A discussion on restoring EQ's music once and for all

[doacleric]

I could use the help of some internet savvy people. I believe I have an old PC laying around thats not TOO new to try what I want to do. Only thing is, it does not have ISA port, only PCI. That would limit me to a Sound Blaster Live! card. I want to know if its worth the trouble to put together something older that has ISA slots.

What I need to know is, does classic EQ perform better with a AWE64, or a SB Live! card? My memory seems to be telling me that both SHOULD allow for EQ's soundfont to work correctly, but I can't say for certain. I also don't know which one could potentially sound better. I scoured the internet for hours the other day trying to find old posts/patch notes/dev comments from 1999-2001 that might shed some light, but I was unsuccessful. Can anyone help?

[TheBlackSheep]

Originally Posted by doacleric [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I could use the help of some internet savvy people. I believe I have an old PC laying around thats not TOO new to try what I want to do. Only thing is, it does not have ISA port, only PCI. That would limit me to a Sound Blaster Live! card. I want to know if its worth the trouble to put together something older that has ISA slots.

What I need to know is, does classic EQ perform better with a AWE64, or a SB Live! card? My memory seems to be telling me that both SHOULD allow for EQ's soundfont to work correctly, but I can't say for certain. I also don't know which one could potentially sound better. I scoured the internet for hours the other day trying to find old posts/patch notes/dev comments from 1999-2001 that might shed some light, but I was unsuccessful. Can anyone help?

I had a SB PCI128 card. I don't recall ever having a sound problem.

Az

[doacleric]

Originally Posted by TheBlackSheep [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I had a SB PCI128 card. I don't recall ever having a sound problem.

Az

Thanks but that doesn't help. EQ back in the day did 1 of 2 things when playing music.

1.) If you have an AWE64 and I think a Live!, it would activate the special soundfont files, upload it into the soundfont bank RAM on the soundcard, and use that for music play back, along with any special effects such as reverb and what not. This is what we are trying to recreate

2.) If you had ANY other soundcard besides those 2, it would instead load a software based DLS soundbank, and use that to playback the music. This would bypass the MPU-401 native playback abilities of the soundcard, and use a 100% software solution to play the music. This soundbank sounded significanty inferior, in addition to using up a lot of CPU time, causing the music to skip for a lot of people on slower systems. This is what most people ended up hearing back in the day.

Back around the release of Luclin and the DX8 upgrade, both of these systems were dropped, and MIDI playback was simply deferred to whatever wavetable synthesis was available to your soundcard. This can sound decent depending on the wavetable quality of your soundcard, but still sounds inferior to what the music sounded like on a real Soundblaster AWE64 back in the day.

[TheBlackSheep]

Ah! I did not know that.

Azorath

[doacleric]

Well, another huge step forward. Almost there!


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Music DOES seem to currently work. As i'm only using onboard sound, it has defaulted to the crappy software based DLS package, which was expected. After I hunt down and install a Sound Blaster Live! card, EQ should detect it and switch over to soundfont playback of the music. I will then proceed to make recordings of all the music I can get my hands on!

So does anyone have an old SB Live! (CT4760) that they'd like to share? [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Deadmantis]

I thought I had one in an old Dell box a friend had given me for parts but it is the SBLive! *value* card which is not worthy of the SBLive! name [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

If you can't find any donors, here is a link to one I found on Pricewatch
http://www.txmicro.com/Creative-Labs...80-p-3580.html

Good luck!

[doacleric]

Originally Posted by Deadmantis [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I thought I had one in an old Dell box a friend had given me for parts but it is the SBLive! *value* card which is not worthy of the SBLive! name [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

If you can't find any donors, here is a link to one I found on Pricewatch
http://www.txmicro.com/Creative-Labs...80-p-3580.html

Good luck!

If its an original Value (CT4670) it should be perfect. According to wikipedia:

The Live! Value (also known as Live! 1024) is identical to the full Live! with the exception that it has color coded plastic connectors instead of gold and does not include the extended digital I/O card. The original Sound Blaster Live! had a proprietary 9-pin mini-DIN connector for digital output that Creative referred to as the "Mini Din." This connector allowed the use of a microphone and digital speakers at the same time. This cannot be done with the value and base models of all subsequent Creative sound cards, as they share a single port for S/PDIF digital in/output and microphone connectivity. The Mini-DIN connection was not included in any subsequent Sound Blaster product, however owners of speaker systems that use this as the only digital input may buy an adapter from Creative.

However, if its the "Dell branded" version of the Live!, then I don't think I would bother trying:

This card, marketed as a Sound Blaster Live!, did not have the full capabilities of the retail versions of Live! It used a different audio chip, not EMU10K1 but EMU10K1X, that is noticeably smaller with fewer pins. The chip does not accelerate DirectSound in hardware, nor EAX. The sale of this board by Dell created some controversy because it was not obviously marketed as an inferior or cheaper product. The card can be identified by its part number (SB0200/0203).

[Deadmantis]

Sorry for the delay. I pulled the SBLive! card from the old Dell box. It is identified as CT4870 and it does have the EMU10K1 chip. Unfortunately I don't have the install disc for it [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] I think you can find old drivers for it Win98 online.

I put the card into my Win XP machine to check to see if it even works, and XP installed drivers for it automatically without an install disc. EQ music sounds GREAT on this card!

It's yours if you want it, just send me a PM here [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[FatMagic]

Awesome! Well done doacleric - looking forward to the final results [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[loobusk]

just a sound little bump