Was it really this bad?

[Amigaz]

Have recently hooked up my vintage PC(s) to my Mac to record some game tunes to compare the output from different soundcards.
First up was my Soundblaster Pro 2 (CT2600) , recorded the intro tunes from both Pinball Dreams and Pinball Illusions.
The output from it is really horrible, the .mod music isn't played properly and it sound quite muffled
http://sites.google.com/site/jivemaster2008/Home/PD_INTRO.ogg?attredirects=0
http://sites.google.com/site/jivemaster2008/Home/PFant_Intro.ogg?attredirects=0

Compare with the Gravis Ultrasound PnP
http://sites.google.com/site/jivemaster2008/Home/PD_INTRO_2.ogg?attredirects=0
http://sites.google.com/site/jivemaster2008/Home/PFant_Intro2.ogg?attredirects=0

I know Creative soundcards from this period aren't top quality but can it really be this bad?

[Hopeapaa]

Hmm... I remember reading somewhere that with Sound Blaster the Pinball Fantasies music would run too slow. It was because of some technical restriction, but I couldn't find any information about it when I made a search. Perhaps someone remembers this?

About the sound quality, remember that Sound Blaster Pro 2 is only capable of outputting 8-bit sound and only 22 050 Hz in stereo. Also it has much noisier amplifiers and structure than the Gravis Ultrasound.

There's one but, I think most of the MOD-music still used only 8-bit samples. The frequency might still be higher that what SB Pro2 is capable of.

I have lately been playing Pinball Fantasies with both Gravis Ultrasound 3.4 and Sound Blaster AWE32. They sound pretty much equal. I don't remember how bad the Sound Blaster Pro 2 was, I would have to dig one PC from the closed which has one of those in it and do the comparison... when I have some spare time...

[Amigaz]

Hmm... I remember reading somewhere that with Sound Blaster the Pinball Fantasies music would run too slow. It was because of some technical restriction, but I couldn't find any information about it when I made a search. Perhaps someone remembers this?

About the sound quality, remember that Sound Blaster Pro 2 is only capable of outputting 8-bit sound and only 22 050 Hz in stereo. Also it has much noisier amplifiers and structure than the Gravis Ultrasound.

There's one but, I think most of the MOD-music still used only 8-bit samples. The frequency might still be higher that what SB Pro2 is capable of.

I have lately been playing Pinball Fantasies with both Gravis Ultrasound 3.4 and Sound Blaster AWE32. They sound pretty much equal. I don't remember how bad the Sound Blaster Pro 2 was, I would have to dig one PC from the closed which has one of those in it and do the comparison... when I have some spare time...

We can't blame the 8bit and 22 050hz
I've recorded the same samples from my Amiga 3000 which sound chip technology is from the mid 80's and also had 8bit sound an 22 050
Listen to those samples here:
http://sites.google.com/site/jivemaster2008/Home/PD_INTRO_3.ogg?attredirects=0
http://sites.google.com/site/jivemaster2008/Home/PFant_Intro3.ogg?attredirects=0

Very close to the Gus, we can say the Amiga version is the reference version since these games were released first on the Amiga.

The Sound Blaster 16 fails also but the sound is cleared.
I used a CT2230 model:

http://sites.google.com/site/jivemaster2008/Home/PD_INTRO_4.ogg?attredirects=0
http://sites.google.com/site/jivemaster2008/Home/PFant_Intro4.ogg?attredirects=0

[Rhizome]

If I remember correctly, the Sound Blaster cards (except AWE32 and 64) could not play MODs in hardware as the Amiga and GUS because they are limited to 2 channels, so the CPU is actually playing the music.

Amiga = 4 hardware channels
GUS = 32 hardware channels
AWE32/64 = 30 hardware channels (2 for the OPL3 chip)

Paula is actually quite an advanced sound chip - one of the main reasons the demoscene continued onto the Amiga platform.

[5u3]

It was even worse!

Considering the quality of your samples and the fact that you supplied a GUS sample for PD lets me assume that you're playing one of the more advanced re-releases of Pinball Dreams, which actually has a quite decent MOD player.

The MOD player in the original 1993 version of PD sounds much worse. The game was supposed to run on 286/386sx machines, but this kind of CPU just barely manages to mix a 4-channel MOD at 22 kHz while doing nothing else! In order to keep the game playable at decent frame rates, the developers had to reduce the sample rate even further.

[Amigaz]

It was even worse!

Considering the quality of your samples and the fact that you supplied a GUS sample for PD lets me assume that you're playing one of the more advanced re-releases of Pinball Dreams, which actually has a quite decent MOD player.

The MOD player in the original 1993 version of PD sounds much worse. The game was supposed to run on 286/386sx machines, but this kind of CPU just barely manages to mix a 4-channel MOD at 22 kHz while doing nothing else! In order to keep the game playable at decent frame rates, the developers had to reduce the sample rate even further.

yeah, I have that version too....the one with Roland LA synth support.
The scrolling is terrible on it too 

Here's an example how the Gus Classic handled the Pinball Dreams title track
http://sites.google.com/site/jivemaster2008/Home/PD_INTRO_GUS_CLASSIC.ogg?attredirects=0

THR GF1 hadnled the track bit different than the Gus PnP interwave chip 

[mace]

There is a reason why the demo scene liked the GUS so much, hardware mixing.

For the SB the PC has to interpolate all those samples, and doing that you lose alot of quality.