Back to the Sound Blaster Pro 2 / AWE64 Gold 😀

I always do after being unfaithful for a bit 😈

badmojo wrote:

Whether this is because the card is bad, or because it just has crappy MPU-401 functionality in general is anyone's guess.

It could be a problem with your card, or something specific to the implementation thereof, but the actual MPU-401 functionality of the Jazz16 chipset itself is solid enough, per my own experience.

badmojo wrote:

orcish75 wrote:

I remember being bitterly disappointed playing any Direct X games, Diablo, Starcraft, etc and having distorted music coming from the one channel. The same thing happened when playing MP3s. The other channel was crystal clear. It never had this issue when playing 8-bit audio in DOS games, both channels were clear and distortion free.

Yes I vaguely remember someone saying once that Media Vision audio cards didn't play nice with Windows games, and that they should be considered DOS only.

I think my Audiowave Platinum 16 uses the Jazz16 chipset. It also has a Crystal CS4231-KL codec chip.
So far I have no issues at all with distorted sound in Windows 3.11 or in DOS games that use 16 bit MSS.
Parhaps the issue only exists in Windows 9x? or perhaps only Media Vision boards are affected?
The Sound Blaster Pro part of the card also seems to be perfect so far.
It is possible that some note have played a bit to long in Daggerfall so perhaps the hanging note bug also affects my card.
Its hard to tell since the music in Daggerfall mostly consists of notes playing for a long time. I have not heard anything strange in other games.

I will try to listen for hanging notes.

My second encounter with the Jazz16 chipset has been even less productive than the first - I don't think I'll be going back for a third. I picked up this nice looking Gateway OEM card, for which Gateway still hosts the specs and drivers on their website. The card looked to be in great condition but it literally went up in smoke the instant I turned the machine on - I was testing it in a PIII which has played nice with all of the ISA cards I've tested in it to date. Here it is, 2 surface mount resistors (I think they are) on the lower right is what burned:

The burned L6 is a ferrite bead, definitely part of filtering supply voltage entering the card.
As there is no picture from the bottom of the board at all and the top picture is charred, I can't tell which supply voltage that is and where it goes, but it is either +12V or -12V supply line.
So much current has passed through it so it got too hot, so there is most likely a shortcut or broken component somewhere else.
L5 seems to have survived.

I noticed there is something burnt right below jumper P9, it could be the source of the problem. Or another ferrite bead. I cannot see from the picture.

Since it has a real OPL3, it might worth to try to fix or mod it so that at least something could be heard.

Thanks for the info Jepael but I'm not going to try to fix it, my soldering skills are probably not up to the job and I don't think it's worth the time finding out.

I've asked the seller for a refund but the listing was carefully worded to not include a condition, so I might be SOOL

I'd promised myself no more Jazz16's but I found this one at the local recycling center in a pile of eWaste, so I decided it was worth the investment of 0 dollars and a little bit of time. It doesn't have a wavetable header and has a SCSI interface, so it's not worth much to me, but this one works at least. The sound blaster pro emulation seems fine but it sounds a bit thin, and I can't think of a reason why this thing exists really. I'd take an AudioDrive over it any day.

It looks nice though:

I'm using two different Jazz 16's in two different Pentium 60 computers and they sound fine to me in DOOM II ver. 1.9. Sounds just like a SB16 with OPL.

I have an old GATEWAY 2000 486 system that the 16MVCARD came in. I downloaded the Jazz16.zip drivers from here (the ONLY ones anywhere I can find for anything close to the 16MVCARD) but the installation freezes as soon as it gets to the configuration screen of I/O, IRQ, etc. I got the drivers manually declared and loaded in the AUTOEXEC.BAT/CONFIG.SYS and it now plays sound, but anyone else having problems with the installation program for the JAZZ16?

EDIT: On a lot of extra testing, reinstall, plain boot disk, etc...sometimes the install will get to a point where it'll say there's a DMA conflict, though its not consistent. Time for more thorough, step-testing with notes. 😠

Not sure if you had any luck with the card dogchainx, but I tested mine after being in storage for a bit and the drivers loaded okay, mixer software worked but audio was really really faint. So faint I had to turn up my amp to almost max to barely hear anything and at that point I decided I've had enough of this card and back to storage or maybe the bin it goes.

I have a media Vision pro Audio Wavetable (650-0152-51). The FCC ID is IXW-JAZZWAVE. There are 3 majors chip on the board :

- a JAzz16 mvd1216b
- a spectrum mva416
- an ICS2115v

Scan of this soundcard :

http://wellby.dyndns.org/dnl/img/pro-audio-wave.jpg

This sound card works great under DOS (SB16 emulation) but I could not make wavetable to work. There is a DB connector + an integrated wavetable synthetiser, but I don't understand how use the integrted wavetable part. Any idea ?

Please try to keep your project organized in one thread and link to that thread in any related threads such as this one. It makes it so much easier for everyone.

BTW, I wonder if that card was a prototype?

I know this is an old thread, but I have been messing with the same Gateway OEM card and I had almost exactly the same thing happen. A ferrite burned up in the lower right corner and the card "went up in smoke". 😀

I did get quite a bit of testing done before this happened however and made several recordings. I posted a writeup at http://tenorman.info/pc/gateway16mvcard.

The 16MVCARD isn't really anything exciting, but it also doesn't seem to have any major problems (assuming it doesn't blow up on you). I suppose there is something to be said for that.

dacow wrote on 2014-06-09, 02:49:

Not sure if you had any luck with the card dogchainx, but I tested mine after being in storage for a bit and the drivers loaded okay, mixer software worked but audio was really really faint. So faint I had to turn up my amp to almost max to barely hear anything and at that point I decided I've had enough of this card and back to storage or maybe the bin it goes.

I fixed an issue like this on a couple media vision cards yesterday. One was a jazz 16 and the other one was a quick shot jazz 16 clone. Had really faint output on one channel poor quality on the other. I traced the problem to dead or failing capacitors on the amplifier circuit, connected to the TEA2025 amplifier chip. On both boards there is a 16volt 47uf electrolytic capacitor for each output channel, the only two 47uf caps on my boards. I replaced them with used caps from something else and got full audio back.

With hardware this old you have to watch out for failing capacitors. It's pretty common after this many years. Interesting that those two 47uf caps we're the only capacitors with problems. The others tested fine I don't know what it was about those. I suppose the power load on those two caused them to fail sooner
I'm not sure this will be useful to anyone here now as this is an old thread, but for future reference...

Is anywhere review from jazz16 soundcard?

I try one today, and i'm impressed about sound quality.
I think it's better than soundblaster serie (16/awe)

I've just installed one of these in a Compaq Presario 425. I've tested only with some active speakers. It sounds really great... but I'm not sure about the quality using just passive monitor speakers. Has anyone tried it?

I have a few of these Media Vision cards.
I purchased a used one back in 1990’s from a computer recycler.
And I was never able to get it to work in my ISA computer because I did not have the drivers or manuals.

So when I saw these being sold on eBay I was determined to get one to work.
Some OEM computer venders also used this sound card in there computers like
AST Bravo and others including Compaq.
I have found this sound card in several OEM computers.

It sounds okay. I like it.
Sounds good to me.
I don’t know about it’s game compatibility but the Audio sounds okay.

I use it in a AMD-133-5x86 computer over clocked to 160mhz.
Works okay but can’t play MP3’s

For this reason I would say to use it with a Pentium CPU or Equivalent so you can get the Best out of the Sound card.
And get a 4x or faster CDROM drive.
You don’t have to use the CDROM interface on the Sound card.
You can use a IDE CDROM

I also have one in my 386 computer.
Works okay
I have not heard the bug note
But I mainly play mainstream games

For DOS/Win3x you need to install the drivers and Software package. But Win95 install CDROM comes with Drivers for this sound card.

Don't confuse the Pas16 with the Jazz16. They are different. The Jazz16 is a SB Pro compatible. While the Pas16 was it's own thing with SB compatibility as well.

I have a Jazz16 in a Pentium 3 667 system, I rather like it once setup.
The biggest annoyance with these cards is that they are a pre PnP software jumper card. This can be annoying if you have a PnP BIOS. You will need to reserve the resources you want to use in BIOS setup, to avoid your BIOS giving them to something else.