This is 100% why I subscribed to this channel. DOS & sound cards!! Great video Phil, I really like that you spend time on this. Younger gamers will never understand what an upgrade like this did to us back in the day :-) This card is great in every aspect. I basically grew up with it and all its pros and cons. I own 3 of them myself and are precious to me. One thing that might also be done with this card is to load soundfonts and play DOS games like Doom, ROTT, Duke3D, ... but the only disadvantage is that you can only load those in windows95/98 :-( but it works! Keep it up!
Thanks! Yea I really like to focus on DOS for these reviews. But you're right, it's another unique feature of this card that's well worth mentioning! Doom with the Arachno Sound Font for example, soooo good.
One of the things i liked best about this card. Depending on the memory you choose to install on this card, you can do some amazing things with Sound Fonts with it. Using that function you can make the AWE32 sound like an MT-32, or a GUS, or just about anything you want. I chose this card exclusively because i wanted an amazing card that was very compatible.
AWE32 is the ultimate nostalgic soundcard for me personally, my very first soundcard. Not the best, but decent card, has it's very distinct sound to it, so to speak.
I feel like the AWE cards represent the "ultimate incarnation" of the DOS ISA sound card - like they took the technology as far as it could ever go. Very cool from that perspective. And I like their unique sound.
Thank you so much for this video! A great review. I noticed based on my list that the CT3670 is very unique in the 32 line: it is effectively an AWE64 Value with SIMM slots. Compare the chipset to the CT4380 or CT4500 cards and you'll find they are identical.
+PhilsComputerLab Excellent video as usual! When I had this card, I remember that most games could only really effectively use 8MB of ram on the card. Anything more was intended for specialized audio programs. Didn't find this out until I'd spent $100 on 16MB of ram for it. Oh well. It was still bad-ass. Even when I upgraded to the AWE64, this card went into my wife's PC. She loved the sound improvement.
Once I put 8 megs of RAM in my AWE32 (it was a challenge finding 4M modules back then), next loaded 8MB wavetable included on a SB-Live! CD. It was nice, quite surprising that this just worked.
Best sound blaster I have ever owned for DOS compatibility and MIDI sound. So much so that I tracked down another for my 98 gaming machine and searched high and low a few years back for the MIDI ROM. Also owning it in high school probably made me a little biased...
im glad you did a review for this, I have the card and never knew it had all these awesome features. Cant wait to use it in a nice system build one day.
I had a CT3990 myself in my "primary system" for quite a long time, Was my first Audio Card which I put into my 386 in 2003, and I brought it forward up through to my K6-2. I ended up swapping out for a boring AudioPCI as the ISA Card had some issues with Windows XP. Apparently the 3990 also had CQM which sounds different, though since it was my first Audio card I wouldn't have noticed. Shame I tossed it out along with all my old stuff a few years ago- I no longer had systems that could use them so it seemed silly to keep them around and I figured I could get them cheap ($5-$6 was my thinking) online if I wanted them again later anyway. definitely misjudged that one!
This exact model was my third soundcard and the only one I ever regretted buying. My first one was Aztech Sound Galaxy Pro 16, which was cheap and perfectly hardware compatible with SB PRO, so no complaints there. I think it even had the real Yamaha OPL3 chip on board, so even FM music sounded as it should (but I hated FM music from the get go, so it didn't matter to me). Of course, since I grew tired of FM music almost immediately, I wanted to have wavetable MIDI music, so next I bought Media Forte Sound Forte SF32-WAV. It was an interesting hybrid because it had Creative Vibra16 chip (so it worked 100% as SB16 even without any drivers), but also ICS Wavefront wavetable synth (the same one was used in Turtle Beach Tropez series of cards), which was a very decent and balanced General Midi wavetable synth. In fact, I've heard many wavetable implementations over the years and to me this one is one of the best, right behind Roland and Yamaha wavetable synths. The reason I bought Creative SB32 next was because it had the ability to use installed RAM for bigger soundfont banks and I was sold on the idea. The problem was there were no better sounding banks available for it at the time (there were some awful sounding 4 and 8 MB banks made by EMU in circulation and they sounded much worse than the default 2MB bank, which wasn't all that great to begin with - worse than ICS Wavefront, that's for sure). So I was left with a soundcard that required a TSR program to switch to GM mode and it was a pain in the ass, because it was incompatible with some of the games, and it actually sounded noticably worse in MIDI than my previous sound card. And to add to this it had a very noisy analog output, especially in comparison to Sound Forte, which was very clean. So I don't think I can recommend this card for retro gaming, it has many features, sure, but the implementation is lacking.
SB32 used the EMU Systems EMU8000 dsp, which also was the same dsp-chip used in emus ESi32 Turbo samplers. The SB32 was a pretty nice sampler actually for its price. Nice review.
DSP is digital signal processing (as opposed to e.g. an analog filter or analog oscillator; a DSP uses digital math like a processor does). The EMU-8000 DSP that Creative used on the AWE32s and SB32s does 32-channel wavetable synthesis (that's how MIDI is implemented in windows on these cards through a driver); it also does effects like reverb, chorus, vibrato, filters, ADSR-envelopes etc.
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Phill, my first sound card ! I Remember the Big box, inside Books, CDs , SBig PC Speakers , microphones, and too many itens in package ! Kkkkk today send only board and anti estatic bag
I had one, but as chronic 'why read manuals guy' I never revealed the mystery of mpu-401 emulation. And demo tune Symphony I'm still using as alarm sound :D
I have two of these now with memory maxed out. It's an amazing card really, and I got them cheap but they got at least €100 these days unless you get lucky.
Great video showing some nice details of the card. I just checked my draws and I bought this exact card for a project but I ended up using a AWE 32 instead.
Dear Phil, what a great review, i have a CT3620, after this review i will revisit that soundcard and check out roland mt32 mode. Didn’t know it could be emulated like this. Thank you, subscriber and a 👍🏻 from me😁 Retrocengo
That does sound nice for being CQM. I'm not sure I'd really be able to hear the difference in a blind listening test. I went with a CT3900 and 32 MB of RAM. This is a full length non-PNP AWE32 which has the CT-1747 chip with an integrated OPL3. It can use the reverb and chorus through the EMU-8000 chip like yours can. The hanging note bug is supposedly not present in CT-1747 chip cards and I have yet to hear it so I believe that too be true. It does have single cycle DMA click bug however, you can notice it in e.g. wolfenstein 3D if you disable the music and listen carefully while opening a door or something; it's not hugely distracting. As for MPU-401 emulation I don't know or care. Anyway, gets used mostly for late DOS and win95 gaming ca 1992-1998. For me the magic year when the PC became something I paid any attention to was 1992. Prior to this the Amiga was where it was at in terms of computers; in 1992, we got Ultima underworld, Wolfenstein 3D, Ultima 7 and Dune II on the PC and the writing was just on the wall for the Amiga. There's nothing earlier than this I'd want to play in DOS and most of it's clustered around the DOOM - Quake era as far as DOS is concerned. The horror with an Amiga was all the diskette swapping. For a game like Monkey island II you'd have like 10 diskettes. 1992, harddrives became cheap enough, CDROM-drives were almost cheap enough, sound blasters had made PC sound not completely awful. The 386 DX40, DX2-66 and pentium 166 with or without MMX are the processors that just stayed on the market and dropped in price, over and over until you ended up with affordable PCs; hell I remember the 386-DX40 was still for sale while pentiums were starting to roll around. I didn't have a PC of my own to play these 1992 games, but I noticed them and started thinking about an "IBM clone" for the first time. In 1994, I think, we got a family machine and I must say Ultima underworld was every bit as good as I thought it was. This game represented the open-world branch of modern western RPGs, sprung almost fully formed, seemingly out of nowhere. Blue sky/looking glass might possibly have been time traveling space aliens; I'm not sure; that's how far ahead of its time this game was.
Why I heard that friend that told me he would purchase my AWE 32 after I purchased my Hercules Game theater XP??? WHY!!! (That's what happen when going from dual boot dos/win3.11/win95 Slot-A to win98 Socket-A, so little apreciation for old hardware back then 😢) Thank so much for all your videos!
I have a sound blaster 32 too, mine is the model ct3600, i got it as a part of a big lot that i paid 10 euros + shipping, very big deal, all the features works great in my ms dos system, also on mt 386 40 mhz machine that uses the fx3000 modetherboard that you used for a build video some time ago
in that same lot i also got a lot of parts i used in my 386 build, i really like that motherboard, now i am testing it with a sound blaster pro 2 i got as a part of a 18 euros lot, in the same lot i got some other goodies too like a MDA graphics card and many other isa cards and also a matrox millennium g220 pci
for me the sound blaster pro 2 it's a good card, but the fm is giving me problems in some games, for example in moneky isaland i have no sound from the fm or very low sound, in doom and duke nukeman 3d it works as expected, good things of this card are the fm quality, because uses an original opl3, and the card is driver less because uses jumpers, and also the sound portion works in 8 bit, it can work in 8 bit isa slots on machines like 8088, and 16 bit bit is needed only if you want to use the cd port, don't know if it has problems with dma or the midi port, but in wolfestesin 3d and day of the tentaclke the playback just worked fine for me i didn't hear nothing of strage, i don't have midi modules to test the mpu compatibility unfortunately, thats my small review of it, i hope you enjoyed
Interesting. So the SB Pro is the first Creative card with a mixer. So I recommend installing the software, and adjusting the levels. When I do sound card reviews, I run the mixer tool after every game, as games often change them.
Discovered one of my soundblasters is this exact model. I thought it was an AWE32, not a SB32. I didn't know about the midi emulation abilities and that trick to switching the interrupt may have stymied me if I ever came across it. My card wasn't working the last time I tried it but the machine had a memory config problem, I should try it again soon.
I just bought this card on Ebay for 20€. It came with 4M of memory installed. I'm looking forward to playing games with it! All the demos I've seen so far sound great (even the farty synth in DOOM is kina charming) so I'm really happy I ended up with it. I'm currently building a retro gaming system based on a Pentium-MMX made in the same week I was born, running Windows 98 for DOS and early Windows gaming.
Really wish there was a way to purchase Turrican II for DOS. Also, I wonder how it would sound by default after installing 8MB of memory, since 4MB would be reserved for ROM samples for the E-Mu 8000
I miss my SB32 (Which I had 8Mb installed on to be able to have modules playing in the background in MS-DOS while barely using any RAM or CPU as the card would both handle the RAM requirements for the modules as well as the majority of the processing). Truly an AWEsome (see what I did there hehe) card!
@@philscomputerlab Well, what I could do with that card due to it pretty much being an audio co-processor would leave many in awe. Most (if not all) ISA sound cards were basically audio co-processors (currently would be called accelerators) due to the ISA BUS limitations demanding the card to do more stuff than otherwise would be possible, like the later PCI cards that pretty much did nothing aside being a CODEC to create an analogue wave and used the CPU to do most if not all of the processing, which mandated the need for MMX enabled CPUs. This is also why I only switched from an ISA sound card to something else after there was no longer possible to use ISA cards, very few PCI cards would actually do the processing for you therefore requiring more CPU resources to do anything. When I finally stopped using an ISA card was when I upgraded my P3 to an Athlon XP and made certain to use an NVidia based motherboard that had a proper sound card on-board, is was an NForce2 Deluxe Gold (I forget the manufacturer), basically that mobo had a proper sound card, not just a codec, that had 3 DSPs onboard to handle the audio processing. This was one of the few motherboards that had proper audio on them (Actually I believe that in that time this was the ONLY motherboard with a proper audio card embedded). It was an expensive motherboard due to the NVidia Chipset and Dual Channel support but damn was it worth every penny. Testing that system against the same CPU on ANY other cheaper motherboard (not based on the same chipset or not including that audio card) would result in large performance deficit for the other systems, specially when audio was included as part of the benchmark. When not testing onboard audio the other boards based on the same chipset would rank pretty much the same performance wise. As soon as "heavy" audio processing was needed my system would take the lead as it would not use nearly any CPU cycles to handle the audio. I miss the days when normal hardware didn't have performance crippling stuff implemented as cost savings...
I wish I did my research before I bought my CT3980 AWE32 card! If I knew about this one, I could've got a better, bug-free card for a lot less. Great review though, pretty sure this same software setup applies to any of the SB32 and AWE PnP cards, so it's good to have such a thorough guide in the one place.
I own the same sound card and i was expecting your review, Phil! I am very glad! This helped me a lot. I am having difficulties for finding 30-pin SIMMs above 1MB. If you know some good source, please let me know. Many thanks to you and I will keep commenting here in 2018. Happy new year!
I had trouble finding them too and had to import my 16 MB simms from the US. I'm pretty sure these are the exact same ones but I cannot swear it: eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/30PS16MB/ . 70 ns 30 pin FPM SIMMs is what the AWE32 expects; but 60 ns worked as expected for me. They did have tin-plated contacts though, and preferably you would want to match gold with gold and tin with tin to minimize the possibility of corrosion.
Well with the prices these cards go for, I'm pretty much priced out :/ I never bothered picking up AWE 32 cards back in the day, so that's that I'm afraid.
PhilsComputerLab I'm your subscriber since early beginning of this channel. and I've seen every single video you posted. I'm also member of Retro PC Gaming group (i'm guy who posted picture of computer full of car seat foam particles). Keep up good work.
IKR? The trials and tribulations, the sleepless nights of waiting for windows to reinstall after a crash lol We called the "PnP" promise that was supposed to come with late version of ISA/Early PCI as "Plug n Pray" lol It is indeed a interesting time period. Would be great to see a vid on it. Have a good one!
Just one hint. I recently installed this in my SiS530-based SS7 motherboard. The GM/MT-32 Emulation would crash, as long as the internal Crystal-based onboard audio was enabled. Once I disabled it completely (removing a jumper), everything was working smoothly. Weird issue.
10:23 - AWE32 distortion guitars in Doom sound so warbly... Seems like they should have taken a bit of time to make sure their patch set would sound good with such a popular game. Some of the other MIDI examples sound pretty good, though.
I would like to suggest Wizardry 7 as a good game to test MT-32 emulation modes with, as it uses the default MT-32 instruments. There are some other games that use the defaults too, but I can't think of them right now. We should probably try to capture this on the MT-32 games page on wikipedia.
Sounds like Epic Pinball is still capped at 22Khz like the SB16. It's a dumb bug, and Jazz Jackrabbit has it too. Try them on a good clone card, and they actually work at full 44Khz. I found out about this when building a retro PC a while back, and it really bummed me out. The Epic games were one of the things I wanted most, but for some reason they don't work right on genuine Sound Blaster cards.
It sounded great on the Yamaha Audician 32 Plus last time I tried it. And if I remember right, my old Reveal SC400 with the Crystal chipset worked fine too. I read somewhere that Epic intentionally limited the output on Creative cards so that their games would favor the Gravis Ultrasound, but I'm not sure how true that is. If you do get a chance to do a comparison, it would be cool to hear it :-)
Hmm, the one thing about those YMF718-S cards is that they have basically no output filter, meaning they sound much brighter with more highs, I think this is what you heard and might make you believe it's running at a higher sampling rate. Likely it runs at 22 KHz as well though. But it's possible that they just stuck with 22 KHz for the Sound Blaster options and the GUS got something nicer.
That could be part of it, but I'm pretty sure that SB16 cards sounded exactly the same whether you selected 22Khz or 44Khz in setup. I kinda doubt the filter would affect it that much.
Epic Pinball at least doesn't give you choice with sample rate. Just how fast your machine is, like from 386 to Pentium. But I'll try the Yamaha card when I get around to it. It's a shame it doesn't support the Windows Sound System standard, or that nobody has patched the game to add support, that would be nice.
Hey Phil! Just wanted to say your videos are super-useful and well presented. Have you ever tried putting two ISA sound cards in one PC? I have this CT3670 card and a Soundblaster Pro 2. I was wondering if it would be complete madness to try to get both working. The SB Pro 2.0 on legacy ports (IRQ 7, DMA 1 + 5, Port 220 etc) and put the newer CT3670 on IRQ 5, Port 240, DMA 0 etc. Older games would find the SBPro 2 and newer ones often use the BLASTER environment variable or have their own custom settings. I could feed the line out of one card into the line in of the other, or use external mixer. This way I can get the genuine FM synthesis in old legacy games and also be able to use all of the features of this card for newer games. Imagine in one system having MP-401 support through midi port, AWE32 and True OPL3. Also no hanging note, no clicking bug or and full SBPro stereo support
@@philscomputerlab OK. Sounds promising! I may give it a go. I am currently trying to get a CDROM equivalent of the Gotek Floppy Emulator working. Once I have figured that out (or given up!) I will look into adding second soundcard.
What version of DOS drivers did you use (and how)? Every AWE64 based card I've ever tried exhibited a strange annoying high pitched ringing like a runaway reverb+chorus. And it didn't help when I changed the effect settings in Impulse Tracker AWE drivers. Your recordings are free of this ringing, though.
I have one of these, sadly doesn't work properly - it seems to hang my machine at POST unless I remove the MFBEN jumper, and even then the computer hangs when trying to play any sound.
This card is NOT based on the AWE64 as this came later on. Its the cost-reduced Variant of the AWE32 which lacks factory-installed 512kByte of EMU8k RAM.
PhilsComputerLab hello do you know if there are any AWE32 models that should be avoided becouse of bugs or something else? The one I had back when they were relased was much bigger than yours I think it was a CT3900. I will rewatch some of your videos about sound cards to choose one that would be best for win98 and dos but wont break the bank. As allways thanks for your video!
Hi, Phil! Same SB card as in the video and you are THE expert! ☺ I'm having a problem with a continious buzzing noise at the outputs that are effecting my speakers. Every time I cold boot the machine, the noise appears. After the Mixerset has been loaded with settings, the buzzing goes completely away and corrects itself. I have tried several ISA-slots. Still I also have some issues with sound effects that are not playable or very low - to inaudible. Sometimes I need to set the gain levels higher, depending on the games, which makes me think that the card is getting weaker in terms of the default specifications for the card. Could this be related to hardware or software? Thanks!
Oh man I just found this card in a old pile of cards I had laying around and finding a driver for it has been a nightmare and a half. No wonder no normal AWE32 worked. gonna try your drivers.
Phil from the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU!! Your video and your excellent documentation has FINALLY Made me properly set the card up. I tried for weeks to get everything running, but I was struggling with the wrong driver that either didn't work at all, or only made parts of the card work. Then struggling with the wrong PnP manager who for some reason set the card to complete unreal settings. After your video, I followed it step by step, formatting and reinstalling MSDOS and windows and using your drivers and PnP manager, the card finally works 100% and I can finally install and enjoy some of my classic DOS games. You are the best and thank you again, your videos are the best!
No real OPL3? No buy :P - I refuse to buy any DOS sound card without one since I use music trackers a lot. This does seem like a good option for people who aren't as anal about their FM sound as me though.
cyberholix It's more than that. Many, but not all, of the 3xxx series do as well; they have a licensed OPL-3 tucked away inside the CT-1747 (if you have this chip you have a real OPL3) and can do reverb and chorus on the FM sound through EMU-8000; not sure if AWE-32's with discrete OPL3 chips could do that.
Hey Phil, I just bought this card (mine is a CT 3600) off ebay and some ram for it. The site I was reading says I need to change a jumper called JP2 to enable the new memory but on my card JP2 is empty no jumper
@@philscomputerlab I have yet to receive the card I bought it and the ram off ebay today. I'm just worried I wasted my money since I want the ram expansion
Can you made a video about Gravis ultrasound MAX? I cannot run that beast in Windows 98, it newer work, even in DOS it work perfectly good. Some drivers problem, I guess?
Funny, My retro rig has A GUS MAX and this peculiar card. I did get the GUS working under WIN98, but it isn't great. It can not keep up with newer directX games. It was never meant for that! So I thought I would use the GUS for dos stuff and add a soundblaster for windows in general and some dos games that don't support GUS. The Windows part of this card works fine, but the DOS installation is really messy and has a lot of issues. I do not really like this soundblaster for dos. It is more trouble than it is worth.
Either I stuffed up the driver installation in Windows 98SE, or my CT4780 has some serious issues-DOOM's sound wasn't that good (though it was bearable unlike my MED3931)
Hi Phil, i have a problem with my AWE32, when i'm setting MT32 emulation in Aweutil, there is very loud, cracking sound, which is very annoying and only by reboot i can turn it off. Normal Midi works fine. What I'm doing wrong ? Thanks four help and regards.
Hey Phil, need help with a problem..splash windows saying "impossible to load SYNTHGM.SBK .." when start Windows...its a jumper or midi problem ? the file is in your folder but can´t be loaded. thanks you.
I am also struggling about having a second ISA card for true OPL3. I researched a lot on VOGONS, but all opl3 options seem to have some caveat, like the hanging note bug. Do you think that this card can be used with another opl3 card in another slot? Maybe I am just confused - Is it possible to use opl3 for digital effects in one card and MIDI in another? Or OPL3 is a chip for music so I don't need to worry about the hanging note? Thanks!
PhilsComputerLab True. After listening to the games at this video I am reconsidering this real OPL3 thing. I must say that there was another video of yours, featuring Tyrian with a real OPL3 that blew me away. I will test the game with my cards. Thanks Phil!
My 3670 is identical, but has a slightly different config. Mine does not have the IDE connector. It is silkscreened in, but not installed.. And above the ide connector mine contains a 512kb ram chip so it does not need added ram for a basic sound font. However with 2mb installed, it has 2.5mb available which is just enough for MT32 emulation.
I used soundblaster live! back in the late 90s. It's a great card. I wish I had tried the Aureal Vortex 2. I heard a lot about it and about the A3D technology it packed. I understand why you recommend the Aureal card, but what makes you recommend Yamaha range over SB live? What are its advantages?
What do you recommend to use for Win98 drivers and apps CD? I'm not talking just the driver update, I'm talking about all the extras. Looking everywhere, there are SB16 and AWE64 CDs and there are Value and Gold verriations. Which do you recommend for this card as it seems to exist in both worlds?
This card works very well for all of my vintage machines. However the first generation AWE32 has a genuine OPL3 midi chip on it, and is perhaps a bit better sounding on its analog output. A little less noisy.
No not really...Sound quality is not going to be great on a 386 because the thing is way to slow to run software in CD quality digital audio mode...So most of that fancy Soundbasterd you mention is never even going to be usable on that 386. The ideal Sound card would be a SB with jumpers, so you can boot it with hardware set IRQ's , not needing any software to get it configured and thus saving base memory. SB 1.5 2.0 or Pro Second choice would be any SB PNP without any fancy stuff like ASP or AWE.. you just need Backwards compatiblity since even an SB16 won't be usable to the full capacity in games.. All you need is the legacy SB or SB pro functionality and a card that remembers its IRQ and DMA settings in eprom so you don't have to waste base mem on boot AWE32 minimum requirements were at least a 486DX2 66 , 386 was below spec by then. Keep in mind that the AWE32 came out when Pentium was already out and 486 was at it's last legs. Nobody bought AWE32's for the then already antique 386
I have an Asus 386 DX system chipped at 25 mhz, and has 64k of L2. And usualy 4 mb of ram, sometimes 8 depending on what else is set up. And I find its perfect for wing commander in AWE mode. I slack the ram timings to 2T so get the speed just right, L2 On, and I do not need any TSR's for it really. I think one that uses 2k of ram and loads in UMB. I also use the same card in my 486 gear and sometimes swap it around, I do not keep a card for each individual build, I have too many. It even works just the same even when I disable L2 cache to slow it down even more. However I have not tried it on an SX yet, i have not recapped the motherboard, so I will let you know. But I do not need to use all the bells and whistles, just what the game asks for.
A 386DX with L2 cache?? what have you been smoking. Either you have a 386SL or your DX can't adress the level 2 cache on that motherboard at all. There were no 386SX or DX processors that could use L2 the SL had over 3 times the amount of transtors on chip compared to the DX.. it's a completely different animal. As for AWE mode in Wing Commander: it wasn't released with anything other then regular SB support in WC1 and WC2. There was nothing to set as far as the AWE mode or it's needed IRQ's and DMA's. Only later with the Killrathy Saga version was released in the days of Pentium and W95 did they add some fancy tidbits, but it was meant to run in Windows 95 and minimum requirments was a Pentium 60 with Direct X .. hardly and example of a 386 game then is it?
I did and even re-watched the part where you said that this card does not have slowdown issues with Duke3D when going above 11khz before I commented. I even just watched a third time. I had commented on your 'ultimate MIDI emulator' video stating that I had tried it with the AWE64 Value and experienced the slowdown. You informed me that it was a creative card issue but you're stating here that this card does not have the issue? (2:56)
Yea there are a ton of cards to go through :) Sorry or being a bit short, I just get a lot of questions that are actually covered in my videos :D If I cover an AWE64, I will check out Duke3D for sure.
Creative has special MS-DOS Mode drivers. They come with a readme file and are a little bit involving, there is no simple installer I'm afraid. I did cover this in a video I believe.
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This is 100% why I subscribed to this channel. DOS & sound cards!! Great video Phil, I really like that you spend time on this. Younger gamers will never understand what an upgrade like this did to us back in the day :-)
This card is great in every aspect. I basically grew up with it and all its pros and cons. I own 3 of them myself and are precious to me.
One thing that might also be done with this card is to load soundfonts and play DOS games like Doom, ROTT, Duke3D, ... but the only disadvantage is that you can only load those in windows95/98 :-( but it works!
Keep it up!
Thanks! Yea I really like to focus on DOS for these reviews. But you're right, it's another unique feature of this card that's well worth mentioning! Doom with the Arachno Sound Font for example, soooo good.
Yop that's big true
Brings back so many memories. I remember getting this card. And even installing some memory in it at some stage.
One of the things i liked best about this card. Depending on the memory you choose to install on this card, you can do some amazing things with Sound Fonts with it. Using that function you can make the AWE32 sound like an MT-32, or a GUS, or just about anything you want. I chose this card exclusively because i wanted an amazing card that was very compatible.
AWE32 is the ultimate nostalgic soundcard for me personally, my very first soundcard. Not the best, but decent card, has it's very distinct sound to it, so to speak.
Well you picked a great card for your first sound card!
I feel like the AWE cards represent the "ultimate incarnation" of the DOS ISA sound card - like they took the technology as far as it could ever go. Very cool from that perspective. And I like their unique sound.
Thank you so much for this video! A great review. I noticed based on my list that the CT3670 is very unique in the 32 line: it is effectively an AWE64 Value with SIMM slots. Compare the chipset to the CT4380 or CT4500 cards and you'll find they are identical.
Yea that's pretty much it! An AWE64 with SIMM slots, I like the way you put that.
+PhilsComputerLab
Excellent video as usual! When I had this card, I remember that most games could only really effectively use 8MB of ram on the card. Anything more was intended for specialized audio programs. Didn't find this out until I'd spent $100 on 16MB of ram for it. Oh well. It was still bad-ass. Even when I upgraded to the AWE64, this card went into my wife's PC. She loved the sound improvement.
I just bought one for £70. Your review was amazing. Thanks so much for all that you do.
I used to own this soundcard. When I was younger I had no idea how good it was in respect to emulating midi modules and fm synt etc.
Once I put 8 megs of RAM in my AWE32 (it was a challenge finding 4M modules back then), next loaded 8MB wavetable included on a SB-Live! CD. It was nice, quite surprising that this just worked.
Wow... you review it. In '98 i have 3 awe32, 1 awe64. My first is SB16 with DOS mode. Good review.
Best sound blaster I have ever owned for DOS compatibility and MIDI sound. So much so that I tracked down another for my 98 gaming machine and searched high and low a few years back for the MIDI ROM. Also owning it in high school probably made me a little biased...
Nice!
im glad you did a review for this, I have the card and never knew it had all these awesome features. Cant wait to use it in a nice system build one day.
Creative had so many sound cards. I kinda felt like I had missed out by not owning an Awe32 card but I can see that I didn't really. Thanks Phil!
I had a CT3990 myself in my "primary system" for quite a long time, Was my first Audio Card which I put into my 386 in 2003, and I brought it forward up through to my K6-2. I ended up swapping out for a boring AudioPCI as the ISA Card had some issues with Windows XP. Apparently the 3990 also had CQM which sounds different, though since it was my first Audio card I wouldn't have noticed. Shame I tossed it out along with all my old stuff a few years ago- I no longer had systems that could use them so it seemed silly to keep them around and I figured I could get them cheap ($5-$6 was my thinking) online if I wanted them again later anyway. definitely misjudged that one!
This exact model was my third soundcard and the only one I ever regretted buying. My first one was Aztech Sound Galaxy Pro 16, which was cheap and perfectly hardware compatible with SB PRO, so no complaints there. I think it even had the real Yamaha OPL3 chip on board, so even FM music sounded as it should (but I hated FM music from the get go, so it didn't matter to me).
Of course, since I grew tired of FM music almost immediately, I wanted to have wavetable MIDI music, so next I bought Media Forte Sound Forte SF32-WAV. It was an interesting hybrid because it had Creative Vibra16 chip (so it worked 100% as SB16 even without any drivers), but also ICS Wavefront wavetable synth (the same one was used in Turtle Beach Tropez series of cards), which was a very decent and balanced General Midi wavetable synth. In fact, I've heard many wavetable implementations over the years and to me this one is one of the best, right behind Roland and Yamaha wavetable synths.
The reason I bought Creative SB32 next was because it had the ability to use installed RAM for bigger soundfont banks and I was sold on the idea. The problem was there were no better sounding banks available for it at the time (there were some awful sounding 4 and 8 MB banks made by EMU in circulation and they sounded much worse than the default 2MB bank, which wasn't all that great to begin with - worse than ICS Wavefront, that's for sure). So I was left with a soundcard that required a TSR program to switch to GM mode and it was a pain in the ass, because it was incompatible with some of the games, and it actually sounded noticably worse in MIDI than my previous sound card. And to add to this it had a very noisy analog output, especially in comparison to Sound Forte, which was very clean. So I don't think I can recommend this card for retro gaming, it has many features, sure, but the implementation is lacking.
SB32 used the EMU Systems EMU8000 dsp, which also was the same dsp-chip used in emus ESi32 Turbo samplers. The SB32 was a pretty nice sampler actually for its price. Nice review.
Thanks for sharing! I admit I have no idea what that is, but it sounds good :D
DSP is digital signal processing (as opposed to e.g. an analog filter or analog oscillator; a DSP uses digital math like a processor does). The EMU-8000 DSP that Creative used on the AWE32s and SB32s does 32-channel wavetable synthesis (that's how MIDI is implemented in windows on these cards through a driver); it also does effects like reverb, chorus, vibrato, filters, ADSR-envelopes etc.
Phill, my first sound card ! I Remember the Big box, inside Books, CDs , SBig PC Speakers , microphones, and too many itens in package ! Kkkkk today send only board and anti estatic bag
Good that I still got my SB 16 CT2230 lyying around.
I had one, but as chronic 'why read manuals guy' I never revealed the mystery of mpu-401 emulation.
And demo tune Symphony I'm still using as alarm sound :D
Nice to see you continuing to cover DOS sound cards, especially those that I happen own :3
Cool :D I am keen to see if you have the next card I'm reviewing :D
I have two of these now with memory maxed out. It's an amazing card really, and I got them cheap but they got at least €100 these days unless you get lucky.
I like how you added 30% reverb+chorus to your audio over :-)
Great video showing some nice details of the card. I just checked my draws and I bought this exact card for a project but I ended up using a AWE 32 instead.
Woah, that FX section is really cool. I always thought FM DOS games sounded a little on the dry side.
Yes it's pretty cool :)
Dear Phil, what a great review, i have a CT3620, after this review i will revisit that soundcard and check out roland mt32 mode. Didn’t know it could be emulated like this. Thank you, subscriber and a 👍🏻 from me😁
Retrocengo
Looks like a really nice alternative to AWE64. I forget the differences between the cards, it's useful that this is a later Plug n Play type model.
That does sound nice for being CQM. I'm not sure I'd really be able to hear the difference in a blind listening test.
I went with a CT3900 and 32 MB of RAM. This is a full length non-PNP AWE32 which has the CT-1747 chip with an integrated OPL3. It can use the reverb and chorus through the EMU-8000 chip like yours can. The hanging note bug is supposedly not present in CT-1747 chip cards and I have yet to hear it so I believe that too be true. It does have single cycle DMA click bug however, you can notice it in e.g. wolfenstein 3D if you disable the music and listen carefully while opening a door or something; it's not hugely distracting. As for MPU-401 emulation I don't know or care. Anyway, gets used mostly for late DOS and win95 gaming ca 1992-1998.
For me the magic year when the PC became something I paid any attention to was 1992. Prior to this the Amiga was where it was at in terms of computers; in 1992, we got Ultima underworld, Wolfenstein 3D, Ultima 7 and Dune II on the PC and the writing was just on the wall for the Amiga. There's nothing earlier than this I'd want to play in DOS and most of it's clustered around the DOOM - Quake era as far as DOS is concerned.
The horror with an Amiga was all the diskette swapping. For a game like Monkey island II you'd have like 10 diskettes. 1992, harddrives became cheap enough, CDROM-drives were almost cheap enough, sound blasters had made PC sound not completely awful. The 386 DX40, DX2-66 and pentium 166 with or without MMX are the processors that just stayed on the market and dropped in price, over and over until you ended up with affordable PCs; hell I remember the 386-DX40 was still for sale while pentiums were starting to roll around.
I didn't have a PC of my own to play these 1992 games, but I noticed them and started thinking about an "IBM clone" for the first time. In 1994, I think, we got a family machine and I must say Ultima underworld was every bit as good as I thought it was. This game represented the open-world branch of modern western RPGs, sprung almost fully formed, seemingly out of nowhere. Blue sky/looking glass might possibly have been time traveling space aliens; I'm not sure; that's how far ahead of its time this game was.
Thanks for sharing!
Good times indeed!
TURRICAN.....so many hours spent on that CLASSIC
Why I heard that friend that told me he would purchase my AWE 32 after I purchased my Hercules Game theater XP??? WHY!!! (That's what happen when going from dual boot dos/win3.11/win95 Slot-A to win98 Socket-A, so little apreciation for old hardware back then 😢)
Thank so much for all your videos!
I've got a AWE64 CT4520 got it back in 1998 still works and sounds great.
Well done your review is so deep good job
This in depht review was super useful. Thanks!
I have a sound blaster 32 too, mine is the model ct3600, i got it as a part of a big lot that i paid 10 euros + shipping, very big deal, all the features works great in my ms dos system, also on mt 386 40 mhz machine that uses the fx3000 modetherboard that you used for a build video some time ago
Nice, you got some awesome parts!
in that same lot i also got a lot of parts i used in my 386 build, i really like that motherboard, now i am testing it with a sound blaster pro 2 i got as a part of a 18 euros lot, in the same lot i got some other goodies too like a MDA graphics card and many other isa cards and also a matrox millennium g220 pci
I'm keen to hear what you think about the Sound Blaster Pro 2 :)
for me the sound blaster pro 2 it's a good card, but the fm is giving me problems in some games, for example in moneky isaland i have no sound from the fm or very low sound, in doom and duke nukeman 3d it works as expected, good things of this card are the fm quality, because uses an original opl3, and the card is driver less because uses jumpers, and also the sound portion works in 8 bit, it can work in 8 bit isa slots on machines like 8088, and 16 bit bit is needed only if you want to use the cd port, don't know if it has problems with dma or the midi port, but in wolfestesin 3d and day of the tentaclke the playback just worked fine for me i didn't hear nothing of strage, i don't have midi modules to test the mpu compatibility unfortunately, thats my small review of it, i hope you enjoyed
Interesting. So the SB Pro is the first Creative card with a mixer. So I recommend installing the software, and adjusting the levels. When I do sound card reviews, I run the mixer tool after every game, as games often change them.
The SIMMs are incredibly interesting to see on a sound board.
I've got like 5 of these in a box, I thought they are just a worse AWE64. I'll be trying it out now.
Discovered one of my soundblasters is this exact model. I thought it was an AWE32, not a SB32. I didn't know about the midi emulation abilities and that trick to switching the interrupt may have stymied me if I ever came across it. My card wasn't working the last time I tried it but the machine had a memory config problem, I should try it again soon.
Yea it's a great card, do check it out again. DOS 6.22 is what I would go for.
I just bought this card on Ebay for 20€. It came with 4M of memory installed. I'm looking forward to playing games with it! All the demos I've seen so far sound great (even the farty synth in DOOM is kina charming) so I'm really happy I ended up with it. I'm currently building a retro gaming system based on a Pentium-MMX made in the same week I was born, running Windows 98 for DOS and early Windows gaming.
PhilsComputerLab Happy New Year!
Thank you! You too :D
Really wish there was a way to purchase Turrican II for DOS. Also, I wonder how it would sound by default after installing 8MB of memory, since 4MB would be reserved for ROM samples for the E-Mu 8000
Hopefully it comes to GOG on day.
I miss my SB32 (Which I had 8Mb installed on to be able to have modules playing in the background in MS-DOS while barely using any RAM or CPU as the card would both handle the RAM requirements for the modules as well as the majority of the processing). Truly an AWEsome (see what I did there hehe) card!
I'm not sure if correct, but some people pronounce the A W E as awe (being in awe) :D
@@philscomputerlab Well, what I could do with that card due to it pretty much being an audio co-processor would leave many in awe. Most (if not all) ISA sound cards were basically audio co-processors (currently would be called accelerators) due to the ISA BUS limitations demanding the card to do more stuff than otherwise would be possible, like the later PCI cards that pretty much did nothing aside being a CODEC to create an analogue wave and used the CPU to do most if not all of the processing, which mandated the need for MMX enabled CPUs.
This is also why I only switched from an ISA sound card to something else after there was no longer possible to use ISA cards, very few PCI cards would actually do the processing for you therefore requiring more CPU resources to do anything. When I finally stopped using an ISA card was when I upgraded my P3 to an Athlon XP and made certain to use an NVidia based motherboard that had a proper sound card on-board, is was an NForce2 Deluxe Gold (I forget the manufacturer), basically that mobo had a proper sound card, not just a codec, that had 3 DSPs onboard to handle the audio processing. This was one of the few motherboards that had proper audio on them (Actually I believe that in that time this was the ONLY motherboard with a proper audio card embedded). It was an expensive motherboard due to the NVidia Chipset and Dual Channel support but damn was it worth every penny. Testing that system against the same CPU on ANY other cheaper motherboard (not based on the same chipset or not including that audio card) would result in large performance deficit for the other systems, specially when audio was included as part of the benchmark. When not testing onboard audio the other boards based on the same chipset would rank pretty much the same performance wise. As soon as "heavy" audio processing was needed my system would take the lead as it would not use nearly any CPU cycles to handle the audio.
I miss the days when normal hardware didn't have performance crippling stuff implemented as cost savings...
I wish I did my research before I bought my CT3980 AWE32 card! If I knew about this one, I could've got a better, bug-free card for a lot less.
Great review though, pretty sure this same software setup applies to any of the SB32 and AWE PnP cards, so it's good to have such a thorough guide in the one place.
Yes the software side of things is identical on any AWE card!
Just threw in a $40 USD offer on an AWE64, and it was accepted! And shipping was
Nice :)
Hi, excellent video, I still have that sound card, my question is: Where do I get that module for computers? thanks for your answer. Greetings.
I own the same sound card and i was expecting your review, Phil! I am very glad! This helped me a lot. I am having difficulties for finding 30-pin SIMMs above 1MB. If you know some good source, please let me know. Many thanks to you and I will keep commenting here in 2018. Happy new year!
Well I get most of my stuff from eBay. Likely a bit on the expensive side, but what can you do...
PhilsComputerLab Yeah right. Thanks again! :-)
I had trouble finding them too and had to import my 16 MB simms from the US. I'm pretty sure these are the exact same ones but I cannot swear it: eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/30PS16MB/ .
70 ns 30 pin FPM SIMMs is what the AWE32 expects; but 60 ns worked as expected for me.
They did have tin-plated contacts though, and preferably you would want to match gold with gold and tin with tin to minimize the possibility of corrosion.
I hope it all works out!
soylentgreenb Big big Kudos to you, sir!
If you ever get your hands on a CT3980 I'd be interested to see how it compares.
Well with the prices these cards go for, I'm pretty much priced out :/ I never bothered picking up AWE 32 cards back in the day, so that's that I'm afraid.
Phil is on sound card review spree :D so many different soundcards reviews. good job btw. where is patreon? ? I wanna support your channel.
Just keep watching, that's all the support I need :D
PhilsComputerLab I'm your subscriber since early beginning of this channel. and I've seen every single video you posted. I'm also member of Retro PC Gaming group (i'm guy who posted picture of computer full of car seat foam particles). Keep up good work.
THIS was my most coveted sound card until the sad day that it had to be retired when I had a new mobo with no ISA on it =(
The transition from ISA to PCI and DOS to Windows 9x is such a fascinating period. I really got to do a video about that!
IKR?
The trials and tribulations, the sleepless nights of waiting for windows to reinstall after a crash lol
We called the "PnP" promise that was supposed to come with late version of ISA/Early PCI as "Plug n Pray" lol
It is indeed a interesting time period. Would be great to see a vid on it. Have a good one!
Wow, great review! Thank you, you helped me to choose!
Wow nice thorough overview! Great stuff! Much
So true, it never ends, there is always something to check out :)
DOS PCI sound is very complex. Non Intel chipsets can often work better. There will be a video using a PCI DOS card soon :)
My soundcard on my windows 98 pc is a SB16
Just one hint. I recently installed this in my SiS530-based SS7 motherboard. The GM/MT-32 Emulation would crash, as long as the internal Crystal-based onboard audio was enabled. Once I disabled it completely (removing a jumper), everything was working smoothly. Weird issue.
These are a nice card with IDE. Used to have two DVD/CDRs off it! :). I’d get another if used PCI.
Nice!
I should have bought this instead of the AWE32 I got. It's hanging note bugs made it unusable. I'll sell it ASAP now😁
Yea a lot of the Creative cards have a buggy MIDI interface.
10:23 - AWE32 distortion guitars in Doom sound so warbly... Seems like they should have taken a bit of time to make sure their patch set would sound good with such a popular game. Some of the other MIDI examples sound pretty good, though.
I would like to suggest Wizardry 7 as a good game to test MT-32 emulation modes with, as it uses the default MT-32 instruments.
There are some other games that use the defaults too, but I can't think of them right now. We should probably try to capture this on the MT-32 games page on wikipedia.
Thanks I'll keep it in mind for future videos. Added to my GOG wishlist, waiting for a sale :)
Sounds like Epic Pinball is still capped at 22Khz like the SB16. It's a dumb bug, and Jazz Jackrabbit has it too. Try them on a good clone card, and they actually work at full 44Khz. I found out about this when building a retro PC a while back, and it really bummed me out. The Epic games were one of the things I wanted most, but for some reason they don't work right on genuine Sound Blaster cards.
Maxxarcade Yea I thought it sounded a bit rough. What card will do it at 44 kHz?
It sounded great on the Yamaha Audician 32 Plus last time I tried it. And if I remember right, my old Reveal SC400 with the Crystal chipset worked fine too. I read somewhere that Epic intentionally limited the output on Creative cards so that their games would favor the Gravis Ultrasound, but I'm not sure how true that is. If you do get a chance to do a comparison, it would be cool to hear it :-)
Hmm, the one thing about those YMF718-S cards is that they have basically no output filter, meaning they sound much brighter with more highs, I think this is what you heard and might make you believe it's running at a higher sampling rate. Likely it runs at 22 KHz as well though. But it's possible that they just stuck with 22 KHz for the Sound Blaster options and the GUS got something nicer.
That could be part of it, but I'm pretty sure that SB16 cards sounded exactly the same whether you selected 22Khz or 44Khz in setup. I kinda doubt the filter would affect it that much.
Epic Pinball at least doesn't give you choice with sample rate. Just how fast your machine is, like from 386 to Pentium. But I'll try the Yamaha card when I get around to it. It's a shame it doesn't support the Windows Sound System standard, or that nobody has patched the game to add support, that would be nice.
A good game to test opl/midi would be "loom"
Hey Phil! Just wanted to say your videos are super-useful and well presented. Have you ever tried putting two ISA sound cards in one PC? I have this CT3670 card and a Soundblaster Pro 2. I was wondering if it would be complete madness to try to get both working. The SB Pro 2.0 on legacy ports (IRQ 7, DMA 1 + 5, Port 220 etc) and put the newer CT3670 on IRQ 5, Port 240, DMA 0 etc. Older games would find the SBPro 2 and newer ones often use the BLASTER environment variable or have their own custom settings. I could feed the line out of one card into the line in of the other, or use external mixer. This way I can get the genuine FM synthesis in old legacy games and also be able to use all of the features of this card for newer games. Imagine in one system having MP-401 support through midi port, AWE32 and True OPL3. Also no hanging note, no clicking bug or and full SBPro stereo support
I have tried multiple sound cards in the past, many years ago, and found it to work most if the time but also there can be issues with some games....
@@philscomputerlab OK. Sounds promising! I may give it a go. I am currently trying to get a CDROM equivalent of the Gotek Floppy Emulator working. Once I have figured that out (or given up!) I will look into adding second soundcard.
@@RetroPcCupboard Nice! Finding disc media can be hard these days....
@@philscomputerlab I have hundreds of game disks. What worries me is that at some point the optical drives will die.
I usually just change settings, using edit. The config files are pure txt anyway. And I have 100% controll this way.
What version of DOS drivers did you use (and how)? Every AWE64 based card I've ever tried exhibited a strange annoying high pitched ringing like a runaway reverb+chorus. And it didn't help when I changed the effect settings in Impulse Tracker AWE drivers. Your recordings are free of this ringing, though.
Огромное спасибо ! Особенно благодарен за ваш сайт со всеми нужными драйверами ! Удачи и счастья желаю вам, ребята !
How different is the ct3600? Looks like the 3600 is from 94’
I can only watch this Video @144p, but it's worth it
How come? Just bad Internet?
PhilsComputerLab yes bad internet
Ah ok, sorry man!
The TH-cam app for Android lets you download to your device. I found this useful this month in Egypt at a hotel which throttled me down to 144p.
Andy Aldrich My Internet was only bad for one day, my ISP hat some problemes ...
But thanks for the tip
Good card but... isn't a AWE64 ISA better? No DMA clicking bugs, no MPU hanging notes...just the CQM.
I have one of these, sadly doesn't work properly - it seems to hang my machine at POST unless I remove the MFBEN jumper, and even then the computer hangs when trying to play any sound.
This card is NOT based on the AWE64 as this came later on. Its the cost-reduced Variant of the AWE32 which lacks factory-installed 512kByte of EMU8k RAM.
PhilsComputerLab hello do you know if there are any AWE32 models that should be avoided becouse of bugs or something else? The one I had back when they were relased was much bigger than yours I think it was a CT3900.
I will rewatch some of your videos about sound cards to choose one that would be best for win98 and dos but wont break the bank.
As allways thanks for your video!
No I don't, this is the only 32 I have. I review cards one by one, and whatever I can get my hands on, but I won't get every model...
Hi, Phil!
Same SB card as in the video and you are THE expert! ☺
I'm having a problem with a continious buzzing noise at the outputs that are effecting my speakers. Every time I cold boot the machine, the noise appears. After the Mixerset has been loaded with settings, the buzzing goes completely away and corrects itself. I have tried several ISA-slots. Still I also have some issues with sound effects that are not playable or very low - to inaudible. Sometimes I need to set the gain levels higher, depending on the games, which makes me think that the card is getting weaker in terms of the default specifications for the card. Could this be related to hardware or software? Thanks!
Hmm, not quite sure what's going on there. Cards can slowly die, I've seen this before, but I can't give you any specifics as what it might be.
PhilsComputerLab Thanks for responding. I'll troubleshoot it some more and will eventually replace it with another card if everything else fails.
Oh man I just found this card in a old pile of cards I had laying around and finding a driver for it has been a nightmare and a half. No wonder no normal AWE32 worked. gonna try your drivers.
Hopefully it still works, it's a good card!
I think it does. But man, did it got assigned some weird IRQs.. like IRQ10 and DMA 0. PnP manager at it's finest. Gonna see how it goes.
Phil from the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU!! Your video and your excellent documentation has FINALLY Made me properly set the card up. I tried for weeks to get everything running, but I was struggling with the wrong driver that either didn't work at all, or only made parts of the card work. Then struggling with the wrong PnP manager who for some reason set the card to complete unreal settings. After your video, I followed it step by step, formatting and reinstalling MSDOS and windows and using your drivers and PnP manager, the card finally works 100% and I can finally install and enjoy some of my classic DOS games. You are the best and thank you again, your videos are the best!
That's awesome :D
Oh my god epic pinball!!!!!
Quite magical.
I've seen a lot of your videos, and common for most is that you want to use IRQ (Interupt) 7 instead of 5... Why is that?
Better compatibility with some old games. And to see if it actually lets you change it, not all cards do.
No real OPL3? No buy :P - I refuse to buy any DOS sound card without one since I use music trackers a lot. This does seem like a good option for people who aren't as anal about their FM sound as me though.
The AWE32 series 1xxx-2xxx has a real one onboard.
cyberholix It's more than that. Many, but not all, of the 3xxx series do as well; they have a licensed OPL-3 tucked away inside the CT-1747 (if you have this chip you have a real OPL3) and can do reverb and chorus on the FM sound through EMU-8000; not sure if AWE-32's with discrete OPL3 chips could do that.
I know this dosent have much to do with the sound card, but could you do some stuff with slot A?
I've done a few videos, but the PSU situation makes it difficult. Here is a video of the problem: th-cam.com/video/efK7mw8eYiE/w-d-xo.html
you can get amp meters that "wrap around" the wires, then you can test which voltage wires uses what :-)
Hey Phil, I just bought this card (mine is a CT 3600) off ebay and some ram for it. The site I was reading says I need to change a jumper called JP2 to enable the new memory but on my card JP2 is empty no jumper
And does the ram get detected?
@@philscomputerlab I have yet to receive the card I bought it and the ram off ebay today. I'm just worried I wasted my money since I want the ram expansion
@@Twintania Well why else would it have ram slots... Doesn't make sense to me. Hope it works well!
Can you made a video about Gravis ultrasound MAX? I cannot run that beast in Windows 98, it newer work, even in DOS it work perfectly good. Some drivers problem, I guess?
Man GUS prices, they are out of control. So yea, not going to happen...
Funny, My retro rig has A GUS MAX and this peculiar card. I did get the GUS working under WIN98, but it isn't great. It can not keep up with newer directX games. It was never meant for that!
So I thought I would use the GUS for dos stuff and add a soundblaster for windows in general and some dos games that don't support GUS.
The Windows part of this card works fine, but the DOS installation is really messy and has a lot of issues. I do not really like this soundblaster for dos. It is more trouble than it is worth.
i like the long videos
Hi, What is the difference between this model and the CT3600?
I had Sound Blaster 32 Pnp
It also got memory sockets
Either I stuffed up the driver installation in Windows 98SE, or my CT4780 has some serious issues-DOOM's sound wasn't that good (though it was bearable unlike my MED3931)
How does CT3600 compare to it? Is it any good?
What's that shooting game at 9:13???
Hi Phil, i have a problem with my AWE32, when i'm setting MT32 emulation in Aweutil, there is very loud, cracking sound, which is very annoying and only by reboot i can turn it off. Normal Midi works fine. What I'm doing wrong ? Thanks four help and regards.
Stupid question, is there DOS resident software out there that can emulate General MIDI? Or do you need to have the hardware for it?
Hey Phil, need help with a problem..splash windows saying "impossible to load SYNTHGM.SBK .." when start Windows...its a jumper or midi problem ? the file is in your folder but can´t be loaded. thanks you.
I am also struggling about having a second ISA card for true OPL3. I researched a lot on VOGONS, but all opl3 options seem to have some caveat, like the hanging note bug. Do you think that this card can be used with another opl3 card in another slot? Maybe I am just confused - Is it possible to use opl3 for digital effects in one card and MIDI in another? Or OPL3 is a chip for music so I don't need to worry about the hanging note? Thanks!
I can't relate to this OPL3 obsession :D This card has so many good things going for it...
PhilsComputerLab True. After listening to the games at this video I am reconsidering this real OPL3 thing. I must say that there was another video of yours, featuring Tyrian with a real OPL3 that blew me away. I will test the game with my cards. Thanks Phil!
My 3670 is identical, but has a slightly different config. Mine does not have the IDE connector. It is silkscreened in, but not installed.. And above the ide connector mine contains a 512kb ram chip so it does not need added ram for a basic sound font. However with 2mb installed, it has 2.5mb available which is just enough for MT32 emulation.
wow fantastic.
this soundcard size is not that long at all is it?
Did they have a pci version?
No, only ISA.
Would you recommend me a Sound Blaster Live!?
It's an ok card, but I prefer others to be honest like the Aureal Vortex 2 or YAMAHA range of PCI cards.
Ok now i know what i can buy for replacing my SB16
I used soundblaster live! back in the late 90s. It's a great card. I wish I had tried the Aureal Vortex 2. I heard a lot about it and about the A3D technology it packed. I understand why you recommend the Aureal card, but what makes you recommend Yamaha range over SB live? What are its advantages?
I won't review PCI cards for a while, but we will be looking at a YAMAHA card soon.
But if you must go Creative, go for the Audigy2 ZS.
have a AWE32 card, but is running Win98se.. and the two files says it only work in W3.1&W95... how do i get my card working in DOS ? :-)
It's complicated. You need to grab the DOS prompt drivers from Creative website and study the readme file carefully, then follow what it states.
What do you recommend to use for Win98 drivers and apps CD? I'm not talking just the driver update, I'm talking about all the extras. Looking everywhere, there are SB16 and AWE64 CDs and there are Value and Gold verriations. Which do you recommend for this card as it seems to exist in both worlds?
Hmm not sure, I usually just use the driver update. VOGONS usually has full copies of CD ISO I believe.
@@philscomputerlab And I probably have all of them. They probably all work. I'll just have to play around with it.
I have this card, and my question is : Which is the best isa sound card for a 80386 pc?
This card works very well for all of my vintage machines. However the first generation AWE32 has a genuine OPL3 midi chip on it, and is perhaps a bit better sounding on its analog output. A little less noisy.
sb 2.0 imho
No not really...Sound quality is not going to be great on a 386 because the thing is way to slow to run software in CD quality digital audio mode...So most of that fancy Soundbasterd you mention is never even going to be usable on that 386.
The ideal Sound card would be a SB with jumpers, so you can boot it with hardware set IRQ's , not needing any software to get it configured and thus saving base memory. SB 1.5 2.0 or Pro
Second choice would be any SB PNP without any fancy stuff like ASP or AWE.. you just need Backwards compatiblity since even an SB16 won't be usable to the full capacity in games.. All you need is the legacy SB or SB pro functionality and a card that remembers its IRQ and DMA settings in eprom so you don't have to waste base mem on boot
AWE32 minimum requirements were at least a 486DX2 66 , 386 was below spec by then.
Keep in mind that the AWE32 came out when Pentium was already out and 486 was at it's last legs.
Nobody bought AWE32's for the then already antique 386
I have an Asus 386 DX system chipped at 25 mhz, and has 64k of L2. And usualy 4 mb of ram, sometimes 8 depending on what else is set up. And I find its perfect for wing commander in AWE mode. I slack the ram timings to 2T so get the speed just right, L2 On, and I do not need any TSR's for it really. I think one that uses 2k of ram and loads in UMB. I also use the same card in my 486 gear and sometimes swap it around, I do not keep a card for each individual build, I have too many.
It even works just the same even when I disable L2 cache to slow it down even more. However I have not tried it on an SX yet, i have not recapped the motherboard, so I will let you know. But I do not need to use all the bells and whistles, just what the game asks for.
A 386DX with L2 cache?? what have you been smoking.
Either you have a 386SL or your DX can't adress the level 2 cache on that motherboard at all.
There were no 386SX or DX processors that could use L2
the SL had over 3 times the amount of transtors on chip compared to the DX.. it's a completely different animal.
As for AWE mode in Wing Commander: it wasn't released with anything other then regular SB support in WC1 and WC2.
There was nothing to set as far as the AWE mode or it's needed IRQ's and DMA's.
Only later with the Killrathy Saga version was released in the days of Pentium and W95 did they add some fancy tidbits, but it was meant to run in Windows 95 and minimum requirments was a Pentium 60 with Direct X .. hardly and example of a 386 game then is it?
what effect does changing the interrupt have?
IRQ 7 was the default back in the day.
What does the Analog connector do?
Which one? I thought I covered them all.
So it uses the same chip on the AWE64 yet the AWE64 cards (or at least the Value edition) have the MIDI slowndown issues in Duke3D?
Dude, watch the video!!!
I did and even re-watched the part where you said that this card does not have slowdown issues with Duke3D when going above 11khz before I commented. I even just watched a third time. I had commented on your 'ultimate MIDI emulator' video stating that I had tried it with the AWE64 Value and experienced the slowdown. You informed me that it was a creative card issue but you're stating here that this card does not have the issue? (2:56)
This card worked fine at 44 KHz with General MIDI.
Yes and this appears to be a card I might consider in the future. BTW, awesome video, love the detail. Can't wait to see what you got going in 2018!
Yea there are a ton of cards to go through :) Sorry or being a bit short, I just get a lot of questions that are actually covered in my videos :D If I cover an AWE64, I will check out Duke3D for sure.
oh hey everyone
Oh hi Mordimort [Shizuku- osu!]
Hi All! anyone can share this CT3670 original installation CD for Windows?
Which Game is at 6:35 ?
Only problem I have with this card is it doesn't have real opl3
What do I do if I want to run this card if I reboot the PC in DOS from Windows 98se?
Creative has special MS-DOS Mode drivers. They come with a readme file and are a little bit involving, there is no simple installer I'm afraid. I did cover this in a video I believe.
@@philscomputerlab was that about the ct3670, or one in general?
@@jj_1edzep Applies to any PnP Sound Blaster!
@@philscomputerlab I will try that, thnx! :)