Best MS-DOS sound card?

Right now I have a SB Audigy 2 card installed in my Windows 98SE PC, but none of the MS-DOS games I have work with it. Does anybody have suggestions for cards that work well with MS-DOS? Can these presumably older sound cards work with newer Windows games as well?

For full compatibility you'll want something ISA. I use a Soundblaster Awe64 gold edition in my classic gaming machine. It's a pretty good card. Midi is especially nice.

Unfortunately my motherboard isn't old enough to have an ISA slot. Do I have any PCI options? All I want is to hear the music (and voice) in my MS-DOS games. Right now quality is the least of my concerns.

Originally Posted by Guntz

Do I have any PCI options

depends on the motherboard.. i'd just use dosbox if i were you..

That's pretty redundant considering Windows 98 already has DOS support. I don't think DOSBox even works on Win98. So am I up the creek then?

What CPU and motherboard chipset do you have?

Mobo: Asus P4B533-VM
CPU: Pentium 4 1.7Ghz (I'd prefer a faster speed though. 2.4 at least)

Not sure what else you're asking there. Could you specify?

In order for dos sound to work on a PCI sound card the motherboard needs to support nmi (non maskable interrupt): http://www.mameworld.info/net/emuadvice/sound.html .

Nearly all the options for proper DOS sound on real hardware involve ISA.

Also, the P4 1.7 is one of the worst CPUs ever made. A P3 1.4 is virtually on par. I wouldn't invest a cent in such a machine.

Man that's friggin retarded. How come there's no backwards compatibility with this crap? I am not buying a 486 or something, just gonna stick with DOSBox or something. What's really annoying is I have original CDs for some of these DOS games too.

What's so wrong with the P4? If it's just that speed in particular, I could always find something faster. I've never had a problem with P4s. This isn't the first PC with a P4 I've owned you know.

How far back do you want things to stay compatible? Your computer is 5 generations newer than the death of DOS. That's like being pissed that the PS3 doesn't play NES games. You could probably build a K6-2 system for practically nothing and have more speed and memory than you would ever need for DOS.

Also, the Awe 64 probably the best DOS sound card ever.

I've had the best results with a SoundBlaster AWE64 and OPTi 931 sound card, however, the FM Synthesis on both sound cards is wrong. On the AWE64, some notes are wrong, and on the OPTi 931, some notes are played too loud, resulting in strange sound. There are 2 ISA sound cards I like, but you need a PC with a slow CPU in order to use them properly: the OPTi 929 and the Aztech AZT2320(identified as AZT1008 in Windows 95 for some reason). The OPTi 929 has a discrete YMF262 while the Aztech AZT2320 has an ASIC-based YMF262. The OPTi 929 does produce rougher bass notes due to is sound amp, and I prefer the sound of the OPTi 929, but the problem with these two sound cards is that if you have a motherboard with a CPU that's too fast, certain games will output their FM Synthesis as garbled notes.

If you have a computer that's big enough to fit long ISA cards, you can get a SoundBlaster AWE32. But I'd recommend you'd get anything with a discrete YMF262 or any Yamaha ISA sound cards, which all use ASIC-based YMF262s. Stay away from anything ESS, as their FM Synthesis sounds COMPLETELY wrong and likes to hit false notes a lot. Also stay away from any OPTi sound cards with no discrete YMF262 like the OPTi 931. Those have cloned YMF262s that, while the sound is authentic, certain notes come out too loud, in particular when a certain note starts to play.

Originally Posted by GohanX

How far back do you want things to stay compatible? Your computer is 5 generations newer than the death of DOS. That's like being pissed that the PS3 doesn't play NES games. You could probably build a K6-2 system for practically nothing and have more speed and memory than you would ever need for DOS.

Also, the Awe 64 probably the best DOS sound card ever.

Well from past experiences, MS-DOS on Windows 98 tended to just work. I guess not for sound. It isn't really a dealbreaker if I can't get MS-DOS games to work good on this computer, it just kind of irks me that PCs are so archaic when it comes to supporting older technologies in the old days. Also, how are generations determined with PCs? Is a 10 year gap really 5 generations for PCs? That's really bad.

Interestingly enough, voices worked in Day of the Tentacle when I tried it, but for some reason the sound was a little distorted. Music of course, wouldn't work.

On a similar note, I always thought Adlib referred to the same (or similar) word for 'pretending', basically an 'everything else' driver. Boy was I uneducated on DOS back then (before the turn of the 21st century)...

Originally Posted by Ace

I've had the best results with a SoundBlaster AWE64 and OPTi 931 sound card, however, the FM Synthesis on both sound cards is wrong. On the AWE64, some notes are wrong, and on the OPTi 931, some notes are played too loud, resulting in strange sound. There are 2 ISA sound cards I like, but you need a PC with a slow CPU in order to use them properly: the OPTi 929 and the Aztech AZT2320(identified as AZT1008 in Windows 95 for some reason). The OPTi 929 has a discrete YMF262 while the Aztech AZT2320 has an ASIC-based YMF262. The OPTi 929 does produce rougher bass notes due to is sound amp, and I prefer the sound of the OPTi 929, but the problem with these two sound cards is that if you have a motherboard with a CPU that's too fast, certain games will output their FM Synthesis as garbled notes.

If you have a computer that's big enough to fit long ISA cards, you can get a SoundBlaster AWE32. But I'd recommend you'd get anything with a discrete YMF262 or any Yamaha ISA sound cards, which all use ASIC-based YMF262s. Stay away from anything ESS, as their FM Synthesis sounds COMPLETELY wrong and likes to hit false notes a lot. Also stay away from any OPTi sound cards with no discrete YMF262 like the OPTi 931. Those have cloned YMF262s that, while the sound is authentic, certain notes come out too loud, in particular when a certain note starts to play.

I really appreciate this post Ace, but unfortunately I don't own a PC that has any relation to what you're talking about. Basically the equivalent of trying to get an NES cart to work in a PS2.

I have a couple motherboards with ISA.

Anyone want to buy it? I'll include a Pentium II with it, and perhaps some RAM to get you started. No PSU included though.