Which of the 2 sound cards for games & midi audio files

[ST Dragon]

Which of the following two sound cards would you choose for the ultimate modern gaming experience and that also supports old-school midi audio files with good quality playback?

CREATIVE SOUND BLASTER X-FI TITANIUM FATAL1TY PRO
http://www.e-shop.gr/show_per.phtml?id=PER.540194

ASUS XONAR D2X/XDT/A
http://www.e-shop.gr/show_per.phtml?id=PER.522601

Thanks in advance

[ST Dragon]

What about the two bus types that they come in?
What should I get... PCI-E or PCI?

and most importantly... does Asus & Creative support old-school midi audio files with good quality playback?

[zinger]

You need an OPL3 chip for old IBM compatible PC games.

[Stefan_L]

What do you mean with old school midi files? is it General Midi ones? if so then windows comes with the ability to play those midis already... just select "Microsoft GS Wavetable SW synth" in your favourite midi player.

[Ed Oscuro]

The Microsoft Wavetable Synth has a very different sound than OPL3, and back in the day various cards had very different sounds from each other. If you want to hear MIDI as it was back then, you basically need a computer with old-fashioned ISA (or maybe PCI if there were the right cards developed for it) connectors on the motherboard, and none of that Microsoft software synth stuff.

[mr_m0nks]

As others have said, A General MIDI file will sound different on each device you play it on, depending on the quality of the synth engine.
Everything from top end synthesisers costing several thousand dollars to cheap mobile phones have GM capability now, but each with very different sounds

however the standard soundcard back in the DOS days was probably the old soundblaster16.

not sure how they connected to your pc but you can probably pick them up now for about 20p

actually you will probably be able to get an emulation for one, do a search


as for modern hi fidelity sound quality ,I would worry less about your soundcard and worry more about your speakers (and depending how anal you are the sound character of your gaming space)

no point spending £100's of pounds on a soundcard if you are using crap gaming speakers

[Stefan_L]

Actually miscrosoft is using the sounds from Sound Canvas wich is the standard reference on how Genarel Midi instruments sound so it's as real GM you can get without a Sound Canvas.

Also if the soundcards in the first post has a midi port then why not get a Sound Canvas module or MT-32... the MT-32 is probably as oldschool Midi you can get for games, this was even before the General Midi standard and crap OPL playing Midi.

[Ed Oscuro]

Actually miscrosoft is using the sounds from Sound Canvas wich is the standard reference on how Genarel Midi instruments sound so it's as real GM you can get without a Sound Canvas.

Selecting the various types of sound mapper in dxdiag gives wildly different results (actually, using different applications lead to differences as well, now that I remember it).

p.s. I do have an extra Roland MT-32 lying about

edit: damn, I only WISH I had an sc-55...it's the older MT-32 that I've bought. Still a good system although you'll need to be able to interface the MIDI ports into something. I think the better recent SB cards can still use what's more or less a legacy connection.

[mr_m0nks]

i think buying an expensive piece of kit like a gm sound module to play retro games is a little OTT and certainly not authentic,

personally i think general midi soundtracks were a low point in vidoegame sound design, even the best soundsets in todays GM2 synths sound horrible to me

give me a dedicated synth sound chip or a professionally recorded score anyday

hell the beeps from space invaders sound better than some midi soundtracks

[nimitz]

Well a few basic questions.

do you want surround sound on the sound card? because if all you want is real sound quality get a good M-audio card like the 2496.

if you want to mess around with midi get a sound blaster live...the overall quality if pretty good, you get 5.1 and soundfonts to play around

That being said, no matter what sound card you have you can always use timidityhttp://timidity.sourceforge.net/ to play midi "emulating" any kind of hardware

[Ed Oscuro]

i think buying an expensive piece of kit like a gm sound module to play retro games is a little OTT and certainly not authentic,

Depends on the game. A number of Sierra (IBM PC) and Konami (X68000) titles had specially composed Roland editions of their soundtracks (on the Konami side, you just select from a menu at game start).

personally i think general midi soundtracks were a low point in vidoegame sound design,

Counterpoint: Cyberspace from System Shock.

even the best soundsets in todays GM2 synths sound horrible to me

And that's the basis of your problems.

I agree that an "expensive" (less than $50 in all cases; I will sell my extra MT-32 for about $25 because it's missing the top cover) sound module (which needs to interface with a PC sound card in any case) is not a general purpose solution.

If you want to have good, period-accurate (lolz) sound, you probably need to invest in some retro computer components, or deal with the "upgrades" of current MIDI, or deal with the shortcomings of OPL emulation (zDOOM has various types of OPL emulation, and of course none of it sounds like the Aztech combined MIDI / network card my old Packard Bell had).

[honorless]

PCI-E or PCI

PCI-E is a newer, faster version of PCI.

A PCI card will not fit into a PCI Express slot (and vice versa) so you should look at your motherboard and see what slots it has before buying anything.

[ST Dragon]

My M/B features both ports PCI & PCI-E...
So which of the 2 interfaces should I choose?
Will I benefit anything from the faster PCI-E interface and will the audio sound better or have less lag?

Basically I want to be able to play all my old General Midi Audio files as they sounded on my old ISA Sound Blaster 64 and be able to play all the old DOS games that feature General Midi soundtracks via DOSBox Emu...

So, I want to choose the best card for the job…
Seeing as my M/B has no ISA slot, what should I get?

Thanks in advance.

[Stefan_L]

hmm... soundblaster 64 thats wavetable and FM like SB32...right? So it probably used the wavetable instruments when you played general midi and the FM when playing non midi games (like Wolfenstein 3D), so to have the exact sound of the SB64 instruments you must have an SB64/32 or just accept the (original) GM instruments from Roland (like microsofts GS softsynth).

From 1988 many games had dedicated versions of the music for MT-32 and FM (adlib or compatible) but later in 1991 when the GM standard came the FM versions of the music was just using it as a midi device and making a very weak sound... dedicated FM versions usually sound much better. And as GM was a standard most wavetable soundcards were not fully used to their potentional ability thus giving midi a repurtation of sounding bad.

I have an Yamaha DB50XG... it's an daughterboard you use on the waveblaster connector that many souncards had for "upgrading" the sound, i'm still using it as i did find a fairly new soundcard still having the waveblaster connector (Terratec DMX 6fire 24/96) it even states that the purpose of having the wavetable connector is for using the DB50XG... thats pretty amazing for a 1995 midicard to have such a repurtation, but i also think Roland did a waveblaster daughtercard of their Soundcanvas... not too sure though?

[mr_m0nks]

At the end of the day, the biggest problem of GM soundtracks is that each different make of soundcard or sound module was using a different sound set or even a different form of synthesis to produce their GM set. So unless you track down that same soundcard you were using at the time and find some way to connect it to your current PC, then whatever you get is going to sound different.

so i would go for whichever of the two soundcards fits your current needs, if they end up sounding a bit pony through DOSbox, try an old soundcard emulator and see if that helps your nostalgia

Personally I would go with the creative but that's just because I always have.

Ed im sure there were some good GM scores produced but it was a period in my life that I wasn't gaming much and I didn't own a PC until '97, by which time the move over to windows gaming had almost taken over, as had the CD-ROM with its opportnity for a fully arranged score.

and yeah it is down to my personal preference, maybe if i had been gaming on PC in the early to mid 90's i would have a fond memory of those sounds but hey ho, give me a C64 soundtrack any day

[nZero]

I have an Yamaha DB50XG... it's an daughterboard you use on the waveblaster connector that many souncards had for "upgrading" the sound, i'm still using it as i did find a fairly new soundcard still having the waveblaster connector (Terratec DMX 6fire 24/96) it even states that the purpose of having the wavetable connector is for using the DB50XG... thats pretty amazing for a 1995 midicard to have such a repurtation, but i also think Roland did a waveblaster daughtercard of their Soundcanvas... not too sure though?

Yep, the Roland Sound Canvas SCB-55 (a.k.a. - SCD-15) wavetable daughterboard. Equivalent to a Roland SC-55 mkII sound module. I've got a DMX 6Fire 24/96 myself (well, in my PC back in the states) and that's what's sitting in the waveblaster connector.

[trivial]

Will I benefit anything from the faster PCI-E interface and will the audio sound better or have less lag?

Complex question to answer completely, but if you have a free PCI-E slot narrower than 8x--or you have no desire to ever SLI your video card--that is what you should get. Your regular PCI cards and several things built into the motherboard use a single bus that's rather choked by modern standards.

But the least lag I've ever experienced in a soundcard was the TB Hurricane architecture for ISA. That's irrelevant now. Was very cool on a 486 with Windows 3.1 though. No FM or useful DOS compatibility.

[ST Dragon]

Does the Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer also feature dedicated RAM like the The Fatality brand and do they both use the exact same X-Fi chip?
Or is a cut-down version like the XtremeAudioversion? I've heard that the XtremeAudio is a relabeled Live24! card and doesn't contain the X-Fi chip one would expect...

Generally, what other advantages does the the Fatality brand have over the XtremeGamer card?
Does it really sound much better with a nice set of speakers?

Thanks in advance.