CMI8x38 FM/OPL quality

[Ryan Underwood]

Hi,

I've been hacking around with my CMI8738 in Linux and DOS for the last few
days. The databook for the chip claims that it emulates a SBPro or SB16,
depending on where you look. Anyway, I wrote a little detection routine,
and it looks like it places a OPL3 at 0x220-0x223 and a first half of a
OPL3 at 0x388-0x389. However, the sound quality is very strange. It
sounds like an emulator which is running on too slow a CPU -- dropped
notes, wrong timing, bad sound in general. I enabled the chip first with
SETAUDIO.COM, and then with my prog written against the databook under
DOS. I use various games and adlib music disks, and the results are all
the same.

Does anybody have a PCI CMI8338 or CMI8738 under DOS or Linux/ALSA and
have FM sound with a decent quality? Does the Windows driver use its
hardware "capabilities" or does it use an emulator instead to cover up
some deficiency?

I'm also curious if the old CMI8330 Soundpro had the same issues with
crappy FM. Maybe this is something I'm doing wrong or something wrong
with my system instead (600Mhz Athlon, AMD-750 chipset)

Thanks!