with Live! and Audigy2 but since switching over to random distros from Win7, I have just accepted onboard sound which seems less special as the discreet solutions.

>>10256830
they made Soundblaster 16 you autismo

>>10256820
That the sound cards and the game ports were for video games?
The port also doubled as a midi port.

>>10255442
Soundblaster Live

I was late to the DOS gaming party but it just werks with every game I throw at it, even in Windows 9x. Excellent choice for a late-90's system and they're very affordable too, just avoid the OEM versions because the fucking lousy pricks removed the chips necessary for MIDI compatibility it's basically an officialized defective chink clone.

>>10256468
Stuff made in the late 80s to mid 90s was mostly designed for Roland MT-32 and it shows. You can run DOSBox-X for that or the MT-32 emulator Munt.

boo! You ruined cambridge soundworks, creative. boo!

>>10256929
I'm intrigued by the SoundCanvas stuff, but apparently the only software that can more or less replicate it is payware. I never knew MIDI stuff could be so complicated. I just played with whatever General MIDI soundfonts were installed on Windows back then.

>>10257301
I have an SK88 pro keyboard, basically a SoundCanvas module stuffed into a small synth. One of my favorite pieces of music gear and still relatively inexpensive. You can always pirate a VST too.

>>10257301
No, the emulation for it with Munt and DOSBox-X which has it built right into the emulator is pretty good and you'll have a hard time telling the difference between the in-game music with that emulated setup vs. youtube videos recording off real hardware. It uses the real original roms from a compatible setup.

>>10257785
I'm still learning about all this stuff, but doesn't that only emulate the MT-32? Later DOS games such as Doom seem to have been made rather for the SC-55.
>>10257307
I found what claims to be an SC-55 sound font on archive.org, but I'm not sure how authentic it really is. Guess I'll dick around with it.

Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS

Bought it 20+ years ago and still use it because it's better than whatever onboard sound you get like cheap RealTek audio (the crab logo is cool though).

>>10258523
I went with pic related about that time myself. I was something of a poorfag, but lots of people online were billing it as a cheaper alternative to the Audigy 2. It certainly worked very well for the games I was playing at the time (primarily UT2004).

>>10258024
Later DOS games just used general midi and sounded decent on any good sound card of the time, like a Sound Blaster AWE32/64.

>>10259013
Currently have a similar card running a cheaper version of that crystal chip. Sounds great as midi device in windows 98 but damn that soundblaster opl emulation sounds horrible. Too bad there's no way to extract the default soundfont from the driver.

I had the one that came with this guy
I only ever used the headphone jack though

>>10255460
HOLY FUCK i played this game over 30 years ago and havent thought of it since, this triggered me hard

>>10256881
based fm enjoyer

Whichever option that made sound come out when I was installing the game.

>>10259481
Sir, you need to be at least THIS autistic to post in this thread.

are there any pci soundcards with dos support?

k according to the manual i found on archive.org my integrated audio should have full soundblaster compatibility, with opl3 and wavetable synthesis. For some reason i dont get any music in dos games though, soundblaster sound effects work fine. I am thinking its the driver im using I may have to find another.

>>10259808
Yes, install dosbox. I can attest to a shitty 1995 era hentai game from the company Silky’s and called ‘Jack’ working without issue and better than when I was running it in actual DoS in the late 90’s. Normal DoS games such as Darkseed 1, Master of Orion 2 and more also work fine. No errors, hiccups, stutters, or any other sound related bullshit.

I know you may want actual whatever DoS like we had decades ago but dosbox works really well.

>>10259808
Depends on what you mean by DOS support. If you mean native DOS, some do technically support it, such as the Ensoniq PCI cards, but there's issues, including the fact that they don't do actual FM synthesis but emulate it through samples, which is obviously not ideal. If you run DOS applications inside Windows, however, you can use a wider variety of cards with less issues, including cards like the SBLive, though again, typically with emulation rather than true FM synthesis.

>>10256881
I've been on an absolute rabbit hole these past few days. I knew sound cards were somewhat complicated, but I had no idea just how much. At least from what I can gather, people are often split between OPL2 vs. OPL3, and to a lesser extent the synthesizer used by ESS cards. MIDI is a whole nother thing, too, and I don't think I'm anywhere near the bottom on that one. And that's without getting into things like the GUS. It's fascinating, to be sure.

>>10259828
i installed the realtek ac97 driver and now the music works fine but i have no control over the volume the slider and the dial on the speaker both do nothing lol going to keep trying drivers till i find one that works.

>>10262440
>I've been on an absolute rabbit hole these past few days.
Probably more like out of your depth in the puddle next to the rabbit hole. You have no idea how deep this rabbit hole goes. Your few days of googling is like a grain of sand on the beach for even a child that's not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious, and callous and wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the ravenous Bug-Blatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, lost, found, queried, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighter.

>>10258523

Rocked on of these for years and years, until I started getting into music production and it became more and more standard/convenient just to use outboard stuff like the M-Box, Scarlett etc.

That said, I never bought any of the hype about sound quality. Audiophile stuff is snake oil through and through. AC97 chip makes digital sound the same quality as any other card makes digital sound, by very definition. It's digital. 24 bit is 24 bit, 48khz is 48khz.

What those cards did have was cool software features that generic motherboard sound never has. And I gotta admit, 5.1 surround sound in Call of Duty and Medal of Honour back in the day was pretty awesome.

>>10262726
Uh, sure, that's kind of what I said. Anyway, I've been trying some of them out on 86box. So far I've set up a 286 with a Sound Blaster 2.0, which retains CSM compatibility, as well as a 486 with a SB16, though I'm wondering if an AWE32 might not be better.

>>10263098
Better electrical isolation is one of the features that PCI sound cards offered, and even then you had to get a halfway decent card for it.
With onboard sound, especially the old ones, shit like USB ports would cause loads of noise in the audio out. I've seen plenty of computers up till the early 2010's even where you could hear the mouse movements and even tell which direction the cursor was going in, just from the interference it made in the onboard sound chip.

>>10263313
>you could hear the mouse movements and even tell which direction the cursor was going in, just from the interference it made in the onboard sound chip

This is why I shelled out for a Sound Blaster!

>>10263313
I remember about ten years ago or so, I built a Pentium III Windows 98 rig, and since it happened to have an ISA slot still, I stuck an old SB16 I had lying around on it, but I got a lot of hissing on it and overall it sounded like ass. Now, later on I found out that may have been due to aging components or some shit, but in any case I ended up swapping it out for a SBLive, which sounded MUCH cleaner, and sound even worked on DOS games through Windows, though of course it's emulated shit, so eh.

>>10259828
In your situation, there should be a setting in your Bios that lets you enable the compatibility.

>>10263237
Beyond embarrassing

>needing to buy a special card to get sound for your videogames
PC cucks are so pathetic.

>>10255442
I just learned today that my Audigy 2 ZS Notebook could redirect sound back into my old laptop's speakers without using a line in cable. How cool is that?

>>10263836
Normal for most laptops to be honest.

>>10263912
Really? Are there other notebook sound cards that do this? I just thought it was a neat feature that I could play games with EAX enabled through the built-in speakers.

>>10262726
fucking hitchhiker's guide reference, god this board really is full of old fucks

>>10256056
>AC'97 sound
>PCMCIA wifi
Yep, it's gaming ti-KCSHSSSHHHHRKRKSSSHHHRshHSHHHKKRRRHHSHHSSK

>>10263948
tfw you will never watch hhg on a sony watchman that looks almost exactly like the hhg in the hhg.
yo dawg

>>10263601
thanks ill try dicking around in there i hadnt thought of that.

Is the AWE32 the ultimate DOS sound card? It seems to have compatibility with damn near everything down to the earliest Adlib games, while still having something extra for certain games that supported it specifically.

>>10265195
i really think it is the best all-around retro card. Sound Blaster AWE32 CT3980 + expanded ram & DreamBlaster S1

>>10256450
it was amazing and supreme

>>10256796
lol seriously? the pc I used it in was banished to the shadowrealm 20 years ago

>>10258523

I had the original Audigy with this guy under my CD Drive.

>>10259198
>>10266061

Missed your post there - I used to use it for recording occasionally too.

>>10265601
It certainly works a treat. Seems like there's a gorillion different models, though, some more cut-down than others, but then again, that's the case with just about all Creative cards.

>>10263313
this still happens on my z370 motherboard. my monitor's audio is even worse. i got a usb odac.

I bought this but took the EMF cover off, it worked fine and I loved it until it didn't work with Linux.

So I just use a normal Foucisrite Solo outboard sound thing now. It's not as good, but very very close. Its' true, your MB does not have good audio quality.

>>10255442

>>10256117
I'm still mad that they never released Windows2000 drivers. I remember I used the Karaoke feature a lot that magically removed all vocals from any audio CD, but I never played a game that specifically supported it.

>>10266594
Always been curious about the GUS. Apparently it got a good bit of support, too, over 150 games according to the interbutt. Not bad for not being a Sound Blaster derivative.

>>10257301
it's everything bad about retro pcs along with everything bad about vintage audio. You need several period-correct pieces of hardware that are used by certain games and you're going to pay out of the nose for the hardware and interfaces if you want it to be authentic. Dosbox does pretty good MIDI from what I saw so may just try that.

>>10259469
That is sort of the beauty with PC games, is that they are very personal and could vary to many different combinations of hardware. Whatever unique setup everyone has and not always fully unified in a similar experience. Music created from Yamaha or Roland are both great, but my memories are tied to the Yamaha FM.

>>10262440
Yeah, I was only familiar with SoundBlaster and EAX. I only learned about Aurreal and their Vortex implementation much later. Always wondered why I couldn't do Quake 3's 3D sound despite having a cool Live! with EAX. So much to play around with for PC games.

Genuinely don't remember. Some no-name card I got from Computer city for $15. Worked for Doom, so I was happy.

>>10267114
It's a good card except for the Ad Lib/FM Synth part which is laughably bad so it's just not a good choice for games that only have Ad Lib music. It sounds amazing in games that have proper support for it though

>>10265195
The AWE32 uses hardware emulated Adlib sound which sounds wrong on a few games.

The ultimate DOS sound card is a SB Pro 2 for most games, Adlib Gold for the handful of games that took advantage of it, Gravis or AWE32 for stuff that relies on sampled stuff, and Roland SC55 for the best quality in MIDI tunes.

>>10267973
is there a book on sound cards?

>>10255442
Simons Quest - Bloody Tears

>>10267973
>The AWE32 uses hardware emulated Adlib sound which sounds wrong on a few games
What do you mean? It has an OPL3 chip last I checked (same as the SB16 and SB Pro 2), which does sound different from the Adlib's OPL2 but I don't know if that really counts as emulation. I know the AWE64 changed to CQM synth, which sounds REALLY different, but even that is still a form of synthesis. It was the Live! series that went full emulation.

>>10267826
Seems like a common recommendation is to have both a GUS along with a Sound Blaster or derivative for this reason. I've never tried having two cards installed, though. I suppose it's just a matter of making sure there's no IRQ/DMA conflicts during configuration.

whats a cheap PCI soundcard that will give me music in dos games launched through windows *AND* has a gameport

Can anyone legitimately tell the difference between Munt and a real MT-32?

I know audio-related anecdotes don't really mean anything due to placebo and general fetishizing of hardware, but sometimes the autism is right. Does anon feel there is a difference?

>>10269648
A Sound Blaster Live will work.

>>10268157
>It has an OPL3 chip last I checked

Please look at the image >>10265195 posted, and highlight which chip is the OPL3. hint: you won't find any. Because it doesn't have one. It too uses the CQM which is a hardware "emulation" of the OPL2/3 functions.

>>10269875
SB Live is the worst quality sound card for old games. It lacks native FM and has broken hardware resampling which makes PCM playback sound really bad.

However I can't think of a PCI card that wouldn't have this problem and would give you good quality music in DOS games, you'd need to go ISA for that.

>>10269906
What's this, then?

Also, looking at several sources on the internet, it seems there were models with the OPL3, and others with the CQM, the latter being only in the PnP revisions, though not all PnP AWE32s used CQM.

>>10269906
>Also, looking at several sources on the internet, it seems there were models with the OPL3, and others with the CQM, the latter being only in the PnP revisions, though not all PnP AWE32s used CQM
Same with the SB16

>>10269906
https://dosdays.co.uk/topics/sb_awe32_64.php
>The first AWE32 card, CT3900, was a full-length 14" (356 mm) 16-bit ISA card. This had a true Yamaha OPL3 chip, as did the CT2760 and CT3780 that followed.
>Non-Plug & Play (PnP) models have a CT-1747 bus interface chip which integrates a licensed Yamaha OPL3 core
This anon is right. Yes there are variants with the shitty CQM, but the ones with the 1747 chip have true OPL3

>>10269990
Was talking about this Anon >>10269964 being right. So basically it depends on the specific model. But there are AWE32 cards with real OPL3

>>10269906
well ISA slot isnt an option for me and I gotta make due with what I got. A sound blaster live is also cheaper than a gameport to USB adapter

>>10270067
These may be up your alley as well:
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/ess-es1938s-solo-1.html
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/yamaha-ymf744-pci-sound-card.html

>>10270271
oh that second one sounds great but im not sure where to track one down ebay has one for 1300 bucks lol and the others are 724s.

>>10259469
Where are my manners, I should offer some really cool FM synthesis sounds: https://youtu.be/a_ihqZw7Wms

It's not for everyone, as people tend to hate Sega-like sounds, but some artists can work real magic into the compositions.

>>10270954
It's pretty cool how many games had options for both FM and MIDI. They certainly hit differently.

bumpo

>>10255442
there is not book i guess, on the technologies of sound cards of the past 40 years.

>>10269964
Licensed shit by Creative, not a real OPL.

>>10273454
Are you implying Creative made an OPL clone and Yamaha let them use the OPL name despite not actually being OPL? Got a source for that?

I use a YMF744 based sound card. It has a real OPL chip, but on a PCI card. Most DOS games work great, although once in a blue moon you get a game that won't work right with it, either requiring you to boot up in DOS mode, or there's just no way to fix it. Cool thing is somehow the VxD drivers for it support digital CD audio on mounted ISOs, so I never have to use my CD drive.

>>10273820
Sounds groovy. I may have come across one at some point, but I can't recall for sure.

>>10256450
After Creative stole their tech and bought them out mid lawsuit, what happened to A3D as a product? I rightly don't know how they did 3d audio acceleration and 3d audio emulation. Is there more to A3D than QSound for example?

>>10275126
i have the impression no games are as good as half-life with aureal after the buyout.

Great a soundcard autism thread. Can anyone identify which synth is used here? The song is from Transport Tycoon. I have put "Harmony 3DS719 WaveTable" in the comment field because IIRC that's the card I recorded it from, however I can't find any wavetable synth related to that card. It has been like 20 years so I can't remember the details very well.

https://files.catbox.moe/kruryg.ogg

>>10276442
Your Google-Fu is weak, young padawan.
So what we know is we're looking for info on card known as "A-Trend Harmony 3DS719". A quick search tells us that's the marketing name for it, the actual product ID printed on the card is "ATC-6631"
Searching online for images of that card shows that its got an empty space for some massive chip that's seemingly been left unpopulated on every picture I could find in my quick search for it.
A popular option back then was manufacturing a cheap FM-synth card with an optional higher-end WaveTable edition also available. On these particular units the empty space for the chip is labeled "QS1000".
And searching for QS1000 WaveTable gives us our answer: AdMOS QS1000. It's a wavetable chip meant to be integrated to cards that have everything but a wavetable synth.

>>10276468
For some further information: your card is a variant of Yamaha Audician 32 Plus. There's quite a few similar cards out there with only slight differences in PCB layout.
If you feel the need for QS1000 audio but don't feel like hunting on ebay, the guys behind the DreamBlaster have made a Waveblaster-compatible version of the QS1000: https://www.serdashop.com/QWave

>>10276468
>>10276476
Wow, I'm actually in awe you could solve it so quickly. I think what threw me off was that I wasn't sure if it was a softsynth or actual hardware. Back in those days reinstalling Windows was common and after a reinstall I lost the ability to use that synth.

>>10255442
my first sound card

>>10255442
I had an awe64 gold on a cyrix 200 mhz with matrox millenium.

Has thread been made for retro graphics cards?

what was the advantage of the awe64 gold? the clearer sound or lack of some bugs the previous ones had?

i had the impression it was gimmicky to a degree.

>>10255442
did graphics/sound cards that combined both exist? or am i misremembering?

>>10278363
>what was the advantage of the awe64 gold?
better s/n and spdif output. That's about it. I think it also had gold plated plugs.

>>10278880
Don't know about retro ones, but modern cards have HDMI and can output sound, so technically those do.

>>10278880
In the DOS times it was better to have separate video and sound cards. All-in-one cards existed to a degree (the nVidia NV1 was one of those) but they were not preferred because with separate cards you could get the best options. It was not uncommon for a high-end setup to have a high-end 2d card, a Voodoo 3d accelerator, and a dedicated soundcard or maybe even two. Plus sometimes networking.

>>10278880
You might be misremembering the fact that a lot of 90s sound cards came with a gamepad port too. They're both game-related things so I could see confusing that

>>10279201
yeah it must be that

>>10279201
>>10278880
Although I think the Diamond 3D Edge (the card that rendered 3D like the Saturn) did have sound hardware on it. Not very good audio but that's an example

>>10255442
what were the best speaker set to buy? some were very basic and quite bad. What was the top of the line?

>>10279226
I can't begin to tell you, but I had some Altec Lansing speakers at one point that were breddy gud, at least better than the shit you'd usually find at shops. Later on in the XP days I had pic related, the Logitech Z-340s. Motherfuckers lasted me about a decade, and they technically still worked, except the volume knob became way too fiddly and the left channel would some times go out if you messed with it.

>>10255442
did anyone have this? how was it?

>>10255460
Is that like 4bit sound?

>>10281768
Quite literally 1-bit.

>>10282064
Awesome

>>10282072
It's actually pretty crazy how long it stuck around as the sole sound source for PC games. The Adlib and Creative Music System cards didn't come out until 1987. There were other earlier options, but they didn't catch on, probably since they were not made with games in mind in the slightest.

>>10255442
Yamaha Waveforce XG, what was this exactly?

>>10266594
I found a project called pico gus, its a thing you can make that simulates the gus but a lot cheaper

>>10282276
Apparently that's the card that FFVII PC was meant to be used with, and it sounds very nice with it. Otherwise, it sounds anywhere from just ok to absolute shit (especially fucking OWA).

>>10282175
>It's actually pretty crazy how long it stuck around as the sole sound source for PC games
Not if you had a Tandy 1000 (or PCjr but that was a commercial failure). It had the same sound chip as a Master System/Game Gear, integrated on the motherboard
>All Tandy 1000 computers feature built-in video hardware, enhanced sound hardware (based on one of several variants of the Texas Instruments SN76496 sound generator) and several peripheral interfaces, including game ports compatible with those on the TRS-80 Color Computer, an IBM-standard floppy-disk controller supporting two drives, and a parallel printer port, all integrated into the motherboard in addition to the hardware standard on the IBM PC/XT and, in later Tandy 1000 models, PC/AT motherboards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYHtojsaRkY

>>10255442
did you need special speakers for the aureal 3d sound magic stuff?

>>10256881
What's the best PCMCIA sound card for DOS gaming?

>>10259808
There’s a handful of PCI cards that use something called SB PCI LINK, it’s a 6pin IDE cable that connects to your mobo from the card that’s supposed to give the card DMA access (and the other stuff) in DOS
I have a sound blaster card with a YMF724 Chip and and intel 440 chipset mobo and it works for me

>>10284823
I didn't even know they made those.

>>10255442
We used to go to small computer stores and dig around in their "random parts bin" for $5 boards that looked like they could be sound cards. I had a lot of fun trying to get dozens of different nameless devices working on a DOS-mode PC with various pseudo-soundblaster like autoexec commands and listening to how different music and effects sounded in Doom when I actually got them working.

Fast forward a generation, and I continue to be enraged beyond belief that Creative annihilated the Aureal A3D technology from the universe. It was the single best directional sound algorithm I ever had the privilege to experience on its original hardware form in games like Thief: The Dark Project. Words cannot describe how much better it was than that lazy pile of shit, EAX, that Creative forced as the standard. NASA engineers were supposedly involved in its design. Playing Thief with a mere pair of stereo headphones, it was truly a joy to be able to listen to the footsteps of guards while pressing your ear against a closed door with the lean key and knowing not just how far away they were in the opposing hall, but physically where they were and what direction they were moving. This binaural technique is highly underutilized in modern games; trust me, the positional sound we have now *does not compare*. Nowadays, the technology seems to solely exist in the hearing aid device industry.

>Modern Creative cards use the X-Fi chip, which contains Creative's own (not great) 3D implementation. The A3D patents were never used inside. In fact, the Foosball table at the main office was jokingly called the $32,000,000 table because it was the only thing from the purchase of Aureal's assets that was actually used. A couple of simple minor things (such as MacroFX) were used from the purchase of Sensaura, but none of the really good stuff (like Virtual Ear, for example, which would allow you to tune the 3D algorithm to your own ear shape).

>>10287497
Creative really were the villains of the PC hardware world prior to Nvidia, weren't they?

bamp

I can't find a soundfont to make doom's music sound exactly like Wolfenstein 3D's

What's the best Sound Blaster, in your opinion? Specifically for DOS gaming, that is.
https://strawpoll.com/ajnEO5m5xZW

im using a sound blaster live CT4760, for all round compatibility its fucking GOAT,

it works with dos/95 upto win11, according to wiki the sound out the front of the card is better than the rear which is thin and quiet, unless u have the addon daughter board, which i dont, i found the card good enough in win98 with the liveware 3.0 cd drivers, it was better than the cmedia card i was using, for later OS theres the kxaudio drivers, different drivers for win7 and 10, 10 driver works on win 11, there are about 5/6 different drivers at least a couple are known to be bugged and dont work, so finding the right one for ur Os is a headache, which is the same problem i have for the cmedia card as well as onboard ac97, loads of drivers only one works. this driver also has an option to switch the front and rear audio, i had to uncheck it to get sound out of the back of my card, it still sounds awesome tho at least as good as onboard hd audio if not better, also i think the kx audio drivers also work on audigy cards

ive also got a CT4620, the live cards just sound great,no buzz/hum white noise, i was really surprised at he quality from a card thats over 25yrs old. also from what i heard the card models that start with SB instread of CT are cards that were produced by DELL, which were sold as the same but were lacking features of the creative cards, not sure if this applies to all cards, maybe only the live/5.1, and not later audigys, someone prove me wrong