Sound Blaster Vibra 16

[Derrik Navarro]

Finallyi have in my hands a roland scb-55.

Now i must mount it in an sound blaster card, i have 3 models:

sb16 ct2910 (very long card, with ide connector)

sb16 ct2940 (medium card, with ide connector)

sb16 ct2960 (normal card, no ide, but vibra16c)

There are some difference between this models?

The "vibra16c" is a true sound blaster 16?

I tried CT2910 and CT2960 with my SCB-55, both of them have the "hanging notes" MIDI bug. See this thread for more info.

The Vibra cards (except the ultra-cheap Vibra X[V]) generally sound cleaner than SoundBlasters with the 'classic' chipset, but they are missing some mixer features, like StickbyDos already mentioned.

I have a Vibra 16. IIRC it is an ISA Plug and Play card, so it needs a TSR driver to run in DOS (the driver is not for the sound card, but for DMA setting, IRQ setting, etc). I don't know whether I happen to own the model, or all Vibra 16 cards need such driver to run in DOS, though.

No, it is not CTCM for sure. I think it's "pre-CTCM" of some sort. I don't kinda remember, but IIRC the name of the file is something like DWCFGMG.SYS or such (sorry, I don't remember the exact wording, I left that one legacy system in my hometown ? ). However, it seems that it reads the ESCD file on my hard drive.

It needs to be loaded to the memory, and even with EMM386, it still eats up a lot of conventional RAM --let alone without EMM386. Thus, to play Ultima VII with sound, I always disable my CD ROM drive (not loading the CD ROM driver) in order to free up sufficient RAM.

I get the impression that it is not made by Creative at all, since during the first time installation, the name displayed is 'ISA Configuration Utility' or such. However, when it's not being loaded to the memory, no sound can be heard.

EDIT: Confirmed. The name is indeed DWCFGMG.SYS. I googled a little, and found the reference here. Yes, it is not CTCM. In fact, I ain't using CTCM at all; only DWCFGMG, and boy, it eats a lot of RAM.

The normal Creative installation process should have provided a DOS Configuration Manager called CTCM.EXE, which will have been inserted into your CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT file. (DWCFGMG.SYS is an alternate PnP manager that may be used in CONFIG.SYS, but it uses 1700 bytes of low DOS memory whereas CTCM does not, and doesn't set the BLASTER string in the DOS environment.)

If you have a Windows 9x system, it should be in your C:\WINDOWS\DOSSTART.BAT file. This is the file that is supposed to perform tasks similar to AUTOEXEC.BAT when you select 'Start ... Shut Down ... Restart in MS-DOS Mode'.

Well the good news is that DWCFGMG doesn't need EMM386. Nope. It can be perfectly loaded to conventional RAM (DEVICE=C:\DWCFGMG.SYS), so it can run Ultima VII perfectly (unlike, for instance, Sound Blaster Live! driver that needs EMM386). However, do mind that it devours conventional RAM, so you may need to disable your CD ROM drive or other devices.

1700 bytes is not that bad compared to the totally useless CTMMSYS.SYS and CTSB16.SYS drivers Creative's DOS installer is so happy to include in the CONFIG.SYS. They easily take 10 KB ?, but are not needed for anything important, so you can REM them out...

It depends on the game, if you want to check your setup, run DOOM (the shareware version will do) with Gerneral MIDI (Sound Canvas, Wave Blaster) music. The bug cannot be missed in the music of the first level, single instruments will 'get stuck' after a short time, it sounds very annoying. If it plays fine on your card, don't bother ?

As I recall, there were two main compatibility issues with the Vibras. First, the mixers did not have separate treble/bass controls. Second, the Vibras used two 8-bit DMA channels to simulate one 16-bit DMA channel, which didn't always work properly.

another little problem...

in dos this card works ok (no drivers or setting need).

but with windows 98, there are some software or driver to install?

i have thy yesterday, but i think, windows 98 can't see the roland card....

where i can find the drivers?

or the settings?

1) I would say a Vibra16S is the same as a Vibra16S

2) Assuming we're talking about the Awe64s OPL3, refer to the ancient CQM vs Genuine Yamaha debate. I would go with the Awe64 for the additional midi capabilities of course, due to not being overwhelmingly concerned with clinical accuracy. If you want all sounds to be perfectly genuine, then get the 16S or Pro 2.0

3) I prefer vibra16S over the pro 2.0 (sacrilege, I know) due to having much much less line noise, and me not particularly caring for any issues with stereo. I've yet to run into any compatibility issues that have actually been noticeably annoying to me, even though I'm told regularly how much better the Pro II is.

Three pet peeves:

-Sound Blaster Pro: Yawn. There are a ton of cards that do an acceptable job at SB Pro compatibility. Almost of all of them are way cheaper than a real one.

-OPL vs. ESFM vs. CQM: People act like your ears will explode if you listen to anything other than a real Yamaha chip. I've only come across a couple things that I thought were really terrible: Analog Devices and the emulation on Soundscape and GUS cards.

-Hanging Note Bug: Are you going to actually drive anything with the MPU-401 interface? A lot of beginners aren't, but still get hung up on this.

Vibra 16 is as good as a SB16, does anyone really use the Bass/Treble settings on their SB16's? (as thats the only real difference)

AWE is a SB16 with the EMU chip, so really this is the better choice if you already have it. but if your games don't support the AWE as a music device it'll be no different.

Wrong.

There are at least three types of Vibra Chips: C,S and XV and as far as I know all XV's are DSP rev. 4.16 and therefore bug free.

Problem anyway: I don't know any Vibra XVs with a wavetable header. I added one to my Soundblaster 16 WavEffects making that card to a pretty decent one for casual DOS gaming

Grtz,

Thomas

Some Vibra16 cards are PnP and some are not.

There are models with OPL3 and models with CQM.

Models with or without high-DMA support.

Models with the hanging-note bug or without it.

And some Vibra16 cards support bass/treble regulation.

3) I prefer vibra16S over the pro 2.0 (sacrilege, I know) due to having much much less line noise, and me not particularly caring for any issues with stereo. I've yet to run into any compatibility issues that have actually been noticeably annoying to me, even though I'm told regularly how much better the Pro II is.

This has been my experience as well, it baffles me how so many people call the Pro 2 a "silent" card. I had one for several years during the 90s (it was my first sound card) so it's really nostalgic to me, and currently I own two, but each time I use them I cannot stand the line noise compared to a SB16.

Pros are quiet on older motherboard made by solid brands, cheap clones from late nineties have shit supply rails filtering and you will hear it on Pro (interrupts when moving a mouse, hard drive, etc).

SB16 = clicks and pops in games without direct SB16 support.

If you want to equip a PC XT, such as my beloved Amstrad PC1640, with a sound card, you have typically two possibilities. Either you spend a lot of money and get one of the rare 8-bit soundcards at ebay, or you buy a replica. The latter are also not for free, and may have a limited function spectrum.

A third possibility is you buy one of the 16-bit ISA cards that function also in an 8 bit ISA slot. But how to make them fit in a PC like the Amstrad, who have the mainboard covered with an anti-static shielding? You can remove the shielding, but to you want that? And do you get drivers?

Have tried unisound. Nice tool, thanks for point to it, works nicely with the card! For the CT4170, it seems to do essentially the same job as the ct4170.exe tough, but with the practical extra that one can adjust the volume already with the activation.

Little addendum, I manged the Game Port to work in the XT, using unisound. Took my a while to realize that the the tool sets the defaul io address for the game-port to 0x200, upon which, most DOS games at least in the Amstrad dont recognize the joystick. One needs to set it to 201 So just add a J201 to the Blaster variable, and it rocks.

Yesterday i tried the software which was linked in the first post but i ran into some irq conflicts resulting in having serious hdd issues once the soundblaster was activated. I guess i'll have to try different irq settings or testing the card in an xt with fewer extension cards installed.

Although they were not the first way of making noises from a computer (PC Speakers, parallel port adapters, Ad-lib Sound Cards and Gravis Ultrasound cards), they were one of the most popular and affordable devices. Initially, quality was lacking, but over the first few generations, the cards improved and the Soundblaster 16 was a big hit.

This is a later card, intended for people to upgrade their systems for MPC compliancy. The IDE connector allowed for people to add an IDE CD-ROM to their computers, as most only featured a single IDE connector at the time, used by hard disks and ZIP drives.

This is a very cost-reduced version of the improved Vibra chipset. Note the lack of IDE interfaces, or the Yamaha OPL chip. In fact, with this model, they introduced their own competing FM Synthesis system called CQM synthesis which was criticised for a less-than-faithful emulation of the OPL which it replaced.

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