Topaz95 wrote on 2023-12-27, 21:00:
dionb wrote on 2023-12-27, 11:02:
You could - but note what has already been said about MIDI issues on the CT4170. It's one of the least buggy SB16 variants on that front, but does suffer from MIDI slowdowns/pauses when high quality digital audio is being played at the same time as MIDI music. One of the games most mentioned where you notice this is... Tie Fighter.
You probably have everything you need to work around this though: the fix is to use different sound devices for MIDI and digital audio. The second device can even be another SB16/Vibra chip. You have some sound device onboard. Use it, either for MIDI (if it is anything other than an SB16/Vibra chip) or for digital audio (if it is).
If this is your motherboard, it has a Crystal CS4235 chip onboard which is capable of excellent bug-free MIDI. It is also capable of WSS 16 bit audio in games that support that. In practice it will sound almost the same as the CT4170's SB16, but you won't have the Vibra clipping and hissing artefacts. Only advantage of the CT4170 over onboard audio is that SB16 support is much more widespread than WSS.
That's a close match but my motherboard is a Packard Bell S3 Trio Motherboard 182415 the onboard sound chip is a cs4232
Then it's not the PB950 like you originally said. Sounds more like a PB810/20 then.
Regardless:
By typing in cs4232c in C:\windows\cs4232c.exe in ms dos mode it shows that it is functioning https://imgur.com/a/dKE1mGj
Yes, then you have a Crystal audio chip and the same applies as I wrote above: makes sense to use it for MIDI while the CT4170 keeps doing the SB16 stuff.
I have no idea how I would be able to hear anything out of it though without speakers of some kind.
So unless there are speakers of some kind I could buy, should I still buy the roland sc-55? Or maybe there is a way to integrate it into my CT4170?
If you get sound out of the CT4170, I'm assuming you already have speakers in some shape or form.
The CS4232 essentially does the same things as the Vibra chip on the CT4170, so takes inputs from the ISA bus and gives outputs in form of sound - and offers a MIDI interface. It just does some things better (MIDI first and foremost) and some things worse (no SB16 digital audio support). Now MIDI is not sound, it's a way of sending digital instructions to an instrument. The SC-55 synthesizer is such an instrument. It takes the instructions and converts them into music. To do that the SC-55 has MIDI in and audio out connectors. That audio is completely separate from the audio out of your sound card(s).
So worst-case you have three separate audio outputs:
- one on the CS4232 (although you don't need to worry about this if you only use the CS4232 for MIDI)
- one on the CT4170
- one on the SC-55
Exactly how you can get those outputs into your speakers depends on what speakers they are and how you have them hooked up now, but in general you have three options:
- get an audio mixer with multiple inputs and one output. Connect the two/three sound sources to the inputs and the speakers to the out put.
- get an audio switch (or use the different inputs in an amplifier with source switch). Connect the two/three sound sources to the inputs and the speakers to the out put.
- The CT4170 has a line-in port. Run the output of the SC-55 to the input of the CT4710. Keep your speakers attached to the output of the CT4170.
The first option is the best as it allows sounds (and their levels) to be managed independently, but requires another piece of hardware that costs money and takes up space.
The second option is convenient, but has the major drawback that you can only listen to one source at once, and the use case for a setup like this is generally to do digital audio on one source and music on another.
The third option is the simplest in small setups, as you just need a single extra cable. Drawbacks are that you inevitaly add noise to the second source connected via the card's line in, and that you are dependent on the sound card's internal mixer and its software controls. Also, you only have one line-in on the card which means any more than this is problematic. You can daisychain through multiple sound cards (use the line-in on the CS4232 as well), but that adds noise and mixer woes at every step, and you're still limited to one output-only device like an SC-55 sound module.
(if you wonder 'who could possibly need more than one' - I spent yesterday evening physically wreslting with cables for my setup of 6 vintage PCs with 10 sound cards in total hooked up to 6 MIDI modules outputting to a single pair of speakers and one monitor, keyboard and mouse, via among others two 16-port mono/8-port stereo audio mixers. It's all working again in the new location 😀 You can go a long, long way down this rabbit hole 😜 )
Topaz95 wrote on 2023-12-28, 04:30:
[...]
^ This actually Worked! It worked entirely in windows mode and I didn't need to uninstall anything. (Thank Goodness) I tried to configure it for dos mode too but after discovering that I can just load all of my dos games (Including the games I mentioned above) through Windows with sound configs that work, that is all I need to enjoy my packard bell! Besides I'm keeping my CT4170 installed because I need it for games that use CD music.
Not totally convinced you need the CT4170 for games that use CD music - almost certainly there's a CD audio in connector on your motherboard. If you have that PB810/820 motherboard, it's immediately to the rear of the audio riser connector.
That said, the CT4170 offers SB16 support, which the CS4232 does not, so there's still added value to keep it in there. A 'sound card' is actually a bunch of different functionalities traditionally shoehorned onto one device. Since the original Sound Blaster, it's been common to have at least two completely different ways of making sound on it:
- FM synthesis (originally performed by a Yamaha OPL2 chip, later in stereo by OPL3 or one of its many, many clones), used for music in many older titles. Here the computer tells the chip the characteristics of the sound and the chip synthesizes it. Which chip or clone your solution has determines quality.
-Digital audio, which is simply digital-to-analog conversion of sound samples. No processing required, but it does take up a lot of storage (in old PC terms). There are multiple standards for DA, such as the original Sound Blaster (mono, low quality), Sound Blaster 2.0 (still mono, better quality), Sound Blaster Pro (stereo, average quality), Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 (stereo, better quality), Sound Blaster 16 (stereo, 16b high quality) as well non-Creative Sound Blaster standards, in particular WSS (Windows Sound System; stereo, 16b high quality, in theory better than SB16). Each card may support one or more of these standards, as will each game.
- Some cards added 'wavetable' MIDI synthesis onboard. Here the computer just says "play instrument X at tone Y for duration Z". How the instrument sounds depends on samples held in the card/module. It will only sound exactly like the composer intended on the same hardware that he used. Most 1990s games had music composed on a Roland SC-55, which is why that particular module is much sought-after, even if there are many objectively better ones on the market. However it can be fun to listen to the same music on very different hardware (which is why I have 6 sound modules hooked up and quite a few spares...). This functionality can also be present on sound cards, usually with a much cheaper/simpler/worse sounding chipset. Neither of yours have it though, they just have the MIDI interface that let them talk to the hardware somewhere else. Finally, under Windows, if your CPU has enough cycles to spare you can use a softsynth, i.e. Windows pretends to be a MIDI module. This can be as good as the best standalone modules, but only in Windows and it costs system resources.
Finally cards have bugs and other forms of 'personality'. Creative's Sound Blaster 16 range, including the Vibra and AWE32 and 64 cards, are particularly (in)famous for this, as they all have multiple long-running bugs despite being considered high-end. Your CT4170 has MIDI slowdowns/pauses when playing back high quality DA as well as clipping of some sounds. That is actually one of the least buggy. A lot of those cards have MIDI hanging note bugs too, and the non-Vibra ones exchange clicking sounds for the clipping/hissing.
So...
The perfect card does not exist and to approach perfection you can combine cards and use whatever each is best at. In your case:
CT4170
- FM-synth by CQM (mediocre OPL3 clone)
- clipping/hissing in DA
- MIDI slowdowns
+ SB16 support
CS4232
+ FM-synth by either CSFM (good OPL3 clone) or a real OPL3 chip
+ artefact-free DA
+ bug-free MIDI
+ WSS for high-quality audio where supported
- no SB16 support
So it makes sense to use th CS4232 for FM-synth (frequently called 'Ad Lib' in games), all DA except SB16 and MIDI. The CT4170 can do SB16.
How do you acheive this? Just talking pure DOS here to keep it simple, you first need to assign different resources to both chips. Those resources include base address (A), IRQ (I), DMA (D) high DMA (H) and MIDI (M). Also you need to indicate type. T4 is SBPro2, T6 is SB16
I'd recommend:
CS4232: A220 I5 D1 P330 U2 T4
CT4170: A240 I3 D3 H5 P300 T6
Now, this is also the SET BLASTER and thus UNISOUND syntax. Both CT4170 and CS4232 are supported by Unisound, so you can configure both with it without having to mess around with proprietary initialization software.
Then when you install/run a game, if it supports SB16 for DA, choose SB16, and point the game to A240 I3 D3 H5; if it does not, choose SBPro2 and point it to A220 I5 D1. And for MIDI, tell the game to use IRQ2 and address 330.
I have almost exactly the same setup, just with an Aztech AZT2320-based card for FM, SBPro2 and MIDI, and an AWE64Gold for SB16 (and in my case AWE/Emu8k synth). Works perfectly.
