This Sound Card Is a Disaster for DOS Games (Trident 4DWave DX)

[@DOSStorm]

If any of you are still lusting for more examples of this card ruining your favorite games, I made a short with Rise of The Triad, WC2 and Skyroads. kzbin.infoabbaBrDHlZ8?si=SKbHAFmm0a_2Y6Qt

[@IntegerOfDoom]

I appreciate all of my ISA SoundBlasters so much now.

[@DOSStorm]

@@IntegerOfDoom Yeah just slotting in an SB16 and having it just work and sound good without screwing around is great. However, I like messing with these oddball cards...sometimes they surprise you.

[@kunka592]

Yamaha rules, SoundBlaster drools!

[@IntegerOfDoom]

@@kunka592 I gotta get me some of that.

[@IntegerOfDoom]

@@DOSStorm Yeah the freak hardware is fun to mess with.

[@TheYuppiejr]

As someone who grew up with only Sound Blaster cards it's not all roses looking back in retrospect, the early 8-bit models worked pretty well but were noisy, the SB16 generation ushered in a weird period of mix-match components / evolving (often not for the better) designs that featured often noisy DAC's, phantom/hanging note MIDI issues, bad FM synth substitutions and a mix of both jumper and PnP implementations. The AWE32 models which evolved from the SB16 had tons of promise on paper but the mind numbingly dumb decision to leave off a hardware MIDI interpreter (even though the SBPro and 16 had supported a suitable UART mode MPU401 interface with the DB15 or wavetable breakout interface) required the AWEUTIL, which in turn was incompatible with the real mode runtime engine that almost every popular game that supported General MIDI used at the time.... I've done a lot of retro PC hardware projects and the newer Yamaha YMF-7xx and ESS ES186x series ISA PnP cards paired with the Unisound PnP initializer + a Dreamblaster S2 is a vastly simpler and more compatible solution than the original SB16's, of which I own a few for nostalgia purposes.

[@PXAbstraction]

As a former suffering user of Trident video cards, I can confidently say that this company never made a good product.

[@DOSStorm]

It seems to make sense they are no longer around.

[@CDiFan237]

I have an old Daewoo PC with this chip integrated onto the motherboard. One weird issue it sometimes has is it will play the first quarter-second of a WAV file, and continuously loop it until the system is rebooted (I.e. If the Windows Ding sound plays, it will just go "Di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di..." non-stop until a reboot). The wavetable synth is interesting though, as certain MIDI files will even play at that lower pitch. Also sometimes on boot, it will list itself in the PCI device table as about 20 separate multimedia devices and freeze the system.

[@dabombinablemi6188]

That might be caused be a resource conflict. Had the same problem getting my ESS 1868f configured in my K6-III+ PC (primarily due to the always active IDE controller). Being PCI however, you may find that the only fix is to remove conflicting devices in "device manager" (as well as disable some if all IRQ are used), and hope that re-installing the drivers reallocates resources correctly. Doesn't mean that it'll stay fixed if that works as I had to remove/re-install the USB and videocard drivers multiple times due to Windows 98SE changing IRQ allocations on the next boot.

[@DOSStorm]

Yeah I had it do that to me as well at one point. I can't reproduce it on command though. I also had it working fine at one point but everything in DOS was playing back at the wrong sample rate with a crazy low pitch. I'm guessing its another resource conflict problem. The thing just has gremlins man!

[@DOSStorm]

@@dabombinablemi6188 Sometimes resetting the config data or manually reassigning resources in the BIOS can help as well. Early PnP devices can be such a pain, I'd rather they have jumpers most of the time.

[@dabombinablemi6188]

@@DOSStorm Problem is - up until the turn of the millenium, the bios on most boards were still awful at handling PnP IRQ. In my case, the boards gets confused as soon as there are only 2-3 free IRQ (even if they are the exact IRQ required - eg. 5, 10 and 11). TBH the only boards I have without PnP issues are my Via KT600 (MSI), KT400A (Asrock), i815E (ECS) and Intel SE440BX-2.

[@westcoastcaper]

As much as I love old school hardware, seeing One Must Fall 2097 in the video made me cheer!

[@TimNeumann-q7b]

The only PCI cards I'm in the hunt for are the Yamaha variations but like all else retro they're super expensive. Enjoyed the video!

[@DOSStorm]

Some of the Aztech branded cards like the Sound Galaxy 16 have OPL3 chips and you can snag them for around $25 if you look around. Edit: ah you said PCI cards lol

[@dabombinablemi6188]

You could always try to find motherboards with a YMF-740C integrated. Good compatibility, quality and of course OPL-3 integrated. And at least on my Intel SE440BX-2, they have a very clean output.

[@JayTheComputerGuy]

I kind of like the renditon of E1M1 this card puts out! It sounds slightly lower pitch

[@DOSStorm]

The Wavetable is actually kind of neat on this thing, its like the only thing that is likable about it.

[@subynut]

Growing up, I had an Orchid SoundWave32 in my computer. It had a DSP in it that would emulate SBPro and Windows Sound System plus it had a General MIDI Wave-table Synthesis that did a pretty ok job of handling most MIDI files I had at the time. It also had a 3d FM Systh mode that made some games sound great and others sounded awful! Kinda like that Trident sounded. LOL Overall, I really liked that sound card even though the SB emulation was only the Pro instead of the 16. That was one of the reasons I added a ProAudio Spectrum 16 to the system and played the dance of I/O, IRQ, and DMA configurations! That was fun getting those two to work! LOL In the end, those two cards gave me the best of both worlds with a few extra options as well. Anyway, I enjoyed this review of a sound card I had never heard of before and it brought back memories of my old DOS / Windows computers.

[@jbinary82]

Please! Try this in SBEmu, the new sound blaster emulator. As it's ac97 it might work

[@DOSStorm]

Good idea!

[@sluxi]

That was interesting, would have loved to hear it butcher even more beloved game music with the fm synth mode.

[@DOSStorm]

Haha, maybe I'll throw a few more examples in a short or something.

[@physbryan]

@@DOSStorm If you do, Wing Commander II or Wing Commander Academy would be interesting since it also uses FM synth for sound effects much like Commander Keen 4 did. I can barely wait for how ear-punishing it will be!

[@DOSStorm]

@@physbryan Sure why not!

[@Mwyann]

I guess the main reason the sound is not that great in DOS mode is because games used to use OPL3 instruments for sound effects (jump, fire...). Once translated to more complex instruments, it surely doesn't sound like the devs intended.

[@DOSStorm]

Yes, if you disable sound effects its a bit better but still kind of awful and weird.

[@FOIL_FRESH]

i bought one of these cards about a year back because i was so interested in how it would sound - it's worse than i imagined, and that's a good thing! the actual problem with my card is that it doesn't output any sound at all. it's very broken. at least i got it in its box, with its oh so cheesy 90s design. how did you find it's soundblaster 16 compatibility/quality? I had the idea of using it alongside one of my YMF744 cards to only do SB16 while the yamaha did everything else. great vid as always!

[@DOSStorm]

@@FOIL_FRESH The quality isn't bad at all. The problem is some games just don't work, or have weird artifacting/stutter.

[@detalite]

Trident 4DWave was integrated in SiS630/730 chipset.

[@revcrussell]

Trident also made the Trident 4DWave NX, I have them both in my collection but haven't tried either other than to POST.

[@DOSStorm]

Give it a try! The wavetable is at least ok. I'm curious how different your experience would be from mine.

[@pc-sound-legacy]

In the late 90s, "multimedia" was what is "AI" today. Everyone talked about it and every related company wanted to be part of the hype. Sound was a key element so Trident was consequent enough to make a soundcard. S3, Opti and many others did so as well. But also many of them failed to gain marked share. (No wonder in this case I guess). The wavetable sounds better than I remember to be fair. But the FM emulation -horrible!

[@DOSStorm]

Yeah it was a huge buzzword when CD-ROMs came out. My IBM 486 has "multimedia" plastered all over it on the stickers which is pretty funny considering how limited it is as a multimedia machine. Anyway yeah, the wavetable on this card is actually quite decent! Like I said in the video it will sound different with some driver versions. I used this driver: archive.org/details/sharkmm

[@Vanessaira-Retro]

Love seeing my other favorite KZbinr's on my other favorite KZbinr's channel. :D

[@modlabs]

Did you tried to disable USB?

[@DOSStorm]

I did, no dice unfortunately. It just doesn't play nice with this board for some reason.

[@modlabs]

@@DOSStorm well, you gave me Inspiration to find such card for testing.

[@sebastian19745]

@@DOSStorm I found that on some motherboards/BIOS versions there is a setting that specify if you use a PnP OS. Sometimes, it make a difference. I had a Hercules sound card that worked only if I selected Non PnP OS without manually asigning any IRQ/IO adress to PCI. Also, I found that older Realtek AC97 codecs had on early drivers some SB emulation for dos games under WinXP/2k that kinda worked with real dos games (chopped sound, games were slow) if the setting was PnP OS. You are right, ther are cards that do work only on some PCI slots. I have a SiS6202PCI video card that never ever worked on the first PCI slot, no matter the motherboard I tested it in (Socket 7 to Slot1 and even socket A) only if there was no integrated video onboard.

[@joaoc_PT]

Ralphie version of soundcards. Test Rise of the Triad!

[@DOSStorm]

Yeah I need to add more games to my test setup. Rise of the Triad is a good choice!

[@summerlaverdure]

is it just me or does virtualfm seem more like a nothingburger marketing term like blast processing, to try and get suckers to buy their sound card for what is just "it plays midi in dos too" this was a great video!

[@DOSStorm]

I guess its more like a nothing burger with cheese since it does actually do what it says. It seems like a bit of an afterthought in some ways. However, I'm not sure if it is harder on a technical level to implement actual FM emulation or just do whatever the heck they did here. I'm guessing its easier/cheaper to do the wavetable thing since it is likely mostly software driven.

[@summerlaverdure]

@@DOSStorm good point, i guess its doing a little more than i claimed but it sounds so bad i dunno why they even bothered 🤣

[@DOSStorm]

@@summerlaverdure Well its here for our amusement some 25 year later, so that is better than nothing I guess! 😆

[@Pickle136]

yeah sounds like one those cards that have a grand idea of using its midi bank for FM synth.

[@xKynOx]

I like experimental music/Noise/Drone and I think it sounds great.

[@DOSStorm]

I cannot deny it is very different sounding!

[@sparki_]

please a yamaha ymf7x4 review 😢

[@SianaGearz]

This is hilarious. You know how there's people who are in love with Sonic music as tortured by wrongly clocked Atmega consoles. This is going to be a sought-after collector's item now. Now i'm just curious how the DOS version of the driver may creatively butcher ALL the games. Because there's actual logic behind the OPL patch matching, it almost makes sense. Almost but not quite. It's sort of impressive really if you think about it, if not really in a good way. Also the various soundbanks are sort of... the larger ones are not strictly a higher quality versions of the smaller ones, they're all slightly different in character! But they do sound fairly pleasant, they aren't too unbalanced and aren't trying to do too much heavy lifting.

[@dabombinablemi6188]

So many cheap late 90's soundcards/chips beg the question of manufacturers "why not an ESS Solo-1E instead?". Highly compatible, flexible, excellent fm-synth if you were going for that, 3D effects and handles playback/record at 6KHz through to 48KHz (unlike the Live! series with their need to resample). And very cheap to implement cleanly if my generic (and of fairly modern manufacture) Solo-1E card is to go by. So much worse than the AudioPCI.

[@Kawa-oneechan]

The worst thing about the Commander Keen midification is that we actually have the originals, before they were converted to OPL.

[@DOSStorm]

@@Kawa-oneechan The idea of converting FM to wavetable sounds cool on paper. I wonder if it had better execution if it could possibly sound good? The idea is a bit flawed especially with games that use FM sound effects though.

[@jakobole]

That piano-sample sounds like something they snatched from EMU-systems...(EMU II, Proteus and others)

[@VICTORYOVERNEPTUNE]

Awesomesauce

[@petros1815]

"Enhanced" indeed! 😂

[@vojtechadame5860]

I think that a super common Sound Blaster PCI 128 is a lot better. Yes, FM implementation is horrible, but the SB16 compatibility is rock solid and wavetable sounds nice. Also, if you avoid motherboards with dodgy SiS chpipsets, the card will just work, no crashing and other nonsense.

[@DOSStorm]

The first motherboard I tried was a Biostar M6TDL which uses an Intel 440LX chipset. I agree that the SB 128 or even the Live is a much better card even if the FM sounds a bit odd on those cards.

[@alexdhall]

2:15: Install failed. Maybe another package of gum will work? 😂😹🤣

[@MichelHoogervorst]

I thought At Doom's Gate sounded pretty awesome actually!

[@DOSStorm]

Its pretty hard to ruin E1M1 too much. The Wavetable isn't the worst for sure.

[@semibiotic]

Well, I guess, you could let viewers compare original SB sound with "enhanced" ones ...

[@SP95]

Too bad because it sounds good