This depends a lot on the components of your system and what it is currently doing, and also on the arrangement of the cards in the slots.

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

This depends a lot on the components of your system and what it is currently doing, and also on the arrangement of the cards in the slots.

Of course!

As stated above, components are the same for all three recordings and I used the middle ISA slot!

And the system plays Doom 😀 That's all it's doing...

My rating:

1. ESS AudioDrive
2. Sound Blaster Pro 2.0
3. AWE64 GOLD (quite disappointed to be honest)

Not necessarily noise related per-say, but my AWE32s were always plagued with an annoying problem:

When recording from the EMU/SoundFonts, if the gain/volume was too high (even just a wee bit of being close to too high), the EMU would generate DC spikes; resulting in audible clicks and other noisy artifacts in the final recording.

I remember eons ago posting about this over in the long-since gone Compuserve MIDI Music Forum, even used to have a screenie of one (zoomed in) as seen in GoldWave. Really *HARD* looking postive V+ DC spikes... although, not to be confused with the usual clipping associated with having the gain to high.

Extremely ANNOYING, as one had to do a bunch of time consuming "test runs" when recording a MIDI; simply to ensure the volume was loud enough, yet not causing the problem <aarrgghh>.

This is a very interesting idea. The AWE32 was really noisy. The ESS was much better. The SP Pro 2 seemed to be in the middle of the other two cards. You've given me another good idea for a future project... 😀

rfnagel wrote:

I remember eons ago posting about this over in the long-since gone Compuserve MIDI Music Forum, even used to have a screenie of one (zoomed in) as seen in GoldWave. Really *HARD* looking postive V+ DC spikes... although, not to be confused with the usual clipping associated with having the gain to high.

Heh, I dug through the ¥Weeds¥ Archives, and found the original pic and dez that I had uploaded in the Compuserver MIDI Music Forum. My mistake though... it was a *negative* spike.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
DCSPIKE.GIF
3/19/00

SB16/AWE32 DSP DC Spike Screenshot (GIF)
SB16 AWE32 DC SPIKE CLIP POP CLICK RECORDING GIF

This is a screenshot of a DC "spike" that is generated from the DSP of an SB16 or an AWE32 when recording digital audio and the input gain is set too high. The sound SHOULD be clipped, but this glitch occurs instead. These spikes seem to be random (as you can see in the screenshot, there are other portions of the sample that are clipped with NO spike). This problem is discussed in message #595804 and it's thread in the Recording/Audio message section here in the forum. 800x600 GIF file, viewable on-line.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

retro games 100 wrote:

This is a very interesting idea. The AWE32 was really noisy. The ESS was much better. The SP Pro 2 seemed to be in the middle of the other two cards. You've given me another good idea for a future project... 😀

Yea I admit I'm a bit shocked with the AWE64 GOLD results. I mean that card cost a fortune when it launched and is meant to be one of the quieter cards. Yet the SB Pro 2.0 and the ESS clearly blow it out of the water...

Shame I have no means to test the SPDIF output...

Ok guys I tested all my other sound cards 🤣

http://www.mediafire.com/?8aee3hhql6alhh2

3x AWE64 GOLD
1x AWE64
2x Sound Blaster Pro 2.0
1x Sound Blaster 1.5
1x ESS AudioDrive 1868F

I had a second ESS, but it doesn't work anymore. The CWDINIT doesn't find the audio chip 🙁 Went into the bin...

Notes:

- The first AWE64 Gold has a really weak signal on the left channel
- All three card sound quite different. Whereas the two Pro 2.0 sound very close...
- SB 1.5 has a lot of "I can hear the computer think" sounds when you boot the machine, but the noise itself is low. Still hearing the computer think is more distracting than a constant hiss
- SB Pro 2.0 while noisier than the ESS, the noise is quite nice
- ESS clearly the least noisy card

My ranking:

1. ESS
2. Sound Blaster Pro 2.0
3. AWE 64 GOLD
4. AWE 64
5. Sound Blaster 1.5

I still can't believe how good the ESS card is!

I like my generic ESS ES1869 board too. It doesn't have much noise and it sounds fine to me. It's cleaner than the SB Pro 2.0 and the FM is extremely similar (I didn't hear any differences), and it has that nice DB header. And like the SB Pro 2, you don't need drivers which is really excellent.

I'm not surprised that the AWE64s are disappointing. I've always thought that the Gold was overrated. It's just a cost reduced AWE32 (less chips, no CD, no ASP). Removal of standard SIMM slots was an obvious move to make money on addons. The Gold's 4MB of RAM isn't enough to give you access to SF2s that are truly better than say a SCD-15. The waveset ROM is still poor. Yet the Gold was certainly not priced like the ~4 year old tech it was ($300 I think). I know it has S/PDIF which is interesting perhaps.

What I found poor was that out of the 3 AWE64s only 1 was acceptable. The quality really varied it seems. The two PROs however sound alike. I took a marker and labeled the cards for future reference..

I still love the AWE64 GOLD because the digital speech part is excellent. It does have SPDIF, so there is a way around all that noise. Though I don't have a soundcard with COAX in and therefore can't investigate further.

Maybe the AWE just has way to many components on the PCB. I mean my ESS is as simple as it gets. Like 1 chip with some caps and that's it. Will keep an eye on some late SB16s (highly integrated ones) to see how they sound. Nothing on ebay AU at the moment, but they will pop up sooner or later 🤣

Also check out my GODS Intro roundup. First game I found that has issues with the ESS. You are welcome to try the "bug" I found on your card.

I also discovered that the balance between voice and FM is not the same as with the Creative cards. Very obvious in GODS as it uses FM and voice for the Intro music...

It's these 1% of cases where having a Creative Card matters 🙁

SB16s are just not very interesting to me simply because they ALL have problems with DBs. What a joke. How many times can they revise something and still leave bugs like that. If all you want is SB16 mode and FM synth, then they are ok though. But the sound quality can be pretty nasty on them because they are just like an AWE32 after all. At least some of the SB16s effectively are 12-bit cards, btw, due to some DAC limitation (nevermind the analog signal issues)

Speaking of noise, I remember that my SB16 MCD had a PC Speaker input that I decided to use as intended: connect a cable from the PC Speaker output pins on the motherboard to the PC Speaker input pins on the SB16, and you can then hear PC Speaker sounds from the speakers connected to your SB16's speaker outputs.

It was a really neat idea, but unfortunately that cable seemed to act as an antenna that picked up all sorts of RF noise from the computer's internals. I could hear little tones from my speakers whenever I moved the mouse, for example.

swaaye wrote:

Removal of standard SIMM slots was an obvious move to make money on addons.

You got that right. Those damned "memory modules" were a ridiculously priced RIP OFF!

I remember back in the day CLI stating "Many users have had problems with the plastic 30-pin SIMM slots on the AWE32, breaking them and such. That's why we now use these memory modules."

BULLCRAP! Using those AWE64 memory modules was simply a way for them to make extra $$$. I've had *countless* full AWE32 cards, as well as the AWE32 "upgrade" cards... NEVER had one of the SIMM slots ever break. I mean, one does require a half of a *brain* when installing them, ya know?

The GUS PnP I got from someone off here had the SIMM "hooks" broken 🤣

But totally agree with you, selling "upgrades" is a big income stream for Creative.

HunterZ wrote:

Speaking of noise, I remember that my SB16 MCD had a PC Speaker input that I decided to use as intended: connect a cable from the PC Speaker output pins on the motherboard to the PC Speaker input pins on the SB16, and you can then hear PC Speaker sounds from the speakers connected to your SB16's speaker outputs.

It was a really neat idea, but unfortunately that cable seemed to act as an antenna that picked up all sorts of RF noise from the computer's internals. I could hear little tones from my speakers whenever I moved the mouse, for example.

I've never had a problem with noise with those. My SB16/AWE32/SBLive cards have all had them, but I never experienced any strange noise coming from my powered speakers when using that feature (having the PC Speaker slider unmuted and up in the SB mixer).

I never used it that much though, as it just never sound quite "right" to me... piping them through your powered computer speakers, compared to the little "bleeper-buzzer" inside the PC <grin> 😀 I suppose that's kinda similar to that other thread here at Vogons about DOSBox's PC speaker emulation.