Video Sound Card comparison - Digital Speech - DOS Game Wing Commander II

[Mau1wurf1977]

Enjoy and leave comments on the video page!

Quite interested in what differences others can hear.

You really need to use headphones though.

Use 720 or 1080 for audio quality!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3Zj1sioBBk

[CptKlotz]

If anyone is interested, I have made another recording:

WC2 intro on the Terratec EWS64XL (Crystal CS4236).

For some weird reason, I seem to be getting some slight clipping on the EWS, regardless of the volume of the "wave" channel in the EWS mixer. It's noticeable in some places, e.g. "arise, grandson" a few seconds into the audio file.


All in all, the differences seem to be quite subtle indeed, except for the SB 1.5 which is noticeably "brighter" but also contains more audible artifacts ("noisy" playback, clicks and pops). Could it be that the cause of this is simply a low-pass filter that has a higher cutoff frequency or weaker roll-off?

[Mau1wurf1977]

My understanding was that the older Sound Blaster cards didn't have any filters. And thus the very Raw sound, which I personally quite like...

This is what I "hear":\\This is what I got out of it:

1. Second most noisy. Sound very Raw and also very bright (not sure if this is the right word / strong on highs)

2. Most noisy. But soundstage sounds 2nd best IMO

3. Almost least noisy. Sound a bit "damp" though as though they are talking in a box and not a space ship / lack of highs

4. Least noisy, but very close with 3. Quite neutral sound stage. Biggest difference IMO is that it doesn't have that slight "cutou / clickt" when someone stops talking. This is something even the DOSBox version has. So Creative must have been aware of this and seemed to have addressed it on the AWE64 Gold.

[Cloudschatze]

I think you'll find that any of the cards bearing the "CT1703" CODEC, of which there are SB16 and AWE32 variants, have similar digital audio output to that of the AWE64.