ESS AudioDrive ES1868F - One of the best ISA Sound Cards for DOS Games 

Agreed completely, I've used ESS186x cards in dozens of DOS builds. Always been pleasantly surprised with games that are often hard to get sounding correct on other cards, even later SB16s. Nice to know some more technical reasons why it works!

The Audiodrive is my favorite retro sound card. Yeah, Creatives have the name recognition, the cachet, etc, but really, I only really like the SB Pro 2.0, AWE64 and Audigy2 ZS. Otherwise, ESS all the way. I even like it better than the Audician32 (which is also quite good). It's fortunate that these cards are common as dirt, then! (They were in production for a long time. I remember seeing Pentium II and even some Athlon machines with ISA ESS1869s built into the motherboard. They were almost as common as Ensoniq 1371, and more common than ESS Solo-1.)

That was my favourite ISA sound card back in the day. I actually miss it lol. The last time I used it was on a Duron 1000 and the motherboard had a single ISA slot.

Thank you for being such an amazing information resource for us retro computing folks!

My very first sound card was its older brother, an ESS688 based unit. I bought it for my Am486DX2-80 machine when I was 15 years old. I had to deliver a few papers to be able to afford it but it was one of my best purchases ever. Of course it's easy to please a 15 year old but my life changed because of this card. DooM came to life and I played it even more often ;-)

I used to have one of these back in the days. Brings back memories :) I remember that I loved this card.

I had one ES1868 on my first computer. The configuration was: Cyrix 4x86 40MHz (a little beautiful green cpu) / 8MB SIMM / 400MB WD HDD / Cyrus Logic 1MB / ESS 1868 / MS-DOS. Later, when I've installed Windows 95, installing the driver for this card was my first challenge with MS Win 95. Also was the first driver I ever installed. Very very satisfactory sensation when I've managed to hear first Windows 95 sound :). Lost so many nights playing with this computer... great memoryes. You are doing a very nice job reviewing this old stuff. Keep up the good job, best wishes.

I had ESS internal soundcards in my old (notebook/laptops) in the (19)90s.

thanks Phil for going over the dos driver install , i was also using that same driver and couldn't change any settings, i will try the drivers you found when i get around to working on my pII machine, as always, awesome video, thanks again

Oh, I had one of those but without the IDE CD-ROM and Wavetable connectors. I used to use it as my go-to sound card for OPL3 FM stuff until I switched to a Yamaha YMF724F when I found out that it had genuine OPL3 integrated into its chipset. The FM synth accuracy on the ES1868 is pretty close to a genuine OPL3 but there are some inaccuracies that are most notable when playing music that uses certain OPL3 tricks that take advantage of 4-op mode (such as OSKARI.A2m included with Adlib Tracker II, drum instruments sound like noise on ES1868). It was certainly more accurate than a Crystal sound card and Creative Lab's cards that use a CQM chip (their own OPL3 clone) instead of a proper OPL3 chip for FM synthesis.

"If you want to see more videos like this, please let me know" Affirmative!

Nobody can convince me that any early ISA sound card even came close to my 1994 REVEAL Sound Blaster compatible sound card! That REVEAL sound card stood the test of time and lasted until the very last ISA slot in 2004. I miss that sound card. I would still use it today if I could.

Just had to chime in and say I also love these, my first computer I personally owned was a Compaq LTE with one of these in it and that’s what I grew up playing DOS games on, and I still think it’s my favorite FM synth of them all

*Right! Let's go adventuring!* _Right! Let's go adventuring!_ *Right! Let's go adventuring!* _Right! Let's go adventuring!_

I really liked the AOpen AW 32 Pro that I had in my first computer. Good compatibility and a built in wavetable. I still remember the moment I switched Tie Fighter from OPL3 to General Midi for the music. The difference was amazing.

I was lucky to have an ESS AudioDrive 1868 in my 486DX2 in the 90s. Good times.

I like how every game sounded different with other soundchips :D

Quality video as always! Thanks Phil. This was my very first soundcard, back on my 386, carried on till the Pentium era. Now I got one for my DOS build. Great card, highly recommend it for its value.

It's very interesting to see you showing these things side by side with other cards, because in their day I remember frequently running into issues with ESS cards. Mostly it would be problems with drivers in win 9x, and earned them the title "extremely shitty sound" in the local circle. Maybe we judged them unfairly?

Phil, as always great advice and excellent support to the community by way of the very useful driver files on your website. Thanks for your many contributions to the vintage PC community. I for one certainly appreciate your work!

Just spent two days installing a Sound Blaster VIBRA16 into my main system. I was very disappointed about it's limited compatibility. I found your channel watching the SB16 ASP (CT1740) video. I now ordered a ESS. Thanks a lot Phil, I subscribed =)

Sold a lot of those cards in my computer shop between 1997 and 1999, never had compatibility problem. One of the best, if not the best soundblaster emulation for dos gaming.

This was my first sound card. I ran that in my AST Advantage 486 SX 33 with MS-DOS 5 and Windows 3.1!

I agree. All of my ESS cards work flawless in dos. I always found the sound blasters very finicky. ESS are the best!!!

I actually installed this exact card in to a machine yesterday. I quite like the ESS based cards, and there are lots of variants - I've got some with clipping LED's and much more complex output stages too.

My first ever soundcard(1997) was from BTC,a ISA soundcard,model name was 1815 it had an Opti sound chip on it,sounded ok back then,also using a ESS 1869 chip ISA soundcard in one of my windows 95 retro machine.

Yey to videos about cheap options that allow us to enjoy old games!

I really do not understand how you are still stuck with below 100k subs. RU-vid algorithm and clickbairts suck so hard. I just want to let you know that you deserve a ton more subs. By the way will you review fx5900xt?

Great video - loved the demonstrations that showed how incompatibilities sound, that's a great touch.

This was my first sound card. I grew up listening to Doom, Heretic, and Hexen on this card. Great sound!

Been waiting for this video since you mentioned it on Facebook. Thanks Phil!

Watching this video again, after finally getting around to putting my 98 rig together (Aopen AX6BC, P3 1GHz, 120GB SSHD, 256MB RAM, SBLive, ESS AudioDrive 1868)... not there yet, but looking to set up in the next week. Don't stop doing what you're doing with these superb videos. Thank you man!!

+PhilsComputerLab 1:58 That's actually a pre-amp input designed for a spread spectrum equalizer addon. The reason you could hear sound but at a very muffled volume is because that input expects a higher power input.

I just cracked open a computer which had one in it! Looked it up and this is the first video I stumble on.

PhilsComputerLab That un-amplified four pin header connector is the PC speaker pass-through port.

Great instructions, great video! Thanks for this.

3:26 That sound gave me chills & flashbacks to a different time. Loved this video!

Thank you Phil for the tip! Really a good ISA soundcard for a low price. Together with a Dreamblaster S2 it is simply amazing. Thank you, thank you very much. My Win98-Rig is now complete: Abit VH6-II Motherboard 1000 MHz Pentium III 256 SD-RAM GeForce2 MX400 (GeForce 256 is to expensive) ES1868F ISA Soundcard + Dreamblaster S2

Years ago, when I was young and dumb (it persists) I was underestimating these ESS, 'cos it is not a Soundblaster.' :D

Phil, now that is another trip down memory lane. My brother's Pentium 90 had one of these bad boys, before that he had an ESS688. It worked flawlessly for our DOS games. FM sound was spot on. I am surprised that this actually performed better than the SB16. Before the ESS, we had a MediaVision Thunderboard. That was a total POS

Mine doesn't have the ide controller sadly, but it does still show up in devices for some reason. This is a really good sound card, thanks for encouraging me to use mine that I've had for 17 years in storage and providing the drivers on your website!

Great video. I was about buying an expensive Soundblaster 32 but now I've got this one for 9€ on eBay :-D

I picked up the Labway version of the same ESS ES1868F after watching this video. The Labway version is a little more robust and has metal audio connectors vs plastic. Not a big deal but I always loved when they were metal :) This chip is fantastic. It sounds so good in everything. I was using a SB16 previously but it has the MPU-401 bug which is very annoying since I use a SoundCanvas. This card is just as good (actually to me it sounds better) and no bug. Excellent card and I would never have known without your video Phil. And, of course the drivers you found and thankfully have shared with everyone work perfectly. Thank you again!

I found one of these in an old Compaq years ago. I just had it in a draw because I thought it was a cheap card. It is the ES1869 variant and has Compaq written on it, but I just put it in one of my old systems and it sounds great.

No wonder Phil likes this sound card.. it has his name written on it!

This is my favorite video ever, just because of the kindle... My god, that display.... So good.

wow, this is crazy man! i didnt have an isa sound card back then, do you remember onboard sound blaster? lol! port 220 dma1 irq 7 LOLOL those were the days!

I was aiming to buy a cheap audio card and bought this for 10$, back in the 96'. I had no idea it was good. My expectation at the time was: sb pro>sb16>ess1868 🙂

Happen to have that exact AudioDrive ES1868F variant in my sound card collection, heh. As much as I'm a stickler for genuine OPL3, ESFM isn't half bad, and I'd much rather use that than CQM, which has far more numerous and more obvious imperfections compared to genuine OPL3. One thing I noticed with the ES1868F and ES1869F-based sounds cards is that there could be some pretty wild variances between different cards. My ISA sound card collection contains six different ES1868Fs and ES1869Fs, some of which have noticeable differences in their overall output. A few of them has some noticeable high-pass filtering, and they are lacking in bass as a result. One ES1868F, in particular, which looks like some cheap generic crap on a thin, orange PCB actually has the loudest audio output of any of these, so loud that if I set the mixer volume too high, the sound clips quite horribly. It looks to me like a card with a speaker amp that cannot be bypassed, but I'll tell you what, this is my AudioDrive of choice. Unfortunately, I haven't had very good results with the wavetable header. Most of these have really stupidly placed headers, but in every single one of these that I remember testing, the volume of the wavetable header was EXTREMELY high and would cause distortion on my XR385. Perhaps adding a voltage divider, or at least a pull-down resistor directly at the input, would have been a good idea on these cards. The way all 6 of my cards are designed, the wavetable header inputs have the potential to pick up a fair amount of noise from the lack of any pull-down resistors to prevent the inputs from floating.

I have ESS Edison Gold... That was awesome time.

I use one that is IBM branded on my OS/2 machine. It works great in OS/2, WIN/OS/2, and DOS/OS/2.

Also the 93C66 slot is for an optional EEPROM for storing PNP settings. The empty QX2130 spot is for a "Sound Expander" for "widened" or "spatial" audio. It also includes a bass boost. Adding this would need a few extra electrolytic capacitors.

My dad gave me an old mid-tower box with an AMD 386 DX-40Mhz CPU along with a monochrome monitor (1995). So I went to work right away in upgrading, starting with a color monitor (SVGA). I bought a soundcard that ended up being an ESS-based model. It had a music synthesizer program that had a graphical piano keys that were mapped to the keyboard. I played Wolfenstein and Panzer General. Once I got a hold of Doom and X-Wing, then it was clear that I needed a major upgrade. I didn't have a lot of money, but I manage to find a decent 486 motherboard and loaded it with an AMD 486DX-80 Mhz CPU, along with a flightstick. Now Doom and X-Wing playable. I later upgraded it to an AMD 486-120Mhz CPU, Windows 95, and SCSI CD-ROM drive and played MYST. Good times.

I just happen to have this card in my collection tho never knew much about it till now. I am adding this one in along side my SB16 CT2290. Don't suppose would be any conflicts. Thanks for this great video and providing the drivers.

I always wondered why the digital sound crashes in Duke Nnukem 2 on my Audician 32, now i know.

Awesome card and video! My first sound car was the ES 1688, used it for many years.

Great thorough video! I have the ES1898F in one of my builds. I like the sound of it as opl clones go. I love all your DOS stuff... hope you never run out of new content in the category. :)

Thanks for doing a video I requested! Yeah, you're right, it's not the same as a Yamaha, but I think I like it.

Hey, Phil! Looking at my Union brand ES1869F, the three CD audio inputs are labeled: the bare four-pin header is "Sony" while the two white, caged inputs are labeled "Mitsumi" and "Panasonic" respectively... my guess is that the card is expecting different source levels from those different inputs and that's why you only barely heard any audio when you plugged your CDROM into the second white port. As always, great video! Thanks for making it!

I actually had the ES1869 “AudioDrive” soundcard in my old 350Mhz Pentium II...It seemed to producer very pleasant and “warm” sound, even better than my SB16, which seemed clinical and soulless ..Later I tried a RightMark Audio Test, and it seemed that the card was adding way too much even harmonic distortion, which actually sounds good.. Guess it proves how subjective “good” sound is.. One big issue though was the lack of WaveTable synthesis...The Microsoft GS Wavetable synth was absolutely hopeless. Remedied it with Yamaha YSXG100 SoftSynth and Roland Sound Canvas VSC 55..Those days internet was slow..31.6KBPs is what I generally used to get on a good day, and instrumental midi files were a great option.

after my SB vibra16 died on me and i had to get another for a fortune which turned out to be the PnP variant and setting it up was a pain in the arse.. this should work wonders in my DOS+Win95 buid. cheers Phil. : )

i think these cards sound better than the Sb16! also check out the terratec profimedia gold 16/96. it's an ess 1868 card with much better quality, i think a built in wavetable chip as well as better looks!

I liked the way you pronounced Wolfenstein. Speaking of Wolfenstein, doesn't Wolfenstein 3D use FM sounds for things like collecting ammunition and health and other items and only use digitised sounds for things like gunfire and enemy sounds and things like that?

I always go for the ESS cards. They are cheaper than the sound blaster and are compatible with pretty much everything in DOS and windows. Compaq computers used them in a lot of their computers. If you have a P2 or P3 compaq with onboard sound, it's probably an ESS chip. I'm using an ESS 1869 in my DOS machine and have had zero issues with it.

I have the older ESS 1688i n my DOS PC. I really like the OPL3 sound is this "Clone". DOS games sounds like my first PC back in 95 with a SB Pro 2 (the real Yamaha OPL3) The MPU401 is great option in the ESS.

I had one of these sound cards. It was perfectly functional but wow, the hiss..

my first sound card

Neat, I just found a card at my local flea market, I got it for around $1.46, I think I got a good deal :) Now I just have to test it and see if it works. So far I haven't encountered a sound card that didn't work so I'm not really worried about that.

I used to own the SB16, and I never had any issues with clicks or weird sounds. Can you upload or direct me to some examples? you mentioned Wolfenstein 3D which at that time was exactly what I was playing (a lot).

I have this sound card in my Pentium 200 MMX retro Windows98 machine and in Windows it just works with the default drivers from Windows98, both sound and music but when I open a DOS game like Doom I only get sound but no music. I then installed the DOS drivers with the setting you are showing in the video and then both music and sound are working in DOS but as I boot on Windows and run Doom i only get music but no sound anymore. Thank You for the great job you're doing helping us retro hardware sick :)

One of my friends had his gpu die on his C2D desktop, and while we were hunting for a suitable replacement, he came to me with a bag full of components, so I had a look at them, him being totally clueless about anything related to PC's, I had to break the bad news to him that all of the stuff was way too old and could not be used to help him. However for me, that bag of hardware was a gold mine. Mobo + Pentium 133 MMX + RAM, a Diamond Voodoo 2, a couple of old HDD's and some other misc stuff. Needless to say that told him I'm more than happy to take them off his hands. Haven't had a chance to test them out yet though because I don't have a suitable power supply. What PSU would you recommend and where should I look for one?

That jack that you could only get faint audio from with your cd-rom is actually an output header for internal speakers, common on some hp and packard bell computers

Back in the day I always went with Creative brand cards (even those without SB chips) just cause I new they would work better when it came to drivers, however I knew the ESS cards were good quality so if I didn't have the option to get a Creative card I'd settle for the ESS cards. However, by the time I was building computers nobody I knew really used DOS for gaming anymore so I never had to fiddle around with all the config.sys & autoexec.bat settings cause Win95 would handle all the settings... I do remember the first time I went from a basic sound card to a high end one with a good midi wave table built in and game music or even .midi files went from sounding like electronic music to sounding like real instruments though and that's when I realized there was more to sound card quality than just the drivers...

Thanks for the review. I indeed noticed a lot of pops with the sb16 on certain games. Will try this out... Thanks.

Hands down agree with you, excellent card, wish I could find one now, to think I threw so many away in the past...sigh

@OhilsComputerLab, can you share DOS drivers (config utils) again? Link not alive. Thanks!

I have a COMPAQ PREMIERE SOUND ISA card that is ESS, almost sure that the same chipset. They came with the Deskpro 2000 Desktop Series, probably a bit old for a PCI machine, but, yep, nice sound and the Compaq comes with a 3.5W amplifier as well.

I just bought an ASUS P5A Motherboard and the seller gave me this exact sound card. P5A Motherboard with a K6-2 300 CPU and the Sound card U.S. 20.00 dollars for all

I have same card like yours but my only mainboard with ISA slots died shortly before I get that card :( And that was board with Socket 370 like yours which died. Thank you for movie, now I know what my card can do :) And my card have few chips more.

I just got one of these for around 1U$D xD revision 1.3a, a bit smaller but with the same ES1868F chip. Im gonna test it on my Pentium II this night

15:30 - "It's not a soundblaster, it's not 100% soundblaster compatible" Honestly... I just got back into DOS gaming and was thrilled to find an old 486 system with a Soundblaster 16 and a real OPL3... But then I started learning about the problems with the Soundblaster cards and I feel kind of let down by them, like I finally met a childhood hero and learned that they're actually kind of disappointing. Like the DMA popping in audio playback, or the slowdown when using MIDI and digital audio... Back in the 90s I had a Gravis card, I enjoyed it but compatibility was always a problem, and I thought if anything would be trouble-free it'd be a good ol' Sound Blaster... And it really doesn't seem like that's the case. I don't regret picking up the Sound Blaster 16 cards that I've got, but here I am looking into alternatives...

I was looking for sound cards and I found a Genius Ess Audiodrive Es1868f Isa for USD 2 plus USD 2,85 shipping. Surely I will buy it to have sound with doom, duke3D, screamer rally, tyrian 2000, sim city 2000, and others.

In the nineties I was always told to get a Creative SoundBlaster or YAMAHA based card instead of ESS. ESS were rumored to have some inaccuracies with the games. So never had one to verify whether the statements were true.

Indeed! ESS was great.

Hi, Phil. I just got my hands on one of these cards. The layout is slightly different, and it came with the MIDI extension daughterboard. If it at all helps the two analog audio inputs on mine are labeled CREATIVE and MITSUMI. There is also an audio interface for Sony as well.

Hi Phil, you should check out Reality Adlib Tracker when testing sound cards under DOS.

If it's similar to another ES1868F board that I see on eBay, the reason that one of the white plugs didn't work is that it seems they're all specific to one pinout, since I guess not all CD audio cables were the same. One is labelled Mitsumi and one is Creative. There is also a non-shrouded one is for Sony, and I can't read the others. The one I am looking at is FCCID# L6NS611

Holy shit, that is the best view of a kindle I've seen :O. Now I definitely want one :O.

Great Video. I just ordered myself an ES1869F. Should I expect any differences? Also I have a question. I see some of these cards have an empty space for an ES692. Is that something can be added on to these cards if a source is found for those chips?

Hey Phil, don't know if anyone wrote allready in those 271 comments so I'll do it: the audio header that did not work for your optical drive is not an input. It is a speaker output for mpc. Greetings, Tom

More like this, please

Better than My MATE Vince since your outro music is amazing.

i have this card in ibm t20. in dos is horrible in windows sounds crazy

Hi Phil liked your video. I have a similar sound card but with a 1869F chipset is there any difference.

I just took my beloved Audigy out and put an ESS 1869 in for DOS games and I ordered some mpu401 cable to try midi music in games. (Any recommendations?) I am still searching for a terratec xlr8 with A3D. (I sold one 20 years ago, oh my...)

Just bought 2 Sound blaster pro 2.0 CT1600 own 3 total now. Might recapp them with some good Nichicon audio caps in the future. Might be a interesting project

Can you do a video comparing sb16 card CT 2890 Vs the Ess1868, Vs Yamaha 71X , Vs Aztec 2316, and Vs the Awe32 and Awe64

I gotta say I agree - the ES1868 is a great allround ISA card! I have one (bare minimum (i.e. no amplifier, no wavetable header, no IDE) Compaq OEM version) in a P1 166MHz, and one (with all the bells and whistles, Binaura 3D version) in a Dell P2 350MHz. Have tested several other ISA cards over the past few months, and I gotta say, when peeling away the nostalgia - original SB16 cards aren't all that great. It may be dependant on the version, as there were a few million, but the three different ones I tested had average sound quality (this was the biggest bummer - sound seemed so flat and tinny, very lifeless), some bugs (hanging note and pops and cracks in some games, mainly), so I looked for alternatives. ES1868F delivered, definitely. Would love an SB AWE32 or 64 Gold, but they are very pricey compared to an ES1868 or similar SB compatibles. Other noteworthy mentions include a Crystal CS4236b (decent overall sound, swapped stereo though, and very quiet synthesizer on my card - even when bumping up the volume to full in the mixer application, drivers are ok) and an Avance Logic (Realtek nowadays) ALS100+. I gotta say, that ALS100+ can give the ES1868F a run for its money - impressive sound quality, sounds a lot deeper and richer than the SB16, and it works very well in terms of compatibility (can do both SB16 and SBPro), drivers are great. Would love to see you check out an ALS100/100+/200!

What LCD monitor are you using on your retro builds? I was at a thrift store and bought a Dell LCD and thought it would be really nice for retro gaming because its horizontal resolution was 1280, so 640 and 320 were evenly divided and so pixel scaling might work. Unfortunately it was 1280 x 1024, or 5:4 and not 4:3. Is your monitor 4:3? Because I can't seem to find ANY LCD monitors that are 4:3 @ 1280, ie: 1280 x 960...

I remember buying an ESS AudioDrive for my old Packard Bell PC back in the day, but I don't remember which chip it used.