any chance you will make more and sell them? If yes I'll buy some 😀

I will also buy one

I will NOT buy.

and nobody gives a poop.

georgel wrote on 2023-10-30, 19:24:

I will NOT buy.

Seriously, with a card like that you'd be crazy not to considering it has a waveblaster header and an official Yamaha FM Operator Type L chip onboard.

Question: Is this card (under DOS) 100% compativle with my AWE32 Card ? Especially for TRACKER Module Player like AMP or Cubic Player?

DarkVamp1976 wrote on 2023-11-15, 23:05:

Question: Is this card (under DOS) 100% compativle with my AWE32 Card ? Especially for TRACKER Module Player like AMP or Cubic Player?

Yes, all AWE64 sound cards (including Legacy) are 100% compatible with software that supports the AWE32's EMU8K.

If anyone ever ends up selling bare PCBs for the AWE64 Legacy again, I'd potentially be interested in one. I have an AWE64 Value that I love but the lack of a wavetable header and OPL3 chip make it a bit more inconvenient to use than some of the other retro sound cards in my collection. It could also be a good motivation to get good at surface-mount soldering before tackling the task of removing the AWE chip from the existing board and mounting on the new one!

640K!enough wrote on 2019-08-12, 15:42:

derSammler wrote:

So you are destroying existing AWE64 cards to build your custom ones? Not sure about others, but in my opinion, it's completely pointless to destroy real retro hardware for a modern replacement.

If they end up with a superior result, where is the great harm in the effort? It's not like they are destroying some ultra-rare, high-end hardware; it's just a fairly common, base-model Creative card. If they can de-activate or supplement the CQM with genuine OPL3 and also manage quieter output, it's already a net gain.

If Creative weren't so apathetic or openly hostile toward community projects, there may have been other options. As it stands, they were left with no choice. It will be too expensive for me, but I still applaud the effort. It can be a great educational or professional development experience to undertake something like this.

Retro hardware has better sounding DAC, components and materials
you will lose the "magic" in the sound if you don't know what you are doing

shandavid wrote on 2023-11-17, 13:43:

640K!enough wrote on 2019-08-12, 15:42:

derSammler wrote:

So you are destroying existing AWE64 cards to build your custom ones? Not sure about others, but in my opinion, it's completely pointless to destroy real retro hardware for a modern replacement.

If they end up with a superior result, where is the great harm in the effort? It's not like they are destroying some ultra-rare, high-end hardware; it's just a fairly common, base-model Creative card. If they can de-activate or supplement the CQM with genuine OPL3 and also manage quieter output, it's already a net gain.

If Creative weren't so apathetic or openly hostile toward community projects, there may have been other options. As it stands, they were left with no choice. It will be too expensive for me, but I still applaud the effort. It can be a great educational or professional development experience to undertake something like this.

Retro hardware has better sounding DAC, components and materials
you will lose the "magic" in the sound if you don't know what you are doing

IMHO, it could be argued that Creative Labs themselves did not always know what they were doing in their early days. By the AWE64 era, they had gotten a lot better at keeping noise relatively under control, but listening to one at the time, even routed through the headphone amplifier of an audio receiver, the limitations were still quite audible.

While I do have certain fond memories of listening to lo-fi tracker music on an SB 2.0 clone without even proper filtering to remove aliasing effects, I very much appreciated the arrival if 16-bit mixing, higher samplerates than 8KHz, and 16-bit sound cards. These early 16-bit sound cards, were still noisier and sometimes significantly more distorted than even an inexpensive contemporaneous CD player. Even the audio jack on a cheap CDROM drive often provided cleaner audio. At the time, I would have preferred it if the sound cards that I could afford had sounded more like my CD player. At a time when affordable external DACs were not really a thing where I lived and home stereo equipment with S/PDIF input was out of my reach, I very much hoped that the DACs and especially the analogue output stages of the cards I had could be bypassed. That's just me.

If the term 'magic' is meant to imply things like grounding loops, floating sections of op-amps and overly-complicated layouts that are difficult to follow, then I'm personally glad that kind of 'magic' is being removed. Creative cards frequently had some of the worst imaginable layouts that pretty much killed every chance of them having any semblance of a passable signal to noise ratio.

On a side note, I just wish retro stuff being made nowadays wasn't priced to rival eBay prices on actual vintage hardware. I honestly wouldn't mind it if they'd just sell unpopulated PCBs - It's really not that bad to do the work myself, if it means paying a drastically reduced price. Besides, that way I can use the op-amps I like, without having to pay for parts that I don't.

I see this is an old post but I was wondering if there were any of the awe64 legacy left? Thanks

I sure would like one, have several of the original awe 64's but would love to have one with all the bells and whistles. Thanks

Subbing to this for interest.

shandavid wrote on 2023-11-17, 13:43:

Retro hardware has better sounding DAC, components and materials

Aaaaahahahahahahahahahah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SquallStrife wrote on 2024-02-02, 05:17:

shandavid wrote on 2023-11-17, 13:43:

Retro hardware has better sounding DAC, components and materials

Aaaaahahahahahahahahahah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wait, you're serious. Let me laugh harder. AaaAaahHahAHAHAHahhAhAHAhAHAHAHAHAHAHhhahahaHAhaahahahah!!!!!!!!!!!!....

It's probably true to an extent. Capacitors from the era were better and they actually gave a damn about analogue because that's all they had. As sound cards became more "advanced" they introduced all kinds of internal resampling and other crap that made the SB Live! sound worse than an 8bit SB Pro 2.

kolderman wrote on 2024-02-03, 10:13:

It's probably true to an extent. Capacitors from the era were better and they actually gave a damn about analogue because that's all they had. As sound cards became more "advanced" they introduced all kinds of internal resampling and other crap that made the SB Live! sound worse than an 8bit SB Pro 2.

I presume that the SB Live! vs 8-bit SB Pro comparison was hyperbole. That being said, I actually did run some tests on the effects of 44.1KHz to 48KHz resampling on an SB Live! card in the digital domain (no A/D or D/A conversions) using RightMark Audio Analyzer.
I compared it to a modern open source real-time software resampler. The modern resampler is obviously better, but the Live! does not look that bad, IMHO (of course, running udial.wav or a similar corner case through a Live! would be a different story).

Source (along with methodology details and full RMAA reports) : Re: Not so crazy idea : using a Raspberry Pi 4 with jackd , Zita A2J bridge and jack_mixer to make a software S/PDIF mix

darry wrote on 2024-02-03, 17:59:

I compared it to a modern open source real-time software resampler. The modern resampler is obviously better, but the Live! does not look that bad, IMHO (of course, running udial.wav or a similar corner case through a Live! would be a different story).

Audigy family DSP should be better in that department, because it can do some workarounds with 96kHz resampling.

I will buy one