PCI soundcard that is OPL2/OPL3 compatible...?

[Arf the Lab]

Woof. I do a lot of work with Ad Lib (OPL2/OPL3 synth.). One of my newer machines doesn't have ISA slots (so I cannot use an authentic Ad Lib soundcard), but I wish to use its power to do some specific Ad Lib related tasks.

Can someone make recommendations as to what newer, PCI sound card is best for OPL2 *and* OPL3 support? Basically I mean authentic OPL2/OPL3 chips on the card, not emulation or "similar" FM chip synth. Also I'd like to know the strong and weak points of the cards.

Thanks in advance for the help.

[shad0wfax]

Take a look at some PCI soundcard based on Avance Logic ALS 4000 chipset. This one have a FM synth aswell as a wavetable synth, and it works with software written for FM. I don't know if it uses "real" OPL2/3 chipsets, but it's worth trying...

[HondaSiR]

Since the original AdLib card used a Yamaha chip for FM synthesis, might I suggest a PCI based Yamaha YMF-724 XG sound card? Yamaha chips tend to emulate FM sounds better than Creative based chips.

[NOPIK]

ALS sounding more like AdLib, then YMF7XX chips. But no one modern chip is fully compatible with OPL.
If you wan't migrate your sounds on modern software synths - use old computer as sound module. And you can buy a couple of cheap cards ALS, ESS, Yamaha, Creative (Ensoniq based) - to test them.

[Arf the Lab]

Well, searching for ALS 4000 on eBay comes up with several results:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=3701&item=5168759477&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=3701&item=5168804962&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=44981&item=5170415157&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

Any suggestion as to which one (if any of them) would be better for OPL2/OPL3 support?

[shad0wfax]

As long as they are all equally based on Avance Logic's ALS 4000 chipset, I wouldn't say there're strong differences in terms of FM compatibility. Maybe there're differences in the audio circuitry that result in different levels of audio quality, but I can't help you on this topic. Anyway, ALS 4000 was never intended to be a state-of-the-art chipset, but only an economic alternative to Soundblaster.

[NOPIK]

This is the same ALS400, so, there is no difference in sound between them.