[Ct4810 Audio Card Driver Download
Laverne Levenstein
To be specific, I'm reviewing the card pictured above. The model number is CT4810 but the markings on the main chip show CT5880-DCQ. I'm pointing that out because this card belongs to the Ensoniq Audio PCI family, of which there are many variants floating around, and some of them have different feature sets. The drivers I'm using are from the accompanying CD and they support Windows 95/98/NT4.0/2000/Millennium. For the record, this card came with a Socket A system that I got way back in early 2001. I was using it on a daily basis for about 4 years, so I'm familiar with all of its quirks and shortcomings. Anyway, let's start off with what this card can do.
Under Win9x, the Sound Blaster PCI 128 provides DirectSound3D support, as well as software emulated EAX 1.0 and A3D 1.0. As you can imagine, the last two don't sound so great, and using them will put an extra load on your CPU because of the emulation. The positional audio of this particular A3D implementation is kind of lackluster, while EAX can sound "scratchy" in some games. DirectSound3D works well enough, and I didn't notice any issues there. From the volume mixer, you can enable a "Spatial" 3D effect for all audio sources. Personally, I'm not a fan of this, as it just distorts the sound in arbitrary ways. Also, you can enable Reverb and Chorus effects for MIDI playback, if you like that sort of thing.
Speaking of which, General MIDI works by using ECW sets for the softsynth, which is Ensoniq's proprietary format. The driver CD contains three sets in total: 2MB, 4MB and 8MB with the last one arguably providing the best quality. You can switch between these sets from the driver panel at any time. Apparently, the 8MB ECW set also supports GS sounds + 10 drum kits. This card doesn't support soundfont loading (.SBK and .SF2 files) only the aforementioned ECW sets. The driver panel also allows you to use an external MIDI device instead of the softsynth, but unfortunately, this only works for native Windows applications (e.g. Windows Media Player). DOS games will always use the softsynth, regardless of what you select in the driver options.
The analog output of this card is reasonably clean, but there are some occasional clicks and pops when starting a game for the first time. Thankfully, the card can also output digital audio, if you select that option from the driver panel. To clarify, you still use the green audio jack for this, but it will be switched to SPDIF mode. To utilize this, you need a mono 3.5mm to RCA adapter which you plug into the card's green jack, and then connect the other end to a regular coaxial SPDIF cable. Using the card in this mode gets rid of the clicks and pops entirely. Note that if you set the card to digital output within Windows, this will carry over to pure DOS as well. Meaning, you can restart your computer in MS-DOS mode and still have fully working SPDIF output. Interestingly, even analog sources like CD audio can be mixed in and output via SPDIF, as long as you select the relevant option in the driver panel.
This card features SB16 and SBPro emulation for DOS games. The compatibility is pretty decent with later DOS titles (1994 and up), though you may encounter some issues with older games. Be advised that the card's DOS drivers require EMM386.EXE to be loaded, which some games like Turrican II don't like. During my tests, I haven't noticed any DMA clicking or distortions with digital audio. Interestingly, this card seems to properly support SBPro stereo, so if you select "Sound Blaster Pro" in a game's setup, you will get actual stereo sound. Of course, SB16 compatibility works fine as well. One thing that didn't seem to work was ADPCM i.e. there were no digital sound effects in Duke Nukem 2.
General MIDI works fine in pure DOS, and uses the same ECW sets that I mentioned earlier. To me, the instruments from those sets sound a bit bland (even with the 8MB ECW file) but they do the job well enough I suppose. The drivers feature a very basic mixer for pure DOS, which allows you to adjust the volume for digital audio, MIDI and CD audio. There is no setting for Line In or Microphone. However, the mixer does allow you to turn on MT-32 emulation. This can be useful for MT-32 games which don't use custom instruments such as Monkey Island.
And now we come to the worst feature of this sound card: the horrible FM synth emulation. It's truly awful, and every track from every game sounds incredibly broken when FM synth is selected. In short, if you plan on playing older DOS games which only support FM synth music, don't use this card. You can find some recordings below which showcase just how bad this sounds.
The Sound Blaster PCI 128 is a very basic Win9x sound card, with average DOS compatibility. It can be useful if you want to play late DOS titles and early Win9x games, but not for much else. A Sound Blaster Live! or Audigy card would be superior in every way, since those cards can do everything that the SB128 can, only better. The only redeeming quality of the SB128 is the SPDIF output, which works flawlessly in pure DOS, and doesn't need third-party tools to initialize that functionality. All in all, if you can get something better, skip this card.
BTW, I noticed that there's a driver CD image for the SB128 on archive.org. I checked it against my own CD, and it looks like mine is slightly newer, and my image is a bit larger. The DISK.ID of my CD is as follows:
Couldn't you fix that by always selecting Adlib or OPL2 in games' setup options instead of SB16 or OPL3. I think I remember doing that with the SBLive and Audigy Dos drivers and it sounded better than when selecting OPL3.
Speaking of which, General MIDI works by using ECW sets for the softsynth, which is Ensoniq's proprietary format. The driver CD contains three sets in total: 2MB, 4MB and 8MB with the last one arguably providing the best quality. You can switch between these sets from the driver panel at any time. This card doesn't support soundfont loading (.SBK and .SF2 files) only the aforementioned ECW sets. The driver panel also allows you to use an external MIDI device instead of the softsynth, but unfortunately, this only works for Windows applications (e.g. Windows Media Player). DOS games will always use the softsynth, regardless of what you select in the driver options.
What I can tell you is that General MIDI works very reliably on the SB128 in pure DOS. Meaning, every game recognizes that a General MIDI device is present and functional without any special adjustments. You simply select port 330 in setup and it works.
On a different note, I'd like to emphasize once again how simple it is to get SPDIF output working on this card in pure DOS. First, you just need these lines in your AUTOEXEC.BAT to initialize the card:
This assumes that your sound card is already correctly configured under Windows, as it will use all the settings from there. Naturally, HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE must be loaded in your CONFIG.SYS as well. By default, the card makes High DMA use 7 but I manually change it to 5 under Device Manager > Resources, because that more closely matches Creative's older cards. Next, as long as SPDIF is enabled in the Windows driver panel, it will also work in pure DOS. This is regardless of whether you actually select the "Restart in MS-DOS mode" option or create a custom PIF file. I think it's because of the following settings which get saved in the SBPCI.INI file:
And that's all it takes for the card to use SPDIF output in pure DOS. I find this remarkable because every other PCI sound card that I've tried either disables SPDIF completely in pure DOS, or needs some hacky workaround to make it usable. Oh, and if you're wondering about SPDIFRec=true, that just allows your analog sources like CD audio (using a standard analog cable) to be mixed in, so they can be output via SPDIF. Yet another nice feature of this card.
Thank you for your effort, especially for the sound files that I am familiar with. One of my boards has this sound card, or at least a variant of it, onboard. FM not bearable. Gap in knowledge: Why was there no final DOS (FM) compatible PCI sound card? Why not simply install or integrate the cheapest FM chip? An OPL3 chip would not have been necessary, CQM would have been sufficient in comparison. The hard break with DOS and ISA was understandable back then, but from today's retro perspective, this break was a bit too extreme. Or am I missing something?
Gap in knowledge: Why was there no final DOS (FM) compatible PCI sound card? Why not simply install or integrate the cheapest FM chip? An OPL3 chip would not have been necessary, CQM would have been sufficient in comparison. The hard break with DOS and ISA was understandable back then, but from today's retro perspective, this break was a bit too extreme. Or am I missing something?
There was a PCI version of the AWE64 at one point. It's discussed in this thread. And yeah, Creative kinda stopped caring about FM synth accuracy by the time PCI became the norm for sound. But other companies like Yamaha and ESS did have some PCI sound cards with proper FM synth.
I have an ESS Solo sound card that I would like to test under DOS. According to Phil(s Computerlab) it's one of the best PCI DOS sound cards, it sounds good and is compatible. Would this be a good alternative to the PCI 128 card?
The Solo-1 is one of the best PCI sound cards for DOS gaming, with excellent compatibility and a great sounding FM synth implementation (ESFM) which is nearly indistinguishable from genuine OPL3. However, compared to the SB128, the Solo-1 doesn't have built-in General MIDI support, though you can attach a wavetable daughterboard to remedy that. It also doesn't support EAX or A3D under Windows, if that is something you are looking for.
Nothing out of the ordinary right? Well, notice how the developer's comment mentions CD-DA yet there is no such option listed below. This made me curious, so I opened SBCFG.EXE using Norton Commander's viewer and found a reference to CDDAEnable right next to the other settings listed above. Then, I added that line to SBPCI.INI so that the relevant block now looks like this:
795a8134c1