Ultrasound had awesome sound. Friend had this card. Unfortunately GUS wasn't compatible with some games I liked - either sample loading or sound effects didn't worked. Maybe it was due to specific memory configuration, don't remember details anymore. I bought SB AWE32 due to that.
Getting the GUS working was what really challenged my computer knowledge back in the day, (probably like 10 years old) and probably helped me get where I am today. Love the sound of old wave table stuff from back then. Helped that Gravis was a Vancouver company so their BBS was a local call!
Oh how I love the music that came from the GUS! my next door neighbor's dad worked for Gravis at the time. I'd go over there and play doom on lan all the time.
Had experience with that. Unfortunately not all games I liked was GUS compatible. Pity, because besides that GUS had better sound than SB AWE32 I bought later.
2:56 AWE32, 5:17 Level 1 14:09 GUS, 16:34 Level 1 I've read that Doom v1.2 and below use hardware mixing on GUS though so it should sound better that way.
Music aside - Doom above 1.2, such as 1.666 shown here doesn't do hardware SFX on GUS, uses a simple 'software DAC' kind of driver instead. Something about crashes on 0.9, 1.1, 1.2 etc, so they changed it. Roast me if I'm wrong. Edit: I have both cards so will test and check back in 1 to 1000 weeks time. Probably, maybe.
Matty7D Still funny when you think that back then CD-ROM drives used proprietary interfaces that had to be connected to a sound card. Who ever thought that was a good idea was crazy... even SCSI (they did make them, but most off-the-shelf drives were not SCSI) would have made more sense than making you buy a specific sound card to go with the drive.
John Umina If I remember correctly, I got mine for around AU$450. I think I was around 16-17 at the time so it was every cent I had too. I inquired about the additional memory to upgrade it to 1024kB, but it was so expensive. I ended up getting the extra ram for next to nothing from a friend. I can't believe it's been nearly 20 years!!!
There's just something about Doom that captured so many kids back then and we STILL can't get enough of it over 2 decades later. No other game except maybe Duke3D have had such an effect on me. And what's so great about it is the unique sounding experience people hold dear to them that can be very different to the next person, yet the game still had the same effect on us all.
I had a GUS ACE too! and a SB PRO. had them both installed, but only used the SB for it's game port. Gravis sounded so ahead of it's time, it's a shame they couldn't keep it up. RIP Gravis Ultrasound!
Have a Ultrasound MAX from late 94', came in my first new PC. And also a Sound Blaster 16 CT 2910, Sound Blaster AWE 32 CT 3910 + a Vibra ISA SB16 card from 1997.
I remember spending £40 on a Soundblaster Pro compatible because I was sick of the speaker. It sucked, but was a huge leap in enjoying stuff like Tie Fighter and Doom. A few months later, a friend of mine went out and spent £150 on an AWE32. I thought he was crazy, till I heard the music coming out of his PC! Doom just blew me away.
When playing DOS Doom v1.9 with the 1MB+ Gravis Ultrasound or in DosBox with GUS support, there is 3 things you should do to greatly improve your Doom experience: 1: Google for and get the following files: NOVERT.COM (disables vertical mouse movement, trust me on this). GUS1M.WAD (greatly improves Doom 1 music on GUS), GUS1M-II.WAD (this one for Doom 2, sometimes named GUS1M-IID.WAD instead) and put in the Doom directory. To use just type Doom -file GUS1M.WAD. 2: Get and install the GUS ''ULTRASND'' DOS drivers, even if you're using DosBox. Then get and install ''Pro Patches Lite'' v1.61, you may need to get 1.60 or even 1.50 and patch up to 1.61 depending on what you download. PPL combined with GUS1M makes a RADICAL difference to Doom's music, your ears are in for a treat! Make a batch file to automate loading, edit doom.bat and put these 4 lines in: @echo off novert.com doom -file gus1m.wad %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9 novert.com /u Of course there is source ports like ZDoom etc, but this is for people who want to enjoy the original games and have the best possible experience. You may find the music in this method sounds even better than the source ports!
Maybe it's because I had an AWE soundcard back in the day, and that's the way I'm used to the hearing Doom soundtrack, but I think the guitar sounds on the AWE sound much better. But the drum sounds on the Gravis are really, really nice. It's nearly a toss-up, but I think if I had a choice, I'd go with the AWE.
+Shane McRetro Shame that they do not have any future on modern Sound Cards last Sound card I could use this wavetable was the Terratec DMX Xfire 1024 as far I could remember and it was a hard job to attach and keep it hold on this sound card (the card had the suitable connector but I had hold it there with velcro). Today it has a place of honour on my IT shelf. Good thing I kept the box, the midi manual and the CD (Yes it works today, also it has scratches).
I had a guillemot maxi sound fortissimo PCI card back in the late 90s or maybe 2000 that had Yamaha XG capability with the YMf744 chip. I remember being BLOWN AWAY by how cool the MIDI music sounded. I wish I still had it. I'm currently downloading every soft synth I can find and just bought a mess of Lucas Arts and Sierra games to "test" them with :)
Man, the Ultrasound sounds so much better. Shame these things are so damn expensive now, otherwise I'd snag one. I had to go with a Awe 64 in a recent build as a compromise.
the main thing i dont like about the gus is the smaller dynamic range and thus the sound appearing muffled regarding spectrum. but the nuances of the effects and the soundfont of the gus itself were really well designed.
As a former AWE32 user, it was highly under-rated for a number of reasons. The OPL3 FM chip definitely sounded cheesy compared to the Gravis' synth chip, but in reality the MIDI features on the AWE32 were FAR superior. The General Midi sounds were based on a WAVETABLE synth (basically a fancy older word for a loop-based sampler), and though the standard GM sample set was pretty crap, power users discovered how to download and use "Soundfonts" (basically completely new sample libraries), and also (as I did) bump up the onboard RAM using standard (for the day) PC Memory - to create what was basically an in-computer version of the rack-mounted E-MU Proteus 2, which was an music industry standard piece of hardware. The problem was that not a lot of developers (very few, if any, to my memory), utilised that functionality on the AWE32, and just went with the standard General Midi soundfont. However, some very select titles did actually ship with a Soundfont - the original Ultima Online is one notable example. I guarantee you there wasn't a single (consumer) soundcard on the market back then that sounded as good as this : th-cam.com/video/C3LabWWJiLM/w-d-xo.html I remember also a lot of people (Myself included) used to use the free "Vienna Soundfont Studio" tool made by creative, to hack together our own custom soundfonts for various games (and in my case music production). Listen to this guy who created a custom GM soundfont for use with X-Wing, and imagine that level of music/audio quality back in 1997. There's a reason I was so proud of my AWE32. :) th-cam.com/video/h1-4lQYdooQ/w-d-xo.html In any case, I remember back in the day there was an almost Microsoft Vs Apple rivalry between Gravis and Creative Labs soundcard fans, and it was debatable back in the day whether using hard disk space for sample memory, or onboad RAM (As in the case of the Soundblaster stuff) was the right choice. Ultimately history proved that the latter was superior. The Gravis Ultrasound sank like a rock, and Creative Labs' Soundblaster hardware continued to move forward in leaps and bounds for several more generations. Until of course the final reality we know today where on-board sound hardware is mostly standard, and mostly good enough.
MrJimbo1qaz The AWE32 had 2 RAM slots supporting standard (for the time) RAM up to 28MB (when system ram was only 512k max), and whilst you're correct that that Soundbank was 2 - 300 mb, the fact that the AWE32 was basically an E-Mu Proteus sampler, meant that you could achieve a lot with VERY little. That's the entire concept of a sampler. Instead of a single, 5mb sample that loops poorly, you needed only to create a small (less than 100k if you like) sample, with perfect loop points, then using the SoundFont Studio tool could create an instrument with far more depth.. I assure you that in 1998, PC's were averaging 1mb of RAM (minimum!), but that was the beauty of the AWE32 back in the early 90's - unlike the Gravis, it did not require hard drive (slooow), and nor did it require system RAM - it had it's own RAM slots. Granted, factory units only had 512kb (but that was as much as SYSTEM RAM on most PCS!), and that was expandable up to 28MB! As I may or may not have mentioned, I owned my AWE32 purchased in 1994 for almost a year and a bit until I realised I could upgrade the beast with extra RAM, and from that day forth, I was creating music on it that you would NOT think was created on a PC. I actually created some music using that setup that was used on TV commercials in the mid 90's here in Australia. :D It was a seriously powerful machine, considering it cost under 300$AU, and it was as powerful (if you knew what you were doing) as an rack-mounted E-Mu Proteus unit worth WELL over a thousand dollars at the time... FYI I _did_ eventually upgrade to a Sound Blaster "LIVE!", on account of its VASTLY improved noise floor, I can't quite recall, but I believe it had 1meg of RAM by default? But not long after that I was STILL suffering noise floor issues because by that stage I was producing music for "serious" broadcast, and I had to upgrade to actual professional hardware. My next audio "Card" (including a breakout box) cost me around AU$1200.00. And then at some point in the early 00's, PC OEMS started shipping audio hardware that was just as good as dedicated audio hardware, built right onto the motherboard. That's why "Soundcards" aren't really a thing anymore, at least in the consumer sphere.
+dingo7055 Yikes! That's quite scary! Almost could have been in a Sega commercial... they had a strange team! I dig those funky beats though, never would have thought that was all (or mostly) done on a regular old sound card! Amazing!
As you can hear, the GUS was better. Note this was the GUS Max, so much later time frame. The original GUS sounded just as good, and was out way before Soundblaster even knew what a sound card was(ok wavetable) Soundblaster was the name for people who didn't know what gaming was back in the day. Compatability? Very few games(good ones) didn't come with Native GUS support.
+Kelthuzzar I used to pair up my hand-me-down Ultrasound ACE (via my cousins) with my Media Vision Pro AudioSpectrum 16 in the mid 90s. My cousins had moved from their Media Vision Thunder Board to (1) a Diamond sound card (back when Diamond actually made good stuff) and then to (2) a Sound Blaster AWE32. I eventually went to a AWE64 Gold in the late 1990s. I played a lot of shareware games from iD/Epic MegaGames, and back in the early 1990s, all the computer guys I knew wished they had a Gravis (a few had Sound Blasters and one guy back in 1989/1990 lent one of my cousins his AdLib card for a month or 2 during the summertime -- we were so excited, given our reliance on the PC computer speaker). The demoscene was in full swing, and Future Crew's "Second Reality" was all that everyone was talking about -- the Gravis desire was pretty passionate amongst all of us (but no one I knew could afford one, even though it was a lot cheaper than getting a Roland MT-32). I knew ONE guy who had a MT-32, but he wasn't really much of a gamer (his parents were quite wealthy).
+Kelthuzzar I think the ACE was for Windows support. There really wasn't any "good" games that supported windows at the time. Why load Windows to run a game. DOS was where it was at at the time.
+Grant Schoep And, I remember a number of games that came out specify ally for GUS support. That is what they targeted. Not sure if they directly support things like adlib or soundblaster. The days of the real shareware BBS downloads. yes, maybe commercial games didn't.
Na, the GUS wasn't inherently better. It was easier to live with in terms of games, because you only had to initialize it once to set it to its resources, there were no drivers taking up memory, unlike the AWE32 which was a mem hog under DOS. The GUS had the problem that even with a ram expansion it only had 1MB of Wavetable memory. It also used a Wavetable Synth with loadable sound fonts, same as the AWE32. But whereas the AWE had more memory, the GUS had the choice of eiter preloading a heavily compressed General Midi set (that results in muffled effects and missing instruments) or using Ultramid and compatible drivers to load the fitting patches for each Midi file as it is played. Try using a modified Doom version without Patch preloading, sounds completely different. It was bad in games like Strike commander though where the music changed in battle depending on the mood, you had slight pauses when patches got discarded and reloaded (the Ultrasound drivers were actually on the Strike Commander CD, but not enabled in the soundcard menu to choose them, you had to set the card manually). I loved my GUS Max to death, but it was severely limited in a lot of ways and the signal/noise ratio was... not very good. Also, playing more voices at once lowered the playback quality, but that wasn't noticeable since most of the games only used 8bit samples at that time due to space constraints on floppy disks. But to sum it up, Dingo7055 is completely wrong with his argumentation - the GUS used the same technology as the AWE32. Also, it came out when only the SB16 was available with OPL3 FM synthesis (at the same price point as the Ultrasound!). It was an underdog, but at that time the best sounding card on the market for its price.
Ahh! This was a good watch. My current retro pc has a sound blaster awe64 gold. In Windows 98, I'll load the 4mb sound font provided by creative. In DOS, I just go pure awe32 mode. My next retro pc will have a sound blaster 16 with an NEC XR385 daughter board attached to it. Can't wait to finish that one.
Gravis Ultra Sound wins for me, too bad it was not widely supported and you had to emulate. I never had one though, it was horrendously expensive back in the day and the top of my sd career was a SB Pro16 which was already orgasmic compared to the AdLib card I previously had.
+Tomek Tomek My strongest memory of my childhood was playing on pots and pans with a wooden spoon. My mother came in and picked me up and said, "Son you are no GUS, AdLib maybe, but certainly no GUS". Until today I had no idea what she meant! :)
The AWE installer has some fantastic 90s elevator/gameshow music ;-) I used to own a GUS PnP which was strangely incompatible with everything except the demo software that came with it and Second Reality 2. It also had that wonderful 90s drawback of costing a lot of money and then needing you to buy 1 meg of ram for it separately.
You made it wrong ;) The AWE32 loaded with a 8 MByte Sample (SoundFont) from Yamaha or GM or Roland. Music over Midi ! With the Gravis, DualMode! AWE for Sound, Music from GUS, with a big SoundFont. Now all Music sounds absolute great! Heavy Metal with Roland Guitars! Massiv
Level 2 bass line sounds SOOO good on the Gravis. Shame about the weird sample for the drum that sounds like a panpipe or something. I grew up playing Doom with an SB16 (which was an enormous upgrade from the PC speaker, which I was originally stuck with for about a year), and so my memory is probably closer to the SB32. Overall the GUS sounds a little nicer though.
***** you proabbly know already but The GUS was much coveted, it was really popular in the europe demoscne, you can run both though in the same system, i used to run an awe64 and a gus max.. the gus max has all 3 classic interfaces for cdrom drives too.
The weird samples are a bug in Doom's DMX sound library (Google "GUS instrument mappings bug"). I recently released a WAD file that fixes this - look for gusgonna.wad in the idgames archive.
Now that dosbox emulates most of this hardware, I find myself wondering which hardware the creators intended their respective games to run on. In this case I suspect it was the gravis.
Many thanks for uploading this great comparison. I never had SB 32/64 AWE. I went from SB Pro to GUS ACE 1 Mb. I must admit that SB AWE 32 sounds definitely better than OPL chip-based SB but the quality of the music has nothing to do with GUS. GUS sounds clearer, sharper and more "midish". Am glad I chose GUS over SB 32 back in 1997. It was a superb sound card!
I like both, but the AWE32 wins for me! i think the AWE32 is more supported - I might be wrong, just feels that way from the sound setups I've seen in lots of the most common DOS games. I think the Gravis has richer instruments - a bit like some of the Roland cards but it sounds a bit too perfect imo.
I remember in those days, the Gravis (to my ears) always had the richer sounds and instruments. It was really great sounding! But to your point, I always remember issues with that card. Games would crash or it was just overall buggy when using the Gravis. Sound blaster sounded inferior (and this all depended on what SB card you had), but it just had better support and just tended to work better right out of the box. Fun days.
I have to agree. The Gravis had a higher quality .WAV table. Definitely richer in sound. It was my favorite card, at its time of release. Great fun back then
I always regretted replacing my Gravis Ultrasound with the Soundblaster AWE 32. The best graphics card around then was the 3DFX Voodoo. The original StarWars games of this era were amazing I recomend you play them!
Ahh, the GUS.. I've had the Soundblaster, SB16, SBpro SBawe32, SBAwe32 gold, SB Audigy, etc... and the GUS Max... I have always thought the GUS has outperformed all the SB's for the midi synth. The trick, however, was to load the higher memory samples. I remember adding 2 512k chips (SODIMMs?) and loading a 1meg or 2 meg sample pack on bootup. The default was something like a 128 or 256 meg sample pack, which is what we're hearing. Try using the larger sized sample pack, and the results would be hands down. I tried to get many of the Soundblaster cards to match the sound of the GUS, but I never could.. I even tried loading GUS sample packs into the AWE32... but never could get it to sound right. Thanks for the blast from the past.
The regular GUS came with 256KB of RAM, expandable to 1MB, and the GUS MAX came with 512KB, and was also expandable to 1MB. The GUS PnP came with 1MB of sample ROM, but you could install up to 8MB of RAM (you had to install some RAM for backwards compatibility, the PnP Pro came with 512K). The GUS drivers came with separate MIDI banks for 256/512/768/1024K, but some people also released their own, optimised versions that also fixed some bugs in the default ones (later drivers also updated the samples). The PnP was IMO hands-down the best one. Not only did it have the larger memory, but it used a more advanced chipset that didn't lower the sample rate when using more voices, and added delay and chorus effects. Backwards compatibility was near perfect, it was only the Windows drivers that were a bit crash-happy (but to be fair, the GUS classic drivers weren't any better).
@@ershn8d oh yeah I forgot about that! I was mostly just running a dos box in windows 98 at the time. In pure DOS, I would use either the EWS64 for MIDI equipped with 32mb or GUS ACE. I wish I was better at editing Dream Soundbanks, that EWS could do some heavy lifting.
Poor GUS, but you're not wrong! I loved my dual speed Creative Labs CD-200 CD-ROM with some variety of Sound Blaster, nothing as fancy as you see here of course!
despite growing with a AWE64 back in the day, I have to admit the GUS sounds a lot better. but the PC seems to work harder to accommodate the improvement tho.
Nice shootout, takes me back. I was into computer music at the time so I had the GUS, much later on I got an AWE64 gold and even though it had better compatibility it always felt like a bit of a let down.
Thanks! Even for me rewatching this is a trip down memory lane! Everything has changed since then although I still regret selling that GUS... dammit! :-)
If you've got the ISA slots couldn't you put them both in? The IO Port ranges and interrupts can be set not to interfere for sound and IIRC the AWE32 has a jumper to disable it's IDE interface so those won't interfere either... More stuff will sound better on the GUS since it's always wavetable, but very little dos software can use the AWE32's high quality synth so for most stuff it'll sound exactly like an SB16
Finally got around to listening to this and I think the GUS sounds better - more precise and snappier. AWE does sound awesome, especially if you're coming from a low-end card equipped system, but overall it seems mushier than it's competitor. It was nonetheless a magic moment when I had my first SB32, equipped with 8MB, playing my favorite tunes... just wow. I really underestimated why these, higher end, cards are sought after.
I was wondering if you had any info on this mystery of mine. I was rewatching doom nation(its a special about the history of doom from the dvd and itz been uploaded on youtube) and i noticed that at some points when they shows footage of doom the sounds were completely different for enemies and shooting and stuff. Much more digitized. I was wondering if you could take a look and maybe figure out what sound card was being used
It seems that you have 1mb ram on your GUS. I had one with 512kb and some of the instruments were different; the pad on toxin refinery was choir and nuclear plant had piano instead of a harpsichord(?*) Probably the gm set was mapped in a way that some patches doubled each other to conserve memory (*GUS harpsi doesn't exactly sound harpsi at all :) )
How about getting an gravis ultrasound ace? That was a upgrade for excisting sb16 or other cards. You had to re-route the sound, in the same way that you re-route the vga signal on the original voodoo gfx card.
I think the Ultrasound sounds better in tracks with bass and drums and more atmospheric tracks with pads. The AWE32 excels in melodic music. The Ultrasound is so damn rare and hard to get to work though. That's why I will buy me a neat AWE64 Gold for 15 bucks!
Neither one of these sound that great to me, but the AWE32 sounds a little better. I'm used to using a Roland SC-55 or SC-88 for dos games, so I may be subconsciously comparing it to that. I noticed the AWE32 here didn't sound quite right though. I've used an AWE32 for this game and it sounded a bit different.
there was a change in the sound engine in doom 1.2 i think. it limited the 3 of voices doom would use. before that you could hear a lot more events on the GUS. [gunshots creatures ect..]
I always thought the AWE was better. Even with a limited 1MB ROM (1.5MB with GS enabled) it had an overall better sound. The Gravis was a great concept but not having SB compatibility when it came out really killed it. Gravis 1MB users usually like EAW Pats or Pro Patches Lite 1.61 as their sounds of choice. The AWE cannot use custom sounds from DOS. The game has to support it directly for custom sample data. You can load soundfonts in Windows and run games from a DOS box though.
the gus is from 1992, the awe32 from 1994, they released it before the sb16 :) the awe32 uses just the 1m rom in dos games (the whole set is 1m), the gus loads just the necessary samples (max 1m, but ca 5m is the whole set). it depends on the game, how optimized to the card. some is better on awe, some on gus, no clear winner. eg i prefer the gus in the dark forces over the sc55/rap10, anyway the roland blows away the gus/awe32.
Hey which version of the GUS were you using? I was using a GUS Classic when I recorded this comparison, and up to this point they sounded the same, but after this point, they do have quite a bit of differences. th-cam.com/video/sdMm-ETa32U/w-d-xo.htmlm49s Maybe our drivers are different?
Good point, the GUS was a 1.8 MAX - I've been hunting for another replacement but damn they have shot up in price! O_O;;; It's quite possible the drivers I was using are different too, it was so long ago, why didn't I note these things down!
I wish I could find a cheap Ultrasound card. Only places I have seen them for sale are Ebay and they are stock photos and almost $100. I used to have one of them long time ago and stupid me threw it out when I moved several years ago. Loved the midi quality although it was a real chore to get the thing to actually work.
but be honest... eg the rap10 is from 1993, and general midi compatible - it sounds much better, and supported more (from 1992). the strongest point of the gus, the modul based musics (epic games typically, and scene demos of course) - it does not use the cpu power. if you use the gus dma for voices at normal games, it slows down the computer much more, than a sound blaster.
The GUS sounds a bit better but I like it both. I think AWE32 sounds better than SB32. GUS cards were problematic. SB cards not. So I was always a SB user. I had SB16, AWE32, AWE64, PCI 128, Audigy SE, Audigy 4, and now I have SB Z :)
I'm building a retro rig with these two cards.. The max and the awe32 pnp ide. The sound blaster however is a bitch to actually get working. I'd rather have a more generic SB16 or even SB pro than that thing. The Ultrasound has its limits, but it shines where it is supported.
As I'd prefer the warmth of the AWE32 I have to say that the E1M3 sounds warmer on the GUS. But oh biy the E1M1 sounds aweful on it! Full disclosure: I grew up with OPL2 Yamaha soundchips
***** The smoke was the hardest part for me to get working as well, but I did it in the end with a few tweaks to make it longer and higher, was a very satisfying feeling.
The problem with this comparison is that Roland captures have been publicly available since the late 90s and now everything else sounds like crap. Re: AWE32 vs. GUS, in general it seems down to which one the sound programmer is more familiar with. I'd say DOOM sounds better with GUS, but that pan flute in E1M2 (The Imp's Song) is terrible. Clearly an instrument mapping error, sloppy QA.
Hullo Shane. Well, unfortunately, in real life cheap price often beats quality. Anyhow, even after 12 years since I upgraded with a heavy heart from my beloved GUS ACE 1 Mb to SB Live! I take a lot of pride in being GUS owner. Would it be possible for you to upload more vids of old PC games with GUS music? Am downloading it in MP4 format and then listening to it either on my SB Audigy X-Fi sound card with 5.1 speakers or on a 5.1 stereo set. It sounds awesome on both configurations!
Nice nostalgic video, dude. I have an old AWE32 sound card myself, the only remaining hardware of an old P 0,166 Ghz based PC, which PSU exploded. Thing is, I have no idea what do with it. Not only will the ISA slot not fit any modern day and age mobo, but all already have on-board sound that (at least I think lol) is of better quality. I still keep it, since it´s a pity to toss it in a trash can, but then again why keep it ? :( Any ideas? Did you just gather hardware from the past or did you acquire them to make your vintage built just for fun? Cheers. PS: where were the monster´s grunts and moans in this video?? I remember they were so ¨juicy¨ back in the old days with an awe32, compared to a Sb 16 or Sb Pro.
If you don't know what to do with your sound card and you know it works, just sell it! Personally I got parts for my retro build from all over the place, my own parts, some parts I got from my clients, I'm a computer repair technician. Right now I'm using a Pentium III Katmai to test a Gravis Ultrasound Ace sound card and I can tell you that all of the "grunts and moans" all are there, I'm pretty sure that Shane McRetro tried to put an emphasis on the music by disabling the sound effects.
i think you should go for a number nine gxe32 16bit isa card i got one they are very rare and hard to find mine has 2mb ram , s3 processor chip , svga 1024x800 capability either that or a ati mach32 series:D
This isn't even a real AWE 32 in this video. It's a SoundBlaster 32 PnP, I'm guessing CT3600? There's a huge difference. The SoundBlaster 32 is a budget model that actually uses the Vibra 16 and not the AWE chip like a real AWE 32 would have.
The tunes sound like they were programmed on a Roland SC-55 Keyboard so therefore that had the fullest sound out of the ones I've heard and was emulated on most of the other cards in a lower samplerate but had a unique version programmed on the Ultrasound as the US couldn't emulate the Roland by the sounds of things.
Who’s doesn’t remember seeing the Ultrasound option in every game wishing to own one someday.
I had the AWE32 and I always felt like I was missing out when we I saw that option!
Ultrasound had awesome sound. Friend had this card. Unfortunately GUS wasn't compatible with some games I liked - either sample loading or sound effects didn't worked. Maybe it was due to specific memory configuration, don't remember details anymore. I bought SB AWE32 due to that.
13:45 switches to the Gravis card :)
+sinephase thx!
Getting the GUS working was what really challenged my computer knowledge back in the day, (probably like 10 years old) and probably helped me get where I am today. Love the sound of old wave table stuff from back then. Helped that Gravis was a Vancouver company so their BBS was a local call!
BBS! Sounds like you might be a few years older than me! I missed out on all the BBS wizardry, I'm a http kind of guy! :P
Oh how I love the music that came from the GUS! my next door neighbor's dad worked for Gravis at the time. I'd go over there and play doom on lan all the time.
I used to call them from atlantic canada
Had experience with that. Unfortunately not all games I liked was GUS compatible. Pity, because besides that GUS had better sound than SB AWE32 I bought later.
2:56 AWE32, 5:17 Level 1
14:09 GUS, 16:34 Level 1
I've read that Doom v1.2 and below use hardware mixing on GUS though so it should sound better that way.
Didn't they always use the DMX library for sound?
Music aside - Doom above 1.2, such as 1.666 shown here doesn't do hardware SFX on GUS, uses a simple 'software DAC' kind of driver instead. Something about crashes on 0.9, 1.1, 1.2 etc, so they changed it. Roast me if I'm wrong. Edit: I have both cards so will test and check back in 1 to 1000 weeks time. Probably, maybe.
Ah the memories. I remember spending a fortune on the Gravis Ultrasound Max. The difference between that and my old SB card were amazing.
That new fangled dual speed CD-ROM thing was the reason I bought a GUS. The sound card that came with the bundle was crap!
Matty7D Still funny when you think that back then CD-ROM drives used proprietary interfaces that had to be connected to a sound card. Who ever thought that was a good idea was crazy... even SCSI (they did make them, but most off-the-shelf drives were not SCSI) would have made more sense than making you buy a specific sound card to go with the drive.
Hey Matty7D do you remember how much they were? I seem to recall it was $AUD500 back in the day. Whatever it was, I spent every cent I had.
John Umina If I remember correctly, I got mine for around AU$450. I think I was around 16-17 at the time so it was every cent I had too. I inquired about the additional memory to upgrade it to 1024kB, but it was so expensive. I ended up getting the extra ram for next to nothing from a friend. I can't believe it's been nearly 20 years!!!
Back then everything was expensive. When I upgraded my PC memory, getting 4 MB (MB, not GB!) costed me 200€ !
There's just something about Doom that captured so many kids back then and we STILL can't get enough of it over 2 decades later. No other game except maybe Duke3D have had such an effect on me. And what's so great about it is the unique sounding experience people hold dear to them that can be very different to the next person, yet the game still had the same effect on us all.
Ultrasound hands down. The electric guitar isn't great on either card, but it is a joke on the AWE32.
Yeah it's good on the Gravis but just a little muffled that's the only problem with a Gravis but everything else is amazing :D
@@chiptuneoverdrive1245 GUS cards used a Kurzweil patch set ;)
imo the AWE32 beats out the Ultrasound at everything except guitar.
I feel bad for the folks who spent tons of cash on their AWE32 only to be crushed once that guitar started playing
@@EpicTyphlosionTV You just couldn't afford it.
Sound Blaster all the way!! I am biased mind, I used to work Creative Labs UK, loved every minute of working there.
I actually tend to agree with you, although there's no doubt in my mind that the Ultrasound forced creative labs to get more... Well creative!
holy cow the gravis sounds epic
I had a GUS ACE too! and a SB PRO. had them both installed, but only used the SB for it's game port. Gravis sounded so ahead of it's time, it's a shame they couldn't keep it up. RIP Gravis Ultrasound!
The original "DOOM" music, "terrible"? Blasphemy. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to step outside!
Have a Ultrasound MAX from late 94', came in my first new PC. And also a Sound Blaster 16 CT 2910, Sound Blaster AWE 32 CT 3910 + a Vibra ISA SB16 card from 1997.
I remember spending £40 on a Soundblaster Pro compatible because I was sick of the speaker. It sucked, but was a huge leap in enjoying stuff like Tie Fighter and Doom. A few months later, a friend of mine went out and spent £150 on an AWE32. I thought he was crazy, till I heard the music coming out of his PC! Doom just blew me away.
When playing DOS Doom v1.9 with the 1MB+ Gravis Ultrasound or in DosBox with GUS support, there is 3 things you should do to greatly improve your Doom experience:
1: Google for and get the following files: NOVERT.COM (disables vertical mouse movement, trust me on this). GUS1M.WAD (greatly improves Doom 1 music on GUS), GUS1M-II.WAD (this one for Doom 2, sometimes named GUS1M-IID.WAD instead) and put in the Doom directory. To use just type Doom -file GUS1M.WAD. 2: Get and install the GUS ''ULTRASND'' DOS drivers, even if you're using DosBox. Then get and install ''Pro Patches Lite'' v1.61, you may need to get 1.60 or even 1.50 and patch up to 1.61 depending on what you download.
PPL combined with GUS1M makes a RADICAL difference to Doom's music, your ears are in for a treat!
Make a batch file to automate loading, edit doom.bat and put these 4 lines in:
@echo off
novert.com
doom -file gus1m.wad %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
novert.com /u
Of course there is source ports like ZDoom etc, but this is for people who want to enjoy the original games and have the best possible experience. You may find the music in this method sounds even better than the source ports!
Man you were HARDCORE on doom haha
Thanks for the info!
Or just get GZ Doom
novert raises some memories - great times! Still using it in my 486/586 systems.
I love the drums on the gravis, makes the awe32 sound so low quality
Maybe it's because I had an AWE soundcard back in the day, and that's the way I'm used to the hearing Doom soundtrack, but I think the guitar sounds on the AWE sound much better. But the drum sounds on the Gravis are really, really nice. It's nearly a toss-up, but I think if I had a choice, I'd go with the AWE.
The Gus guitar is horrible, but I like the other sounds from the intro especially. But I am also an AWE32 user and fan
Best DOS Sound I have had was the Sound Blaster SB 16 with Yamaha DB 50 XG External Wavetable attached to it.
Oh baby! Wavetables make my knees weak!
+Shane McRetro Shame that they do not have any future on modern Sound Cards last Sound card I could use this wavetable was the Terratec DMX Xfire 1024 as far I could remember and it was a hard job to attach and keep it hold on this sound card (the card had the suitable connector but I had hold it there with velcro). Today it has a place of honour on my IT shelf. Good thing I kept the box, the midi manual and the CD (Yes it works today, also it has scratches).
I regret having to shrink down my collection but dammit I needed the space! Only the best will survive I suppose! :)
I had a guillemot maxi sound fortissimo PCI card back in the late 90s or maybe 2000 that had Yamaha XG capability with the YMf744 chip. I remember being BLOWN AWAY by how cool the MIDI music sounded. I wish I still had it. I'm currently downloading every soft synth I can find and just bought a mess of Lucas Arts and Sierra games to "test" them with :)
I had the SW 60 XG and it was just awesome. I always dreamt of the 1000XG but it was never supposed to happen for me.
GUS was my favourite gaming soundcard. :)
While I'm a SoundBlaster at heart... GUS holds a special place!
Man, the Ultrasound sounds so much better. Shame these things are so damn expensive now, otherwise I'd snag one. I had to go with a Awe 64 in a recent build as a compromise.
the main thing i dont like about the gus is the smaller dynamic range and thus the sound appearing muffled regarding spectrum.
but the nuances of the effects and the soundfont of the gus itself were really well designed.
As a former AWE32 user, it was highly under-rated for a number of reasons. The OPL3 FM chip definitely sounded cheesy compared to the Gravis' synth chip, but in reality the MIDI features on the AWE32 were FAR superior. The General Midi sounds were based on a WAVETABLE synth (basically a fancy older word for a loop-based sampler), and though the standard GM sample set was pretty crap, power users discovered how to download and use "Soundfonts" (basically completely new sample libraries), and also (as I did) bump up the onboard RAM using standard (for the day) PC Memory - to create what was basically an in-computer version of the rack-mounted E-MU Proteus 2, which was an music industry standard piece of hardware.
The problem was that not a lot of developers (very few, if any, to my memory), utilised that functionality on the AWE32, and just went with the standard General Midi soundfont. However, some very select titles did actually ship with a Soundfont - the original Ultima Online is one notable example. I guarantee you there wasn't a single (consumer) soundcard on the market back then that sounded as good as this : th-cam.com/video/C3LabWWJiLM/w-d-xo.html
I remember also a lot of people (Myself included) used to use the free "Vienna Soundfont Studio" tool made by creative, to hack together our own custom soundfonts for various games (and in my case music production). Listen to this guy who created a custom GM soundfont for use with X-Wing, and imagine that level of music/audio quality back in 1997. There's a reason I was so proud of my AWE32. :) th-cam.com/video/h1-4lQYdooQ/w-d-xo.html
In any case, I remember back in the day there was an almost Microsoft Vs Apple rivalry between Gravis and Creative Labs soundcard fans, and it was debatable back in the day whether using hard disk space for sample memory, or onboad RAM (As in the case of the Soundblaster stuff) was the right choice. Ultimately history proved that the latter was superior. The Gravis Ultrasound sank like a rock, and Creative Labs' Soundblaster hardware continued to move forward in leaps and bounds for several more generations. Until of course the final reality we know today where on-board sound hardware is mostly standard, and mostly good enough.
MrJimbo1qaz The AWE32 had 2 RAM slots supporting standard (for the time) RAM up to 28MB (when system ram was only 512k max), and whilst you're correct that that Soundbank was 2 - 300 mb, the fact that the AWE32 was basically an E-Mu Proteus sampler, meant that you could achieve a lot with VERY little.
That's the entire concept of a sampler. Instead of a single, 5mb sample that loops poorly, you needed only to create a small (less than 100k if you like) sample, with perfect loop points, then using the SoundFont Studio tool could create an instrument with far more depth..
I assure you that in 1998, PC's were averaging 1mb of RAM (minimum!), but that was the beauty of the AWE32 back in the early 90's - unlike the Gravis, it did not require hard drive (slooow), and nor did it require system RAM - it had it's own RAM slots. Granted, factory units only had 512kb (but that was as much as SYSTEM RAM on most PCS!), and that was expandable up to 28MB!
As I may or may not have mentioned, I owned my AWE32 purchased in 1994 for almost a year and a bit until I realised I could upgrade the beast with extra RAM, and from that day forth, I was creating music on it that you would NOT think was created on a PC. I actually created some music using that setup that was used on TV commercials in the mid 90's here in Australia. :D
It was a seriously powerful machine, considering it cost under 300$AU, and it was as powerful (if you knew what you were doing) as an rack-mounted E-Mu Proteus unit worth WELL over a thousand dollars at the time...
FYI I _did_ eventually upgrade to a Sound Blaster "LIVE!", on account of its VASTLY improved noise floor, I can't quite recall, but I believe it had 1meg of RAM by default?
But not long after that I was STILL suffering noise floor issues because by that stage I was producing music for "serious" broadcast, and I had to upgrade to actual professional hardware. My next audio "Card" (including a breakout box) cost me around AU$1200.00.
And then at some point in the early 00's, PC OEMS started shipping audio hardware that was just as good as dedicated audio hardware, built right onto the motherboard. That's why "Soundcards" aren't really a thing anymore, at least in the consumer sphere.
+dingo7055 Wow! Thanks for the history lesson! Got any links to those ads? :)
***** It was a long time ago but check your PM's I'll send you a little something.
+dingo7055 Yikes! That's quite scary! Almost could have been in a Sega commercial... they had a strange team! I dig those funky beats though, never would have thought that was all (or mostly) done on a regular old sound card! Amazing!
dingo7055 aww, I want to see the video too : /
As you can hear, the GUS was better. Note this was the GUS Max, so much later time frame. The original GUS sounded just as good, and was out way before Soundblaster even knew what a sound card was(ok wavetable)
Soundblaster was the name for people who didn't know what gaming was back in the day.
Compatability? Very few games(good ones) didn't come with Native GUS support.
A storm is brewing in the comments! :)
+Kelthuzzar I used to pair up my hand-me-down Ultrasound ACE (via my cousins) with my Media Vision Pro AudioSpectrum 16 in the mid 90s. My cousins had moved from their Media Vision Thunder Board to (1) a Diamond sound card (back when Diamond actually made good stuff) and then to (2) a Sound Blaster AWE32. I eventually went to a AWE64 Gold in the late 1990s. I played a lot of shareware games from iD/Epic MegaGames, and back in the early 1990s, all the computer guys I knew wished they had a Gravis (a few had Sound Blasters and one guy back in 1989/1990 lent one of my cousins his AdLib card for a month or 2 during the summertime -- we were so excited, given our reliance on the PC computer speaker). The demoscene was in full swing, and Future Crew's "Second Reality" was all that everyone was talking about -- the Gravis desire was pretty passionate amongst all of us (but no one I knew could afford one, even though it was a lot cheaper than getting a Roland MT-32). I knew ONE guy who had a MT-32, but he wasn't really much of a gamer (his parents were quite wealthy).
+Kelthuzzar I think the ACE was for Windows support. There really wasn't any "good" games that supported windows at the time. Why load Windows to run a game. DOS was where it was at at the time.
+Grant Schoep And, I remember a number of games that came out specify ally for GUS support. That is what they targeted. Not sure if they directly support things like adlib or soundblaster. The days of the real shareware BBS downloads. yes, maybe commercial games didn't.
Na, the GUS wasn't inherently better. It was easier to live with in terms of games, because you only had to initialize it once to set it to its resources, there were no drivers taking up memory, unlike the AWE32 which was a mem hog under DOS.
The GUS had the problem that even with a ram expansion it only had 1MB of Wavetable memory. It also used a Wavetable Synth with loadable sound fonts, same as the AWE32. But whereas the AWE had more memory, the GUS had the choice of eiter preloading a heavily compressed General Midi set (that results in muffled effects and missing instruments) or using Ultramid and compatible drivers to load the fitting patches for each Midi file as it is played. Try using a modified Doom version without Patch preloading, sounds completely different.
It was bad in games like Strike commander though where the music changed in battle depending on the mood, you had slight pauses when patches got discarded and reloaded (the Ultrasound drivers were actually on the Strike Commander CD, but not enabled in the soundcard menu to choose them, you had to set the card manually).
I loved my GUS Max to death, but it was severely limited in a lot of ways and the signal/noise ratio was... not very good. Also, playing more voices at once lowered the playback quality, but that wasn't noticeable since most of the games only used 8bit samples at that time due to space constraints on floppy disks.
But to sum it up, Dingo7055 is completely wrong with his argumentation - the GUS used the same technology as the AWE32. Also, it came out when only the SB16 was available with OPL3 FM synthesis (at the same price point as the Ultrasound!). It was an underdog, but at that time the best sounding card on the market for its price.
Ahh! This was a good watch. My current retro pc has a sound blaster awe64 gold. In Windows 98, I'll load the 4mb sound font provided by creative. In DOS, I just go pure awe32 mode.
My next retro pc will have a sound blaster 16 with an NEC XR385 daughter board attached to it. Can't wait to finish that one.
Gravis Ultra Sound wins for me, too bad it was not widely supported and you had to emulate. I never had one though, it was horrendously expensive back in the day and the top of my sd career was a SB Pro16 which was already orgasmic compared to the AdLib card I previously had.
+Tomek Tomek My strongest memory of my childhood was playing on pots and pans with a wooden spoon. My mother came in and picked me up and said, "Son you are no GUS, AdLib maybe, but certainly no GUS". Until today I had no idea what she meant! :)
*****
Oh yeah, it's a looong way from AdLib to GUS, it's still good your mom didn't say you were as bad as a PC speaker.
+Tomek Tomek Hahaha, geez she's not that mean to me! :P
Sounds so much better than the music today.
The AWE installer has some fantastic 90s elevator/gameshow music ;-)
I used to own a GUS PnP which was strangely incompatible with everything except the demo software that came with it and Second Reality 2. It also had that wonderful 90s drawback of costing a lot of money and then needing you to buy 1 meg of ram for it separately.
You made it wrong ;) The AWE32 loaded with a 8 MByte Sample (SoundFont) from Yamaha or GM or Roland. Music over Midi ! With the Gravis, DualMode! AWE for Sound, Music from GUS, with a big SoundFont. Now all Music sounds absolute great! Heavy Metal with Roland Guitars! Massiv
The awe makes some noise, when the GUS outputs music.
Ohhhoooo SNAP! Dems fightin' words!
Yep, music to the broke ears.
Its ok - you couldn't afford the AWE series. We get it.
Level 2 bass line sounds SOOO good on the Gravis. Shame about the weird sample for the drum that sounds like a panpipe or something. I grew up playing Doom with an SB16 (which was an enormous upgrade from the PC speaker, which I was originally stuck with for about a year), and so my memory is probably closer to the SB32. Overall the GUS sounds a little nicer though.
***** you proabbly know already but The GUS was much coveted, it was really popular in the europe demoscne, you can run both though in the same system, i used to run an awe64 and a gus max.. the gus max has all 3 classic interfaces for cdrom drives too.
The weird samples are a bug in Doom's DMX sound library (Google "GUS instrument mappings bug"). I recently released a WAD file that fixes this - look for gusgonna.wad in the idgames archive.
I hear you... but after a minute I really dig it. It balances out the mood and turns the level into techno dance floor.
Now that dosbox emulates most of this hardware, I find myself wondering which hardware the creators intended their respective games to run on. In this case I suspect it was the gravis.
It was neither. The music for Doom (as with most general midi based game music) was probably composed for the Roland Sound Canvas SC-55.
I think I wasn’t the GUS since it is playing a flute for the claves in “nuclear plant” and this is extremely annoying.
Many thanks for uploading this great comparison. I never had SB 32/64 AWE. I went from SB Pro to GUS ACE 1 Mb. I must admit that SB AWE 32 sounds definitely better than OPL chip-based SB but the quality of the music has nothing to do with GUS. GUS sounds clearer, sharper and more "midish". Am glad I chose GUS over SB 32 back in 1997. It was a superb sound card!
Gravis starts from 13:40
***** Maybe you need to find ISA expander? I believe, it exist, or can be build by skilled master. I saw it once in "pizzabox" cases.
I love Doom's music, no matter what sound card or system it's running on, even the 32X
No no not that kind of compression. I mean the one which makes loudness go up and down irritatingly.
I like both, but the AWE32 wins for me! i think the AWE32 is more supported - I might be wrong, just feels that way from the sound setups I've seen in lots of the most common DOS games. I think the Gravis has richer instruments - a bit like some of the Roland cards but it sounds a bit too perfect imo.
+GadgetUK164 I think I'll have to do a rematch... Know anyone selling a GUS MAX? :)
I remember in those days, the Gravis (to my ears) always had the richer sounds and instruments. It was really great sounding! But to your point, I always remember issues with that card. Games would crash or it was just overall buggy when using the Gravis. Sound blaster sounded inferior (and this all depended on what SB card you had), but it just had better support and just tended to work better right out of the box. Fun days.
I have to agree. The Gravis had a higher quality .WAV table. Definitely richer in sound. It was my favorite card, at its time of release. Great fun back then
Nothing beats the Roland SoundCanvas SC-55
I always regretted replacing my Gravis Ultrasound with the Soundblaster AWE 32. The best graphics card around then was the 3DFX Voodoo. The original StarWars games of this era were amazing I recomend you play them!
Ahh, the GUS.. I've had the Soundblaster, SB16, SBpro SBawe32, SBAwe32 gold, SB Audigy, etc... and the GUS Max... I have always thought the GUS has outperformed all the SB's for the midi synth. The trick, however, was to load the higher memory samples. I remember adding 2 512k chips (SODIMMs?) and loading a 1meg or 2 meg sample pack on bootup. The default was something like a 128 or 256 meg sample pack, which is what we're hearing. Try using the larger sized sample pack, and the results would be hands down.
I tried to get many of the Soundblaster cards to match the sound of the GUS, but I never could.. I even tried loading GUS sample packs into the AWE32... but never could get it to sound right. Thanks for the blast from the past.
The regular GUS came with 256KB of RAM, expandable to 1MB, and the GUS MAX came with 512KB, and was also expandable to 1MB. The GUS PnP came with 1MB of sample ROM, but you could install up to 8MB of RAM (you had to install some RAM for backwards compatibility, the PnP Pro came with 512K).
The GUS drivers came with separate MIDI banks for 256/512/768/1024K, but some people also released their own, optimised versions that also fixed some bugs in the default ones (later drivers also updated the samples).
The PnP was IMO hands-down the best one. Not only did it have the larger memory, but it used a more advanced chipset that didn't lower the sample rate when using more voices, and added delay and chorus effects. Backwards compatibility was near perfect, it was only the Windows drivers that were a bit crash-happy (but to be fair, the GUS classic drivers weren't any better).
The gravis sounds very nice, the creative is not bad its just the gravis sounds a bit more dynamic.Possibly it has a better frequency response ?
I'm more impressed that you've apparently never played Doom before.
Use ProPatsLT on the Ultrasound!
Also your AWE32 needs ChoasV19.sf2 and 12MB RAM or more.
AWE can't use custom patches in RAM under pure DOS... I bought AWE to test, after 25 years with GUS and got really disappointed.
@@ershn8d oh yeah I forgot about that! I was mostly just running a dos box in windows 98 at the time. In pure DOS, I would use either the EWS64 for MIDI equipped with 32mb or GUS ACE. I wish I was better at editing Dream Soundbanks, that EWS could do some heavy lifting.
yeah i agree, i dont have any of the hardware yet still looking into whats best, for an all rounder
I had an AWE 64 with RAM upgrade. The reason was cynically simple. I bet on much better support for the Soundblaster brand.
Poor GUS, but you're not wrong! I loved my dual speed Creative Labs CD-200 CD-ROM with some variety of Sound Blaster, nothing as fancy as you see here of course!
despite growing with a AWE64 back in the day, I have to admit the GUS sounds a lot better.
but the PC seems to work harder to accommodate the improvement tho.
I feel you, I was a Creative Labs guy myself back in the day too and a TNT2 M64... now that says budget :-)
Nice shootout, takes me back. I was into computer music at the time so I had the GUS, much later on I got an AWE64 gold and even though it had better compatibility it always felt like a bit of a let down.
Thanks! Even for me rewatching this is a trip down memory lane! Everything has changed since then although I still regret selling that GUS... dammit! :-)
If you've got the ISA slots couldn't you put them both in? The IO Port ranges and interrupts can be set not to interfere for sound and IIRC the AWE32 has a jumper to disable it's IDE interface so those won't interfere either...
More stuff will sound better on the GUS since it's always wavetable, but very little dos software can use the AWE32's high quality synth so for most stuff it'll sound exactly like an SB16
Is the sound normalized/with dynamics compression? The real awe32 has much better dynamic than what I am listening here.
The Gravis sounds rougher and more aggressive - so, way better to me.
Gravis sounds more like I remember my Dooms. I had SB16 then tho...
Is this shane41 from OCAU?
Finally got around to listening to this and I think the GUS sounds better - more precise and snappier.
AWE does sound awesome, especially if you're coming from a low-end card equipped system, but overall it seems mushier than it's competitor. It was nonetheless a magic moment when I had my first SB32, equipped with 8MB, playing my favorite tunes... just wow. I really underestimated why these, higher end, cards are sought after.
I was wondering if you had any info on this mystery of mine. I was rewatching doom nation(its a special about the history of doom from the dvd and itz been uploaded on youtube) and i noticed that at some points when they shows footage of doom the sounds were completely different for enemies and shooting and stuff. Much more digitized. I was wondering if you could take a look and maybe figure out what sound card was being used
It seems that you have 1mb ram on your GUS. I had one with 512kb and some of the instruments were different; the pad on toxin refinery was choir and nuclear plant had piano instead of a harpsichord(?*)
Probably the gm set was mapped in a way that some patches doubled each other to conserve memory
(*GUS harpsi doesn't exactly sound harpsi at all :) )
How about getting an gravis ultrasound ace?
That was a upgrade for excisting sb16 or other cards.
You had to re-route the sound, in the same way that you re-route the vga signal on the original voodoo gfx card.
I think the Ultrasound sounds better in tracks with bass and drums and more atmospheric tracks with pads. The AWE32 excels in melodic music. The Ultrasound is so damn rare and hard to get to work though. That's why I will buy me a neat AWE64 Gold for 15 bucks!
I NEED THAT MIDI AT THE BEGINING
Yeah you're lucky i still have to cope with a cirrus logic 5428 1mb on-board and it plays fine???
not yet i've been distracted all kinds of other things and may be moving soon so decided to put this on hold :(
love old computers
I use SB AWE64 32MB Addon with Music Quest ISA MPU and Soundcanvas MT32/SC88 for the old pc
Neither one of these sound that great to me, but the AWE32 sounds a little better. I'm used to using a Roland SC-55 or SC-88 for dos games, so I may be subconsciously comparing it to that. I noticed the AWE32 here didn't sound quite right though. I've used an AWE32 for this game and it sounded a bit different.
Both have a unique sound to them. If there are 2 PCI slots left I'd do a double decker.
These all predate PCI, it's ISA all the way!
What you are testing there is a Sound Blaster 32 (CT3620) and not the AWE32!
there was a change in the sound engine in doom 1.2 i think. it limited the 3 of voices doom would use. before that you could hear a lot more events on the GUS. [gunshots creatures ect..]
Ohhoooo, this I was not aware of. Looks like I have no option but to try and find a GUS under $500 (dreaming) to battle these two again! :-)
dat expansion memory XD
oh yeah the awe32 and awe64 make that same sound or midi like that but the sound card is different.
oh that was a sound blaster 16/awe32. wait its got a ram slots.
Haha, right? How overpowered did these cards need to be? *looks at 4GB VRAM*
@@NixMcRetro and it's interesting that awe has 1mgm and also 8 gm upgrade sound font too. including opl3 fm synth chip or cqm fm chipsynth too.
I always thought the AWE was better. Even with a limited 1MB ROM (1.5MB with GS enabled) it had an overall better sound. The Gravis was a great concept but not having SB compatibility when it came out really killed it. Gravis 1MB users usually like EAW Pats or Pro Patches Lite 1.61 as their sounds of choice. The AWE cannot use custom sounds from DOS. The game has to support it directly for custom sample data. You can load soundfonts in Windows and run games from a DOS box though.
the gus is from 1992, the awe32 from 1994, they released it before the sb16 :) the awe32 uses just the 1m rom in dos games (the whole set is 1m), the gus loads just the necessary samples (max 1m, but ca 5m is the whole set). it depends on the game, how optimized to the card. some is better on awe, some on gus, no clear winner. eg i prefer the gus in the dark forces over the sc55/rap10, anyway the roland blows away the gus/awe32.
Hey which version of the GUS were you using? I was using a GUS Classic when I recorded this comparison, and up to this point they sounded the same, but after this point, they do have quite a bit of differences. th-cam.com/video/sdMm-ETa32U/w-d-xo.htmlm49s
Maybe our drivers are different?
Good point, the GUS was a 1.8 MAX - I've been hunting for another replacement but damn they have shot up in price! O_O;;;
It's quite possible the drivers I was using are different too, it was so long ago, why didn't I note these things down!
Should sound the same if the memory on them are the same. Depends on the patch set loaded and you can change them via propats
Both cards sound fine but they suck when it comes to the electric guitar sounds. DX
SC-55 is better than both of them.
GUS definitely 👍
I did notice the removable ram card slot in the Sound Blaster.
It may sound a bit strange, but I love the FM-Version (OPL Chip) the most :-)
I wish I could find a cheap Ultrasound card. Only places I have seen them for sale are Ebay and they are stock photos and almost $100. I used to have one of them long time ago and stupid me threw it out when I moved several years ago. Loved the midi quality although it was a real chore to get the thing to actually work.
but be honest... eg the rap10 is from 1993, and general midi compatible - it sounds much better, and supported more (from 1992). the strongest point of the gus, the modul based musics (epic games typically, and scene demos of course) - it does not use the cpu power. if you use the gus dma for voices at normal games, it slows down the computer much more, than a sound blaster.
The GUS sounds a bit better but I like it both. I think AWE32 sounds better than SB32. GUS cards were problematic. SB cards not. So I was always a SB user. I had SB16, AWE32, AWE64, PCI 128, Audigy SE, Audigy 4, and now I have SB Z :)
All the midi demos come with the x-fi as well! :D
I'm building a retro rig with these two cards.. The max and the awe32 pnp ide. The sound blaster however is a bitch to actually get working. I'd rather have a more generic SB16 or even SB pro than that thing. The Ultrasound has its limits, but it shines where it is supported.
As I'd prefer the warmth of the AWE32 I have to say that the E1M3 sounds warmer on the GUS. But oh biy the E1M1 sounds aweful on it!
Full disclosure: I grew up with OPL2 Yamaha soundchips
im looking to put together an "ultimate DOS gaming rig" although may extend that to win 95/98 not sure yet, so this is helpful
Nice blender tutorial intro.
***** The smoke was the hardest part for me to get working as well, but I did it in the end with a few tweaks to make it longer and higher, was a very satisfying feeling.
11:50 - 13:42 Best parts of doom music...
2nd Level music rocks.
But sounds better on the Soundblaster AWE32
no problem mate!
i found none on any site and waited 9 years for one and there is no drivers or anything so i would go for an ati mach32.
The problem with this comparison is that Roland captures have been publicly available since the late 90s and now everything else sounds like crap. Re: AWE32 vs. GUS, in general it seems down to which one the sound programmer is more familiar with. I'd say DOOM sounds better with GUS, but that pan flute in E1M2 (The Imp's Song) is terrible. Clearly an instrument mapping error, sloppy QA.
Ultrasound was the god but support lacked. I am happy using Awe64 as Awe32 myself
great video
***** jajajaja cool
Hullo Shane. Well, unfortunately, in real life cheap price often beats quality. Anyhow, even after 12 years since I upgraded with a heavy heart from my beloved GUS ACE 1 Mb to SB Live! I take a lot of pride in being GUS owner. Would it be possible for you to upload more vids of old PC games with GUS music? Am downloading it in MP4 format and then listening to it either on my SB Audigy X-Fi sound card with 5.1 speakers or on a 5.1 stereo set. It sounds awesome on both configurations!
Nice nostalgic video, dude. I have an old AWE32 sound card myself, the only remaining hardware of an old P 0,166 Ghz based PC, which PSU exploded. Thing is, I have no idea what do with it. Not only will the ISA slot not fit any modern day and age mobo, but all already have on-board sound that (at least I think lol) is of better quality.
I still keep it, since it´s a pity to toss it in a trash can, but then again why keep it ? :( Any ideas? Did you just gather hardware from the past or did you acquire them to make your vintage built just for fun?
Cheers.
PS: where were the monster´s grunts and moans in this video?? I remember they were so ¨juicy¨ back in the old days with an awe32, compared to a Sb 16 or Sb Pro.
If you don't know what to do with your sound card and you know it works, just sell it! Personally I got parts for my retro build from all over the place, my own parts, some parts I got from my clients, I'm a computer repair technician.
Right now I'm using a Pentium III Katmai to test a Gravis Ultrasound Ace sound card and I can tell you that all of the "grunts and moans" all are there, I'm pretty sure that Shane McRetro tried to put an emphasis on the music by disabling the sound effects.
Way too much compression on these recordings..
gravis sounds sick. theres no comparison
I'm trying to hunt down a replacement but it's proving a bit more difficult than I hoped! (Also I agree!)
What is wrong with it?
gravis is dead . and its sound like sick radio. so simple
It sounds like the recording was made with AGC, as the noise floor pushes down when loud stuff comes through.
I think I might still have my gus max in a drawer somewhere, but I live in Spain and I have no experience sending things overseas.
i think you should go for a number nine gxe32 16bit isa card i got one they are very rare and hard to find mine has 2mb ram , s3 processor chip , svga 1024x800 capability either that or a ati mach32 series:D
I love the sound of the Soundblaster on E1M3.. but the hissing is annoying lol
you really should have a crt monitor for this...
I think the Gravis sounds better, but the Sound Blaster has the better low bass for Doom.
This isn't even a real AWE 32 in this video. It's a SoundBlaster 32 PnP, I'm guessing CT3600? There's a huge difference. The SoundBlaster 32 is a budget model that actually uses the Vibra 16 and not the AWE chip like a real AWE 32 would have.
For sure, when I saw the "AWE32" I thought: "No way! that one is too small!"
The tunes sound like they were programmed on a Roland SC-55 Keyboard so therefore that had the fullest sound out of the ones I've heard and was emulated on most of the other cards in a lower samplerate but had a unique version programmed on the Ultrasound as the US couldn't emulate the Roland by the sounds of things.
i actually prefer Gravis Ultrasound sound card hardware the Original Official Vanilla Standard Regular.
well the Revision better be good or else.
Gravis Ultrasound FTW
Say you were broke at the time without saying you were broke XD.