I think changing the soundfonts can be done inside System -> Control Panel -> Multimedia. Also, this card has an interesting history. The first cards were called AudioPCI, and had Ensoniq written on the main chip. I think the chip was labelled ES1370. When Creative got involved, they upgraded the chip a couple of times, and renamed the chip to ES1371 and then ES1373. The following Wikipedia webpage has quite a lot of info about it -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensoniq_AudioPCI

I'm DOS only. No Windows...

I should install W95 it seems. I have so many folders it's getting hard to navigate in DOS 😀

Thanks for a very useful summary. I would also add that another drawback is the need for EMM386 to be loaded in order for the sound card to work in DOS, which prevents some older games from running (e.g., Ultima 7, Turrican 2, just to name a couple).

With many (though not all) gravitating to external midi devices (e.g., MT-32, CM-32L, SC-55, etc.), to be used via dosbox and/or a real DOS install, I was wondering whether such a card (or perhaps an Aureal Vortex based card instead), when used to provide just SB pro/16 digital effects, and midi out via gameport, but not midi music (or OPL for that matter), negates the need for a mobo with an ISA slot?

That is, is the quality of the SB pro/16 digital effects (but not music), and general DOS compatibility, good enough, that one could feel content without an ISA-based sound card installed?

Good point. If you look at this thread, you can even have wavetable tunes in DOS, and no ISA slot in sight!

Hehe now I can just run to my Retro corner and try all this stuff out instead of wondering about it 🤣

Yes good point regarding EMM386. And indeed it doesn't start 🙁

I also tried hooking up a Roland through the joystick port, no luck. The sound still comes out though the speaker out port on the AudioPCI. I checked the SBPCI.CFG file but couldn't see an option to use the external midi port.

Maybe the W95 driver support this?

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I have so many folders it's getting hard to navigate in DOS 😀

norton commander or a clone

Hmm the more I test the more games I find that crash with Sound Blaster sound.

General Midi however works fine. Space Quest 4 and 5 sound really good!

In SQ4 I updated the Sound Blaster driver (patch for faster cpu) but after a while the speech will just loop. Space Quest 5 doesn't start with Sound Blaster enabled. Midi only works well however.

Back to Square One 🤣

Hmm so I installed W98SE. All good. Loaded Intel chipset driver (for 440BX), Nvidia Video driver (for TNT2) and Creative driver (for PCI128 which is a AudioPCI). Everything works I can hear sound.

But there is not even a Creative control panel or any software allowing me to change anything at all 🙁

I miss MS-DOS allready 🤣

I think I will load 6.22 again tomorrow

Have you tried looking in Control Panel -> System -> relevant device

Will check it out tomorrow!

I also have 2 Voodoo cards I quickly want to test.

Any Game demos I can use to test these while I still have W98SE installed? But there should also be DOS games that work with the Voodoo 2 right?

How about Unreal and/or Unreal tournament?
Not sure about DOS V2 demos...perhaps check out falconfly.de? They may have a demos section.

FWIW those "ECW" files are _not_ soundfonts, but rather "Ensoniq Concert Wavesets". The Ensoniq sound card isn't soundfont compatable at all, and can only use those three wavesets for it's DOS and Windows MIDI music playback.

BTW, the Creative Labs' Sound Blaster Live and Audigy cards use those same wavesets (and similar, if not the exact same) DOS drivers for their DOS MIDI music playback. Also, in Windows, the Live and Audigy's "SBLive Software Synthesizer" uses those same wavesets (along with soundfont support for their "Synth A" and "Synth B" Windows MIDI devices).

In a nutchell, IMHO, the best bet for a sound card that does similar things and has similar features would be an old Sound Blaster Live "Value" edition... as in addition to the DOS ECW MIDI drivers, it also supports true soundfonts within Windows; and can be had for as little as US$12 bucks 😀

Just my 2 cents...

(edit) P.S.

Here's a dir listing of the DOS drivers for my SBLive:

101/01/2009  12:00 AM               350 CTSYN.INI
201/01/1999  03:00 AM         2,259,070 EAPCI2M.ECW
301/01/1997  03:00 AM         4,986,999 EAPCI4M.ECW
401/01/1999  05:00 AM         8,292,462 EAPCI8M.ECW
504/08/1999  01:01 AM            10,811 PSBEG.BIN
606/23/1999  03:00 AM               839 SBECFG.CFG
707/06/2001  04:00 AM            31,133 SBECFG.EXE
807/06/2001  03:01 AM           272,064 SBECORE.BIN
903/27/2001  03:00 AM           200,900 SBEGO.EXE
1007/06/2001  05:00 AM             5,853 SBEINIT.COM
1107/06/2001  04:00 AM            16,995 SBELOAD.EXE
1211/24/1999  01:04 AM            60,496 SBEMIXER.EXE
1311/04/1998  01:02 AM            34,187 SBESET.EXE
1409/17/1998  01:00 AM             6,064 SBESET.TXT

...and the contents of my "CTSYN.INI" file:

1[CTSyn.drv]
2SBEnable=True
3JoyEnable=True
4Waveset=C:\SBLIVE\EAPCI8M.ECW
5PCIPort=E400
6PCIIRQ=12
7OPLPort=388
8MPUPort=330
9SBPort=220
10SBIRQ=5
11SBDMALO=1
12SBDMAHI=5
13JoyPort=200
14
15[SBEMixer]
16MasterVolL=192
17MasterVolR=192
18WaveVolL=192
19WaveVolR=192
20CDVolL=192
21CDVolR=192
22SynthVolL=192
23SynthVolR=192
24MT32=False
25DigitalSpeakerEnable=False

Yup, Creative bought Ensoniq and made use of their DOS hardware virtualization/emulation tech. They added SB16 support in DOS (dropped Soundscape support). The driver is used all the way up to Audigy 2, I think. It definitely has issues with some games and EMM386 is a nasty caveat.

Aureal has a very usable DOS driver too. A neat thing about it is that the Aureal cards have a wavetable header and it does work in DOS. It is SBPro-capable for digital sound but has no 16-bit choice. It does not need EMM386 but it is still not 100% compatible.

I don't really like AudioPCI that much. It's too barebones and it has PCI issues sometimes. It seems to suffer from PCI bus contention more than a Live or Vortex card. Also, AudioPCI has zero hardware acceleration for 3D sound and it has no hardware MIDI synth at all so in Windows it is nothing compared to a Live! or even a Vortex. Live has an awesome MIDI synth that gets overlooked too much I think.

The ES1370 isn't able to play all sample rates properly. 48 KHz, for example, plays slightly higher pitched I think. I found this out a year ago or so. I think it's designed for 11.025, 22.05 and 44.1 KHz. It is the only member of the family that can play without resampling and this is both a plus and a caveat depending on what you want to play. Playing movies that are all 48 KHz gets you out of pitch audio.

BTW, that Wikipedia article was mostly written by me 🤣. I was an Ensoniq nut starting in 1994 and followed AudioPCI from the first rumors in 1996 and bought one in 1997. It was nice to have a PCI sound card but I was disappointed that my giant Soundscape card could sound better in MIDI. Way better before the 8MB patch set showed up. And I had lots of pops and static because my Voodoo1 and the AudioPCI didnt get along well (bus contention thing). Then I got a Live! and never looked back.

There are a few different AudioPCI cards apparently, using the various ES137x chips. These were just rebranded by Creative for the 4-5 cards they sold based on these chips.
http://www.yjfy.com/Museum/sound/Ensoniq.htm

Great posts people.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Yes there are plenty of PCI cards around, however how many of these work well with DOS Games und real DOS (Not DOS window in Windows)

I haven't read the thread, but when it comes to SB pro FM compatibility under DOS, ESS Solo1 has been my choice. I have not yet heard a card, that sounds more like the real thing than the Solo1 (mind you: PCI)

ESS had an interesting "ESFM" synth that they claimed was a superset of OPL3. I just ordered myself a ES1869 ISA card to play with.

swaaye wrote:

Live has an awesome MIDI synth that gets overlooked too much I think.

Hehe, (if ya know me) not by me <grin> 😀

swaaye wrote:

A neat thing about it is that the Aureal cards have a wavetable header and it does work in DOS.

Hmmm... that may be a solution for me so's I can install my old Wave Blaster (1) in my current rig (in conjunction with my Live) 😀

(edit) Well DUH! I just remembered that I have a Diamond Multimedia sound card (IIRC a "MonsterSound MX300") laying around somewhere... which is based on the Aureal chipset, and has the wavetable daughterboard connector on it 😀

Heh, now I'll have to go digging through all of my old crapola <grin>...

The 2MB AudioPCI guitar sounds like the Soundscape Elite's. But the bigger patch sets change the guitar out and it sounds much better. Interesting. The older Soundscape has a better guitar too actually.

There doesn't seem to be any effects on AudioPCI output in DOS. Makes it sound very dry, like the regular Soundscape card. Elite has some reverb and chorus enabled by default and you can tweak it with sysex commands.

AudioPCI MIDI definitely appears to be 22 KHz audio. The 11 KHz cutoff is easily seen on a graphic equalizer (Winamp Ozone plugin here). This would explain why the Soundscape cards sound much crisper/fuller/wider. They seem to operate at 44.1 KHz or so.

The 8MB patch set is hardly an improvement over the 4MB. They must have been limited by the hardware.

My PII/450 that I used for several years had an integrated AudioPCI on the motherboard. I'm actually quite attached to the MIDI sound of it... it has this extremely "clear" quality to it, especially the percussion, that other MIDI sample sets seem to lack. (Although this might be an Ensoniq thing, as my Soundscape VIVO comes close as well) Still brings me back a little rush of nostalgia when I hear it.

I notice however you guys are talking about it topping off at 22Khz which is strange to me because it certainly seems like my AudioPCI was clearer and probably at a full 44Khz (it sounds closer to the linked Soundscape Elite recordings thread). Listening to the Doom recordings from the first post, I can hear the loss in quality compared to what I remember. It's definitely noticable in the percussion where I don't feel they have as much definition. I'd like to check this out in more detail, as perhaps Ensoniq improved the playback quality in later revisions (or there is a difference because mine is integrated). It'll take a bit though since I need to reinstall Windows on that thing.