- VCF South West - June 14 - 16, Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at University of Texas at Dallas
- VCF West - Aug 2 - 3, Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA
- VCF Midwest - Sept 7 - 8 2024, Schaumburg, IL
- VCF SoCal - Mid February 2025, Location TBD, Southern CA
- VCF East - April 2025, Infoage Museum, Wall NJ
-
Please review our updated Terms and Rules here
5150 sound card options
- Thread starter bettablue
- Start date
per
Veteran Member
Soundcards became a thing arund 1987, so 16-bit machines were common at the time. There were still games made with support for 4MHz 8088 machines, but most things were made with faster machines in mind.
As mentioned, AdLib (and eventually the SoundBlaster which technically has an onboard AdLib) was the allstar consumer market option. You also has the more expensive and advanced MIDI options, or the more obscure things like the Game Blaster, but many of those has not as widespread support.
As mentioned, AdLib (and eventually the SoundBlaster which technically has an onboard AdLib) was the allstar consumer market option. You also has the more expensive and advanced MIDI options, or the more obscure things like the Game Blaster, but many of those has not as widespread support.
The Creative Music System/Game Blaster gets no respect. I never heard it outside of DOSBox until I got the ATI soundcard I mentioned earlier in the thread, but to me the music sounds very similar to the Adlib and early Soundblaster. Games like Quest for Glory II sound pretty much identical between the three cards, with the exception of sound effects present only for the Soundblaster. Maybe my hearing is just shot.
Really? The CMS does square wave synthesis a lot like the NES sound chip. FM synthesis is capable of a lot warmer, more natural sounds. Great music can be made on both, they're just different. The CMS doesn't get a lot of attention, because a lot more games support Ad Lib.
per
Veteran Member
The Sound-Blaster basically contains an AdLib onboard, so I'm not surprised. The Game-Blaster is on the other hand all about squarewaves. Some early Sound-Blasters does have Game-Blaster support, but the two cards are otherwise totally different things.
sergey
Veteran Member
Building the card yourself is not a really cheap deal (you can get an ESS card for much less).
The cost of the parts is:
- PCB (from me) - $10 + $3 shipping in US
- Parts (except of Yamaha ICs) - about $29 from Mouser + $5 or so shipping. (You might already have some parts in your junk box, and save a few $$)
- Yamaha OPL2 + DAC - $7 on eBay + $4 or so shipping
So the total with shipping is about $58... again not cheap, but not as ridiculously expensive as buying the original Adlib (I've seen one on eBay for $200 or so?!... but I guess either the seller was nuts, or it is a really rare collector's item)
Cloudschatze
Veteran Member
Disappointingly, the noise-channel percussion techniques commonly used in Tandy/PCjr compositions and arrangements are almost unheard of with the C/MS chipset, despite it having similar capabilities.
Having preceded the Creative Music System to market in the U.S. by an entire year, it's not surprising that the (superior) Ad Lib MSC garnered the industry support and became a standard. If not for both Sierra and Radio Shack, I imagine the "Game Blaster" might be considered a complete flop today.
Having preceded the Creative Music System to market in the U.S. by an entire year, it's not surprising that the (superior) Ad Lib MSC garnered the industry support and became a standard. If not for both Sierra and Radio Shack, I imagine the "Game Blaster" might be considered a complete flop today.
Sierra embraced computer audio to a wild degree. For example, Mobygames lists only Sierra Online games as supporting the IBM Music Feature Card. Their early games also supported a wide variety of MIDI hardware from Casio, Yamaha, and a few others, most of which I've never heard of before.
Someone at Sierra really enjoyed music.
sergey
Veteran Member
Early Sound Blasters had OPL2 + DAC-SS parts (the same as on the AdLib board). The analog audio output part on SoundBlaster was a bit different from AdLib, but neither of them are HiFi quality. Anyway I don't think it will be any significant difference between FM sound played on AdLib or on a Sound Blaster.
Sound Blaster Pro 2 used OPL3 instead of OPL2 (backward compatible, and I think new OPL3 features are rarely used anyway). Many Sound Blaster 16 cards had OPL3 functionality built in to the SB chip, although Vibra 16 (CT2501) based cards have actual OPL3 chip. Finally newer Vibra 16 versions used FM emulation technique called CQM, which by some accounts produces crappy sound
Cloudschatze
Veteran Member
I imagine it made a lot of business sense to support as many devices as possible, given the lack of standards at the time. They obviously made an industry-defining decision with regard to MIDI-based soundtracks and use of the MPU-401 and MT-32, but the arrangements of these soundtracks for playback on "less-capable" hardware are rather poor by comparison, and in the case of the Ad Lib, likely gave rise to the unfortunate, "cheesy FM" moniker. That said, I'm quite fond of the Casio playback, even if no-one else seems to be...
MicroProse never seems to get the credit they deserve, but their sound/music support, if not as wide in scope as that from Sierra, is generally impressive across all supported devices.
per
Veteran Member
All SB16's with the CT1747 bus-controller has a real OPL3 aswell, but the die is embeded within the CT1747 chip. It's the cards having the CT1978 (like most PnP versions of the SB16) that used the CQM simulated FM.Many Sound Blaster 16 cards had OPL3 functionality built in to the SB chip, although Vibra 16 (CT2501) based cards have actual OPL3 chip. Finally newer Vibra 16 versions used FM emulation technique called CQM, which by some accounts produces crappy sound
A lot of cards with the CT1978 has room for a real OPL3 chip, but it's typically not populated.