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Wavetable Board... Should I Use It?

Raven

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I have one of these (Crystal S-W1/C):
sw1c.jpg


I just got a Creative AWE32 and was thinking of slapping this daughterboard onto it. I know that the AWE32 has an EMU8000 chip for wave stuff - should I even bother testing this out? Is it a matter of opinion? This daughterboard, interestingly, was packaged attached to a Crystal soundcard within one of those IBM "stealth" towers. The soundcard itself doesn't mean much to me, but a wavetable board can. If not for my AWE32, would this be good for any SB card?
 
I never checked my AWE32's to see if they had a waveblaster port, but I would only use those add ons on a SB16 anyway. Make sure that card (picture didn't work in your post) is a waveblaster part before you short something out.
 
Ah, sorry - the picture did work when I initially posted it - I guess the site got mad that I hotlinked.

It's got a female pin header that fits the pins on a SB16 for it. If I understand correctly the Waveblaster invented the Wavetable header and the others are all compatible replacements. Anybody confirm?
 
Ah, sorry - the picture did work when I initially posted it - I guess the site got mad that I hotlinked.

It's got a female pin header that fits the pins on a SB16 for it. If I understand correctly the Waveblaster invented the Wavetable header and the others are all compatible replacements. Anybody confirm?

I'd guess that the interface is MIDI compatible, and then it should work rigth away when it comes to playing notes. However, the system-exlusive commands may differ from card to card. You will problably want one being "General MIDI" compatible, because they use standarized system-exlusive commands.
 
Since that card has built in MIDI and RAM sockets for more samples then most waveblaster cards can support, why not use it as is? I believe the AWE32 used a different midi address then the SB16 + waveblaster combo so games either need direct support for the awe32 or you need to be able to change the midi port in the game setup.
 
Well then I can stick it on a SB16. The point is I like to have SB-compatible sound without emulation drivers, etc., so I like to use SB cards. I am using the AWE32 in my new box just because I've never used an AWE32, but I've got an SB16 right here with a Waveblaster header and since this ought to be compatible I'll give it a go - maybe in my 486, since that's more likely to make use of MIDI.
 
That Crystal daughterboard is a Dream chipset, which seems to be generally regarded as quite good. Not on par with Yamaha or Roland, of course, but a worthy upgrade from the AWE MIDI, in any case. This is just hearsay, though, since I don't personally own one, and it's a largely subjective thing anyway. I recommend you browse around the VOGONS forums, they've got a bunch of discussion and information about sound cards and daughterboards.

Most SB16s and AWE32s are actually a terrible choice for use with daughterboards, though. They tend to have DSP chips that cause 'stuck' MIDI notes, which is a problem on all versions except the first v4.05 (generally only found on the CT1740/1750) and last v4.16 (generally only found on Vibras and late AWE32 PnP's).

TBH, I've found that it's not worth dealing with Creative cards. There are a good number of clones that are far better in just about every way, including, believe it or not, Sound Blaster compatibility.
 
That Crystal daughterboard is a Dream chipset, which seems to be generally regarded as quite good. Not on par with Yamaha or Roland, of course, but a worthy upgrade from the AWE MIDI, in any case. This is just hearsay, though, since I don't personally own one, and it's a largely subjective thing anyway. I recommend you browse around the VOGONS forums, they've got a bunch of discussion and information about sound cards and daughterboards.

Most SB16s and AWE32s are actually a terrible choice for use with daughterboards, though. They tend to have DSP chips that cause 'stuck' MIDI notes, which is a problem on all versions except the first v4.05 (generally only found on the CT1740/1750) and last v4.16 (generally only found on Vibras and late AWE32 PnP's).

TBH, I've found that it's not worth dealing with Creative cards. There are a good number of clones that are far better in just about every way, including, believe it or not, Sound Blaster compatibility.

No offense, but what cards are you speaking of, because i have yet to own any sound card that's been better sounding than my Creative Labs setups.

I've had everything from a SB Pro in my first pc when i was little to my external SB card that i use with my mac when im at home now...
 
You can put 28MB (well 32 but 4 isn't used) and load any instrument set you like on an AWE32. Most waveblasters are stuck with 4MB or so of ROM samples (no ram expansion), so while most instruments sound decent that are not the best you can have.

Most DOS games have good soundblaster support because that was the target card. There are other cards with decent midi performance but they are best when games had them programmed in. For example I used a Reveal midi card that was a rebadged Ensoniq Soundscape, the MIDI was good but the effects section was not too good. I also have a couple Gravis Ultrasounds that work well when they are directly supported but they have issues with SB mode affects. The PAS16 (Pro Audio Spectrum) was another card that had decent support in games. The standard forf MIDI was the Roland MT-32 external MIDI box, very good and still pricey.

Setup on a sounblaster is not that bad on the units with jumpers, and a little more complicated on the PnP versions. For the most part Soundblasters are best for sound affects, and other cards are better for MIDI. I like the SB16 + Yamaha DB50-XB waveblaster for the best of both worlds in one machine, plus a Gravis Ultrasound PnP for added support. For older games without midi support a SB Pro 2.0 is your best bet, or an old adlib for the very first games.
 
No offense, but what cards are you speaking of, because i have yet to own any sound card that's been better sounding than my Creative Labs setups.

I have an ESS Audiodrive 1688 board in my 386, and a Yamaha YMF719 in my 486. They're pretty generic cards with those chipsets, too, nothing fancy. But even so, they have much less static and noise in their output than most any Creative ISA card, except maybe the AWE64 Gold. Both cards have properly working wavetable headers, and good FM synth quality, and seem to be 100% SB Pro compatible (which no Creative cards other than the SB Pro itself can offer).

Now, those cards aren't SB16 compatible, but that's not realistically much of a loss, since not many DOS games actually used 16-bit samples, and the ones that did, generally supported WSS, which these cards can do.

I've also found pretty good results with my Opti 928/Crystal 4231 board, but I haven't tested that one quite as thoroughly yet.
 
Well i havent used an Audiodrive 1688, but i've used crystal-based boards (plenty of them, and actually my HP has one built in) and Crystal is awful in my opinion for static/noise output and by far the worst i've used next to my old MediaVision ThunderBoard, that thing was flaky too, but i will say the CD-Rom that came with that thing went 12 years before it finally died, i think i still have that card around somewhere, not like i'd use it for anything serious.

I did have an AOpen board with a Yamaha chipset built in, and it was not bad, but i still have yet to have something sound as good as my Creative Labs cards when doing pure music (CD-A, MP3, etc).. My 386 doesnt even have a sound card in it (IBM PS/2 so cant even find one to fit the goofy slot), it just uses the PC speaker for whatever it needs for now.

My AWE32 card does not have much static output, unless i max out my speakers, it's one of the few ISA cards i can actually stand to plug my headphones directly into without going insane over the static and noise. Although, i do have to say i had a generic sound card ASound i think back in '99 to replace a dying Aztech board, and it did not do bad at all either, just not enough bass response.
 
For "the records" the wavetable board didn't work out at all. I had my 425 open to upgrade it from 4.5GB to 80GB HDD, and thought I'd toy with sound cards. I put an SB16 w/ the Crystal board on it in and tried playing Conquests of the Longbow with MT-32 sound. About half the notes came through - which is attributable to one of two things: the crystal board sucks, or the SB16 wavetable header sucks. Both are quite possible, as according to Wikipedia the SB16 had several revisions in which the wavetable header had serious problems. I'd place my money on the Crystal board sucking, though. Anyway the notes that did come through sounded epic - like a real piano and such. I'm looking for my SB16 Waveffects board to try out, as that has a built-in wavetable that shouldn't fail (isn't an MT-32 or anything, but it should get the job done).

Edit: Looks like my Waveffects board ran away from home - I've spent an hour looking and it's just gone. Oh well, no MIDI for me.
 
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It's certanly not MT-32-compatible then. You should try to play a standard General MIDI file through it too, as General MIDI and MT-32 is two different synths even though they both utilizes MIDI to transfer sounds.
 
From my experience with MPU-401 expansion boards and from what I have read, it seems nothing is truly fully compatible with the MT-32. If you want to be able to hear MT-32 sound in games as it was meant to be heard, you're going to need the real thing.

It's funny how a few people said that Crystal chipsets are shit, because they apparently have the best SNR of any sound chip of the era, and are supposed to offer excellent SB Pro compatibility. AWE32 in my opinion is the biggest piece of shit for wavetable sound in DOS. The TSR is gigantic, you have a measily 1mb of samples in ROM (compared to 2mb or 4mb on the waveblaster I and II) which barely sounds better than adlib, and the big slap in the face is that you can't even use soundfonts in DOS applications, making your RAM expansion rather useless. The SNR is better than previous creative offerings, but not much to write home about, and there are usually issues with MPU-401 stuck notes. Plus you can't get true stereo SB Pro sound.

My opinion is that Crystal and ESS chipsets with real OPL3 are the way to go.
 
As far as I know, none of the SB16 or later models support SB Pro 2.0 stereo, just mono. So I keep around a bunch of SB Pro 2.0 for the older DOS game machines (great for DOOM).

Do games that directly support the AWE32 load up their own samples in available RAM? I never realy looked into that since I generally just played games on a SB16 + Yamaha waveblaster and didn't bother getting AWE32's until a few years ago when I seen them at the recycler cheap. MIDI started going out of style by the time the AWE32/64 got popular because of CDROM music tracks.

Even the other Roland cards (waveblaster, and the stand alone ISA cards) do not sound exactly like the MT-32.
 
*edit - all of the info I have about the MT-32 is gleaned from a few evenings spent at the Quest Studios Forum. I have, unfortunately, not had the time to first-hand try all possible configurations at my disposal, though I believe that the information below is correct. I encourage you to goto Quest Studios and read through the forums yourselves. There are a LOT of dedicated MT-32 and MIDI enthusiasts that frequent there, and as a group, it is the most knowledgeable place I have found on the net regarding MIDI and MT-32 usage. Also note, further edits to this post will be in bold.

Raven: If you're interested in hearing what MIDI in Conquests of the Longbow is supposed to sound like, head on over to Quest Studios - Tom has put up flac-format midi recordings of pretty much every Sierra game out there. Fantastic Stuffs. (Incidently, CotL is my favorite Sierra title behind the Space Quest series).

If you're looking for real MIDI in your games, I'll second Anonymous Coward - get an MT-32. The midi cables are cheap (I got mine for $6 shipped off of eBay), and the MT-32, if you watch them, can be had for $30-40 shipped. Heck, I recently passed on one modified with the Real World hacks (professional hacks that fixes some of the shortcomings of the MT-32), and it ended up going for $45 shipped. And yes, I've been kicking myself ever since :) Note that unless you're lucky enough to find a v3 MT-32 (telltale sign - it has a headphone port on the back of it), then you'll most likely have timing problems in sending SYSEX data to the MT-32 in some games (typically Sierra games - the ones I most want to play): wrong notes will occasionally play, and playback may even stop. This is common as the v1 and v2 MT-32's had an error where they would overflow and require a reset... the v3 fixed this issue. The workarounds are twofold: first, slow your computer down to 286-style speeds. Second: get a Roland midi card which will buffer the SYSEX data to the card, sending it to the MT-32 at a speed which it can handle. This second solution will run you some bucks, btw. I ran into this overflow solution when I first got my MT-32, having listened to the tunes at Quest Studios prior to trying the game, I was disappointed... enough so that I recently purchased a Roland MIDI card so I wouldn't have to fiddle with SlowMo each time I wanted to fire up a game.

Oh - it's fair to note that USB-to-midi cables exist and are cheap as well (again, $6 shipped off of eBay). These will work great with DOSBox on your modern PC, and you can use the built-in speed controls in DOSBox to get your MT-32 sounding right (or your MT-32 emulation, which DOSBox supposedly does passingly well - I've never used it)

So far as MPU-401 compatibility, you can use a Sound Blaster or compatible card (to my knowledge, any SB/compatible card will do, but this may be limited to the 16-bit Creative cards - I've not yet tested with my SBPro v2 - currently, an Ensoniq generic card is what's in my gaming machine)with a midi-out to drive your MT-32. Bear in mind that true MPU-401 compatible supports both Intelligent Mode and UART mode. The only true MPU-401 compatible cards I'm aware of were produced by Roland, or contained the Roland chips (excluding the Roland RAP-10 sound card, sadly). Nearly every other card on the market only supported UART mode, although this wasn't usually a problem for gaming as it was only the earliest MIDI games that needed Intelligent mode to work, and for many of those games, there are hacks available that will patch them to work with your Sound Blaster/MT32 combo (at least for many of the Sierra games - Quest Studios hosts these files, as does sierrahelp.com).

As for my retro setup, I currently have a Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 for digital sound effects, and I'm currently using it to drive my MT-32. (I double-checked! - oops! looks like I planned to pop the SB Pro in the rig, but I never got around to it. The generic Ensoniq is in there now - sorry for any confusion, guys) I've recently purchased a Roland SCC-1a to use as a midi card - I want the dream system I always wanted back in the day, and when that baby's delivered, I've got it :) - I'll be using the SCC-1a exclusively as a midi card to power my MT-32, with my SB Pro running the digital sound effects. So far as noise/static on the SBPro? I've never noticed it unless I cranked all the volumes to max... and I expect distortion at that point.

FWIW, I also used the Pro Audio Spectrum 16 back in the day - for about 8 years, actually - and it was a wonderful card. Rather tricky to get going with some of my Origin titles, but once I got that set, I never had to worry about it again. Again, only noisy when blasted at full volume. Great card. Wish I knew for sure what I did with it.... (I'm thinking that it was "loaned" and never came back - sigh)
 
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Does the external midi/game port on the SB Pro 2 work with the MT32?

In short, YES :) The midi/game port on the Sound Blaster cards will all work with the MT-32, but in UART mode only (which is all you need for most games). Just bear in mind that you may need to slow your computer down in order to get the correct sounds from your MT-32 unless you have the 3rd revision of the MT-32, which is easily denoted by the presence of a headphone jack on the back. Also, you'll need the proper midi cable. Monoprice.com sells them for about $8-9 shipped, unless you want to go the eBay route and save a few bucks.

*edit - I double-checked my gaming rig. I had thought I had the SB Pro v2 in there, but apparently I never got around to swapping it with my generic Ensoniq card. To the best of my knowledge, the SB Pro v2 will work with the MT-32 just fine, but I have not yet tested that assertion - sorry for any confusion.
 
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