Thank you all for watching! This video is a day early compared to normal releases to accomodate a live show next Tuesday...details soon. Please check out the video description for all links, and if you'd like to help me reach the momumental height of 1000 patrons (we're so close now!) head on over to patreon.com/RMCretro Thank you! Neil - RMC
BTW, if you're craving that MT-32 sound but don't want to shell out for the real hardware, but you do still want to use real retro PC hardware, check out the mt32-pi project: github.com/dwhinham/mt32-pi
Hi Neil, thanks for the shoutout, I'm glad you could make good use of the clips from my DOS MIDI video! If only I'd known the Orpheus was just around the corner when I bought my PC-MIDI card from the same manufacturer. That said, I've been so happy with it (in conjunction with my OPL3 SoundBlaster 16) that I have no doubt this will also be top notch - so I've just ordered one of these too! 😄
@@stoojinator as mentioned on the website: Orheus soundcard : 130eur Orpheus soundcard with PCMIDI installed: 180eur Orpheus soundcard with PCMIDI installed and Dreamblaster X2 daughterboard: 230eur
Would the SoundBlaster compatibility work with other obsolete operating systems, such as Win2K Pro, BeOS or OPENSTEP for Mach? I don’t just run DOS and Win9x on my vintage PC. Right now, I have an AWE64 Gold with DreamBlaster daughter card
10:54 is it just me or does someone else think that the "tzzzz" sound effect when selecting a power plant in Sim City sounds like someone making the sound with their mouth?
Given the flexibility of this card, I really don't find the price to be absurd or anything. It simply does a lot, and does it very well. The quality of the components appear to be top notch as well. Will certainly look in to one of these myself. Nice showcase of everything it can do.
It's amazing to me that these days you can design your own sound card (or indeed any pcb) and even get it built to this standard. Especially when you consider back in the day that pretty much the only people that could do this sort of thing was large businesses with considerable funds behind them!
It could technically be done by just about anyone who could afford a pc in the first place, the trick is that the internet makes a lot of info much easier to get than back in the day, so if you dig around long enough you can cut through the nonsense and voodoo logic that tends to get passed around as "fact".
It's even more possible because of availability of technical documentations of these chips, often with complete schematics. I know Crystal and ESS chips have those.
@@alexatkin It's necessary to know where to look as often even those old SB clones can be much better and compatible then a real SB. That applies mainly to SB16 and AWE32 as they have many bugs, incompatibilites and in case of AWE32, inferior wavetable synth to a competition. But they still sell like they are the top of the line products and ultimate solution for any retro PC. I would definitely pick Crystal (except CS4235) based card over SB16 for every day use.
I wish their GUX reviving project still alive(VOGON).. but well.. I love Star Control II sound from GUS. I owned about 30 years ago. I wish I kept it well..
Those Nichicon Fine Gold caps... magnifique! I re-capped an NEC PC-9821 Ap2 (with the on-board sound) with those and they sound AMAZING, even through the built-in cone speaker.
I own one of these also, and it’s basically flawless. I’m using a S2 vs X2 wavetable board, since I’m using this to run a MT32, SC55, SC88 and MU80. It works flawlessly and replaced my SB Pro 2.0 and PC-MIDI card with an all in one solution! One of the best designed retro products I have ever seen.
I remember pitching up at my brother - in - laws house back when Doom (the shareware version) was first doing the rounds. We played it on his home office pc (286 I think?) with no sound. The next day we trawled around the local computer shops looking for a sound card. Popping that very cheap and quite nasty card in it still blew our minds when that sound started ringing out. It's amazing what we thought was good back then!
I'm pretty sure Doom required a 386. At the time I remember Linux was just getting interesting, and it needed the memory management of a 386 as well. I was in a networking course back then, and Doom was the only game that could be played over a network.
Wow, that is an impressive board - super versatile. Premium price for a premium product. I wasn't aware of this card - thanks for enlightening me with your excellent review.
"Sound Blaster 16's having those pops, and hissing" Thats part of the nostalgia. ;D Like vinyl music, its kinda part of the experiences in a way, but I totally get it. I have one of these on order and I have the stand alone PC MIDI, and the S2, X2, and X3 daughter boards. All amazing products. Great overview of this card.
I can get on board with that sentiment - perfection isn't always perfect, but I am really very pleased with this card. The answer of course is to have MULTIPLE RETRO PC's!
I will never forget the day I plugged an AWE-32 into my PC, back in 95/96, it was absolutely amazing. I don't run a classic 90's era PC at the moment, but I do run CoolSoft virtual MIDI on my daily driver PC now. Only because on occasion I want to hear my old 90's MIDI sounds, and it let's me enjoy them on my modern machine. I've plenty of cool soundfonts in there, but the AWE32 soundfont is the default. Love that sound.
I've been planning to work on building a top tier DOS system next year and the prices of some of the better hardware was hurting my soul. This however, checks a bunch of boxes for me for a lot less than all the other dispirate components combined. Definitely hope to pick up one of these soonish.
Same here, I've been thinking something in the range of a P3. Sure it's not "super retro" but parts are easy to find and cheap, plus it plays all the dos era stuff that I care about.
Got my Dreamblaster X2 recently. Wasn't sure about the Buran soundfont, sounds a bit harsh to me, especially noticable on the electric guitar tones in the DN3D Theme. But once I switched to the "GUD" sound font I fell absolutely in love with it. Can warmly recommend that you test the GUD sound font in your X2 if you have one. You might like it more too.
My intelligent Roland SCC-1 card cost me £600 second-hand and the Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold was another £80 - making the Orpheus card incredible value for money!
And just to think that back in the day I used to associate Crystal sound chips with cheap cut down Soundblaster clones. I really hadn't realised how much the Crystal version of FM sound missed though, the OPL3 shows a real improvement in sound detail. I also really like the inclusion of the wavetable connector. I have had a hard time sourcing a sound card with this connector, especially for PCI based systems. I would like to get a PCI version of this card for my own retro system.
Agreed, I can't see myself using the Crystal chip on this at all. Not with a genuine OPL3 on board! But I suppose it's nice to have that option for later Windows games.
PCI wont reliably work with dos. Even Creative couldnt make it work at the time and had to buy Ensoniq (company started by Commodore people, including designer of SID sound chip).
My first sound card back in the DOS/Win3.11 days was a Roland SCC-1... a MIDI sound card based on the SC-55. I've still got it along with an Creative AWE32 and Yamaha DB50XG WaveBlaster card.
I had a Soundblaster 16 in my Packard Bell 486 SX-33 and it cost me over $200 aud and it didn't sound anywhere near as clear or clean as this does. Great video, Neil. And again, looking forward to seeing the new place once you've moved into it. ;)
Awesome piece of hardware, developed by retro-enthusiasts! Ordered one immediately. Batch is sold out, hope to get one in Q1 2021. Thanks for the presentation! I like crystal for the given reasons, nice combo with the original YMF262. Will be a great host for my wavetables.
LOL OMG I literally just finished the "LGR Blerbs" on this exact same card. It's going to be soo fun to watch two different perspectives on this so close together. That and from both sides of the pond - as they say - too.
Now that's the kind of card everyone would have dreamed of were it released back in the DOS days. SoundBlaster, OPL3 and MIDI all on one card and working perfectly. Sadly, even the oldest of my mainboards only has PCI. Would be nice to get a modern version of this which could work with DOS emulators.
Superb. I have been hoarding many ISA soundcards "just in case" I need them, but now i think I can thin my collection out now, knowing that if I ever really need a new card that I can get one, albeit at a bit of a premium/fair cost though.
Me too. I have a box of different ones. From Soundblaster Pro 2.0 up to AWE64. Some Yamaha cards, some ESS cards. I tried to stick to models that had the least bugs. Also have a couple wavetable boards too. The Dreamblaster X2 of course, and a Diamond Monster Sound 2Mb
I still have my loaded CT3900 which I picked up brand new in the early 90s. I recently recapped it and did a couple of small mods to clean up its output, which helped it out quite a lot. Seems to have more punch and definition to its sound then it has ever had! But it is still not 100% free of disk sounds or other interference. Though I would say its about 75% gone which is substantial. I do know it has deteriorated through the years and I am not sure how it compares to when it was new, but I am sure its much improved.. The new Oprpheus sounds like it would give it a solid run for its money though..
We loved your musical skills in the Yamaha video. i thought it was hilarious
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Ah, that duke3d music part brought up memories. That was the first game where I was very familiar with the fm music before getting my hands on an SB AWE32. That difference just blew me away 😍
The statement about the authentic Creative hardware is something I just experienced. I have an SB16 MultiCD and it doesn't sound good at all anymore. Needs new caps, and it does suffer from OPL hang. This is a nice upgrade I'd consider for the 486 gaming rig. Thanks for sharing all this, I now have retro envy.
Impressive card indeed! I wasn't expecting much going into the video, but now I totally see why you're so enthusiastic about it! It really doesn't seem expensive either - 130€ is cheaper than a Roland MIDI device as you noted, and the engineering quality looks and sounds similar!
I've got the PCMIDI card, and as you mention it works perfectly in both intelligent and "dumb" MPU401 modes. Most soundcards from the past had really buggy implementations of the MPU401 intelligent mode.
Great vid as always. Thought I'd pop in to say I got my book yesterday. The package survived the trip across the Atlantic. You used the same picture for Philip and Andrew Oliver on the cards and mug. I mean, they are twins, but it still felt like you were reusing assets.... :D
3:00 "who must recreate that experience". I think there's a lot more of us who are creating experiences they never had, and getting luxuries they couldn't afford before. You could do a video specifically about people experiencing Retro-PC gaming that they missed in childhood/teen years. I think many just put their collectibles on a shelf, but if that's what makes them happy...
yee, at that time I was rly happy with my ESS AudioDrive 1868F, since I upgraded to Creative SB AWE32 ASP with 8MB RAM and Creative MIDI Blaster daughterboard on it... that was something!
Pretty cool! If I were building a 1990s gaming PC I'd be all over this. Right now I don't play a lot of old DOS games, and when I do, I emulate. I do enjoy getting original hardware for vintage gaming (most recently a Sega Genesis and an Amiga 500) but so far I haven't extended that to PC hardware. Back in the day I leaned heavily toward the MIDI side of things (my first sound card was a Gravis Ultrasound... It was a fun card but compatibility was a problem of course, and its OPL emulation was terrible) and emulation can support DAC and MIDI at least as well as vintage soundcards could - but chiptunes and analog synth are where you really want proper hardware IMO. That said the Adlib/OPL music and sound on PC never left me with too great an impression. Maybe there's more to it than I thought? I feel like since there were so many OPL variants and OPL-compatible chips (not to mention the fact that OPL music was just one option among several on the platform) - game makers couldn't really tweak their tunes for optimal results the way they could on C64 or Sega Genesis - where, again, you had different versions of the hardware that could sound different but in principle at least every machine had the same hardware and made the same sound. (So for instance looking at Lemmings - personally I think the Genesis music is great, but the Adlib music on PC to me is nowhere near as good - and I think the Adlib should be capable of better sound than the Genesis FM synth, right? I don't know how much that is the result of the PC platform being more nebulous and how much is the marketability of each platform...)
MT32 owner/programmer here. Just wanna give some clarification on when intelligent mode is needed. The MT32 does not require it, rather it is the game that determines whether it is needed. For example Monkey Island does not need it, but many older Sierra games do. On 386+ machines this can be overcome using SoftMPU.
Wonderful video. Another nice purchase and its performing very well. You must have quite a collection of Boards now. Day of the Tentacle ia a classic which i will longplay at some point. Duke Nukem is another superb game, and the sound is so nice now, amazing. Worth every penny. Well done Neil.
Who would have thought there would be a premium ISA sound card 20 years after ISA slots disappeared from motherboards! I'm ignoring industrial boards.. Mind blowing really..
Certainly intriguing, especially with those Nichicon caps, AC97 header, and intelligent MIDI. For my PII era Socket 370 Celeron 400(A) build, I'm currently using a Turtle Beach Montego II Aureal Vortex II PCI sound card (for Windows audio), passed through an Audician 32 Plus Yamaha OPL3 ISA sound card (for DOS audio), with a Serdaco DreamBlaster S1 (Final Edition) daughterboard, for a nice beefy "synthetic wavetable" sound.
You just had to make that comparison. smh. Like many, I had only briefly played SimCity and downloaded the demo of 2000. They really fulfilled the potential of the original game, it was easy to overlook the faults when you had the earlier version to compare it to.
The two DOS games I wasted many hours of my life were Great Naval Battles... oh how I played that to death and beyond and surprisingly Frontier Elite which unlike its bugomatic successor FEII, the first one worked very well and you could get in super deep into the high end secret missions like nuking bases on barren moons or even jump huge distances in your Panther clipper knowing you were free from being jumped by pirates (by time you had a clipper you were pretty godlike and only collision with a sun or planet could kill you) and by that time you had amassed vast fortunes in your name and boredom alleviated by shooting a space station and just annihilating every old bill cruiser spawned and your maxed shields showed nary a blip as your wanted level went nuts :P Years later I bumped into David Braben himself, at Bournemouth uni where I was doing some Open University work and he was there in the canteen, enthusing about Elite, Frontier etc then I mentioned Frontier II and he was not a happy chap... kinda ended sour then but he did tell me he was there working on the major massive sequel that became Elite Dangerous and took many long years to bring to fruition and people found too bloody hard to play due to safe worlds being piratey full and abs no point in trying to coast in to your space port as you is brown bread quite quickly :(
Great stuff Neil. You had me at SID chip, which is the only SID you'll ever need. And that's where I got lost... Sorry, you were saying something about DOS and #DOScember ?
They sold out! I already have a couple of new Wavetable boards and the Orpheus looks like a great replacement for my waning AWE32. Guess I'll wait for the next batch!
I'm considering selling my AWE-64 Gold and replacing it with this card. Since it has the SIMMconn module from Serdashop, as well as the original coax digital audio breakout, collector prices on eBay would easily cover the price!
Day of the Tentacle is currently up on Xbox game pass as a remastered, I remember this at the end of the Piratey games of similar action where the only really funny bit was the gobbing competition and was only amusing the once or maybe twice hehe I had a SB Pro something or other, it had gold plated connectors and used a WHOLE ISA port too and surprisingly it made for a very good ad hoc synthesiser and I kept that going well into the 2000's when mobo sound cards just ate the ol' SB Pro thingy hehe I think the last thing I truly used it for was Dance eJay which turned out some epic sounds and I do believe I still have it somewhere if leaky caps haven't claimed it :) I do keep meaning to out my box of AGP vid cards, sadly the only one of worth was prob the Rage Fury Maxx with two count 'em two GPUs and twice as much headache to get the bloody thing to work and I swear not one game was ever optimised or addressed even that ATi's Edzel existed and if I wanted to play Doom or Hexen or Wolfenstein 3d... I had to pull the Maxx out and put in a crappy nothing vid card to play arrgh
For the missing sound effects in those older Apogee games, try disabling S/PDIF in the ini file. Maybe the digital sounds are routed through S/PDIF only when it's set to enabled.
and here i am in 2022. instead of using my computers onboard real tech i find my self using a usb audio adapter that was made in 2013. because it just sounds.. better then the onboard audio even tho it detects as generic usb audio device.
The dreamblaster x2 has a dream france chip innit and that chip combined with the rom chip if it has one onboard allows you to have all of those lovely general midi instruments onboard use case that i have seen these dream france chips get used is with karaoke machines and midi modules like this or for midi keyboards
SB16 < AWE < AWE32 < AWE64 I'm pretty sure that's how my sound cards evolved back in the day but they were PCI by the end. Ah DoT fun game gonna have to go play it again. I haven't had a stand alone card for a very long time though
Thank you all for watching! This video is a day early compared to normal releases to accomodate a live show next Tuesday...details soon. Please check out the video description for all links, and if you'd like to help me reach the momumental height of 1000 patrons (we're so close now!) head on over to patreon.com/RMCretro
Thank you!
Neil - RMC
Mega thanks for your hard work creating this delightful video Neil !!!!
BTW, if you're craving that MT-32 sound but don't want to shell out for the real hardware, but you do still want to use real retro PC hardware, check out the mt32-pi project: github.com/dwhinham/mt32-pi
0 p lp
How does a channel participate in #DOScember?
Hey buddy, if you want an MT32 I have one. Hit me up if you are interested in it, and I'll mail it to you.
Hi Neil, thanks for the shoutout, I'm glad you could make good use of the clips from my DOS MIDI video! If only I'd known the Orpheus was just around the corner when I bought my PC-MIDI card from the same manufacturer. That said, I've been so happy with it (in conjunction with my OPL3 SoundBlaster 16) that I have no doubt this will also be top notch - so I've just ordered one of these too! 😄
Thanks so much for helping with the episode Rees!
@@RMCRetro You're very welcome Neil, always happy to help out in any way I can 😊
I have one of these cards and I'm delighted with it. It's perfectly authentic with none of the big list of problems that exist in the old cards.
How much was it? I can't seem to find a price for it and would love one too!
@@stoojinator as mentioned on the website:
Orheus soundcard : 130eur
Orpheus soundcard with PCMIDI installed: 180eur
Orpheus soundcard with PCMIDI installed and Dreamblaster X2 daughterboard: 230eur
I try to pre order one, next batch will come out early /mid 2021, but the wait list is long...
Surely if it has none of the bugs, its not authentic. ;) Thank goodness for that, sound cards were a PITA.
Would the SoundBlaster compatibility work with other obsolete operating systems, such as Win2K Pro, BeOS or OPENSTEP for Mach? I don’t just run DOS and Win9x on my vintage PC. Right now, I have an AWE64 Gold with DreamBlaster daughter card
10:54 is it just me or does someone else think that the "tzzzz" sound effect when selecting a power plant in Sim City sounds like someone making the sound with their mouth?
it actually is lol
It definitely is.
Every time I plug in an electrical device, I make this sound. Drives my wife nuts, haha.
@@Aldranis 😹
Yes it really does
“Hail to the king, baby”
This is one of those devices that I'd slap the money down in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, I don't have ANY computers with ISA anymore.
Given the flexibility of this card, I really don't find the price to be absurd or anything. It simply does a lot, and does it very well. The quality of the components appear to be top notch as well.
Will certainly look in to one of these myself. Nice showcase of everything it can do.
It's amazing to me that these days you can design your own sound card (or indeed any pcb) and even get it built to this standard. Especially when you consider back in the day that pretty much the only people that could do this sort of thing was large businesses with considerable funds behind them!
It could technically be done by just about anyone who could afford a pc in the first place, the trick is that the internet makes a lot of info much easier to get than back in the day, so if you dig around long enough you can cut through the nonsense and voodoo logic that tends to get passed around as "fact".
It's even more possible because of availability of technical documentations of these chips, often with complete schematics. I know Crystal and ESS chips have those.
@@Paar86 Its ironic that these chips are our saviours today when soundblaster clones were so hit and miss back in the day.
@@alexatkin It's necessary to know where to look as often even those old SB clones can be much better and compatible then a real SB. That applies mainly to SB16 and AWE32 as they have many bugs, incompatibilites and in case of AWE32, inferior wavetable synth to a competition. But they still sell like they are the top of the line products and ultimate solution for any retro PC. I would definitely pick Crystal (except CS4235) based card over SB16 for every day use.
I love new retro hardware. Such a cool card!
Me too, but it's a missed opportunity when they go with green PCB :/
This is really going to rustle Clint's jimmies.
For me it is still the GUS Max.. Still have mine working in a setup for most DOS games. That, for me, was the best experience.
I wish their GUX reviving project still alive(VOGON).. but well.. I love Star Control II sound from GUS. I owned about 30 years ago. I wish I kept it well..
try the x2gs, the opl3 sounds like a pc speaker compared to it
back in the days when sound was more important than video and refresh rate.
Those Nichicon Fine Gold caps... magnifique! I re-capped an NEC PC-9821 Ap2 (with the on-board sound) with those and they sound AMAZING, even through the built-in cone speaker.
I own one of these also, and it’s basically flawless. I’m using a S2 vs X2 wavetable board, since I’m using this to run a MT32, SC55, SC88 and MU80. It works flawlessly and replaced my SB Pro 2.0 and PC-MIDI card with an all in one solution!
One of the best designed retro products I have ever seen.
I remember pitching up at my brother - in - laws house back when Doom (the shareware version) was first doing the rounds. We played it on his home office pc (286 I think?) with no sound. The next day we trawled around the local computer shops looking for a sound card. Popping that very cheap and quite nasty card in it still blew our minds when that sound started ringing out. It's amazing what we thought was good back then!
I'm pretty sure Doom required a 386. At the time I remember Linux was just getting interesting, and it needed the memory management of a 386 as well. I was in a networking course back then, and Doom was the only game that could be played over a network.
@@squirlmy that makes sense.
Wow, that is an impressive board - super versatile. Premium price for a premium product. I wasn't aware of this card - thanks for enlightening me with your excellent review.
I just received your book in the mail and I couldn't be happier with it. Well done. Love the channel.
Thank you Daniel!
@@RMCRetro You have a book?
"Sound Blaster 16's having those pops, and hissing" Thats part of the nostalgia. ;D Like vinyl music, its kinda part of the experiences in a way, but I totally get it. I have one of these on order and I have the stand alone PC MIDI, and the S2, X2, and X3 daughter boards. All amazing products. Great overview of this card.
I can get on board with that sentiment - perfection isn't always perfect, but I am really very pleased with this card. The answer of course is to have MULTIPLE RETRO PC's!
@@RMCRetro Multiple vintage/retro computers AND multiple forms of MIDI playback devices. ;D
wow i have that similar giddy feeling of when i bought my first sound blaster. dayum it sounds amazing
I will never forget the day I plugged an AWE-32 into my PC, back in 95/96, it was absolutely amazing. I don't run a classic 90's era PC at the moment, but I do run CoolSoft virtual MIDI on my daily driver PC now. Only because on occasion I want to hear my old 90's MIDI sounds, and it let's me enjoy them on my modern machine. I've plenty of cool soundfonts in there, but the AWE32 soundfont is the default. Love that sound.
I've been planning to work on building a top tier DOS system next year and the prices of some of the better hardware was hurting my soul. This however, checks a bunch of boxes for me for a lot less than all the other dispirate components combined. Definitely hope to pick up one of these soonish.
Same here, I've been thinking something in the range of a P3. Sure it's not "super retro" but parts are easy to find and cheap, plus it plays all the dos era stuff that I care about.
Jumping down the MIDI rabbit hole can get super expensive.
LGR better put on a lobster bib before watching this
Was going to say the same thing - Looking forward to his excitement over it too !
@@mcbpete Funny you should say that...
And... He put up his own video not too long ago about this. th-cam.com/video/FBNmt9Tz6VY/w-d-xo.html
This is actually a good companion to the LGR blerbs video.
I just feel sorry for the lobster.
Got my Dreamblaster X2 recently. Wasn't sure about the Buran soundfont, sounds a bit harsh to me, especially noticable on the electric guitar tones in the DN3D Theme. But once I switched to the "GUD" sound font I fell absolutely in love with it. Can warmly recommend that you test the GUD sound font in your X2 if you have one. You might like it more too.
Thanks for the tip, I need to try this out
@@RMCRetro There's a project on Vogons to make an MT32 font for it aswell, so you can try that too.
RMC is the only TH-camr I’ve heard mention AmiPro. AmiPro was awesome.
Mine has been ordered and will ship soon. Can’t wait!
My intelligent Roland SCC-1 card cost me £600 second-hand and the Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold was another £80 - making the Orpheus card incredible value for money!
And just to think that back in the day I used to associate Crystal sound chips with cheap cut down Soundblaster clones. I really hadn't realised how much the Crystal version of FM sound missed though, the OPL3 shows a real improvement in sound detail. I also really like the inclusion of the wavetable connector. I have had a hard time sourcing a sound card with this connector, especially for PCI based systems. I would like to get a PCI version of this card for my own retro system.
Agreed, I can't see myself using the Crystal chip on this at all. Not with a genuine OPL3 on board! But I suppose it's nice to have that option for later Windows games.
Nice to see what this sound card can do :) It's great to see new hardware like this, even if I will always prefer authentic old hardware.
"Australian thumbs up". hahah, good one ;). You have earned my subscription right there.
Duke Nukem 3D sounds great! I had Sound Blaster Awe 32, it was ok but friends Gravis Ultrasound had awesome midi music.
This is absolutely wicked. Great find. Thanks for sharing!
Wow! Big case of Better-Than-You-Remember. Makes me want an ISA slot on my newest PCs.
Looks and sounds good! I have the Dreamblaster X2 in my Korg NS5R. Now I can back up that's a wonderful bit of kit!
You know somethings good when both Neil and Clint (LGR) like something.
ISA. Makes sense I suppose, though I hope a PCI variant is introduced. Seems great tho! I can almost tell over YT how great it sounds :)
PCI wont reliably work with dos. Even Creative couldnt make it work at the time and had to buy Ensoniq (company started by Commodore people, including designer of SID sound chip).
My first sound card back in the DOS/Win3.11 days was a Roland SCC-1... a MIDI sound card based on the SC-55. I've still got it along with an Creative AWE32 and Yamaha DB50XG WaveBlaster card.
I had a Soundblaster 16 in my Packard Bell 486 SX-33 and it cost me over $200 aud and it didn't sound anywhere near as clear or clean as this does. Great video, Neil. And again, looking forward to seeing the new place once you've moved into it. ;)
Awesome piece of hardware, developed by retro-enthusiasts! Ordered one immediately. Batch is sold out, hope to get one in Q1 2021. Thanks for the presentation! I like crystal for the given reasons, nice combo with the original YMF262. Will be a great host for my wavetables.
Yep, I get pops and crackles on a genuine SB AWE32.
Awesome channel.
LOL OMG I literally just finished the "LGR Blerbs" on this exact same card. It's going to be soo fun to watch two different perspectives on this so close together. That and from both sides of the pond - as they say - too.
This must be a dream come true for retro dos gamers. The sound quality is fantastic!
Now that's the kind of card everyone would have dreamed of were it released back in the DOS days. SoundBlaster, OPL3 and MIDI all on one card and working perfectly. Sadly, even the oldest of my mainboards only has PCI. Would be nice to get a modern version of this which could work with DOS emulators.
Superb. I have been hoarding many ISA soundcards "just in case" I need them, but now i think I can thin my collection out now, knowing that if I ever really need a new card that I can get one, albeit at a bit of a premium/fair cost though.
Me too. I have a box of different ones. From Soundblaster Pro 2.0 up to AWE64. Some Yamaha cards, some ESS cards. I tried to stick to models that had the least bugs. Also have a couple wavetable boards too. The Dreamblaster X2 of course, and a Diamond Monster Sound 2Mb
I recall well the euphoria i felt installing my brand new Soundblaster Awe 32, it was "Awe"some.
I couldn't afford such premium sound at the time, I'm jealous of you
I still have my loaded CT3900 which I picked up brand new in the early 90s. I recently recapped it and did a couple of small mods to clean up its output, which helped it out quite a lot. Seems to have more punch and definition to its sound then it has ever had! But it is still not 100% free of disk sounds or other interference. Though I would say its about 75% gone which is substantial. I do know it has deteriorated through the years and I am not sure how it compares to when it was new, but I am sure its much improved.. The new Oprpheus sounds like it would give it a solid run for its money though..
best part, is that its NEW!!! should last a lifetime from now!
We loved your musical skills in the Yamaha video. i thought it was hilarious
Ah, that duke3d music part brought up memories. That was the first game where I was very familiar with the fm music before getting my hands on an SB AWE32. That difference just blew me away 😍
I remembered to turn up my headphone volume when you started testing the Duke3D music. So good with that Dreamblaster X2.
That OPL3 sound is gorgeous. Amazing sound card and great review, thanks for that.
The statement about the authentic Creative hardware is something I just experienced. I have an SB16 MultiCD and it doesn't sound good at all anymore. Needs new caps, and it does suffer from OPL hang. This is a nice upgrade I'd consider for the 486 gaming rig. Thanks for sharing all this, I now have retro envy.
Impressive card indeed! I wasn't expecting much going into the video, but now I totally see why you're so enthusiastic about it! It really doesn't seem expensive either - 130€ is cheaper than a Roland MIDI device as you noted, and the engineering quality looks and sounds similar!
the soundfont sounds sound great.
Nice, Retroman (in The Cave).
I am playing with DOSBox atm...
Duke Nukem 1.5 :D
Very tricky getting Lemmings 2 to work well. I’ve finally got it to work with no glitches!!!
I've got the PCMIDI card, and as you mention it works perfectly in both intelligent and "dumb" MPU401 modes. Most soundcards from the past had really buggy implementations of the MPU401 intelligent mode.
I never see Sam & Max: Hit the road in any DOS videos this was my favourite game back in the day and had a great soundtrack.
Great vid as always. Thought I'd pop in to say I got my book yesterday. The package survived the trip across the Atlantic. You used the same picture for Philip and Andrew Oliver on the cards and mug. I mean, they are twins, but it still felt like you were reusing assets.... :D
Great to hear it arrived safely. If you look closely there are differences, I made sure Stoo didn't reuse them.
YO that synthwave bit building up to you popping the card in was DOPE. Keep that shit up my man.
Am I the only one that spilled my tea while hearing Neil refering to the "australian thumbs up"?
3:00 "who must recreate that experience". I think there's a lot more of us who are creating experiences they never had, and getting luxuries they couldn't afford before. You could do a video specifically about people experiencing Retro-PC gaming that they missed in childhood/teen years. I think many just put their collectibles on a shelf, but if that's what makes them happy...
I like how it's got the AC'97 connector on there so you can put it in a newer case and use the front audio jacks.
yee, at that time I was rly happy with my ESS AudioDrive 1868F, since I upgraded to Creative SB AWE32 ASP with 8MB RAM and Creative MIDI Blaster daughterboard on it... that was something!
Within a few hours of this video and the next batch of Orpheus I cards is sold out. The power of RMC !
I was lucky enough to have a father that plays piano and was into MIDI keyboards. Which means that I had a Roland MT-32 available in my DOS childhood.
Pretty cool! If I were building a 1990s gaming PC I'd be all over this.
Right now I don't play a lot of old DOS games, and when I do, I emulate. I do enjoy getting original hardware for vintage gaming (most recently a Sega Genesis and an Amiga 500) but so far I haven't extended that to PC hardware. Back in the day I leaned heavily toward the MIDI side of things (my first sound card was a Gravis Ultrasound... It was a fun card but compatibility was a problem of course, and its OPL emulation was terrible) and emulation can support DAC and MIDI at least as well as vintage soundcards could - but chiptunes and analog synth are where you really want proper hardware IMO.
That said the Adlib/OPL music and sound on PC never left me with too great an impression. Maybe there's more to it than I thought? I feel like since there were so many OPL variants and OPL-compatible chips (not to mention the fact that OPL music was just one option among several on the platform) - game makers couldn't really tweak their tunes for optimal results the way they could on C64 or Sega Genesis - where, again, you had different versions of the hardware that could sound different but in principle at least every machine had the same hardware and made the same sound.
(So for instance looking at Lemmings - personally I think the Genesis music is great, but the Adlib music on PC to me is nowhere near as good - and I think the Adlib should be capable of better sound than the Genesis FM synth, right? I don't know how much that is the result of the PC platform being more nebulous and how much is the marketability of each platform...)
One upside of being stuck inside for almost all year is all the money going from the pub budget to the hardware budget.
I felt that.
MT32 owner/programmer here. Just wanna give some clarification on when intelligent mode is needed. The MT32 does not require it, rather it is the game that determines whether it is needed. For example Monkey Island does not need it, but many older Sierra games do. On 386+ machines this can be overcome using SoftMPU.
That Day of the Tentacle intro is actually the second movement of Rossini's William Tell overture. =P
Wonderful video. Another nice purchase and its performing very well. You must have quite a collection of Boards now.
Day of the Tentacle ia a classic which i will longplay at some point.
Duke Nukem is another superb game, and the sound is so nice now, amazing. Worth every penny. Well done Neil.
Oh man I love #DOScember! greatest time of the year of Retro DOS gaming!
You completely murdered the pronunciation of Ferreira.
I do apologise
Who would have thought there would be a premium ISA sound card 20 years after ISA slots disappeared from motherboards! I'm ignoring industrial boards.. Mind blowing really..
Great review of an excellent piece of hardware. While it costs more than I can afford at the moment, I think the price is actually not bad.
Certainly intriguing, especially with those Nichicon caps, AC97 header, and intelligent MIDI. For my PII era Socket 370 Celeron 400(A) build, I'm currently using a Turtle Beach Montego II Aureal Vortex II PCI sound card (for Windows audio), passed through an Audician 32 Plus Yamaha OPL3 ISA sound card (for DOS audio), with a Serdaco DreamBlaster S1 (Final Edition) daughterboard, for a nice beefy "synthetic wavetable" sound.
You're making me want to build myself a good ol 386/486 DOS system.
Simply amazing new hardware!
130 pound is actually a steal 👌🏻
I think it really is
To me, "enjoying" SIM City 2000 is like enjoying Vogon poetry.
Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me,
As plurdled gabbleblotchits,
In a lurgid bee.
You just had to make that comparison. smh. Like many, I had only briefly played SimCity and downloaded the demo of 2000. They really fulfilled the potential of the original game, it was easy to overlook the faults when you had the earlier version to compare it to.
@@RMCRetro
>Enjoy poetry
"Let's not overdo it, okay?"
Resistance IS useless!
Looks just like a Soundblaster card!
That beat drop at 7.08 ooooooh boy 👊🏼
The two DOS games I wasted many hours of my life were Great Naval Battles... oh how I played that to death and beyond and surprisingly Frontier Elite which unlike its bugomatic successor FEII, the first one worked very well and you could get in super deep into the high end secret missions like nuking bases on barren moons or even jump huge distances in your Panther clipper knowing you were free from being jumped by pirates (by time you had a clipper you were pretty godlike and only collision with a sun or planet could kill you) and by that time you had amassed vast fortunes in your name and boredom alleviated by shooting a space station and just annihilating every old bill cruiser spawned and your maxed shields showed nary a blip as your wanted level went nuts :P
Years later I bumped into David Braben himself, at Bournemouth uni where I was doing some Open University work and he was there in the canteen, enthusing about Elite, Frontier etc then I mentioned Frontier II and he was not a happy chap... kinda ended sour then but he did tell me he was there working on the major massive sequel that became Elite Dangerous and took many long years to bring to fruition and people found too bloody hard to play due to safe worlds being piratey full and abs no point in trying to coast in to your space port as you is brown bread quite quickly :(
Sounds great! I never heard the DynaBlasters music on PC before!
Thank you for showing SimCity 2000, still makes me laugh the "Bzzzz" sound of the power plants.
Flawless sound!
This card was made by a Portuguese guy, Edro Ferreira. This is an example of what can be archived with the right mindset
This is what I miss when I buy a game on GoG. I swear I spent more time in setup.exe than the actual game. lol
You can still extract the actual setup routine from the GOG installer.
Fantastic content. You are a pleasure to listen to! Thanks!
Great stuff Neil. You had me at SID chip, which is the only SID you'll ever need. And that's where I got lost...
Sorry, you were saying something about DOS and #DOScember ?
They sold out! I already have a couple of new Wavetable boards and the Orpheus looks like a great replacement for my waning AWE32. Guess I'll wait for the next batch!
Mid vid I was thinking hocus pocus would sound proper on this and... you delivered, thanks mate!
Those pastel-colored PC99 sound connectors were really the beginning of the end of Western civilization in retrospect.
I'm considering selling my AWE-64 Gold and replacing it with this card. Since it has the SIMMconn module from Serdashop, as well as the original coax digital audio breakout, collector prices on eBay would easily cover the price!
Day of the Tentacle is currently up on Xbox game pass as a remastered, I remember this at the end of the Piratey games of similar action where the only really funny bit was the gobbing competition and was only amusing the once or maybe twice hehe I had a SB Pro something or other, it had gold plated connectors and used a WHOLE ISA port too and surprisingly it made for a very good ad hoc synthesiser and I kept that going well into the 2000's when mobo sound cards just ate the ol' SB Pro thingy hehe I think the last thing I truly used it for was Dance eJay which turned out some epic sounds and I do believe I still have it somewhere if leaky caps haven't claimed it :) I do keep meaning to out my box of AGP vid cards, sadly the only one of worth was prob the Rage Fury Maxx with two count 'em two GPUs and twice as much headache to get the bloody thing to work and I swear not one game was ever optimised or addressed even that ATi's Edzel existed and if I wanted to play Doom or Hexen or Wolfenstein 3d... I had to pull the Maxx out and put in a crappy nothing vid card to play arrgh
What a fantastic solution!
For the missing sound effects in those older Apogee games, try disabling S/PDIF in the ini file. Maybe the digital sounds are routed through S/PDIF only when it's set to enabled.
What a superb review and superb card!
and here i am in 2022. instead of using my computers onboard real tech i find my self using a usb audio adapter that was made in 2013. because it just sounds.. better then the onboard audio even tho it detects as generic usb audio device.
Very nice card sounds great 👍 and a competitive price too ☺️😉 you do get what you pay for 👍
Gravis Ultrasound? Had to say it...
The dreamblaster x2 has a dream france chip innit and that chip combined with the rom chip if it has one onboard allows you to have all of those lovely general midi instruments onboard use case that i have seen these dream france chips get used is with karaoke machines and midi modules like this or for midi keyboards
SB16 < AWE < AWE32 < AWE64 I'm pretty sure that's how my sound cards evolved back in the day but they were PCI by the end. Ah DoT fun game gonna have to go play it again. I haven't had a stand alone card for a very long time though