Old school computer question.... best ISA sound card?

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: Mavrick007

Originally posted by: ElFenix
AWE 32!! uses regular ram

Heh but only 30pin simms.. do you have any left? I think I have like 4 x 1meg.

thats what computer flea markets are for

 

[kami]

Soundblaster 16!!! Accept no subtitutes! That card lasted me from my 386 days to the end of my Pentium1 days. Or AWE32/AWE64 if MIDI stuff is important...

 

[Goi]

The old "professional" or "prosumer" cards like the Turtle Beach Pinnacle or Fiji have great sound quality at and beyond its time. It beats the Diamond MX300, the now defunct Ensoniq's AudioPCI and SB Live! cards, and are just getting rivalled by the likes of the Hercules GTXP, Philips AcousticEdge and even Turtle Beach's own Santa Cruz. Of course, these are all consumer cards compared to the Pinnacle/Fiji, which have been handily outpeformed by recent professional/amateur cards by M-Audio/Midiman, RME, Terratec, DAL and Lynx Studio.

 

[Biggs]

Btw, does the AWE64 Gold ISA have official Win 2K drivers?

 

[Biggs]

Well, just did a quick search on the Creative site and,

Sorry, there are no Creative firmware/drivers for Sound Blaster AWE64 Series under Windows 2000.

 

[MrMaster]

AWE64 Gold

Nothing better on ISA

 

[Vinny N]

When I downgraded back to my Celeron 566 system, I gained access to ISA slots, I've got an SB Live and an AWE64G with 28mb memory both running in this system.

The AWE64G doesn't seem to have much noise when you're running it through digital out... (that's how I have it hooked up to the digital cd in on my Live). Any noise I might here is coming from the Live's analog stuff

Biggs:

Windows 2000 has built in WDM drivers for the AWE64Gold.

Soundfont support requires changing the driver for the wavetable device and acquiring a different AWE control panel (slightly modified from the NT4 version), but it can work.

 

[Biggs]

The AWE64G doesn't seem to have much noise when you're running it through digital out... (that's how I have it hooked up to the digital cd in on my Live). Any noise I might here is coming from the Live's analog stuff

Is this the 2-wire S/PDIF cable you're talking about? Does it have the option to send the data through the IDE bus(thus eliminating the need for any cables) like the Santa Cruz?

Soundfont support requires changing the driver for the wavetable device and acquiring a different AWE control panel (slightly modified from the NT4 version), but it can work.

I'm not that much into soundfonts but may I know how to exactly do this? D'you mean I need to obtain a different drive to enable soundfonts?

Thanks.

 

[Vinny N]

Originally posted by: Biggs

The AWE64G doesn't seem to have much noise when you're running it through digital out... (that's how I have it hooked up to the digital cd in on my Live). Any noise I might here is coming from the Live's analog stuff

Is this the 2-wire S/PDIF cable you're talking about? Does it have the option to send the data through the IDE bus(thus eliminating the need for any cables) like the Santa Cruz?

Soundfont support requires changing the driver for the wavetable device and acquiring a different AWE control panel (slightly modified from the NT4 version), but it can work.

I'm not that much into soundfonts but may I know how to exactly do this? D'you mean I need to obtain a different drive to enable soundfonts?

Thanks.

Eh?...you lost me there...or rather I lost you.
Sending CD Audio through the IDE bus is an cd-rom drive function. It's not dependent on the sound card at all. ANY soundcard can play the data. The cd-rom drive has to support it.

I was referring to internally connecting the AWE64Gold and and SB Live via spdif digital out on the AWE and cd digital in on the Live. Yes it was the 2 wire SPDIF that came with my Live, (it's intended for digital cd audio but it happens to fit the internal SPDIF out connector on the AWE card.



You have to manually change the driver for the wavetable to the NT4 driver. Then you have to download a recompressed executable for the AWE Control panel (no one seems to know why the original NT4 AWE Control panel won't just work, but it doesn't.) If you're really interested I can host the required files.

 

[Biggs]

Don't mean to push, but doesn't the sound card's WDM driver have to enable this feature(i.e. sending data via IDE bus)? Anyway, how come you still used the S/PDIF cable for connecting the AWE64G out to the Live! in? I mean, can't you use the "sending data via IDE bus" feature? Many thanks.

 

[Vinny N]

Originally posted by: Biggs
Don't mean to push, but doesn't the sound card's WDM driver have to enable this feature(i.e. sending data via IDE bus)? Anyway, how come you still used the S/PDIF cable for connecting the AWE64G out to the Live! in? I mean, can't you use the "sending data via IDE bus" feature? Many thanks.

Biggs...you're driving me insane here I'm trying not to get angry...

No. I'm pretty sure the sound card doesn't need a WDM driver for that. The cd-rom just has to support it correctly.

And even if it did, it doesn't matter, you're only changing the wavetable(MIDI) driver to a non-WDM driver. Not the Wave device. So either way CD Audio through the IDE bus ("digital playback") works.

Anyways, that has nothing to do with the connection.

You still don't understand the AWE64G->Live connection do you?

Because with that connection, I get ALL of the AW64G's audio (wave, midi, etc, everything that would come out of it's speaker outputs). And it goes through my SB Live. All without noise from the AWE64G.

If I wanted, of course I could use ""sending data via IDE bus" feature" as you put it, but that only gives me CD Audio.

You're obviously confusing CD Audio "digital playback" because I mentioned using the CD Digital SPDIF in on the SB Live (it's just a plain SPDIF) You can use it for whatever SPDIF in you'd like, it's not confined to CD Audio SPDIF as far as I can tell.

Do you understand now?

 

[Biggs]

Crystal clear, mate. Thanks.