AWE64 Legacy: A Premium New ISA Sound Card in 2022 

Also found it here on yt, on "soundwave trax". Theres also a couple uploads of the other song, phased chords by estrayk and evelred.

Hello I know that this video was made a year ago but I saw that sf2 files also work on the midi thing you just have to do all files then click on the sf2 file

BTW: FastTracker 2 only used card memory for the classic 1MB Ultrasound. No other. SB16 will use all you want for system memory. Impulse Tracker, however, would use AWE32/64 card RAM if you chose, as well as the reverb/chorus effects!

You and your peers back then were instrumental (kind of literally) in getting the PC world into sound and music on a larger scale, and I certainly grew up with Creative, having owned the original SoundBlaster 8 Bit, SB16, SB16 Pro, AWE32, AWE64 Gold and finally the SB Live! Player before my music making ambitions were swallowed by real life and onboard solutions became "good enough" to me as a mere consumer. I've formed some of my core auditory childhood/teen memories through those cards, and had quite the blast their name promised with them. I guess this was a lenghty "thanks"!

@@fonkbadonk5370 I started out as a lowly technical support agent when the SB Pro was popular and worked my way up to developing applications packaged with the Nomad MP3 players and Live cards over a period of eight years. Fun times!

An honor. Some guy at creative should realize how big is the retro community and do something official :)

I salute you, sir!

I still use this card today. ❤

That's incredibly funny, I'd be thinking my game was haunted or something haha

Lol

That made me trully lol

Haha, the guy thinks hes schizo, hearing his own voice through the speakers

But I'm thinking we have a nice compreson for awe64 gold vs awe64 value specific ct4520 2mb onboard

For $540 it better be quality lol

The problem is that while it's a stunning looking product and looks like a true labour of love from some enthousiats, it's doomed to fail commercially and it will never get off at that price (or drop to reasonable price) because let's be honest - how many people are actually interested in such product worldwide? I'd say probably less than 1000 and if you add the price to the equation, maybe 100 folks would actually buy it.

@@puciohenzap891 Yeah, for something like that I would probably play with it for a weekend and then it will end up in a box, forgotten about in a closet somewhere for a decade

@@puciohenzap891 Id say maybe like 10k interested but the 100 actually buying it, sounds about right

@@puciohenzap891 And is difficult(but not impossible) to obtain in western country due to conflict.

for a - low count, - hobbyist-designed but professionally built, - packaged, - extremely niche product $500 is CHEAP sourcing the chips alone is a challenge. Designing a 6 layer PCB demands expertise. Prototyping this would have cost quite a bit (each test run of 5 _EMPTY_ boards? $200 then populate them...)

Divorce or a new sound card hmmm

It's our childhood toys, of course we do!

We're not old, we're retro! There's a difference there!

*crumbles into pile of dust*

I had a Seanix branded CRT from about 1998 that behaved in a similar fashion. When it changed sync modes, it would make an audible click, but the image would morph like this one. I think the ODM was Hansol.

You talk like a poet.

I used to have one of these monitors myself. It's an aperture grille CRT, Trinitron-like. So there's two tiny damper wires inside the CRT that you can faintly see on white backgrounds but it never bothered me. Goes up to 100 Hz refresh at 1024x768. Unfortunately, mine died with a loud bang one night and I didn't have the confidence to try to repair a CRT monitor at the time.

@@reidster87 whaddya know, the Hansol Mazellan looks nigh-identical to the Gateway VX700! But it’s got a D-pad instead of a little door with controls behind it.

@@TheVanillatech thank you!

Yep, I was just about to comment that. Strange how using custom SF2s worked correctly though.

A wild ElectronAsh appears!

@@Vanessaira-Retro I just saw how much the card costs. It's nice, but it's not in my budget. lol

​@@Vanessaira-Retro Hi, btw. Stupid GoogleTube auto-deleted my comment. sigh Basically, I just sent off for boards today, for an FPGA-based ISA Sound Card. It will be fully open-source. The PCB files are on my github. I'll be using the SB16 and OPL3 code from ao486 (with credit). I've been discussing it mainly on the fpga-systems channel on the RMC Discord. Let's see if this comment gets deleted again. lol

@@electronash That would be neat, as I would like an option to use FPGAs to mimic other types like Yamaha's OPL4 or the GUS, Ensoniq Soundscape etc.

FT2 outputs in 16-bit live, from a 32-bit integer mixer.

Thanks for confirming what I was also pretty sure about. The first tracker I used (Tetra Compositor, lol) didn't even support XMS, so the free conventional memory was all you got (about 580K in my case back then). FT2 was my favorite. Triton was an amazing group anyway. Too bad Crystal Dream II was overshadowed by 2nd Reality. But I'm drifting off ;) Regarding hardware mixing (using the RAM on the soundcard - not DMA to get the samples from the system memory) you have to use Cubic Player to hear AWE's full potential (you could add reverb for example). GUS on the other side didn't even support software mixing afaik, so FT2 absolutely used GUS' memory to load the samples into.

Any modern phone has better audio hardware than this card. And mod files can be played on Android without problems. Buying this card for playing tracker files would be quite a waste of money.

@@sypialnia_studio i think ur missing the point of the card- its for retro pc stuff, u quoting android is a non-argument

@@sypialnia_studio Its not a case of they needed to do it,its the fact they wanted to.Many things in life are 100% unnecessary,but still give some folks much happiness.Who are we to say "No"?

Mod files (and variants like screamtracker3, impulse tracker, etc.) load PCM samples into memory and play from there - they're sound card independent. Any modern computer can play them perfectly, with the right tracker. :) (where a lot of modern computers do struggle is noise on the audio outputs, but you can get around that with an external usb sound card or bluetooth)

@@dariyanvalentine3564 that's exactly the point- this card is meant for retro compatibility. Mod files are not suffering with compatibility in any way with modern hardware. And op stated he likes to listen to mod files and would get this card for the "whole new level". In reality this card does nothing for mod files compared to a modern PC or smartphone you already have. But it's hella expensive. If the op wants this card just for listening to mod files it's a waste of money.

Oh they are still a thing in pci-e form, but hardly anybody buys them anymore.

@@rommix0 Mostly "audiophiles" that is, the kind of folks who will spend thousands of dollars on cables for their hi-fi systems. Just the cables.

@@rommix0 I buy them, they rock

I still purchase soundcards, just in USB form factor.

@@ashkitt7719 If you need more than USB and 3.5 minijack you'll need an internal card or external interface regardless. Definitely not an audiophile thing.

You actually could. UT99 uses tracker files packaged away in .UMX files. If you extract them out, you'll find they're mostly .IT files with a few .S3M as well. The original Unreal is the reverse, favouring S3M, and Deus Ex is entirely .IT files. I think all three games have the same composer, so that's probably an indication of how they changed tracker programs over the course of development.

@@Roxor128 I'm well aware! That's why I love this music

Epic (and DICE and Remedy) got their roots in the demo scene. Hence their early games all used tracker music, Jazz Jackrabbit, Pinball Fantasies, Death Rally, OMF2097 etc.). But the Amiga ofc played also an important part. PC beeper, GM and OPL3 just didn't do it. Think about Bitmap Brothers and Xenon II - Bass the bomb :)

Yes the SCC-1 was in many ways actually a step backwards from the MT-32. General Midi was IMO the worst thing to ever happen to PC sound. The Soundblaster 16 should have been something like the GUS on a smaller scale. i.e. 6 or 8 ADPCM channels and some RAM and the FM synth. If PC soundcards had been based on the OPN instead of the OPL this would have been a lot simper as the YM2610B (OPNB) would have fit the bill perfectly: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_YM2610. Example of OPNB music: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-deb4BGycmF8.html Now imagine that chip on a PC card with 256k of RAM back in the day.

do i understand correctly that this soundcard is basically a collection of different kinds of synthesizers bundled together?

@@GeorgeTsiros It's a Yamaha OPL3 FM synth and two separate ways (native or MPU-401 emulation) to route midi to internal or external wavetables, in addition to PCM playback of course. All the things typically employed by early to mid 90s DOS games, basically.

@@ozzyp97 i'm gonna search for a graphic/image/chart that describes how the diff components interact, the architecture of it, in a sense. Apart from that, is the arrangement you describe something common or something rare for cards of this "kind" ? I had an ISA awe32 gold, but i am sad to admit i irrepairably damaged in a shitfit about 20 years ago.

@@GeorgeTsiros It's the same as the AWE32 essentially, just with some modern refinements. OPL + digital goes all the way back to the original Sound Blaster, and AWE is where Creative first added an internal wavetable.

Plus it’s a strict upgrade on the output stages, and the exact same chips! Like the video said the value model isn’t rare.

Lu!

And upgraded in this case. The chips are salvaged off AWE64 Value cards, giving them a new lease on life and letting them really shine.

A little too expensive for me, lol.

It's a shame Creative had to be greedy yet again, you can still get a 32MB kit brand new for the AWE32s for about $20 because they're the same as tons of old Macs, synths etc. The cards themselves on the other hand...

I think Cubic Player support it, too. As does MOD4WIN.

Yes. Number 002 was the version with a gift)

Every awe64 have opl3 Logic in cms chip not the chip itself

There's also a utility that initialises the HardMPU in some particular way that some games seem to require but not others.

IRQ 2/9 is also sometimes reserved for ACPI, at least on 440BX. Switching to APM in the bios and uninstalling ACPI drivers did fix it in one of my systems, but imagine how long it took to figure that out. Just one more reason to stick to older hardware for your intelligent mode needs.

@@ozzyp97 I didn't even think about that. It is sometimes assigned to the USB controllers as well in a PCI system.

I was looking to see if anyone would point that out and mention the players that used the E-Mu to play the MODs. I couldn't remember exactly what the player I used was called - I thought something like AWEMP but I think now it may well have been AMP. I just remember that it blew my mind when I heard my MOD collection played on my Gold for the first time. I'm sure that even modern software mixing with vast CPU resources doesn't sound quite as AWEsome (ba-dumm-tshhhh). I shall have to dig out the PC that's got the card in it (my old, well-loved Dual-Deschutes box), revive it and have a listen.

I think Cubic Player and MOD4WIN also support the AWE32 for hardware mixing.

Wonder if the makers being stuck in Russia are forcing them to charge a lot more.

@@SCSNSE They have to charge more because small PCB runs cost a lot of money. If they could make and sell thousands then the price per unit would be lower.

@@SCSNSE the sender could order it from the other country to Russia. I highly doubt that there is a manufacture of such electronics in russia

I was a creative guy in the 90's but a friend of mine had 3 different Gravis cards, and still has them in storage so likely they worth something now.

Yeah it's the cards internal bus. It's slow.

He's done a whole video about the kinds of cameras you need to film a CRT without flicker. Not sure if its on this channel or his main one, though.

It's not stressful to be a Russian right now, my dude (it isn't to me, and I'm also one), on the contrary: for the first time in modern history we're actually giving NATO a run for their money instead of silently watching them expand onto our borders, lol. So it's just you.

That's exactly why I'm scared. If thats how "run for its money looks", I honestly expect state to confiscate my businness and everything i own in 5 to 10 years, and send me to Gulags, along with hundred thousand "foreign agents".

@@roguenova6766 I am sorry that you digest the BS you are fed with. You are in WAR with ONE of your neighbors. Those who actually shaped the term and where "Rus" came from. If you are at war with ALL of your neighbors (hopefully not), then we are all dead and your boasting or absolute silly nationalism or delusion of persecution (I don't know what your "illness" is) doesn't matter anymore. I shouldn't really talk with you, because your view on what a "border" is, is telling! That is by definition (and in our context) the line that marks TWO sovereign territories. In contrary, what you understand is worth of a real proud f'n nationalist: You confuse independency with a vassal state. Welcome back to 1950! Just a thought experiment: Imagine Russia was SURROUNDED by those bad bad bad states, who FREELY choose to be part of the European-Treaty-Organization. Really bad things would happen: Like free and prospering trade between Russia and the rest of Europe and the world. Like it was before, you absolute Moron! Who would've thought, the REST (okay most ...) of the world actually RESPECTS borders. Okay, I don't think you do understand this, with your creative use of the definition of a border of a country. I really wish from the bottom of my heart that they don't take you or your children to die in a useless fight. Don't you know what the first victim of a war is, Nova? It is the truth!