I particularly enjoyed the insight into patch choices - makes this video stand out from the other sound card comparisons. I confess I have never liked the sound of ESS cards, but then I haven't spent any time with inferior cards either so it's probably great compared to them!
I was under the impression that the music for Warcraft II was composed on a Roland Sound Canvas SC-88? I usually use my Sound Canvas SC-55 mkII when I play Warcraft II. It sounds very close to the CD audio. The SC-55 can only do 24 polyphonic notes at a time so some of the instruments don't play like they would on a later SC-88 or SC-88Pro, but I always liked the orchestrated General Midi sound of the Warcraft 1 and 2 soundtracks. They sounded like they were trying to replicate the big musical scores from movies. However, if I was to only use FM synthesis I would definitely go with the ESFM. The mixture of drum samples with additional FM channels provides quite a pleasing sound. If I remember correctly SimCity 2000 has ESFM support too? I don't have any ESS audio cards, so I can't test. I guess I will take a look her on youtube and see what I can find.
I took this from Vogons, aparently from Glenn Stafford himself: "The original equipment used to record the Warcraft II music was a Roland SC-55 layered with a Roland SC-88. I recall only certain sounds were doubled with SC-88 but not all. French Horns were doubled, and... probably some of the woodwinds too, and I’m guessing strings and choir too. I think Snare was better on SC-55 alone, maybe timp too, also reverse cymbal, and not entirely sure about the rest and would have to take it case by case."
Insightful. I never went this deep into DOS audio capabilities back in the day. Most of my equipment was bits and pieces tossed together with the hope it would work at all. Thanks.
I didn't realize (or had forgotten) that ESFM was a thing. I have to agree with you about it, and will have to give it a try the next time I play a compatible game on a compatible computer (or I'll break down and get an ESS-based sound card)!
Hi Amber, this was awesome! I love the WC2 soundtrack in all its variants. I wonder if it will sound much different using an actual OPL2 from an older Soundblaster. I should try my lovely CT-1350B since it's the only sound card I have with a real YM3812 😆
Depending on the game, the Audigy and Live aren't too bad, and if there's MIDI support they're quite good. The Yamaha YMF cards are definitely better for AdLib/OPL, but they've given me more issues, at least on the systems I've tested them with. Probably absolutely fine with an SB-Link cable, but every board I have with an SB-Link also has an ISA slot, so I'm more inclined to use an older card anyway.
Iam very happy with ESS cards! Both my 486 builds have ISA 1969F and 1968F, Voodoo 1 and 2 computers uses PCI ESS Solo-1 and PCI Yamaha YMF724F-Y XG. Both cards connected to MB with SBLink it working perfect. I dont have any issues with very old games all these cards are compatible with SB PRO and Adlib. Other cards i have SB16 CT2950 with yamaha OPL, AWE32 3900 with 8MB simm and for newer computers Live SB0060 SB0090 SB0100 or SB0220. All creative cards i have can manage SB16 DOS games with no problems. But compatibility with very old games where no SB16 support is very bad. All creative cards i have failed in games like Jazz jackrabbit, Epic pinball, Tyrian, Duke Nukem 2 or Jill of the jungle. Sound is just garbagge it look like card dont know sampling rate. ESS and both sblink cards no problem and can play without issues. Tried also some Crystal and Avance Logic sound card. It working but midi there not god
There is something wrong in the Video. Warcraft 2 supports OPL2 and OPL3. If you choose Adlib, Sb, sbpro you hear OPL2, and SB16, ess, or generic OPL3 you may hear OPL3 sound (and there clonechip sounds). the biggest difference is the soundcard chipset (real opl3 in 2740, CQM in CT 3600) ess opl emu, and there specific other cards... .
I’m impressed with ESS, particularly ESFM. The YM744 sounds great and the AWE32 is really appealing. You can see why each of these are tired by price. How about the AWE64? Is it particularly different from the AWE32. I know the 32 tends to be the favourite, but I don’t have one of these😢. I have an Aureal Vortex 2 paired with one of Serdaco’s x2 XG’s. Nice!
I've not owned an AWE64, but as far as I recall, it's not a lot different. Better sound quality (owing to better components and build quality), but functionally mostly identical to the AWE32. The 64s didn't get the silly 30-pin SIMM slots, though, so you were limited to the sample RAM on-board (or the expansion modules if you're very lucky!) I think the SIMM slots are the whole reason people love the AWE32. To be fair, it's kind of funny to have more RAM on your soundcard than in your computer proper :)
Very cool video and I learned a new thing today ESFM despite having dos gaming as my main mode of video game entertainment in 1991-1996. Couldn't own all the cards tho!
Why would you select Adlib on Audigy? Isn't Audigy supporting AWE32 emulation (which, btw, was clearly the best)? What other hardware you used? Maybe the emulation was cpu constrained?
Not only AWE32 emulation but doesn't it like the SB Live! also support setup as a General Midi device? I remember doing that a lot back in the day on the Live! cards. And from what I understand, the DOS emulation on the Audigy is supposed to be better? I have never used an Audigy card in a DOS environment. I have a couple to try with though. Maybe I will do that today.
@@helldog3105 the audigy and live lines are carrying over the ensoniq tech from their pci card line. General midi is supported through various wavetable files the 8mb being the best. For awe32 support you need the awe32 or awe64, but its just a 1 mb wavetable rom really. This kinda makes me interested to try OPL on my audigy 2 zs to see if its slow as well. Im suspicious the PCI chipset might play a factor here.
@@helldog3105 Yes, it's General MIDI emulation, not AWE32. I'm not sure how it works with Audigy in DOS, but I did use it with Live! card.... and decided to get AWE32, because it just sounds better, even with the default 512k sound bank. But it would be interesting to know how it works with Audigy.
@@aspinx I've been working on an AthlonXP-M 2800+ machine with a 9800 Pro and a Audigy Platinum Ex in between work today. I need to install the DOS emulation package to make it work in DOS and I will let you know what I think it sounds like.
The Vibra 16 has an OPL3 not 2. Also, the SB32 doesn't have an OPL chip... and should sound completely different from OPL cards. Also, the YMF744 card, besides having an integrated OPL3 (not 2), is also PCI, and should have the playback speed just a tiny bit different from the others. Yet, all your recordings up to the Audigy, sound exactly the same... I think you might have got some things mixed up.
Honestly. I'm kinda sad that most DOS game music usually used a MIDI-based approach. Cause if people would've gone for a tracker-based system, then this is what the Crystal ESFM could've sounded like: czcams.com/video/pOB5qR2qf_c/video.htmlfeature=shared Absolutely insane that an OPL3 clone sounds better then the actual OPL3 when it's used in native ESFM mode.
Back in the days I've had SB AWE32 with 4 MB SIMM and I was proud that I have had some quality sound card. I do not quite like the ESFM synth. On the other hand I now have few cards with Yamaha OPL3 chip and YMF718 / YMF719 and they are the best I have tested in past five years. Well, except that one time I've had SB AWE 32 for one week and sold it for spare parts, because that card had some serious issues with my power supply :-D
The AWE32 was a unique animal.... for some inexplicable reason Creative decided NOT to connect the MPU-401 interface to the onboard wavetable ROM/RAM for General MIDI, unless you use a hacky workaround with the AWEUTIL.EXE TSR . The problem was, AWEUTIL didn't work properly with a huge number of protected mode games (DOOM, Duke3D, etc..) meaning you could not utilize the RAM based soundfonts via General MIDI with a vast number of games. If a game supported the AWE32 explicitly, it only utilized the default ROM sample set, making the add-on RAM mostly a novelty. My favorite variant of the AWE32 for DOS gaming is the value edition that includes an OPL3 FM chipset, 512k of RAM and the standard 1 mb wavetable ROM.. but no SIMM based expansion memory. Otherwise I much prefer something like the $30ish Yamaha YMF719 based or ESS 186x single chip PnP cards with a wavetable MIDI module like the Serdaco X2GM, which gives you a licensed Roland soundfont plus nearly limitless options to upload other soundfonts that all work fine in DOS games with General MIDI support. A lot of early PnP/wavetable capable ISA sound cards were clunky to deal with particularly if software was involved in making the resources available to the operating system, so Creative was not alone in this product deficiency. I do recall having jumped ship on Creative Labs when I wanted to do wavetable General MIDI and moving to an Aztech Waverider card. From a historical context the AWE32 is interesting but clunky, many of the negative characteristics of the earlier Sound Blaster 16 or Vibra cards simply carried forward with the (poorly) bolted on wavetable synth capabilities. The AWE64 is a better card that moves the novelty of SIMM expansion RAM to a proprietary add-on module, but doesn't correct the lack of a hardware MIDI interpreter which was the Achilles heel of the AWE line as DOS gaming cards.
I’m impressed with ESS, particularly ESFM. The YM744 sounds great and the AWE32 is really appealing. You can see why each of these are tired by price. How about the AWE64? Is it particularly different from the AWE32. I know the 32 tends to be the favourite, but I don’t have one of these😢. I have an Aureal Vortex 2 paired with one of Serdaco’s x2 XG’s. Nice!
This was great. I had no idea about that warcraft 2 music detail.
Also made me appreciate my little ESS 1869 more
Thank you :)
Gotta give some love to the little guys. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Can I just comment how amazingly clean all of these recordings are!
I particularly enjoyed the insight into patch choices - makes this video stand out from the other sound card comparisons. I confess I have never liked the sound of ESS cards, but then I haven't spent any time with inferior cards either so it's probably great compared to them!
i knew esfm had some enhancements but i didnt expect that change. Thanks for pointing this out.
I was under the impression that the music for Warcraft II was composed on a Roland Sound Canvas SC-88? I usually use my Sound Canvas SC-55 mkII when I play Warcraft II. It sounds very close to the CD audio. The SC-55 can only do 24 polyphonic notes at a time so some of the instruments don't play like they would on a later SC-88 or SC-88Pro, but I always liked the orchestrated General Midi sound of the Warcraft 1 and 2 soundtracks. They sounded like they were trying to replicate the big musical scores from movies. However, if I was to only use FM synthesis I would definitely go with the ESFM. The mixture of drum samples with additional FM channels provides quite a pleasing sound. If I remember correctly SimCity 2000 has ESFM support too? I don't have any ESS audio cards, so I can't test. I guess I will take a look her on youtube and see what I can find.
I took this from Vogons, aparently from Glenn Stafford himself:
"The original equipment used to record the Warcraft II music was a Roland SC-55 layered with a Roland SC-88. I recall only certain sounds were doubled with SC-88 but not all. French Horns were doubled, and... probably some of the woodwinds too, and I’m guessing strings and choir too. I think Snare was better on SC-55 alone, maybe timp too, also reverse cymbal, and not entirely sure about the rest and would have to take it case by case."
@GabrielZ666 super cool! Thank you for the info! I had not read this before.
Insightful. I never went this deep into DOS audio capabilities back in the day. Most of my equipment was bits and pieces tossed together with the hope it would work at all. Thanks.
amazing video, well done
This is amazing. What a comparison! You really deserve a lot more subscribers.
Thank you! I'm so glad you enjoyed it!
I didn't realize (or had forgotten) that ESFM was a thing. I have to agree with you about it, and will have to give it a try the next time I play a compatible game on a compatible computer (or I'll break down and get an ESS-based sound card)!
Great video and comparison! 👍
Thank you!!
Hi Amber, this was awesome! I love the WC2 soundtrack in all its variants. I wonder if it will sound much different using an actual OPL2 from an older Soundblaster. I should try my lovely CT-1350B since it's the only sound card I have with a real YM3812 😆
Depending on the game, the Audigy and Live aren't too bad, and if there's MIDI support they're quite good. The Yamaha YMF cards are definitely better for AdLib/OPL, but they've given me more issues, at least on the systems I've tested them with. Probably absolutely fine with an SB-Link cable, but every board I have with an SB-Link also has an ISA slot, so I'm more inclined to use an older card anyway.
Great work. Wouldn't have guessed the Audigy failed that much.
Great Job Amber You Nailed IT
Iam very happy with ESS cards! Both my 486 builds have ISA 1969F and 1968F, Voodoo 1 and 2 computers uses PCI ESS Solo-1 and PCI Yamaha YMF724F-Y XG. Both cards connected to MB with SBLink it working perfect. I dont have any issues with very old games all these cards are compatible with SB PRO and Adlib. Other cards i have SB16 CT2950 with yamaha OPL, AWE32 3900 with 8MB simm and for newer computers Live SB0060 SB0090 SB0100 or SB0220. All creative cards i have can manage SB16 DOS games with no problems. But compatibility with very old games where no SB16 support is very bad. All creative cards i have failed in games like Jazz jackrabbit, Epic pinball, Tyrian, Duke Nukem 2 or Jill of the jungle. Sound is just garbagge it look like card dont know sampling rate. ESS and both sblink cards no problem and can play without issues. Tried also some Crystal and Avance Logic sound card. It working but midi there not god
Very thorough as always! Someone needs to port this music over to C64 to see how the SID handles it :)
There is something wrong in the Video. Warcraft 2 supports OPL2 and OPL3. If you choose Adlib, Sb, sbpro you hear OPL2, and SB16, ess, or generic OPL3 you may hear OPL3 sound (and there clonechip sounds). the biggest difference is the soundcard chipset (real opl3 in 2740, CQM in CT 3600) ess opl emu, and there specific other cards... .
I’m impressed with ESS, particularly ESFM. The YM744 sounds great and the AWE32 is really appealing. You can see why each of these are tired by price. How about the AWE64? Is it particularly different from the AWE32. I know the 32 tends to be the favourite, but I don’t have one of these😢. I have an Aureal Vortex 2 paired with one of Serdaco’s x2 XG’s. Nice!
I've not owned an AWE64, but as far as I recall, it's not a lot different. Better sound quality (owing to better components and build quality), but functionally mostly identical to the AWE32.
The 64s didn't get the silly 30-pin SIMM slots, though, so you were limited to the sample RAM on-board (or the expansion modules if you're very lucky!)
I think the SIMM slots are the whole reason people love the AWE32. To be fair, it's kind of funny to have more RAM on your soundcard than in your computer proper :)
Well done!!
Very cool video and I learned a new thing today ESFM despite having dos gaming as my main mode of video game entertainment in 1991-1996. Couldn't own all the cards tho!
i had myne 724 yamaha pci for 18-24 USD retail price back in 1999(do not remember exact price)... - best sound i ever had.......
Why would you select Adlib on Audigy? Isn't Audigy supporting AWE32 emulation (which, btw, was clearly the best)? What other hardware you used? Maybe the emulation was cpu constrained?
Not only AWE32 emulation but doesn't it like the SB Live! also support setup as a General Midi device? I remember doing that a lot back in the day on the Live! cards. And from what I understand, the DOS emulation on the Audigy is supposed to be better? I have never used an Audigy card in a DOS environment. I have a couple to try with though. Maybe I will do that today.
@@helldog3105 the audigy and live lines are carrying over the ensoniq tech from their pci card line. General midi is supported through various wavetable files the 8mb being the best.
For awe32 support you need the awe32 or awe64, but its just a 1 mb wavetable rom really.
This kinda makes me interested to try OPL on my audigy 2 zs to see if its slow as well. Im suspicious the PCI chipset might play a factor here.
@@Pickle136 I would be curious about the Audigy 2 ZS, I only have one of those cards, and it's still sealed in box.
@@helldog3105 Yes, it's General MIDI emulation, not AWE32. I'm not sure how it works with Audigy in DOS, but I did use it with Live! card.... and decided to get AWE32, because it just sounds better, even with the default 512k sound bank.
But it would be interesting to know how it works with Audigy.
@@aspinx I've been working on an AthlonXP-M 2800+ machine with a 9800 Pro and a Audigy Platinum Ex in between work today. I need to install the DOS emulation package to make it work in DOS and I will let you know what I think it sounds like.
The Vibra 16 has an OPL3 not 2.
Also, the SB32 doesn't have an OPL chip... and should sound completely different from OPL cards.
Also, the YMF744 card, besides having an integrated OPL3 (not 2), is also PCI, and should have the playback speed just a tiny bit different from the others. Yet, all your recordings up to the Audigy, sound exactly the same...
I think you might have got some things mixed up.
Honestly.
I'm kinda sad that most DOS game music usually used a MIDI-based approach.
Cause if people would've gone for a tracker-based system, then this is what the Crystal ESFM could've sounded like: czcams.com/video/pOB5qR2qf_c/video.htmlfeature=shared
Absolutely insane that an OPL3 clone sounds better then the actual OPL3 when it's used in native ESFM mode.
What scaler are you using in Warcarft 2? (Is it Dosbox btw?)
I'm using an old StarTech VGA2HDMI Pro!
22:29 - yes mylord 😀
ymf 724 pci 😁
S/N ratio > 98 dB
Back in the days I've had SB AWE32 with 4 MB SIMM and I was proud that I have had some quality sound card. I do not quite like the ESFM synth. On the other hand I now have few cards with Yamaha OPL3 chip and YMF718 / YMF719 and they are the best I have tested in past five years. Well, except that one time I've had SB AWE 32 for one week and sold it for spare parts, because that card had some serious issues with my power supply :-D
The AWE32 was a unique animal.... for some inexplicable reason Creative decided NOT to connect the MPU-401 interface to the onboard wavetable ROM/RAM for General MIDI, unless you use a hacky workaround with the AWEUTIL.EXE TSR . The problem was, AWEUTIL didn't work properly with a huge number of protected mode games (DOOM, Duke3D, etc..) meaning you could not utilize the RAM based soundfonts via General MIDI with a vast number of games. If a game supported the AWE32 explicitly, it only utilized the default ROM sample set, making the add-on RAM mostly a novelty.
My favorite variant of the AWE32 for DOS gaming is the value edition that includes an OPL3 FM chipset, 512k of RAM and the standard 1 mb wavetable ROM.. but no SIMM based expansion memory. Otherwise I much prefer something like the $30ish Yamaha YMF719 based or ESS 186x single chip PnP cards with a wavetable MIDI module like the Serdaco X2GM, which gives you a licensed Roland soundfont plus nearly limitless options to upload other soundfonts that all work fine in DOS games with General MIDI support. A lot of early PnP/wavetable capable ISA sound cards were clunky to deal with particularly if software was involved in making the resources available to the operating system, so Creative was not alone in this product deficiency. I do recall having jumped ship on Creative Labs when I wanted to do wavetable General MIDI and moving to an Aztech Waverider card.
From a historical context the AWE32 is interesting but clunky, many of the negative characteristics of the earlier Sound Blaster 16 or Vibra cards simply carried forward with the (poorly) bolted on wavetable synth capabilities. The AWE64 is a better card that moves the novelty of SIMM expansion RAM to a proprietary add-on module, but doesn't correct the lack of a hardware MIDI interpreter which was the Achilles heel of the AWE line as DOS gaming cards.
I’m impressed with ESS, particularly ESFM. The YM744 sounds great and the AWE32 is really appealing. You can see why each of these are tired by price. How about the AWE64? Is it particularly different from the AWE32. I know the 32 tends to be the favourite, but I don’t have one of these😢. I have an Aureal Vortex 2 paired with one of Serdaco’s x2 XG’s. Nice!