I use several of these (and its bigger brother YMF744) in retro machines. With PC/PCI compatibility is great, but of course finding the appropriate motherboard can be a quest. A company called QDI back in the day made the most motherboards with PC/PCI headers, up into the Pentium4 era (chipsets 845, 848). I have several of those too and they work great with no crashes. I had a fairly lengthy thread on Vogons a few years back in which I posted motherboards that I discovered that have PC/PCI. Even some that only have the solder points not the header, and which can become PC/PCI enabled by simply soldering the header.
The Yamaha chip on these cards is actually from the DS-XG family of chips, which means that they support XG (eXtended General) MIDI, which is a Yamaha extension to the General MIDI standard. However, it also means that it is more than just a Wavetable synthesizer. It has tons of other features too (despite being a cut-down version of their XG flagship chips).
The XG synthesis is done in software on these cards, hence why it only works in Windows. It's quite a different beast to Yamaha's hardware XG synths (the MU series modules, SW series sound cards, etc), and presumably lower quality.
@@hikari_no_yume I did not know that. I had expected that these chips would at least provide _some_ hardware support for XG MIDI. Well, I learnt somethig new today ;-). p.s. proud owner of a MU-series module here.
Incidentally, from what I could find, I think the mixing of channels (up to around 64 at maximum polyphony) and possibly sample rate conversion are offloaded to the hardware. The main synthesis and effects aren't though. I guess it was a way for them to save costs and only need a single chip for cheaper cards.
@@hikari_no_yume Fascinating. I know the Yamaha OPL4 chip is capable of handling 24 channels of digital audio and could, for instance, be programmed to play tracker files. If the DS-XG chips are in fact "simple" wavetable synthesis devices, could they (in theory at least) then also be programmed in a similar fashion? If you're not interested in SB compatibility (which for most chips that provide SB compatibility rarely goes beyond meagre SB Pro support), could these be programmed from DOS in such a fashion?
the GOAT pci sound card (for dos). I have found my holy grail earlier in the year, which is a YMF744 with coax spdif output AND the pc/pci (sblink) pins. It's in a Pentium 3 currently but I'm thinking of running it alongside my Orpheus (just to keep drivers and devices separate in DOS vs W98) in my super socket 7 flexi machine. Great sound quality (via digital, kinda cheating), the OPL3 being legit sounds amazing when needed, plus the XG softmidi synth is crazy good compared to its price. It even does a half-decent job at A3D and EAX when turned on. 10 thumbs up!
Wow thanks for showing this card. I had one in my very first PC and enjoyed the XG synth so much I recorded the Doom midis with it and still listen to the.
@@DOSStorm no worries! I'm going to add them to video playlists on my other retro gaming channel one of these days. Thanks again for your awesome content and keep up the great work.
My version is lacking the SB Link header but it is on my To-do list to remedy that oversight. Great review and an excellent selection of tunes to jam to during the montage. 🤘
@T3hBeowulf I know Scrap Computing did a video on soldering pins on the pad and adding the needed components to get it all working. Makes me want to do that as well to some of the cards I have.
Thanks for this video, I’ve got a few of these cards hanging around, waiting to be installed in something. I normally gravitate toward a Soundblaster Live! but next time I need a card for a system with no ISA slot, I think I’ll grab one of these 👍🏼
For like an XP system I would take the Live since it has all the EAX goodies and is a bit lower noise floor. If you're doing Windows 95/98 though and want to play DOS games, this is a much better choice IMHO.
Can't beat those Yamaha drum kits, great job showing off what this card can do even without the PCLink option.. also huge props for throwing Zeliard in the mix, one of the more underappreciated early Sierra games that seems to get lost in Silpheed's shadow.
@@DOSStorm It's rather unforgiving as side scrollers go, I'd put it on the Batman NES level for difficulty. Like Silpheed it's pretty versatile in terms of the hardware it will run on; XT/808x and Hercules graphics / PCSpeaker on the low end up to MCGA/64-color or EGA graphics with Roland MT-32 audio on the high end.
I also have one of these, and it's my favorite PCI sound card for DOS. I was surprised with how well the emulation worked most of the time, especially comparing it to other PCI cards. The XG midi part sounds amazing, as well as the OPL being 100% perfect (unlike CQM on later Sound Blasters)
I think it's much better than the PCI cards from Creative at least for DOS. I would argue it is probably better than their late ISA CQM SoundBlasters as well at least from an FM sound perspective.
Hey! I have one of those exact cards in my pile. I had forgotten why I kept it around all these years. Noice! Thanks for all the info! Loved the sound bits.
Great video as always! I have a Intel branded 440BX2 chipset motherboard with this sound card built in. Its really nice to have a good soundcard integrated. If you load the Power YMF app you can choose different midi sound bank sizes for this card as well as some other options it opens up.
Mind me asking but what motherboard is it? Could it be the Intel Seattle 2? Is the XG synth any good in that motherboard? I have the opportunity to buy one and I am interested in the wavetable perfomance and sound mostly....
@@ivanmastrandrea5482 It's the Intel branded 440 BX-2 motherboard. The motherboard box on the side says: BOXSE440BX2 if that helps. The XG Chip is located in the rear lower half of the board behind the 3rd PCI slot. I believe most "Intel" 440BX2 boards have it. Sound quality is really good. It has genuine OPL3 inside as well.
I never seen this particular card in the wild. I've seen several SBLIVE! Cards which I have but I'm set with what I got. Good video as always. I had loved the music in vinyl goddess from Mars. Crush being the best besides the title screen music named tafa.
I have been experimenting with a Azza KT3-AV Socket A Motherboard and managed to get both the ESS AudioDrive ES1869F and a A-Trend HARMONY ATC-6631 (Yamaha YMF719E-S) ISA Sound Card. VIA KT133A can be a pain in the ass to work with.
I once had an YMF724. I plugged the output to my oscilloscope and made a frequency measurement. Seeing the results, I gave the card to a local used computer parts shop
I have this same card, a Labway LWHA301G50 (Yamaha YMF724). I also have a HOONTECH S1 Digital XG (with Yamaha YMF744) and a Labway LWHA471R1 XWave 6000 with Yamaha YMF754). I am a fan of these sound cards.
I have a card with this chip slated for a slot 1 build. The card and motherboard both have the PC/PCI Link headers, so the hope is that this box will give me good coverage / compatibility for DOS and Windows games from Y2K on back. I have all the parts I need but the motherboard has some leaky caps I haven't yet had time to replace. Maybe this winter I'll get around to it...
RE: PCI issues I upgraded to an PCI sound card. And the issue I encountered almost immediately was with my MS Sidewinder FFPro joystick. The force feedback would just randomly die and go limp mid game. (The MS FFPro worked flawlessly on my ISA sound card...)
@@DOSStorm I never got to figure out the cause. I managed to 'solve' the problem by re-installing my ISA sound card alongside my PCI card. Then I plugged in the joystick on the ISA sound card's port. Note -- it's only the force feedback that dies randomly. The joystick directions still work.
The Intel SE440BX-2 has the YMF-740C integrated (slightly cutdown 724) as well as the SBLink header. Whenever I've used it compatibility has been flawless, though I prefer using an Awe64 Value.
That would have been interesting. I would imagine the train of thought was to future proof as the ISA bus was being phased out. Obviously with 2000/XP getting rid of DOS that didn't age well.
@@DOSStorm That does appear to be what Intel was trying to do with the board. My problem ends up being that only one card in our household has SBLink, and that's the Solo-1 I installed in my Mum's retro PC. Which uses TDMA. All other's are either ISA or SB Live!.
I had a bit more compatibility by setting the IRQ for the card via BIOS to something away from 5, like 11 for instance. I don't know why but having the card hard-set to the IRQ the TSR is using will cause many if not all SB digi audio games to crash. I could at least get into Duke and Descent this way. Tyrian's a REAL pill on just about any PCI card, though. Also had a lot more luck in true DOS mode, even though that takes away the wavetable.
I was able to get SB working on both Descent and Duke 2 with IRQ 5. I should have been a bit more clear perhaps, I just muted the sound effects because they are obnoxiously loud especially on Duke 2 where there is no real volume control.
Have you seen the dISAppoinyment board on Vogons that makes use of a tpm header to connect ISA cards to modern mainboards? Looks like an awesome solution!
14:26 the intro sounds like a ripoff from the intro of the track Hearts, from the 1983 best seller album 90125 by the band Yes. Nice. Almas? Does the protagonist collect souls in this game (Almas means Souls in Portuguese and Spanish)
To be honest I don't know as I have not played the game much! A viewer suggested I use it for testing OPL2, which was a great suggestion as the music is very good.
Yamaha claims it's a hardware based "genuine OPL3" in spec sheet. So I'm assuming they have somehow integrated it into the chipset, or they are big liars. Either way it doesn't appear to use CPU cycles and it sounds good.
"My Compaq Presario 6505" 😁... heh, just realized while looking at my Peavey 6505 sitting besides me (Yes, my Peavey follows me everywhere, tame beasts) 😉. Greetings 🤘jenzGuitarist🤘
they shoulda just made a cable that ends in a ISA adapter card so they could have ISA compatibility instead of using the sblink or ddma or other nonsense. PCI soundcard would be used by the driver in windows while the ISA card would present a sbpro on the ISA bus.
...interesting... 'SB-Link' ...now i know why i could never get the 'card' version of this to work purely in DOS while the one built into the motherboard worked perfectly.... learn something new every day... its also torture that the XG functions work only with windows... this is a generic soundcard that happens to have a hardware opl3 to everything else... btw, if you ever get your hands on the PC version of final fantasy 7 that was made for win9x systems do give this card another listen...
I have managed to source SB-Link capable system since I did this video. So, I may give this card another shot and see what happens. I'll keep FF7 on my radar for when the time comes.
@@Pickle136 Ah, maybe you're right - I'll have to go check my P4 then for how I got an OEM SB LIVE card work in Win 98 and DOS. Sounds great at least though...
SB live offers wavetable support in dos as well as soundblaster compatibility so it's a good choice as well, especially for games with general midi music. But if it comes to OPL2/OPL3 FM you better chose another card. The Live do OPLx in software emulation and that will sound wrong in some situations.
@@pc-sound-legacy True, but in a P4 without ISA, I find a $10 LIVE to be quite adequate. I have not yet heard a game that didn't reproduce synth properly. I could be tone deaf though ;)
I use several of these (and its bigger brother YMF744) in retro machines. With PC/PCI compatibility is great, but of course finding the appropriate motherboard can be a quest. A company called QDI back in the day made the most motherboards with PC/PCI headers, up into the Pentium4 era (chipsets 845, 848). I have several of those too and they work great with no crashes. I had a fairly lengthy thread on Vogons a few years back in which I posted motherboards that I discovered that have PC/PCI. Even some that only have the solder points not the header, and which can become PC/PCI enabled by simply soldering the header.
Link to the thread?
The Yamaha chip on these cards is actually from the DS-XG family of chips, which means that they support XG (eXtended General) MIDI, which is a Yamaha extension to the General MIDI standard. However, it also means that it is more than just a Wavetable synthesizer. It has tons of other features too (despite being a cut-down version of their XG flagship chips).
The XG synthesis is done in software on these cards, hence why it only works in Windows. It's quite a different beast to Yamaha's hardware XG synths (the MU series modules, SW series sound cards, etc), and presumably lower quality.
@@hikari_no_yume I did not know that. I had expected that these chips would at least provide _some_ hardware support for XG MIDI.
Well, I learnt somethig new today ;-).
p.s. proud owner of a MU-series module here.
Happy to hear it! I have some XG hardware devices myself, but no MU as of yet. Yamaha made great things in the 1990's.
Incidentally, from what I could find, I think the mixing of channels (up to around 64 at maximum polyphony) and possibly sample rate conversion are offloaded to the hardware. The main synthesis and effects aren't though. I guess it was a way for them to save costs and only need a single chip for cheaper cards.
@@hikari_no_yume Fascinating. I know the Yamaha OPL4 chip is capable of handling 24 channels of digital audio and could, for instance, be programmed to play tracker files. If the DS-XG chips are in fact "simple" wavetable synthesis devices, could they (in theory at least) then also be programmed in a similar fashion?
If you're not interested in SB compatibility (which for most chips that provide SB compatibility rarely goes beyond meagre SB Pro support), could these be programmed from DOS in such a fashion?
man this is such an amazing sound card! zeliard sounds insane!
the GOAT pci sound card (for dos). I have found my holy grail earlier in the year, which is a YMF744 with coax spdif output AND the pc/pci (sblink) pins. It's in a Pentium 3 currently but I'm thinking of running it alongside my Orpheus (just to keep drivers and devices separate in DOS vs W98) in my super socket 7 flexi machine. Great sound quality (via digital, kinda cheating), the OPL3 being legit sounds amazing when needed, plus the XG softmidi synth is crazy good compared to its price. It even does a half-decent job at A3D and EAX when turned on. 10 thumbs up!
Does the digital out actually work when running in legacy modes?
@@DOSStorm it does, but i am having trouble initialising the dig out in dos. it works flawlessly in w98.
You can't do wrongn with yamaha in your retro pc. I listen with headphones and the 3D mode improves nicely! Thanks for the review 🎶
Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen a bad Yamaha product ever.
Wow thanks for showing this card. I had one in my very first PC and enjoyed the XG synth so much I recorded the Doom midis with it and still listen to the.
I should have included sound samples from DOOM, it does make it sound pretty amazing.
@@DOSStorm no worries! I'm going to add them to video playlists on my other retro gaming channel one of these days. Thanks again for your awesome content and keep up the great work.
This is a fantastic card. Especially if you can use the SB Link PC/PCI ability.
Agreed. I'd like to get a proper board and retest it eventually.
@DOSStorm Thankfully most of the boards that support it are Slot 1's. Which are amazing to work with.
@@Vanessaira-Retro there are some (not many but a few) pentium 4 motherboards that support PC/PCI. Most of them are from the company QDI.
My version is lacking the SB Link header but it is on my To-do list to remedy that oversight.
Great review and an excellent selection of tunes to jam to during the montage. 🤘
@T3hBeowulf I know Scrap Computing did a video on soldering pins on the pad and adding the needed components to get it all working. Makes me want to do that as well to some of the cards I have.
Thanks for this video, I’ve got a few of these cards hanging around, waiting to be installed in something. I normally gravitate toward a Soundblaster Live! but next time I need a card for a system with no ISA slot, I think I’ll grab one of these 👍🏼
For like an XP system I would take the Live since it has all the EAX goodies and is a bit lower noise floor. If you're doing Windows 95/98 though and want to play DOS games, this is a much better choice IMHO.
Can't beat those Yamaha drum kits, great job showing off what this card can do even without the PCLink option.. also huge props for throwing Zeliard in the mix, one of the more underappreciated early Sierra games that seems to get lost in Silpheed's shadow.
Thanks! Someone actually recommended I use Zeliard to test some cards. It seems like a neat game, I'd like to sit down and play through it sometime.
@@DOSStorm It's rather unforgiving as side scrollers go, I'd put it on the Batman NES level for difficulty. Like Silpheed it's pretty versatile in terms of the hardware it will run on; XT/808x and Hercules graphics / PCSpeaker on the low end up to MCGA/64-color or EGA graphics with Roland MT-32 audio on the high end.
The shilling worked, I subscribed.
haha much appreciated!
You're absolutely right, that wavetable alone is worth it! :)
Yep, it sounds awesome in most games.
I also have one of these, and it's my favorite PCI sound card for DOS. I was surprised with how well the emulation worked most of the time, especially comparing it to other PCI cards. The XG midi part sounds amazing, as well as the OPL being 100% perfect (unlike CQM on later Sound Blasters)
I think it's much better than the PCI cards from Creative at least for DOS. I would argue it is probably better than their late ISA CQM SoundBlasters as well at least from an FM sound perspective.
Hey! I have one of those exact cards in my pile. I had forgotten why I kept it around all these years. Noice! Thanks for all the info! Loved the sound bits.
Great video as always! I have a Intel branded 440BX2 chipset motherboard with this sound card built in. Its really nice to have a good soundcard integrated. If you load the Power YMF app you can choose different midi sound bank sizes for this card as well as some other options it opens up.
Mind me asking but what motherboard is it? Could it be the Intel Seattle 2? Is the XG synth any good in that motherboard? I have the opportunity to buy one and I am interested in the wavetable perfomance and sound mostly....
@@ivanmastrandrea5482 It's the Intel branded 440 BX-2 motherboard. The motherboard box on the side says: BOXSE440BX2 if that helps. The XG Chip is located in the rear lower half of the board behind the 3rd PCI slot. I believe most "Intel" 440BX2 boards have it. Sound quality is really good. It has genuine OPL3 inside as well.
@@Aaron.Newman does it sound similar to the one on the video or the S-YXG100 Soft Synth?
Yes we like it. I miss my Gravis Ultrasound isa classic from the good days.
Interesting! Never heard of SB Link before. I guess I'll be on the lookout for that. :)
Yeah I'm looking into finding a board that supports it.
I never seen this particular card in the wild. I've seen several SBLIVE! Cards which I have but I'm set with what I got.
Good video as always. I had loved the music in vinyl goddess from Mars. Crush being the best besides the title screen music named tafa.
I was lucky having YMF726 in 1997, remember FFVII with XG designed midi, marvelous
I have been experimenting with a Azza KT3-AV Socket A Motherboard and managed to get both the ESS AudioDrive ES1869F and a A-Trend HARMONY ATC-6631 (Yamaha YMF719E-S) ISA Sound Card. VIA KT133A can be a pain in the ass to work with.
I once had an YMF724. I plugged the output to my oscilloscope and made a frequency measurement. Seeing the results, I gave the card to a local used computer parts shop
I would assume the quality of the output depends on the manufacturer of the card. Some are probably better than others.
Of course we like this video! Nice! Next time it would be nice to compare game compatibility between DDMA with PC-PCI modes
Yeah, I think I will definitely try to get a compatible board before I test out any other cards with SB-Link.
In my opinion, Forte Media FM-801 is the most DOS-compatible PCI card.
ESS Solo-1 wants to have a word with you sir! 😂
Oooh, them’s fightin’ words!
I have this same card, a Labway LWHA301G50 (Yamaha YMF724). I also have a HOONTECH S1 Digital XG (with Yamaha YMF744) and a Labway LWHA471R1 XWave 6000 with Yamaha YMF754). I am a fan of these sound cards.
For a PCI cards they seem pretty nice. I'd like to get an SBlink motherboard and test it out again.
I have a card with this chip slated for a slot 1 build. The card and motherboard both have the PC/PCI Link headers, so the hope is that this box will give me good coverage / compatibility for DOS and Windows games from Y2K on back. I have all the parts I need but the motherboard has some leaky caps I haven't yet had time to replace. Maybe this winter I'll get around to it...
Yeah it should give you good coverage of games from 1990 up to 2002 or so if you have a Pentium 4 or something.
RE: PCI issues
I upgraded to an PCI sound card. And the issue I encountered almost immediately was with my MS Sidewinder FFPro joystick. The force feedback would just randomly die and go limp mid game. (The MS FFPro worked flawlessly on my ISA sound card...)
Good to know I guess. I wonder why that would be? Does it do it in both DOS and Windows games?
@@DOSStorm I never got to figure out the cause.
I managed to 'solve' the problem by re-installing my ISA sound card alongside my PCI card. Then I plugged in the joystick on the ISA sound card's port.
Note -- it's only the force feedback that dies randomly. The joystick directions still work.
If you're going to cover PCI sound cards, then you ought to look at the OG: the S3 Sonic Vibes!! Love the videos :)
Interesting, I didn't know S3 made any sound cards. I'll look into them!
The Intel SE440BX-2 has the YMF-740C integrated (slightly cutdown 724) as well as the SBLink header. Whenever I've used it compatibility has been flawless, though I prefer using an Awe64 Value.
That would have been interesting. I would imagine the train of thought was to future proof as the ISA bus was being phased out. Obviously with 2000/XP getting rid of DOS that didn't age well.
@@DOSStorm That does appear to be what Intel was trying to do with the board. My problem ends up being that only one card in our household has SBLink, and that's the Solo-1 I installed in my Mum's retro PC. Which uses TDMA. All other's are either ISA or SB Live!.
Its physically impossible not to make that face while playing the Descent soundtrack.
True that!
I had a bit more compatibility by setting the IRQ for the card via BIOS to something away from 5, like 11 for instance. I don't know why but having the card hard-set to the IRQ the TSR is using will cause many if not all SB digi audio games to crash. I could at least get into Duke and Descent this way. Tyrian's a REAL pill on just about any PCI card, though. Also had a lot more luck in true DOS mode, even though that takes away the wavetable.
I was able to get SB working on both Descent and Duke 2 with IRQ 5. I should have been a bit more clear perhaps, I just muted the sound effects because they are obnoxiously loud especially on Duke 2 where there is no real volume control.
Comparing Retro PC nostalgia to DMV nostalgia? "Them's fightin' words" as Bugs Bunny would say!
Have one, beast of a card!
Have you seen the dISAppoinyment board on Vogons that makes use of a tpm header to connect ISA cards to modern mainboards?
Looks like an awesome solution!
Thanks for bringing this to my attention! Sounds like a good solution for FreeDOS.
@@DOSStorm I'm almost looking for an ISA card to try it... almost ;)
In 2020, there was a big stock of new 744 cards in eBay. I missed my opportunity
Cool video
Thank you!
Well i imagine using it in a modern PC with PCI slot to spare
If it does support SB16
Yay for Yamaha XG
14:26 the intro sounds like a ripoff from the intro of the track Hearts, from the 1983 best seller album 90125 by the band Yes. Nice.
Almas? Does the protagonist collect souls in this game (Almas means Souls in Portuguese and Spanish)
To be honest I don't know as I have not played the game much! A viewer suggested I use it for testing OPL2, which was a great suggestion as the music is very good.
Zeliard is sounding great.
I agree, its one of the best sounding OPL samples here.
Yamaha goodness
They always seem to get it right don't they?
thanks a lot 🙏
wow, Symphony X enjoyer spotted
Guilty. I've seen them live 4 times!
The Asus P2B Slot -1 has DDMA "hehehe"
Is this a real OPL3 or just an emulation?
Yamaha claims it's a hardware based "genuine OPL3" in spec sheet. So I'm assuming they have somehow integrated it into the chipset, or they are big liars. Either way it doesn't appear to use CPU cycles and it sounds good.
Just got one of these. Still not convinced. Sounds little bit odd to me. Definitely will need to make one to one comparison with my CT1600.
@@james_gastovski Hmm... that is a good video idea.
Where are doom and doom2?
Why?
"My Compaq Presario 6505" 😁... heh, just realized while looking at my Peavey 6505 sitting besides me (Yes, my Peavey follows me everywhere, tame beasts) 😉. Greetings
🤘jenzGuitarist🤘
I'm a proud owner of a Peavey 6505 mini so its just a freudian slip on my part. haha
The best PCI soundcard for DOS is an ISA card :D
they shoulda just made a cable that ends in a ISA adapter card so they could have ISA compatibility instead of using the sblink or ddma or other nonsense. PCI soundcard would be used by the driver in windows while the ISA card would present a sbpro on the ISA bus.
...interesting... 'SB-Link' ...now i know why i could never get the 'card' version of this to work purely in DOS while the one built into the motherboard worked perfectly.... learn something new every day... its also torture that the XG functions work only with windows... this is a generic soundcard that happens to have a hardware opl3 to everything else...
btw, if you ever get your hands on the PC version of final fantasy 7 that was made for win9x systems do give this card another listen...
I have managed to source SB-Link capable system since I did this video. So, I may give this card another shot and see what happens. I'll keep FF7 on my radar for when the time comes.
The general midi sounds worst than a Awe32 or 64 Soundcard
You think? I kinda like it.
Seeing as these cards are getting kinda long in the tooth, I am most interested in modern replacements, just saying.
If you have an ISA slot and you can find one in stock, the PicoGUS is a nice solution.
Any SB Live! (even OEM ones like 0100) will work well with Unisound in DOS.
unisound only support isa
@@Pickle136 Ah, maybe you're right - I'll have to go check my P4 then for how I got an OEM SB LIVE card work in Win 98 and DOS. Sounds great at least though...
@@the_kombinator live does have its own dos drivers. Another new option would be sbemu.
SB live offers wavetable support in dos as well as soundblaster compatibility so it's a good choice as well, especially for games with general midi music. But if it comes to OPL2/OPL3 FM you better chose another card. The Live do OPLx in software emulation and that will sound wrong in some situations.
@@pc-sound-legacy True, but in a P4 without ISA, I find a $10 LIVE to be quite adequate. I have not yet heard a game that didn't reproduce synth properly. I could be tone deaf though ;)