Sound Blaster 16 CT1740 Review 

darak2 I had no clue at the time. I did they one clone card once, and went straight back to Creative. It was only like many, many years later that I heard about the issues.

Yeah, all the games spoke directly to hardware, so having an original Creative card was worth it. I went from a Pro to a SB16 to an AWE32 and continued using Creative cards even when their value was questionable compared to integrated audio. Now I know, in insight, how other companies probably made better cards with cleaner sound and less issues, but 100% compatibility was never guaranteed in DOS since every game did things differently and nobody was really serious about following specs. Probably every sound engine ever made for DOS was buggy in one way or another, it really was a case of 'it works in my card, let's hope it works for others'. Developers were partly to blame, but at the time quality documentation was scarce even for professionals. I had a Soundblaster 2.0 development kit at some time, and I remember it as a massive book full of blatant mistakes and sample code which often would refuse to even compile.

That is a good point. Having one company dominate, does have its benefits. Just imagine having to support 6 different sound standards. So that was good. I'm pretty sure I had such a card back in the day, it was certainly one of the early models and it had jumpers. But I do remember getting stuck notes in Doom sometimes, so maybe it was an even older card. It was a Sound Blaster 16 Basic AFAIK, but I will never know for sure... The good old Sound Blaster and Sound Blaster 2 are the most trouble free. They just work. No mixer or anything to adjust :)

Yeah, my first SoundBlaster used switches in the card and was hassle-free. No crappy software in your AUTOEXEC.BAT making your boot time slower either. I remember when I got that card and how disappointed I was when I realized most music would use the FM chip, which I considered a small upgrade from the ZX Spectrum I had before. The Tetra Composer MOD demo that came with the card changed my mind, but unfortunately very few games ended up using tracker music (but hey, Deus Ex was one of those, best main game theme ever!). I eventually went to appreciate Adlib music and realized it was rarely used to its full potential. Most developers just had their musician compose in some expensive MIDI equipment and converted that data straight into Adlib notes, alongside some patches that often came from some library or previous game and didn't really resemble the original instruments. The result was often a mess, but I guess there was no easy way to port the same music in a huge variety of platforms and sound hardware.

i also found a ct1770 sb16 scsi with the dsp 4.05 that is free of the hanging note bug, i don't use midi devices, only FM synthesis so i don't really care about if the card has the hanging note bug or not

Nice :D I purely replaced them to make it easier to show which does what.

It was mine too :) I remember it was called SB16 Basic Edition back in the day. Later added GUS Ace along with it, since demo scene was a big thing then (and today) in Finland.

I built my 486 rig after watching your vids btw. Brings back all the feels from the old days. Hoping to get my kids playing DOS edutainment games one day like I used to. (It's got a vga crt monitor also for authenticity)

I know the feeling. I have about 10 project pcs I need to finish, but I can never get any one of them "perfect" so they stay in a mess.

Dude! Do this! Save the retroworld - keep it alive ♥

I noticed the same thing. Do we know which setting is truly DMA 1?

Talking about dropping files, I had quite the trouble getting drivers for my SB 128 PCI (Using an Ensoniq ES1373) that work when rebooting into DOS. The card works fine with the drivers from the Creative website, but they only provide the latest drivers which dropped MPU-401 emulation. In he end I found an image of the original driver CD that came with the card somewhere on the web.

That's awesome :D

Yea seems a mistake!

Maybe at a later stage, I've got some other that I need to get through first :)

Are you using a wavetable board?

I have a CT1740 059334 with a Yamaha DG50XG daughter-board attached and also don’t experience lag in DN3D with high sample rate FX. The card is identical as far as I can see apart from the fact that it doesn’t have that resistor fix.

For many of us I think, although for me it was the older Sound Blaster 1.5. I skipped anything with Pro, so it was straight to the 16. Actually, I did try a non Creative card first, it was a huge let-down, so I "ran" back to Creative right away and got the SB16 + Roland wavetable board.

Oxygenic same here! It was a 486dx2, back in 1993

Check out the model # on it. it usually is something like CT2230. Then search for that chip to figure out which card exactly it is and how it behaves with the DMA clicking hanging notes and FM synthesis.

Yea Windows 98 is pretty easy enough, but DOS can be a challenge to get going. I try my best to put in place tools to help, but every system and configuration is different, so often one has to do a bit of messing about :)

@@philscomputerlab Indeed - but the effort was worth it to get my computer MS DOS ready, I am luck that I have a few machines to rely on. Really appreciate your help as the website and video instructions were easy to follow. Now I fully understand what you mean when you talk about sound cards with good DOS compatibility

Lucas Milani No, I will make individual reviews as this suits my pace.

Maybe throw some OPL3 emulations on later cards and software solutions in the mix. Like some soundofnts tha claim to be like the OPL3.

The CT1740 doesn't use PnP and therefore doesn't need CTCM.

Yea pretty much. I'm starting to look at cheaper alternatives, that I have always dismissed, but I'm not finding it quite a bit of fun. I checked out the ESS AudioDrive and they are great, but there are others with chips from Aztech and Opti that want to try. And of course the Yamaha ISA cards, they are excellent.

Nice!

I think I have the PAS 16? What "distinctive" sound did it have?

It did a good job of Soundblaster 16 emulation, but some games specifically supported the Pro Audio Spectrum and I believe they had slightly different music. The first game that comes to mind is One Must Fall 2097.

I don't think this is an IDE interface, but for the propriety Panasonic / Creative drive.

There was the Creative Labs Multimedia Starter Kit that combined a SB16 with Creative branded Panasonic CD-ROM.

Make sure the gameport is active, there is a jumper!

Jumper shows it as active

@@fourby4toy Hmm, does the board or the IO controller have a game port? It might just be a header even...

"Best" is totally subjective, pretty much every sound card has it's own signature and it does depend a lot on the game, with later games, a Sound Blaster 16 are often the way to go.

IIRC SB16 can't do SB PRO stereo FM (dual OPL2). Of course beign creative they claimed FULL compatibility with SB PRO on the box, and after the people found out about the issues.

piecaruso97 Don't have one and I'm basically prices out. But there are more of other interesting cards to look at.

Stefan Lelieveld If you're using DOS, ISA is the way to go.

Unless I'm confusing RU-vidrs here Phil did a video on an Ensoniq PCI card which is basically the same as SB PCI 64 a short while ago. From my experience both SB PCI 64 and PCI 128 both suck for both DOS and Windows. If you're prepared to give up on EAX sound then maybe something like a Guillemot Maxi Sound 64 would be a card to consider. It's ISA but still does 4 channel DirectSound3D in Windows.

I'm locked in with these games for testing with other videos. To get a good recording, you got to mute the inputs in the mixer.

Thanks for you reply ;) Can you use Tyrian OST for your audio test?

+Charles thekinglov I doubt it will fix the DMA clicking bug and the hanging note MPU-401 issue.

the hanging note bug is from the dsp chip, 4.12 and 4.13 dsp chips had that so called bug, 4.05 didn't have the bug

What about the lagging in Duke 3d with a wavetable board?

I stopped doing that, it was too much work. I will do individual videos, but use mostly the same games. Also, I explicitly mention the strengths and weaknesses of the cards, so that should be a good start :D I wouldn't read too much into it, as sometimes a different machine can make a card sound better or worse. Especially when it comes to the noise.

The one thing I've learned is that you just have to hear things yourself. No ones ears are the same. I remember in high school a teacher had a CRT TV facing the wall with nothing glowing. I heard the whine all through class and it bugged the heck out of me. The next day it was still on, still bugging me so I asked if I could get up and turn the TV off. The teacher told me that it was off but I insisted it was on. He goes back, hits the power button and said that yes, it was on. Apparently, I was the only one that could hear it.

Yes, that is so true! A good example is a review of an Aztech card coming up. Over headphones I could hear pretty much all Sound Blaster effects and speech being distorted or scratchy. But later, I watched the video on the TV and couldn't really hear those details. So I think a lot of people will be happy with how it sounds, which will affect the recommendation as it's actually a mint card and dirt cheap.

Makoto Enoki The installer takes care of all of that!

The installer should add the lines to the autoexec.bat, however if you use a SB Live card I recommend checking anyway-I've found that the drivers love having the lines in the wrong positions and the sound won't work in games that reuire real DOS mode unless the error is corrected.

The environment value just makes it easier for games to 'detect' the card. Old games didn't need it; you set the configuration to use the correct hardware settings manually. You only need software to adjust the mixer.

I've seen images with the resistor online, but who knows...

No its to add intelligent mode to the MPU-401 interface.

That issue is more complex than it seems: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ZiSM5pUGab4.html

@PhilsComputerLab thanks a ton Phil, this got me up and going! I had a good look at the Readme as well, so have a much better understanding of the steps you followed as well. Crazy how things worked back then, but now I'm basking in some OPL goodness. That's again!

@@MarshalArnold Awesome 🥰👍

www.philscomputerlab.com/ms-dos-starter-pack.html

Yes windows 98 is PnP and should install drivers automatically. I do recommend installing the driver update, which you can get from the Creative website.

@@philscomputerlab hmm i was already a bit worried that its not normal my Windows 98 doesnt recognize my audio card, not even a unknown device in the device manager. The card works fine in Dos, i went through the Diagnose program and tested the sound. So the problem i have is Windows 98. These are the settings from the Diagnose tool: DSP version: 4.13, Base I/O: 220H, Wave Table: 620H, MPU401: 330H, IRQ: 7, DMA: 1, 5. The driver update could only work if Windows actually sees a card, otherwise the update does nothing i think. Any suggestions because iam really stuck...

@@philscomputerlab What are the basic steps for this soundcard to get it to work in Windows 98? Just plug it in the computer then let Win98 install de drivers automatically, then install the update? So i dont need to install anything in Dos and therefore autoexec.bat doesnt need any extra lines of code?? Iam confused what is manditory to get it to work.

I will for sure take a look at a later stage.

I will for sure take a look at a later stage.

PhilsComputerLab ok thanks a lot!

Because this is the only use I found for it >

Abandon-ware, unless it pops up on GOG one day.

Alex4SiliconValley the sb Pro 2 if you want to have good compatibility with older dos games

he IS :) but now lives in Australia

He was originally an Austrian that now lives in Australia but has plans of conquering New Zealand while wearing a Pickelhaube.

Don't know, this is my first Sound Blaster 16 I checked out :D

PhilsComputerLab Every revision I check out has either the DMA issue or the midi bug, or it's one of those Vibras with the CQM, which sounds harsh and inaccurate :(

Have you tried an ESS AudioDrive? With the 1868 or 1869 chipset, they are pretty good. I will check out more cards as we go along, Aztech, Opti and others!

PhilsComputerLab I've seen your review of it, and I got curios. I tried to find one, but they are pretty hard to come by here in Italy

They should be really easy to find...

No it's not, many Sound Blaster 16 cards have a buggy MIDI interface that can produce hanging notes in some games! Google it, it's a well documented issue!

@@philscomputerlab awesome thanks Phil. Reason I ask is that for whatever reason I cant get my Awe64 gold to transmit a midi signal to my roland midi devices. Specifically the sc55mk2. Perhaps there are specific settings I have to configure? I feel like iv tried everything

@@ScanlineCity Hmm AFAIK the only thing you need to check is that one jumper on the AWE is closed for MPU401 to work. But otherwise it should just work. Make sure to test both the MIDI input and output cable, sometimes they are mislabelled.

@@philscomputerlab ok thanks! I didn't know the awe64 had jumpers. I will look into it. You inspired me into this hobby...thanks again Phil!!!!

@@ScanlineCity I'm sure we'll figure it out, it's nothing overly complex. Have you confirmed that the Sound Canvas is working? Like with a USB MIDI adapter, or another sound card with MIDI interface?

I only used it for making that video.

I see... Thanks anyway.