Best Choices for the ISA Sound Blasters

[Great Hierophant]

To me, there are two kinds of Sound Blasters, the early, 8-bit kind and the later, 16-bit sort.  

Of the early sound blasters, there are five major kinds:

Sound Blaster 1.0
Sound Blaster 1.5
Sound Blaster 2.0
Sound Blaster Pro
Sound Blaster Pro 2

For me, I see no reason to obtain a 1.5 over a 1.0 because the 1.0 has the CMS chips and the 1.5 does not.  Also, while 2.0 offers improvements over 1.0, it rarely comes with the chips or the special PAL needed to use them.  Also, a Pro is more functional than a 2.0 anyways.  As far as Pros go, there is no reason to obtain a Pro if a Pro 2 is available, as one OPL3 chip is still superior to two OPL2 chips.  

For the later Sound Blasters, there are many, many models, but three important ones:

Sound Blaster 16 ASP/CSP
Sound Blaster AWE32 PnP
Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold

The Sound Blaster 16 is something of a vanilla sound card, but it does contain a MPU-401 compatible midi interface and a waveblaster connector.  I don't believe there was much support, especially game support, for the ASP chip, but its rather rare these days anyways.  The card is mostly compatible with the older sound blasters, except for the stereo functionality of the SB Pro.  Later cards may have restored this.  Audio output quality is not the greatest.  

The Sound Blaster AWE32 is a very controversial card.  Its wavetable synthesis required the AWEUTIL driver that takes up a lot of conventional memory (although it apparently can load itself into the High Memory Area.)  Also, it was incompatible with games that used DOS Extenders unless the game specifically supported the AWE.  Sound quality is an improvement from the Sound Blaster 16.  Some AWE32s contain the socket for the rare ASP chip.  Even the wavetable header must use the AWE.  

The Sound Blaster AWE64 is even more controversial.  Easy expansion of the wavetable RAM is impossible due to the proprietary interface and the wavetable header is gone.  AWEUTIL still must be used.  Best ouput quality, however, so if you don't need the expansion RAM this card is for you.  

If you have a good daughterboard like the SCB-55 or the DB-50XG or their ISA card equilavents, then I challenge anyone to show why you would need the wavetable synthesis of the AWE, at least for games.  However, that is not to say that an AWE is useless, its digital sound capabilities can still be used without the dreaded AWEUTIL.

[Cloudschatze]

I think the best choice for an ISA Sound Blaster would have to be MediaVision's Pro AudioStudio16.  :smt110

Otherwise, my first recommendation would be the SBPRO2, followed by the AWE64 (If 16-bit playback is desired). Creative Labs and General MIDI are mutually-exclusive, as far as I am concerned.

One rather nice "feature" of the AWE cards is their routing of FM playback through the effects-processor. As a single-card solution, I'd much rather have nice-sounding FM than abysmal wavetable playback. Reverb and chorus make a world of difference with FM. Not without fault though, I've noticed that any FM produced by the AWE64 is ripe with nasty, high-pitched overtones (that are only audible to one of my ears, no less). Maybe this can be filtered out.

[Great Hierophant]

I think the best choice for an ISA Sound Blaster would have to be MediaVision's Pro AudioStudio16.  

Is there any difference between Media Vision's "Pro Audio Spectrum" and "Pro Audio Studio"?  While the PAS does boast Sound Blaster compatibility, I'm sure there are some games that will not work with it when slected to Sound Blaster mode.  Presumably the PAS 16 is SB16 compatible.  

If (non-creative) wavetable cards could work with the AWE32 without the AWEUTIL driver, then the AWE32 would be undoubtedly the best choice.  Unofurtnately, as AWEUTIL provides the MPU-401 emulation, it must be memory resident to work with the wavetable midi cards.  However, to use the effects on the OPL3 chip, you will need AWEUTIL in DOS.

[Alistair]

What's wrong with AWEUTIL? Disable the MPU-401 emulation on it and then use one of those SB MIDI Port Utilities (from Toms' Utilities page). That's what I always did.

- Alistair

[Cloudschatze]

Is there any difference between Media Vision's "Pro Audio Spectrum" and "Pro Audio Studio"?  While the PAS does boast Sound Blaster compatibility, I'm sure there are some games that will not work with it when slected to Sound Blaster mode.  Presumably the PAS 16 is SB16 compatible.

The original PAS is an 8-bit card, and is not Sound Blaster compatible.

The Pro AudioSpectrum16 and AudioStudio16 are nearly identical, with the latter featuring a couple of extra mixer settings, a line-out, and better component shielding (thus being the better-sounding of the two). Both cards are 100% Sound Blaster 2.0 compatible, as MediaVision had to license the technology from Creative (after the Thunderboard lawsuit...). None of the PAS cards are SB16-compatible, and required native support for 16-bit sound.

Later MediaVision cards, based on the Jazz chipset (MVPRO3D, etc.), added SBPRO2 compatibility and a wavetable header, but are not backwards-compatible with any of the Spectrum line. Still, one of these may be a decent alternative to an SBPRO2.

However, to use the effects on the OPL3 chip, you will need AWEUTIL in DOS.

Running AWEUTIL with the /s switch will initialize just the effects and not the MIDI emulation, and will not need to be loaded as a TSR (nor will you get that "aweful" NMI error...).

[Great Hierophant]

What's wrong with AWEUTIL? Disable the MPU-401 emulation on it and then use one of those SB MIDI Port Utilities (from Toms' Utilities page). That's what I always did.

- Alistair

AWEUTIL is bad for two reasons.  

First, it requires very large amounts of conventional/upper/high memory.  Combine that with other programs that use this memory, such as DOS, the mouse driver, the CD-ROM driver, the joystick driver, the expanded/extended memory manager and whatever else you are running in low memory, and games start to complain about not enough free conventional RAM.  

Second, and this shows a true lack of foresight on Creative's part, AWEUTIL doesn't work with protected mode DOS games because of the NMI nonsense unless the game specifically supports the AWE32.  When the AWE was released, DOS extenders were the DirectX of their day, ubiquitous.  Use a Protected Mode DOS game that doesn't support the AWE and I hope OPL3 will do.  

Your solution seems limited to Sierra games, when hundreds of games could be affected by one or both of these issues.

[Alistair]

I wasn't offering some definitive solution, I was referring to what I do with Sierra games. Given that this message board it for the "Sierra Soundtrack Series", you'd think I'd be alright with those comments.

When you say it uses up con. memory, do you mean it's in autoexec.bat or config.sys?
I run an AWE32 and had memory problems for years, but it turned out I had just been ignorant about my statrup files (autoexec/config) for years, nothing to do with the AWE32.

Regards,
- Alistair

[Great Hierophant]

http://www.ibiblio.org/GameBytes/issue19/greviews/sbawe32.html

I used this page as an example.  No less than six TSRs are loaded!

[apeman]

To be fair, the SB16 is significantly less noisy than its predecessors. Just one of the reasons I'm still emotionally attached to my SB16 ASP....

[Alistair]

My autoexec/config look nothing like that, so I'm guessing these guys have  loaded every possible TSR into the memory. Good thinking fellas.

- Alistair

[Zemus]

Note that the requirement for an emulation TSR means that one needs a separate setup for each MIDI mode, although this is less troublesome now that MS-DOS allows multiple configurations.

I think this quote shows the level of knowledge the author has. Anyone knows you can go into the SB dir and change the config by simply rerunning the program. I also load it with LH, which helps.

DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\SETVER.EXE
DEVICEHIGH=D:\SBAWE32\DRV\CSP.SYS /UNIT=0 /BLASTER=A:220
DEVICEHIGH=D:\SBAWE32\DRV\CTSB16.SYS /UNIT=0 /BLASTER=A:220 I:5
D:1 H:5
DEVICEHIGH=D:\SBAWE32\DRV\CTMMSYS.SYS

D:\SBAWE32\DIAGNOSE /S
D:\SBAWE32\SB16SET /P /Q
LOADHIGH C:\TVGA\VESA.EXE

And what the hell is this crap? I can run any DOS game fine without loading any of these. These config files made me unwell...
I can usually get the conventional memory to a little over 600KB after loading CD-ROM, AWEUTIL and the Mouse driver. What else do you need to play an old DOS game?

[Great Hierophant]

I assumed that you needed the six TSRs to get the AWE working at all.  If all you are using is the FM and SB16 digital audio capabilities, then you wouldn't really need to load any driver in the config.sys or the autoexec.bat, at least for games.  That leaves the mouse and CD-ROM drivers, some of which you should be able to load in High Memory.  Cute Mouse is very small mouse driver, and non-Microsoft DOSs are more flexible with conventional RAM.

[Zemus]

Any of the AWE32s I've tried only required the SET BLASTER sentence to work simply because some games use it to detect the sound card. AWEUTIL is of course needed if the game only has a General MIDI driver and you want to use the AWE32's samples.

On the other hand, one of those AWE32 PnP cards might require one of the .sys files to set it up since they're not supposed to have any jumpers. Never used one though, so I can't say for certain how they work...
I remember Windows 98 thought that my card was one of the PnP types and proceeded to set it to use some weird ports which didn't work at all.

[Juho Sippola]

This is the initialization string that is needed to get my CT3980 AWE32 PnP running:

set blaster=a220 i5 d1 h5 p300 e620 t6 // required SET variables
set sound=c:\sb16 // required SET variables
c:\sb16\ctpnp.exe // initializes audio
set midi=synth:1 map:e mode:0 // required SET variables
c:\sb16\diagnose /s // initializes audio
c:\sb16\aweutil /s // initializes audio
c:\sb16\mixerset /p /q // loads proper mixer settings
c:\sb16\ct3dse off // this removes the 3D stereo enhancement

And this is for my AWE64 Gold:

SET SOUND=C:\SB16
SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E MODE:0
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P300 E620 T6
C:\SB16\CTCM
c:\sb16\diagnose /s
c:\sb16\aweutil /s
c:\sb16\mixerset /p /q
c:\sb16\ct3dse off

IIRC no TSR's are needed as long as one doesn't use the GM emulation. The MIDI port is set for 0300h because of the coexisting Roland MIDI interface. CTPNP.CFG had to be edited in order to get the MIDI port properly at 0300h.

Making DOS with more than enough of conventional memory free isn't that hard. However, beware of any add-on cards with own BIOS (SCSI and network adapters)! I once had bootable Initio INI-9100 SCSI card which shadowed BIOS straight into UMB, thus effectively cutting 64kB of exploitable memory. Add in the SCSI controller's device driver and you had around 90kB disadvantage versus using only IDE devices.

[Great Hierophant]

set blaster=a220 i5 d1 h5 p300 e620 t6 // required SET variables
set sound=c:\sb16 // required SET variables
c:\sb16\ctpnp.exe // initializes audio
set midi=synth:1 map:e mode:0 // required SET variables
c:\sb16\diagnose /s // initializes audio
c:\sb16\aweutil /s // initializes audio
c:\sb16\mixerset /p /q // loads proper mixer settings
c:\sb16\ct3dse off // this removes the 3D stereo enhancement

While initializing the sound card variables shouldn't use RAM, what about running all those executables?

[Juho Sippola]

They just initialize the card, nothing is actually left into the memory.

[robertmo]

I think the best is
Sound Blaster Pro I

Sound Blasters 1, 1.5 and 2.0 don't have stereo and have CMS chip but Adlib was produced and used before CMS so every game that uses CMS uses Adlib too, and of course Adlib has way better quality than CMS (CMS is just like twelve pc speakers playing simultaneously)

Sound Blasters Pro II, 16, AWE32 and AWE64 don't have stereo with some games (those that use Sound Blaster Pro I only). They also won't have digitized effects with some games (those that use ctvoice.drv, "Innocent Until Caught" for example) cause their ctvoice.drv is 30kB in size. (My sb pro 2 CT-1600 has a 30kB ctvoice.drv. Does anyone know whether there was a different version of sb pro 2 that had a small ctvoice.drv?)

Sound Blasterd AWE32 and AWE64 have wavetable music, but Sound Canvas (General MIDI) was invented and used before AWE so every game that uses AWE uses Sound Canvas too,  and Sound Canvas has way better compatibility with games than AWE. They have 44kHz and 16-bit (but I don't think there are many games that use it). They have MPU-401 UART port but it is not needed if you have Sound Canvas. They may have ASP chip but it wasn't used by many games.

Pro Audio Spectrum 16 is only SB 2 compatible so no stereo. No ctvoice.drv (no digitized sound). It has 44kHz and 16-bit (but I don't think there are many games that use it).

So if you want perfect games compatibility with digitized sound and stereo music Sound Blaster Pro I is the best.

[Juho Sippola]

Personally I prefer AWE64 Gold, it's the only ISA Soundblaster I've used that doesn't have terrible background noise. In my AWE32 the line out is terribly weak (not sure whether intentionally or because of defect) and the speaker out, while powerful enough to even drive reasonably sized speakers without an external amplifier, hisses like hell.

Not much of use for those cards nowadays anyway since one has to 1. FIND and 2. Pay like €300 to get something like these babies http://www.ibase-i.com.tw/mb880.htm http://www.ibase-i.com.tw/mb886.htm - not to even mention how lackluster P4 CPU's are when compared against P-M, Core Duo or AMD64 CPU's.

[Cloudschatze]

Sound Blasters Pro II[/u], 16, AWE32 and AWE64 don't have stereo with some games (those that use Sound Blaster Pro I only).

I'm going to need an example...

Pro Audio Spectrum 16 is only SB 2 compatible so no stereo. No ctvoice.drv (no digitized sound). It has 44kHz and 16-bit (but I don't think there are many games that use it).

CTVOICE.drv will work with the PAS16, but you need to have a '91-dated version. Also, I think you'll find that most games with stereo effects natively support the PAS. In addition, some Sierra titles (supposedly) feature 16-bit effects playback for just the PAS/16.

[Great Hierophant]

Sound Blasters Pro II[/u], 16, AWE32 and AWE64 don't have stereo with some games (those that use Sound Blaster Pro I only).

I'm going to need an example...

I believe Wolfenstein 3D is the best example.