Your testing is exhaustive and detailed and you answer many questions that people have wanted answered in a well-produced presentation. This is why UA-cam needs you.
I have a "Phone Blaster" from Creative, which is a Modem and Sound Blaster 16 all in one. It's an ISA board that has the Vibra 16 Chipset, but ALSO has a real Yamaha YMF262 for true OPL3/Adlib, it also has a wavetable pinout. Blew my mind when I first saw it.
On yesterday at a classified ad, I buy a Audigy 2 ZS for 7€. :D Maybe It would be a little bit better than a audigy player? 7€ was a good price, so I have bought it. At next, I would have a vortex 2 card. I keep my eyes opened.
I own most of these cards (except for the Yamaha PCI and the Diamond Monster Sound) and I eventually stuck with the AWE64. I'm happy this video has somewhat validated my decision (from a performance standpoint). I threw the Ensoniq away. . . it was meh worthy. I have a Cirrus PCI based card that I never found drivers for.
Another option is to plug the line-out of one of the sound cards into the line-in of the other, provided the second card supports line-in in both MS-DOS as well as Windows (the SB Live! for example doesn't).
Just as a piece of information though. This midi capability doesn't really factor in much in DOS games or even most Windows games that still utilized midi music. If you are interested in music production though, then the XG synthesizer can get to shine. Even just listening to XG specific midi files sound totally awesome.
I think I had a Yamaha card at one point (early 2000's maybe, might still have it) that had the same "feature", as in it would play its own files great, but sounded completely average with general-midi stuff. Can't remember the exact model, though.
Me too, as it's the last card to feature 8 channel digital output via digital DIN-connector and having internal SPDIF-input to connect optical drives. I hate the option, which is shown in this video also, to play CD audio over the storage-controller. I contacted Creative multiple times back then why the X-FI's digital I/O capabilitys were cut in comparison to Live! and Audigys and they told me that the media content industry demanded it. That and the fact that EAX and A3D died and sound in games went downhill as did the gaming soundcards made me never buy a soundcard for gaming again. Today I only care about the ability to put out hi-res music digitally and bit-perfect. The Audigy 2 ZS can't do that, so I run my onboard card in parallel to the Audigy 2 ZS.
I bought the Notebook PCMCIA version last year for a mere £5, and it is excellent. It also came with the 5.1 surround sound cable which is often missing in Ebay auctions. I've got a few audio interfaces that are far superior for serious audio use, however I really do like this Audigy card!
+armorgeddon I've not had any problems with quality of playback on either the Audigy or Audigy 2 with high quality sound. Are you talking about high bit-rate sound file-types like FLAC or are you talking about high definition sound streams such as 192khz? I also do 4k streaming with 192khz sources and it sounds very clear and bright. This is most perplexing.
I have an Audigy v1 (SB0090) card (with additional MIDI backplate) in my E8400 750 Ti XP/8.1 system, only like the Audigy 2 you've got, it's also got that sweet gold & black look. Sounds great when playing Colin McRae Rally 2005 with EAX sound over my Logitech X-230 2.1 speakers.
Greetings from Saskatchewan, Canada! I bought one of these Live! 5.1 (SB 0100) cards in 2002 and it was one of the best purchases I've ever made. The Audigy 2 ZS has been my "dream audio card" for years...
Thank you for taking all this time to bring these concise informative videos to us. It's highly appreciated, and I enjoy learning about these old cards. I would be really interested in a video based on all the little attachments and what all the headers and sockets do on these cards! Some have so many connectors and I just have no idea what most of them are for!
Can you pick a card? The main connectors on the board itself are for routing other sound sourced into the mixer. For example the CD-ROM audio cable, or a TV tuner output. The wavetable header is for a wavetable board. And Creative has some connectors for a drive bay with all sorts of plugs and ports.
Hmm, I suppose not. Im an audiophile, so I love everything audio (both hw and sw) and interested in getting the best I can out of my audio. In my win98 gaming build, I have a creative live ct4760. I have the live drive 2 attached to the card also, which works well. I had to install 2 sets of drivers in order to get the best sound from this card. It works in DOS (using your guide for rebooting into ms-dos mode, you genius). Just find all this interesting, so love to learn more.
I just recently acquired a SB X-Fi Titanium HD and it's hands down the best card I've ever had, and I have just about everything. But I use it to listen to music and watch movies right now, not games, it also is the only X-Fi without any windows XP(or older) support and it's rare and expensive but damn does it sound good.
For myself, I currently use the following: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 XP: Sound Blaster Audigy SB0090 (the original version, not the ones with coloured connectors), with the latest driver that supports EAX 4.0. Celeron 400A 98se: Turtle Beach Montego II Aureal II PCI card for Windows & Yamaha Audician 32 ISA card for DOS.
I'm quite excited Phil, having just completed my first designated "retro" build (XP-era, less expensive than Win 9x era at the moment), and I've just managed to get a new old stock Aureal SQ2500 OEM soundcard on ebay! From my research this model is the one with XP compatible drivers (and I have found them), so I am hoping to see if it will co-exist with my PCIe X-Fi based card. They both have quite complex support software as I understand so wish me luck! If not it may form the motivation for a Win9x SS7 build.
If you have a motherboard with a VIA chipset (especially the 686B southbridge), don't use a SB Live! sound card because there was a bug which caused massive disk corruption. It was a known problem back in the day, but much of the information on it has been lost to time. You can still find a few bits of information on old forum discussions, but you may have to use archive.org since many of those websites are no longer in existence, or have since purged those topics. I experienced this problem first hand back in 2001 when I was upgrading from a Gateway 2000 to an AOPEN motherboard with a VIA chipset. I recycled my SB Live sound card and a few other parts to build a Duron 800 machine, and quickly ran into problems. Programs and data on my hard drive would randomly get corrupted and it took a dozen or so Windows reinstalls, lots of driver version swaps and research to figure it out. I ended up having to upgrade to a SB Audigy, at which point I didn't have any issues after that.
I've always wondered about the performance impact of various cards. I always thought a better card might be able to offload stress on the CPU to the point where the effect would be similar to no sound card. I have an original Audigy 2 in my PIII PC because that's what I had on hand from back in the day. It's nice to see that it's not a bad choice at all. I used the driver disc from Vogons, but recently found my original disc. I'll also have to make sure I have VxD enabled!
Ah, Phil. Another great retro video! I have a Sound Blaster AWE64 gold and Sound Blaster Live! in my socket 7 build. My Pentium 166 is the one using an AWE32 + NEC XR385.
Little late to the party on this, but I was just building a P-II 400 which somebody had put a Audigy 2ZS into. I admit, it is a wonderful sounding card in windows, but no matter what I tried, I couldn't get the VXD drivers to work in DOS titles to save my life. I found my old Live Platinum, and it installed with absolutely no issues. This was my actual sound card I bought new in 1999 so it's period correct anyway. Win XP was the prominent OS by the time the Audigy 2 ZS was released.
Hi phil gr8 reviews as always! As a Aureal fan myself i've run my sq2500 for many years now. Gr8 4 games & windows.. But the best Soundcard back in win98/XP era I think is the Santa Cruz (Turtle Beach) it had stable drivers in games, both in EAX & A3D, and it had gr8 sound Quality in win and also decent 4 work, Sound-editing... Plz review this if you have the chance!! //Cyhpr
My preference is towards the Aureal Vortex 2 cards (Diamond Monster MX300 is pretty neat) especially with the amazing 3D sound effects.I think there was a connection with 3Dfx and Aureal in that many of the founders of 3Dfx previously worked at Media Vision and also Aureal Semiconductor was a company that came out of the demise of Media Vision too.Wikipedia says it was a reincarnation of the bankrupt Media Vision.In a way what 3Dfx was to 3D graphics was what Aureal was to 3D sound effects.Too bad about their (Aureal's) unfortunate unfair demise. That Audigy 2 card sounded absolutely amazing though as you demonstrated in the video. However isn't out of the proper time frame as some people would prefer components of the 1999 era rather than using a component from several years later though it does work very very well.
Another A3D fan here. I had the Monster Sound card for the longest time back in the day and I really, REALLY liked it. However there were not many games that supported it. That in mind, my absolute favorite Sound Card (before "current times") has to be the AWE32. I had the top-of-the-line model with the built-in memory slots and gold-plated RCA inputs (no 3.5mm jacks at all). I loved that thing to death. It sounded REALLY good through my amp. Got the AWE64 a few years after and it wasn't what I expected. Don't get me wrong the AWE64 still was/is a good card, just nowhere near the mind & ear blowing experience the AWE32 was.
I still own an original Aureal Vortex (first one) from 1998, I did pick up the Vortex 2 when I made my win 98 build many years ago though. Lucked out and scored it for £3 inc delivery off ebay. :p
Very nice video, thanks :) I use a Gravis Ultrasound max on my P2 400mhz, sound blaster live on a boring xp machine, and sound blaster z on my modern machine. And sid chip and paula :)
There's no match for the GUS ;) I have a "vanilla" Ultrasound in my DOS system, but it's upgraded to the full 1MB. The midi in games that support it is just great :)
Could you do a MIDI comparison between all the cards? I'm curious to know how the Yamaha XG cards sound against the Creative AWE64, Audigy, and Vortex 2 cards.
Yes. Based on Experience with Yamaha's software synthesizers from that era, and XG midi in general, I would expect the Yamaha XG to put in an impressive performance for midi playback. The soft-synths were definitely something... And I had heard that some of the Yamaha branded sound cards from that era used approximately the same sample set... would be interesting to see a comparison. (though XG midi is a different standard to General midi that can make a lot of difference above and beyond the samples alone, but only if the midi files being tested are designed for it... It makes a proper comparison much harder though...)
Midi is kind of weird in that there's a million sound fonts you can load which completely change the feel of the music and many of them are so large that you need some expansion memory to do so, which is usually quite rare and expensive.
Amazing dedication Phil :) Also are you aware that on the audigy series cards there was a high quality driver project called the KX Audio project? It was aimed at professionals and audio producers. Apparently better for music, but the official creative drivers had better EAX and 3D sound support for games.
I believe I heard of these drivers. There is also a project for Windows 10 drivers for the older cards. The Audigy 2 ZS is till a great card, even to this day. Analogue audio can only get so good...
For me the Ideal Windows 98 Sound card would be the AWE64 because I would be playing both Windows and Dos games but thats just me though. Or if I had to choose a PCI sound card I would get a SB PCI 128 because of the DOS compatibility. However this is an interesting test I never new that Sound cards could change the frame rate depending on the quality of sound.
The Yamaha 724 (DS-XG) has the best sounding MIDI Synth. If you use 4MB or 8MB soundfonts it sounds bets (out of all) in games that use MIDI audio (Descent, Descent 2, Carmageddon, Heroes, etc) A3D is good - not as good as Aureal cards, but close enough. Plus, most late dos games and win98 games don't really support 3D audio so that isn't really a defining criteria for super socket 7 soundcard selection. MIDI on the other hand is, since you WILL be playing lots of games that have MIDI music - so - if given the choice, go for the Yamaha PCI card. The Vortex cards are OK, but their MIDI synths are mediocre at best. The AWE64 has the best dos support, and also allows you to play wavetable MIDI music in DOS - something the other cards can't do.
Those are the exact reasons I kept both my Yamaha card and AWE64 card. A3D and EAX never became a factor in the games I played (mostly Interplay and Lucas Arts titles and that one really good game published by Microprose: XCOM UFO Defense)
PhilsComputerLab I'm not sure, I'd have to look, but it's ISA and has a position for an IDE connector - though no connector is present. there is an amplified output on board and the MIDI / Gameport is a thing. It's in my IBM PC340 with a 150MHz Pentium.
PhilsComputerLab It's an ESS AudioDrive E1868F chip with a roughly 14MHz crystal, it's got a footprint for an IDE connector, a connector for a wavetable, an onboard speaker amplifier. Underneath the CN3 jumper block, it says "3D-SOUND" in the silkscreen. It's got a label for an IBM part number on the end of the card.
Yup, these are very common cards. I have to tell you that the 3D is just a post processing effect. No real 3D over headphones like A3D or EAX I'm afraid.
Well i'll be damned i actually just purchased an Audigy 2 card at a flea market for like 1 euro. After watching this vid it feels like an absolute steal.
I use the Audigy 2 ZS in my Windows XP retro computer (I actually just restored my original XP build from 2008). I have a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 from our old Windows Me family computer, but currently a Sound Blaster PCI 64 is installed in my retro Windows 98 PC (that's what it came with). I'll be upgrading that. I'd love an Aureal Vortex card, but I sadly don't have any of those and they're not cheap to get.
I love old creative sound card I have SB16 (non-pro with Sony 2x SCSI Drive), AWE32 Pro (with SoundFont RAM), Live 5.1 Value, Audigy ZS 2 Platinum (with External Rock)
Great video. I am looking at building a system around the Audigy 2 SZ. I've always been a fan of SoundBlaster in particular the AWE64 Gold. Sound fonts are great however, I'm used to using a Roland SCC1 8-bit ISA card for GS MIDI alongside an the AWE64 Gold.
Nice video. You can build your own local network between modern and old computers to transfer files to the i386SX to work around FDD limit. I use such things a couple years ago and this works fine for me. Lan ISA cards with RJ45 is not so expensive to use them and it's better then cards with BNC connectors.
PhilsComputerLab Granted they did do a good job - but the Audigy 2 was in my AM2+ system and the integrated audio in a computer much older than any of the parts in said system still sounded on-par both with a pair of Sony headphones and the speakers built into my HP vs17e monitor.
armorgeddon No - I think my audio sounds great coming through the set of stereo speakers built into my monitor. Reminder: I listen to podcasts and videos where people talk a lot, and the music I listen to (think Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson) was recorded so long ago that the audio quality doesn't get any better than it already started off with.
No way you are getting good audio out of monitor speakers haha. So yeah that's the reason why you don't hear a difference, you don't have good enough speakers that are allowing you to hear the difference! When you hear good computer speakers like with the Klipsch Pro media 2.1 set, you will most likely look back and laugh that you used to think built in speakers and/or 40$ speakers sounded good... it's like going from 480i to 1080HD, there is a huge difference.
around y2k, i built a surround sound system for my computer setup featuring the vortex 2 sound card. the first time i got the system running, i watched the movie Twister for 2 days straight.
Is there any difference in performance between Audigy 2 and Audigy 2 ZS in a Windows 98 retro gaming PC? I found a Audigy 2 at 1/3 the price of a Audigy 2 ZS.
For an SS7 machine , I would go with an ISA card , as you said the kind of games that you play on SS7 won't get much from things like EAX or A3D (SS7 isn't the platform for American Mcgee's Alice, or Wheel of TIme), DOS however will be a big factor. if the choice is PCI then I would probably go with a Sound Blaster Live or Audigy1 , while the Aureal cards sound nice and A3D is nice, as you've said there can be driver issues and I too had those issues too. Audigy2 is a mixed bag for me as far as this , the sound quality is indeed great (although to notice the difference between an Audigy1 and 2ZS is harder unless you're using decent headphones or speakers), getting the VXD drivers running can be a pain though. using 2 cards is an option , one just has to be careful regarding conflicts and different boards will react differently.
Great video! BTW Have you ever heard of the Turtle Beach DDL? It seems to be an XP up sound card... where the Audigy 2 lost support... the DDL offered A3D, and EAX support.
i got a PCI 128 that i tested on an i7 system with windows 98. played everything just fine, good-sounding MIDI, just a shame OPL emulation didn't work because NMI/DDMA isn't supported on modern motherboards
wish you would have had the platinum so you could have check out the front panel that comes with the a2zs.. it is awesome.. as for the dos and 98 the awe64 gold is so compatible with everything.. i love it, i have had both of these cards since they were new and still going strong.. no static or popping on my awe64.. thanks for you videos..
That was a nice comparison. The ol' Live still hold up to the more modern Audigy cards pretty well.There are a lot of variations though of the Live which offer different op amps, caps, etc.. which impacts the sound quality. The OEM cards are picky with drivers I have noticed and i think those are the cheaper, not quite as good sounding ones around. I don't think Creative ever did get the drivers nailed down for those cards after Win 2000 came out since they were focused on selling Audigy cards. I have all of these cards, except the Yamaha 718 card, and my Diamond Monster card is the first one I think, not the Monster MX300 that you have. I had a feeling that was an ESS card. Junk man... same thing as on-board audio, which actually now that I type this, I think I know why you have it. I thought about picking one of those 718's up since I love the 724's midi, but if it is just opl3, then I have cards with that already and would be a waist of $15 for me. The 724 I have really fell in love with. That card for DOS games has fantastic midi, though Blood has an attitude problem with that card, but Descent works fine. There are DOS drivers for that card, but I wasn't able to get those drivers to work with the card when I tried it and I suspect it probably has to do with the SBlink, which I do not have that cable and I don't think most people would have one or be able to find one, but if the game works in DOS mode under 98, then for the most part, they will work with sound. Hard to find card though, so not something to recommend unless that changes, but somehow I have managed to find 4 of them in computers over the last couple years.
Hell I kept using mySB Live! 5.1 right up until my latest i5 build! Using the KX Driver package you get some nice additional options and slightly cleaned up noise.. only gave it up eventually because I went mini-ITX
Since my pentium 4 machine is already equipped with a soundblaster x-fi, I opted for the monster sound MX300 for my super socket 7 board and a soundblaster 16 with db60xg daughterboard.
They don't. It broke with Windows Vista. If you have a Creative card though, you can use ALchemy to re-enable EAX in older games. It's basically a wrapper.
Hey Phil great video I have 2 audigy cards one is the regular audigy 2 and the other is the audigy 2 zs is there any major difference between the 2 as they both look identical ?
Differences between Audigy 2 and 2 ZS are described here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_Audigy#Sound_Blaster_Audigy_2 So for gaming the differences only matter if you care about the last bit of analog output quality and/or you want to use analog 7.1 output. The Platinum and Platinum Pro versions of the 2 ZS came with different external addons, but IIRC if you're not wanting the external accessoires you're better off with the pure 2 ZS, as it will have connectors onboard, that are outsourced on the platinum cards.
Hi Phil, great informative video as always. Your channel has inspired me to build a Super Socket 7 box of my own. :) It's all pretty much set up, though I have run into some issues. I can't for the life of me get the thing to post whenever I set the CPU clock speed above 300 mHz (which is odd, seeing the K6-III+ I'm using is rated for 450 mHz.. Any ideas what I might be doing wrong?
I just had a thought regarding Win9x builds too - the long-forgotten AMD Socket-A athlon board. These seem to have compatibility with Win9x and have interesting transitional features like having SATA alongside AGP and IDE connectors. Sadly having just completed my XP build I don't have the funds right now.
Great video as usual, Phil. Very informative and well put together. I have an AWE 64 Gold, although I'm now looking at getting a 2 ZS. Do you have the 5.25 breakout box? I think it's SB0250. :)
i had that Yamaha PCI card back in the day i don't remember what model it was, but i had a difficult time getting it to work most of the time.. i think it was do to drivers because when it did work it it was fine... Ended up finding a ISA Sound blaster gold AWE 32? at a swap meet..
Phil, when you said that the Vortex 2 has a wavetable header which works in DOS, are you suggesting that a Vortex 2+wavetable approaches the performance, fidelity, and compatibility of using an AW-64 in DOS? I'm currently building an mATX SS7 98/DOS machine, so with my limited slots (3PCI + shared PCI/ISA) I'd like to pack the most functionality I can into the space available. If you have any advice I'd greatly appreciate it. Cheers. And thanks for the videos, I'm hooked!
My only sound card I have ever had was the Creative SB PCI64, quite OK IMHO, though ocassionally, trying to get it work (with some SW) was not that fun 🙂It worked fine with Windows apps and games (well, mostly), but using it with DOS games, it always bottlenecked the system.
Hm ... I Remember Having an Audigy 2 ZS At least i Believe it was that one did that one com with the External Unit that had Midi I/O ,Mic Preamp ,Headphone Out ,Volume control ect (to connect to the firewire port on the card)
@@philscomputerlab Als IT Techniker der 1987 erst geboren wurde und mit Windows aufgewachsen ist. Haben mir deine Videos schon öfter sehr geholfen. Man glaubt echt nicht wie viel alte DOS Kisten noch in Firma rum werkeln. Die sich so gut wie keiner mehr traut anzugreifen.
Hi Phil. Thank you for the interesting video.I would like to ask you if you can show the midi capabilities of the Yamaha soundcard with the XG chip? In the past i had a Yamaha DB50XG daughterboard, it was very nice!:-) Unfortunately you didn't talk about the midi sound of the cards. Thank you!
I still have my Audigy 2 ZS Platinum, haha. I should probably see if anyone wants that thing. It's the one with front 5.25" bay module and remote control.
A big thankyou for this video clip. I myself had an AWE64 Gold and still have it, also I am using a live card for the last 20 yrs, I have not given up the OS too and still stuck with XP since there is no driver support. The interesting feature in this card is that you could adjust the treble & Bass seperatly , also has 2 audio outs and record any audio which is played (what you hear)in the background without any loss.I am looking for a similar card for the last 5 yrs and still unable locate with these mini feature.Do you know of any newer cards which has these features, internal or external card which supports 7 or 10?
PhilsComputerLab They are in top condition. I got myself a Hercules Game Theater XP that i am going to use on one of my retro gaming rigs. From what i have read, the card supports Microsoft's DirectSound 3D, Creative's EAX 2.0, Aureal's A3D 1.0, Interactive 3D Audio Rendering Guidelines Level 2.0 (I3DL2), and the various and amusingly named "technologies" (MacroFX, ZoomFX, EnvironmentFX and MultiDrive). I was going to go with a Sound Blaster Live but in some reviews i read that the Game Theater is much better. Only thing i am not too fond of is the break out box. You have to use this as the card itself just has an audio input port.
It uses the CS4630 DSP, same as the Santa Cruz and the SC is a great sounding card! Sensaura also runs in hardware on that DSP, so it sounds much better than the Yamaha shown in this video.
I have found an aureal 3d to direct sound 3d wrapper with uses very low resources. it's called A3d-live. it can be used on any pci direct sound 3d compatible soundcard supports A3d 1.0 to A3d 3.0 I have tested it on an pentium 2 with a sound blaster live with no issues or slowdowns. also tested it on a Windows 10 pc with a soundblaster zx with creative alchemy driver tested the aureal demos and it seems working fine. you can tell from wich object a certain sound is coming from and you can also hear the direction of the object with very high precision. tested also with snes 9x emulator with sound set to aureal 3d and the sound is working properly.
Had a Live! and an old SB16 in my P3-500 (Tyan motherboard with ISA slots) -- one for Windows and the other for DOS. My very oldest SB16 (the long card from 1993) is still in use -- it plays nice with my P4-3GHz (a P4 with ISA slots!) that's now my DOS gaming box, while the newer SB16 would not. Sounds like crap compared to newer cards, but at least it works! Do you have the Creative driver archive for all the old cards?
I tried installing an Audigy 2 ZS on a Windows 98 machine. The installation software refused to recognize that the card was in the system, despite doing the manual driver install (which didn't work, as it required me to put in the Windows 98 disk, despite the fact that the disk drive had the driver cd in it). I kinda gave up, so I'll just slap a Sound Blaster live in it, and call it a day.
I can recommend the Creative CT4810 for any old W98 system for a person on a budget. Real cheap, you can find it everywhere, and it works with most DOS and newer games. Doesn't have the best sound or all the fancy sound effects line EAX or A3D but it will mortgage 99 times out of a 100 and it's dirt cheap. Too bad that the hardware guru up there in the video didn't have one of them, it's a good contender for anyone on a budget.
Soundblaster PCI128, right? That's the same as the Ensoniq AudioPCI aka the "mystery card" Phil talks about. So he actually had one and it didn't do all that great. I did use this card for budget builds in the early 2000s though, and it was more than okay for the price. Of course, performance impact on a Duron or Athlon system isn't that big.
That's right, it's the same card! Why didn't I remember that? I have a Celeron 550MHz running @800MHz with a Voodoo 3 3500 and I get great performance in all the games I've thrown at it. So I'll change my recommendation, get one if you have a fast CPU in your computer :)
The PCI128 and all cards based on it have compatibility problems with games based on the Build engine, such as Shadow Warrior. Certain sound effects cause the computer to freeze.
The creatives had onboard ram and acceleration but yamaha wont be beaten for midi or fm synthesis, so why not install both? The first time i ever experienced real hifi sound was with the audigy 2zs and the Creative I-Trigue L3800 speaker system, im not joking, those two together are so damn good, the sheer clarity and richness of those speakers is mind blowing, sound stage is just perfect you can hear everything, bass hits to 32hz and top end 22,000hz, they are quality speaker and made of solid metal with two tweeters and a midrange in the LR speakers with separate subwoofer.
@@philscomputerlab I havent heard sound that good since, the 2zs used cherry picked processors they were very expensive boards back in 2003, and their op amps wer just perfect. But yea, i didnt even think it was possible for pc speakers to sound that good, everytime i played music on those speakers i was just drawn into the sound, it was an epic experience, i tried bose pc speakers they dont hold a candle to the creative i-trigue L3800
@@philscomputerlab Its the clearest sound with best SnR yep, im really enjoying windows98se at the moment phil, more now than i actually did in 1998! if i remember right it used to be a big mess of driver crashes and blue screens, but obviously this was down to poor motherboards, since i went with ASRock on socket 754 ive had zero issues!
Hi Philip. I wahtched many of yours videos and these particularly gave a doubt. The "audigy" can works on DOS in real hardware PC and get sound on Nascar 1 or tomb Raider 1?
I've got Terratec dmx xfire 1024 recently. It has wavetable connector, eax 2.0, a3d 1.0 and sensaura (looks like sensaura actually using instead of eax and a3d in games, which is interesting). Also it has good audio input (analog stereo and digital spdif), which is important for me. Don't know how it in dos. Actually there are dos drivers exists. Going to make some tests in dos. Chip on this card is cs4624
I didn't find any SB-Link connector on Terratec DMX Xfire 1024. After some tests I realized that DOS support is weak. Both in windows and Dos I experience many annoying clicks in sb emulation (i815 motherboard). Also I can't use external/built-in midi wavetable in dos apps. There are Microsoft Syntesizer only available in Windows. Despite fact that this card has very good built-in cls/dls soundfont compatible Dream wavetable. Only good thing: when I write "T6" in "SET BLASTER" variable, I can use "sound blaster 16" mode in Duke3d (with "reverse channels" option enabled). Shame that it work only in windows. Duke3d doesn't play any sound (except FM) in pure Dos.
Now I am doing some experiments with digital input of cs4624 connecting it to digital output of diamond MX300 (there are two middle pins at MX-Link connector, that outputs TTL 5 Volt SPDIF, like CD/DVD). Terratec made nice card, but I am using generic VxD drivers from Cirrus Logic site. They are not A3D-compatible and there are no any conflicts with MX300. Also, Vortex 2's 2041 drivers are glitchy in terms of SPDIF. That's why I switch to 2048 (Thank you, Phil - I knew it from your post on vogons). Sound quality became much better (good Curris Logic DAC compare to MX300's Sigmatel). However there are some little clicks present. I don't know reason of these clicks. Going to switch my i815 board to something more relaible, like 440BX or Ali.
No Terratec card in your collection? I had the SBLive and Audigy myself back in the days. First soundcard was a SB1.0 from logitech, using with dos/win.3.1x. It was hard work getting this thing working back then...
Those were the times when reducing the audio quality got your better frame rate.
well not with sound cards, they were indipendent, so it shouldnt have affected, unless, weird implementations
@@Name_cannot_be_blank Wow, look at the rich kid. 😂
@@Name_cannot_be_blank some win9x sound cards had to emulate DOS sounds in software which brought games to a crawl.
@@philipcooper8297AWE64 Gold 😎
Your testing is exhaustive and detailed and you answer many questions that people have wanted answered in a well-produced presentation. This is why UA-cam needs you.
Ha, thank you :D
Well licked Phil's crack Nathan
I have a "Phone Blaster" from Creative, which is a Modem and Sound Blaster 16 all in one. It's an ISA board that has the Vibra 16 Chipset, but ALSO has a real Yamaha YMF262 for true OPL3/Adlib, it also has a wavetable pinout. Blew my mind when I first saw it.
The Yamaha PCI card is also the only PCI card with a real OPL core inside.
Yep got an Audigy 2 ZS over ten years ago and its still my primary sound stage. It just sounds better than most cards.
Yea I'm so happy I "discovered" this card now :)
On yesterday at a classified ad, I buy a Audigy 2 ZS for 7€. :D
Maybe It would be a little bit better than a audigy player? 7€ was a good price, so I have bought it. At next, I would have a vortex 2 card. I keep my eyes opened.
Bargain! You will love it!
Yes, and also work under win2k. :)
These results were eye opening. Very interesting indeed. Thank you for putting in all the testing time.
The results were ear opening.
I own most of these cards (except for the Yamaha PCI and the Diamond Monster Sound) and I eventually stuck with the AWE64. I'm happy this video has somewhat validated my decision (from a performance standpoint). I threw the Ensoniq away. . . it was meh worthy. I have a Cirrus PCI based card that I never found drivers for.
I came from the future (2022) to say this video still rocks! Very useful! ♥ Ty
just the video I was looking for. and even better, a website with drivers for things I'm researching to buy for a retro build! thanks Phil!
I had an OG SB Audigy 1 that I adored. Loved the sound that thing put out back in the day. I couldn't believe the difference when I installed it.
Another option is to plug the line-out of one of the sound cards into the line-in of the other, provided the second card supports line-in in both MS-DOS as well as Windows (the SB Live! for example doesn't).
I still have my old Yamaha Waveforce 192XG sitting around. It had fantastic midi.
Good to know. :)
Just as a piece of information though. This midi capability doesn't really factor in much in DOS games or even most Windows games that still utilized midi music. If you are interested in music production though, then the XG synthesizer can get to shine. Even just listening to XG specific midi files sound totally awesome.
I think I had a Yamaha card at one point (early 2000's maybe, might still have it) that had the same "feature", as in it would play its own files great, but sounded completely average with general-midi stuff. Can't remember the exact model, though.
Yamaha are the best for midi and FM
I'm still using the Audigy 2 ZS in my main machine with Windows 7, kinda weird seeing it in a Socket 7 retro video :D
Haha, yea that card is still mint.
Me too, as it's the last card to feature 8 channel digital output via digital DIN-connector and having internal SPDIF-input to connect optical drives. I hate the option, which is shown in this video also, to play CD audio over the storage-controller.
I contacted Creative multiple times back then why the X-FI's digital I/O capabilitys were cut in comparison to Live! and Audigys and they told me that the media content industry demanded it. That and the fact that EAX and A3D died and sound in games went downhill as did the gaming soundcards made me never buy a soundcard for gaming again. Today I only care about the ability to put out hi-res music digitally and bit-perfect. The Audigy 2 ZS can't do that, so I run my onboard card in parallel to the Audigy 2 ZS.
I bought the Notebook PCMCIA version last year for a mere £5, and it is excellent. It also came with the 5.1 surround sound cable which is often missing in Ebay auctions. I've got a few audio interfaces that are far superior for serious audio use, however I really do like this Audigy card!
+armorgeddon
I've not had any problems with quality of playback on either the Audigy or Audigy 2 with high quality sound. Are you talking about high bit-rate sound file-types like FLAC or are you talking about high definition sound streams such as 192khz? I also do 4k streaming with 192khz sources and it sounds very clear and bright. This is most perplexing.
I wonder how the turtle beach Santa Cruz would do in this test ?
I have an Audigy v1 (SB0090) card (with additional MIDI backplate) in my E8400 750 Ti XP/8.1 system, only like the Audigy 2 you've got, it's also got that sweet gold & black look. Sounds great when playing Colin McRae Rally 2005 with EAX sound over my Logitech X-230 2.1 speakers.
Greetings from Saskatchewan, Canada! I bought one of these Live! 5.1 (SB 0100) cards in 2002 and it was one of the best purchases I've ever made. The Audigy 2 ZS has been my "dream audio card" for years...
Thank you for taking all this time to bring these concise informative videos to us. It's highly appreciated, and I enjoy learning about these old cards.
I would be really interested in a video based on all the little attachments and what all the headers and sockets do on these cards! Some have so many connectors and I just have no idea what most of them are for!
Can you pick a card? The main connectors on the board itself are for routing other sound sourced into the mixer. For example the CD-ROM audio cable, or a TV tuner output. The wavetable header is for a wavetable board. And Creative has some connectors for a drive bay with all sorts of plugs and ports.
Hmm, I suppose not. Im an audiophile, so I love everything audio (both hw and sw) and interested in getting the best I can out of my audio. In my win98 gaming build, I have a creative live ct4760. I have the live drive 2 attached to the card also, which works well. I had to install 2 sets of drivers in order to get the best sound from this card. It works in DOS (using your guide for rebooting into ms-dos mode, you genius). Just find all this interesting, so love to learn more.
Ok, I added it to my project list :)
Great :D
You need to revisit this project, and do a signal to noise ratio test on the cards.
I just recently acquired a SB X-Fi Titanium HD and it's hands down the best card I've ever had, and I have just about everything. But I use it to listen to music and watch movies right now, not games, it also is the only X-Fi without any windows XP(or older) support and it's rare and expensive but damn does it sound good.
For myself, I currently use the following:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 XP: Sound Blaster Audigy SB0090 (the original version, not the ones with coloured connectors), with the latest driver that supports EAX 4.0.
Celeron 400A 98se: Turtle Beach Montego II Aureal II PCI card for Windows & Yamaha Audician 32 ISA card for DOS.
I'm quite excited Phil, having just completed my first designated "retro" build (XP-era, less expensive than Win 9x era at the moment), and I've just managed to get a new old stock Aureal SQ2500 OEM soundcard on ebay! From my research this model is the one with XP compatible drivers (and I have found them), so I am hoping to see if it will co-exist with my PCIe X-Fi based card. They both have quite complex support software as I understand so wish me luck! If not it may form the motivation for a Win9x SS7 build.
If you have a motherboard with a VIA chipset (especially the 686B southbridge), don't use a SB Live! sound card because there was a bug which caused massive disk corruption. It was a known problem back in the day, but much of the information on it has been lost to time. You can still find a few bits of information on old forum discussions, but you may have to use archive.org since many of those websites are no longer in existence, or have since purged those topics.
I experienced this problem first hand back in 2001 when I was upgrading from a Gateway 2000 to an AOPEN motherboard with a VIA chipset. I recycled my SB Live sound card and a few other parts to build a Duron 800 machine, and quickly ran into problems. Programs and data on my hard drive would randomly get corrupted and it took a dozen or so Windows reinstalls, lots of driver version swaps and research to figure it out. I ended up having to upgrade to a SB Audigy, at which point I didn't have any issues after that.
I do remember hearing about this.
I recall this being in the 686a and the b revision fixed that (and ide speed iirc)
Thank you, i didn't know about trick with WDM and VXD driver changing.
Yes, i try with one and the other and vxd driver makes you win some fps that feel better in games!
Sound Blaster Live! was my favorite card.
I've always wondered about the performance impact of various cards.
I always thought a better card might be able to offload stress on the CPU to the point where the effect would be similar to no sound card.
I have an original Audigy 2 in my PIII PC because that's what I had on hand from back in the day. It's nice to see that it's not a bad choice at all. I used the driver disc from Vogons, but recently found my original disc. I'll also have to make sure I have VxD enabled!
Ah, Phil. Another great retro video! I have a Sound Blaster AWE64 gold and Sound Blaster Live! in my socket 7 build. My Pentium 166 is the one using an AWE32 + NEC XR385.
Good combo!
I use an AWE64 Gold in my SS7 build as well. It was a really cool card in the late DOS to early Windows days.
No kidding. I absolutely love that card. That little NEC XR385 clone still blows me away.
Little late to the party on this, but I was just building a P-II 400 which somebody had put a Audigy 2ZS into. I admit, it is a wonderful sounding card in windows, but no matter what I tried, I couldn't get the VXD drivers to work in DOS titles to save my life. I found my old Live Platinum, and it installed with absolutely no issues. This was my actual sound card I bought new in 1999 so it's period correct anyway. Win XP was the prominent OS by the time the Audigy 2 ZS was released.
Hi phil gr8 reviews as always! As a Aureal fan myself i've run my sq2500 for many years now. Gr8 4 games & windows..
But the best Soundcard back in win98/XP era I think is the Santa Cruz (Turtle Beach) it had stable drivers in games, both in EAX & A3D, and it had gr8 sound Quality in win and also decent 4 work, Sound-editing...
Plz review this if you have the chance!! //Cyhpr
I do have that card, so yea, one day...
I've got Diamond MX300 and it really rocks. Those A3D 2.0 demos are still impressive even after 18+ years.
My preference is towards the Aureal Vortex 2 cards (Diamond Monster MX300 is pretty neat) especially with the amazing 3D sound effects.I think there was a connection with 3Dfx and Aureal in that many of the founders of 3Dfx previously worked at Media Vision and also Aureal Semiconductor was a company that came out of the demise of Media Vision too.Wikipedia says it was a reincarnation of the bankrupt Media Vision.In a way what 3Dfx was to 3D graphics was what Aureal was to 3D sound effects.Too bad about their (Aureal's) unfortunate unfair demise.
That Audigy 2 card sounded absolutely amazing though as you demonstrated in the video.
However isn't out of the proper time frame as some people would prefer components of the 1999 era rather than using a component from several years later though it does work very very well.
Great summing it all up :)
Another A3D fan here. I had the Monster Sound card for the longest time back in the day and I really, REALLY liked it. However there were not many games that supported it. That in mind, my absolute favorite Sound Card (before "current times") has to be the AWE32. I had the top-of-the-line model with the built-in memory slots and gold-plated RCA inputs (no 3.5mm jacks at all). I loved that thing to death. It sounded REALLY good through my amp. Got the AWE64 a few years after and it wasn't what I expected. Don't get me wrong the AWE64 still was/is a good card, just nowhere near the mind & ear blowing experience the AWE32 was.
Thanks Phil. It was interesting to see that ISA soundcards aren't necessarily behind PCI cards Performance-wise
I still own an original Aureal Vortex (first one) from 1998, I did pick up the Vortex 2 when I made my win 98 build many years ago though. Lucked out and scored it for £3 inc delivery off ebay. :p
Very nice video, thanks :) I use a Gravis Ultrasound max on my P2 400mhz, sound blaster live on a boring xp machine, and sound blaster z on my modern machine. And sid chip and paula :)
There's no match for the GUS ;) I have a "vanilla" Ultrasound in my DOS system, but it's upgraded to the full 1MB. The midi in games that support it is just great :)
Back then I used an Ensoniq AudioPCI. Great card
Wow, I wouldn't have thought that sound cards had such a significant impact on performance.
Yea on faster CPUs it might not matter that much, but on the K6 it can have a huge impact.
Could you do a MIDI comparison between all the cards? I'm curious to know how the Yamaha XG cards sound against the Creative AWE64, Audigy, and Vortex 2 cards.
Yes. Based on Experience with Yamaha's software synthesizers from that era, and XG midi in general, I would expect the Yamaha XG to put in an impressive performance for midi playback.
The soft-synths were definitely something... And I had heard that some of the Yamaha branded sound cards from that era used approximately the same sample set...
would be interesting to see a comparison.
(though XG midi is a different standard to General midi that can make a lot of difference above and beyond the samples alone, but only if the midi files being tested are designed for it... It makes a proper comparison much harder though...)
Midi is kind of weird in that there's a million sound fonts you can load which completely change the feel of the music and many of them are so large that you need some expansion memory to do so, which is usually quite rare and expensive.
Yamaha were the kings for midi and fm synthesis
Such a nostalgic video.
Still got one of these working in my build
Model sb-0100 with an Nvidia vanta 16, 256mb ram and an AMD athlon 900mhz
Amazing dedication Phil :) Also are you aware that on the audigy series cards there was a high quality driver project called the KX Audio project? It was aimed at professionals and audio producers. Apparently better for music, but the official creative drivers had better EAX and 3D sound support for games.
I believe I heard of these drivers. There is also a project for Windows 10 drivers for the older cards. The Audigy 2 ZS is till a great card, even to this day. Analogue audio can only get so good...
Every driver for every Creative card made is still available.
For me the Ideal Windows 98 Sound card would be the AWE64 because I would be playing both Windows and Dos games but thats just me though. Or if I had to choose a PCI sound card I would get a SB PCI 128 because of the DOS compatibility. However this is an interesting test I never new that Sound cards could change the frame rate depending on the quality of sound.
Why not just put a AWE64 in ISA slot and add a PCI card? Just disable AWE in Windows
The Yamaha 724 (DS-XG) has the best sounding MIDI Synth. If you use 4MB or 8MB soundfonts it sounds bets (out of all) in games that use MIDI audio (Descent, Descent 2, Carmageddon, Heroes, etc) A3D is good - not as good as Aureal cards, but close enough. Plus, most late dos games and win98 games don't really support 3D audio so that isn't really a defining criteria for super socket 7 soundcard selection. MIDI on the other hand is, since you WILL be playing lots of games that have MIDI music - so - if given the choice, go for the Yamaha PCI card. The Vortex cards are OK, but their MIDI synths are mediocre at best. The AWE64 has the best dos support, and also allows you to play wavetable MIDI music in DOS - something the other cards can't do.
Those are the exact reasons I kept both my Yamaha card and AWE64 card. A3D and EAX never became a factor in the games I played (mostly Interplay and Lucas Arts titles and that one really good game published by Microprose: XCOM UFO Defense)
kaneCVR
Really!? I just knew AWE64 is the only card supporting wavetable MIDI under DOS. I enjoyed this a lot back then.
The ESS AudioDrive (or at least the one I have) supports 3D sound pretty well ,and the drivers for it are included with Windows 98SE as-is.
What model do you have?
PhilsComputerLab I'm not sure, I'd have to look, but it's ISA and has a position for an IDE connector - though no connector is present. there is an amplified output on board and the MIDI / Gameport is a thing.
It's in my IBM PC340 with a 150MHz Pentium.
The main chip should have a model number written on it.
PhilsComputerLab It's an ESS AudioDrive E1868F chip with a roughly 14MHz crystal, it's got a footprint for an IDE connector, a connector for a wavetable, an onboard speaker amplifier. Underneath the CN3 jumper block, it says "3D-SOUND" in the silkscreen. It's got a label for an IBM part number on the end of the card.
Yup, these are very common cards. I have to tell you that the 3D is just a post processing effect. No real 3D over headphones like A3D or EAX I'm afraid.
Well i'll be damned i actually just purchased an Audigy 2 card at a flea market for like 1 euro.
After watching this vid it feels like an absolute steal.
I use the Audigy 2 ZS in my Windows XP retro computer (I actually just restored my original XP build from 2008). I have a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 from our old Windows Me family computer, but currently a Sound Blaster PCI 64 is installed in my retro Windows 98 PC (that's what it came with). I'll be upgrading that. I'd love an Aureal Vortex card, but I sadly don't have any of those and they're not cheap to get.
I use the Audigy 2 ZS right now....
Great video! Thank you for taking out the hassle of choosing! :)
For some reason, i got a few of those Audigy 2ZS from work, they were all in the motherboards and cards recycling bin.
I think I used a TurtleBeach card during most of the 98 era. Switching to a SB Live afterwards.
I love old creative sound card
I have SB16 (non-pro with Sony 2x SCSI Drive), AWE32 Pro (with SoundFont RAM), Live 5.1 Value, Audigy ZS 2 Platinum (with External Rock)
Great video. I am looking at building a system around the Audigy 2 SZ. I've always been a fan of SoundBlaster in particular the AWE64 Gold. Sound fonts are great however, I'm used to using a Roland SCC1 8-bit ISA card for GS MIDI alongside an the AWE64 Gold.
Nice video. You can build your own local network between modern and old computers to transfer files to the i386SX to work around FDD limit. I use such things a couple years ago and this works fine for me. Lan ISA cards with RJ45 is not so expensive to use them and it's better then cards with BNC connectors.
I like the Santa Cruz turtle beach. It has the best SQ.
I have an Audigy 2, and it sounds exactly the same to me as the integrated "Crystal WDM Audio PCI" built into one of my Pentium II systems.
Even with decent headphones? To me the Audigy 2 ZS is in a totally different league. Creative did very well with this card.
PhilsComputerLab Granted they did do a good job - but the Audigy 2 was in my AM2+ system and the integrated audio in a computer much older than any of the parts in said system still sounded on-par both with a pair of Sony headphones and the speakers built into my HP vs17e monitor.
You can't judge soundquality with speakers built into a monitor! Did you even set the Audigy drivers to headphone?
armorgeddon No - I think my audio sounds great coming through the set of stereo speakers built into my monitor.
Reminder: I listen to podcasts and videos where people talk a lot, and the music I listen to (think Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson) was recorded so long ago that the audio quality doesn't get any better than it already started off with.
No way you are getting good audio out of monitor speakers haha. So yeah that's the reason why you don't hear a difference, you don't have good enough speakers that are allowing you to hear the difference! When you hear good computer speakers like with the Klipsch Pro media 2.1 set, you will most likely look back and laugh that you used to think built in speakers and/or 40$ speakers sounded good... it's like going from 480i to 1080HD, there is a huge difference.
if ya playing period games i would say an A3D aureal 2 the REAL creators of EAX!
around y2k, i built a surround sound system for my computer setup featuring the vortex 2 sound card. the first time i got the system running, i watched the movie Twister for 2 days straight.
I had a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz! Awesome card.
Is there any difference in performance between Audigy 2 and Audigy 2 ZS in a Windows 98 retro gaming PC?
I found a Audigy 2 at 1/3 the price of a Audigy 2 ZS.
i have a audigy 1 and 2 also awe64 and awe32 so this video helps alot to choose what to use for my pentium pro system
For an SS7 machine , I would go with an ISA card , as you said the kind of games that you play on SS7 won't get much from things like EAX or A3D (SS7 isn't the platform for American Mcgee's Alice, or Wheel of TIme), DOS however will be a big factor.
if the choice is PCI then I would probably go with a Sound Blaster Live or Audigy1 , while the Aureal cards sound nice and A3D is nice, as you've said there can be driver issues and I too had those issues too.
Audigy2 is a mixed bag for me as far as this , the sound quality is indeed great (although to notice the difference between an Audigy1 and 2ZS is harder unless you're using decent headphones or speakers), getting the VXD drivers running can be a pain though.
using 2 cards is an option , one just has to be careful regarding conflicts and different boards will react differently.
Great video! BTW Have you ever heard of the Turtle Beach DDL? It seems to be an XP up sound card... where the Audigy 2 lost support... the DDL offered A3D, and EAX support.
No never heard of it!
Thanks Drivers 3 days Looking Live and 2Zs drivers, installed yesterday, and full drivers is the best.
SB PCI 128 has the best midi with its 8MB Wave table lol aw I miss that card.. luckliy I keep a VM open with the drivers installed to emulate it.
I think I still have one of these and yes it was a solid and good sounding card.
i got a PCI 128 that i tested on an i7 system with windows 98. played everything just fine, good-sounding MIDI, just a shame OPL emulation didn't work because NMI/DDMA isn't supported on modern motherboards
wish you would have had the platinum so you could have check out the front panel that comes with the a2zs.. it is awesome.. as for the dos and 98 the awe64 gold is so compatible with everything.. i love it, i have had both of these cards since they were new and still going strong.. no static or popping on my awe64.. thanks for you videos..
What about the original Vortex?
That was a nice comparison. The ol' Live still hold up to the more modern Audigy cards pretty well.There are a lot of variations though of the Live which offer different op amps, caps, etc.. which impacts the sound quality. The OEM cards are picky with drivers I have noticed and i think those are the cheaper, not quite as good sounding ones around. I don't think Creative ever did get the drivers nailed down for those cards after Win 2000 came out since they were focused on selling Audigy cards. I have all of these cards, except the Yamaha 718 card, and my Diamond Monster card is the first one I think, not the Monster MX300 that you have. I had a feeling that was an ESS card. Junk man... same thing as on-board audio, which actually now that I type this, I think I know why you have it. I thought about picking one of those 718's up since I love the 724's midi, but if it is just opl3, then I have cards with that already and would be a waist of $15 for me. The 724 I have really fell in love with. That card for DOS games has fantastic midi, though Blood has an attitude problem with that card, but Descent works fine. There are DOS drivers for that card, but I wasn't able to get those drivers to work with the card when I tried it and I suspect it probably has to do with the SBlink, which I do not have that cable and I don't think most people would have one or be able to find one, but if the game works in DOS mode under 98, then for the most part, they will work with sound. Hard to find card though, so not something to recommend unless that changes, but somehow I have managed to find 4 of them in computers over the last couple years.
Hell I kept using mySB Live! 5.1 right up until my latest i5 build! Using the KX Driver package you get some nice additional options and slightly cleaned up noise.. only gave it up eventually because I went mini-ITX
i use Soundblaster live! cards for my P3 and P4 systems. because they are reasonably priced and sound good.
Since my pentium 4 machine is already equipped with a soundblaster x-fi, I opted for the monster sound MX300 for my super socket 7 board and a soundblaster 16 with db60xg daughterboard.
Great combo!
@PhilsComputerLab great video as always A+
Thank you Adam!
hey do new games these days still support EAX?
They don't. It broke with Windows Vista. If you have a Creative card though, you can use ALchemy to re-enable EAX in older games. It's basically a wrapper.
Hi Phil, what do you use to capture dvi output esp from the old games. Thx
Hey Phil great video I have 2 audigy cards one is the regular audigy 2 and the other is the audigy 2 zs is there any major difference between the 2 as they both look identical ?
I don't think there is a major difference. Check out some old reviews, might give you some clues.
Differences between Audigy 2 and 2 ZS are described here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_Audigy#Sound_Blaster_Audigy_2
So for gaming the differences only matter if you care about the last bit of analog output quality and/or you want to use analog 7.1 output.
The Platinum and Platinum Pro versions of the 2 ZS came with different external addons, but IIRC if you're not wanting the external accessoires you're better off with the pure 2 ZS, as it will have connectors onboard, that are outsourced on the platinum cards.
Hi Phil, great informative video as always. Your channel has inspired me to build a Super Socket 7 box of my own. :)
It's all pretty much set up, though I have run into some issues. I can't for the life of me get the thing to post whenever I set the CPU clock speed above 300 mHz (which is odd, seeing the K6-III+ I'm using is rated for 450 mHz.. Any ideas what I might be doing wrong?
I just had a thought regarding Win9x builds too - the long-forgotten AMD Socket-A athlon board. These seem to have compatibility with Win9x and have interesting transitional features like having SATA alongside AGP and IDE connectors. Sadly having just completed my XP build I don't have the funds right now.
Same goes for Socket 754 and 939. Pentium 4 also supports 98. So there are lots of options.
Excellent!
17:10 Sound decelerator you say. That sounds like a challenge to build a SS7 machine with that card.
Great video as usual, Phil. Very informative and well put together. I have an AWE 64 Gold, although I'm now looking at getting a 2 ZS. Do you have the 5.25 breakout box? I think it's SB0250. :)
Nope, got no breakout boxes I'm afraid.
i had that Yamaha PCI card back in the day i don't remember what model it was, but i had a difficult time getting it to work most of the time.. i think it was do to drivers because when it did work it it was fine... Ended up finding a ISA Sound blaster gold AWE 32? at a swap meet..
Phil, when you said that the Vortex 2 has a wavetable header which works in DOS, are you suggesting that a Vortex 2+wavetable approaches the performance, fidelity, and compatibility of using an AW-64 in DOS?
I'm currently building an mATX SS7 98/DOS machine, so with my limited slots (3PCI + shared PCI/ISA) I'd like to pack the most functionality I can into the space available. If you have any advice I'd greatly appreciate it.
Cheers. And thanks for the videos, I'm hooked!
Very informative! Thanks!
I would recommend VLSI Thunderbird 128 PCI Sound Card.
It's an odd ball Sound Card forgotten by time.
My only sound card I have ever had was the Creative SB PCI64, quite OK IMHO, though ocassionally, trying to get it work (with some SW) was not that fun 🙂It worked fine with Windows apps and games (well, mostly), but using it with DOS games, it always bottlenecked the system.
Great job! Thank you very much!
Hm ... I Remember Having an Audigy 2 ZS At least i Believe it was that one
did that one com with the External Unit that had Midi I/O ,Mic Preamp ,Headphone Out ,Volume control ect (to connect to the firewire port on the card)
He ich hab gehört du bist aus Österreich!
Liebe grüße aus der Heimat und danke für deine coolen Videos!
Super :D
@@philscomputerlab Wenn du mal was aus der Heimat brauchst gib mir bescheid. Ich tu mein bestes.
@@philscomputerlab Als IT Techniker der 1987 erst geboren wurde und mit Windows aufgewachsen ist. Haben mir deine Videos schon öfter sehr geholfen.
Man glaubt echt nicht wie viel alte DOS Kisten noch in Firma rum werkeln. Die sich so gut wie keiner mehr traut anzugreifen.
Great video Phil.
Another fantastic video!
Cheers :)
Hi Phil. Thank you for the interesting video.I would like to ask you if you can show the midi capabilities of the Yamaha soundcard with the XG chip? In the past i had a Yamaha DB50XG daughterboard, it was very nice!:-) Unfortunately you didn't talk about the midi sound of the cards. Thank you!
I still have my Audigy 2 ZS Platinum, haha. I should probably see if anyone wants that thing. It's the one with front 5.25" bay module and remote control.
PorscheRacer14 Do you still have it?
the sound blaster live 5.1 more period correct for a k6-2-500
A big thankyou for this video clip. I myself had an AWE64 Gold and still have it, also I am using a live card for the last 20 yrs, I have not given up the OS too and still stuck with XP since there is no driver support. The interesting feature in this card is that you could adjust the treble & Bass seperatly , also has 2 audio outs and record any audio which is played (what you hear)in the background without any loss.I am looking for a similar card for the last 5 yrs and still unable locate with these mini feature.Do you know of any newer cards which has these features, internal or external card which supports 7 or 10?
Another great video Phil. How did you get all your cards so clean and shiny? They look like you lacquered the boards.
I think it's just the lighting. I just dust them off a bit, that's it.
PhilsComputerLab They are in top condition. I got myself a Hercules Game Theater XP that i am going to use on one of my retro gaming rigs. From what i have read, the card supports Microsoft's DirectSound 3D, Creative's EAX 2.0, Aureal's A3D 1.0, Interactive 3D Audio Rendering Guidelines Level 2.0 (I3DL2), and the various and amusingly named "technologies" (MacroFX, ZoomFX, EnvironmentFX and MultiDrive). I was going to go with a Sound Blaster Live but in some reviews i read that the Game Theater is much better. Only thing i am not too fond of is the break out box. You have to use this as the card itself just has an audio input port.
It uses the CS4630 DSP, same as the Santa Cruz and the SC is a great sounding card! Sensaura also runs in hardware on that DSP, so it sounds much better than the Yamaha shown in this video.
I have found an aureal 3d to direct sound 3d wrapper with uses very low resources. it's called A3d-live. it can be used on any pci direct sound 3d compatible soundcard supports A3d 1.0 to A3d 3.0 I have tested it on an pentium 2 with a sound blaster live with no issues or slowdowns. also tested it on a Windows 10 pc with a soundblaster zx with creative alchemy driver tested the aureal demos and it seems working fine. you can tell from wich object a certain sound is coming from and you can also hear the direction of the object with very high precision. tested also with snes 9x emulator with sound set to aureal 3d and the sound is working properly.
I wish you'd come back this and do these and the gpus for just SOCKET 7...
Had a Live! and an old SB16 in my P3-500 (Tyan motherboard with ISA slots) -- one for Windows and the other for DOS.
My very oldest SB16 (the long card from 1993) is still in use -- it plays nice with my P4-3GHz (a P4 with ISA slots!) that's now my DOS gaming box, while the newer SB16 would not. Sounds like crap compared to newer cards, but at least it works!
Do you have the Creative driver archive for all the old cards?
The Aureal Vortex 2 was like a hardware cheat back then. :D
I tried installing an Audigy 2 ZS on a Windows 98 machine. The installation software refused to recognize that the card was in the system, despite doing the manual driver install (which didn't work, as it required me to put in the Windows 98 disk, despite the fact that the disk drive had the driver cd in it). I kinda gave up, so I'll just slap a Sound Blaster live in it, and call it a day.
I've been using the Soundblaster Vibra 128, for whatever reason general midi doesn't work on star wars: dark forces. Just freezes the program.
I can recommend the Creative CT4810 for any old W98 system for a person on a budget. Real cheap, you can find it everywhere, and it works with most DOS and newer games. Doesn't have the best sound or all the fancy sound effects line EAX or A3D but it will mortgage 99 times out of a 100 and it's dirt cheap. Too bad that the hardware guru up there in the video didn't have one of them, it's a good contender for anyone on a budget.
Soundblaster PCI128, right? That's the same as the Ensoniq AudioPCI aka the "mystery card" Phil talks about. So he actually had one and it didn't do all that great. I did use this card for budget builds in the early 2000s though, and it was more than okay for the price. Of course, performance impact on a Duron or Athlon system isn't that big.
That's right, it's the same card! Why didn't I remember that?
I have a Celeron 550MHz running @800MHz with a Voodoo 3 3500 and I get great performance in all the games I've thrown at it.
So I'll change my recommendation, get one if you have a fast CPU in your computer :)
I have one, it's a pretty decent card, I haven't tested it too much though.
The PCI128 and all cards based on it have compatibility problems with games based on the Build engine, such as Shadow Warrior. Certain sound effects cause the computer to freeze.
The creatives had onboard ram and acceleration but yamaha wont be beaten for midi or fm synthesis, so why not install both? The first time i ever experienced real hifi sound was with the audigy 2zs and the Creative I-Trigue L3800 speaker system, im not joking, those two together are so damn good, the sheer clarity and richness of those speakers is mind blowing, sound stage is just perfect you can hear everything, bass hits to 32hz and top end 22,000hz, they are quality speaker and made of solid metal with two tweeters and a midrange in the LR speakers with separate subwoofer.
Wonderful, thanks for sharing!
@@philscomputerlab I havent heard sound that good since, the 2zs used cherry picked processors they were very expensive boards back in 2003, and their op amps wer just perfect. But yea, i didnt even think it was possible for pc speakers to sound that good, everytime i played music on those speakers i was just drawn into the sound, it was an epic experience, i tried bose pc speakers they dont hold a candle to the creative i-trigue L3800
The 2 ZS is a great card, can even be used under Windows 98 and is arguably the best sound card for Windows 98 :)
@@philscomputerlab Its the clearest sound with best SnR yep, im really enjoying windows98se at the moment phil, more now than i actually did in 1998! if i remember right it used to be a big mess of driver crashes and blue screens, but obviously this was down to poor motherboards, since i went with ASRock on socket 754 ive had zero issues!
Hi Philip. I wahtched many of yours videos and these particularly gave a doubt. The "audigy" can works on DOS in real hardware PC and get sound on Nascar 1 or tomb Raider 1?
I've got Terratec dmx xfire 1024 recently. It has wavetable connector, eax 2.0, a3d 1.0 and sensaura (looks like sensaura actually using instead of eax and a3d in games, which is interesting). Also it has good audio input (analog stereo and digital spdif), which is important for me. Don't know how it in dos. Actually there are dos drivers exists. Going to make some tests in dos. Chip on this card is cs4624
It should be decent in DOS. The driver mention it, it has the SB link connector too.
I didn't find any SB-Link connector on Terratec DMX Xfire 1024. After some tests I realized that DOS support is weak. Both in windows and Dos I experience many annoying clicks in sb emulation (i815 motherboard). Also I can't use external/built-in midi wavetable in dos apps. There are Microsoft Syntesizer only available in Windows. Despite fact that this card has very good built-in cls/dls soundfont compatible Dream wavetable. Only good thing: when I write "T6" in "SET BLASTER" variable, I can use "sound blaster 16" mode in Duke3d (with "reverse channels" option enabled). Shame that it work only in windows. Duke3d doesn't play any sound (except FM) in pure Dos.
Thank you for sharing this!
Now I am doing some experiments with digital input of cs4624 connecting it to digital output of diamond MX300 (there are two middle pins at MX-Link connector, that outputs TTL 5 Volt SPDIF, like CD/DVD). Terratec made nice card, but I am using generic VxD drivers from Cirrus Logic site. They are not A3D-compatible and there are no any conflicts with MX300. Also, Vortex 2's 2041 drivers are glitchy in terms of SPDIF. That's why I switch to 2048 (Thank you, Phil - I knew it from your post on vogons). Sound quality became much better (good Curris Logic DAC compare to MX300's Sigmatel). However there are some little clicks present. I don't know reason of these clicks. Going to switch my i815 board to something more relaible, like 440BX or Ali.
Cool. For digital Vortex 2 recording I have a Vortex 2 with optical output. I record it on my X-Fi Titanium HD :)
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. Versa-Jack ftw.
No Terratec card in your collection? I had the SBLive and Audigy myself back in the days. First soundcard was a SB1.0 from logitech, using with dos/win.3.1x. It was hard work getting this thing working back then...
I have a spare pci VIA Tremor,should I replace it to the onboard standart Realtek AC97?
(Windows 98-Pentium 4).
Hi, will you do a review on 2 ISA sound cards, ess1868 and als100, and one special PCI sound card from s3 called Sonic Vibes?