Deal of the century... for me anyway...

[Invisix]

BlackMonk wrote:

I wonder...

- Sound Blaster 16 Value Edition - No ASP socket or Wave Blaster header. A cost-reduced board.
- Vibra 16 - A cost reduced SB16 with Plug and Play, but lacks separate bass and treble control, ASP socket and Wave Blaster header.

Vibra had no independent bass/treble?  Maybe the Value was the same?  Maybe it really DOES sound better and you are NOT going crazy!

...or maybe both is true!

Yeah the Sound Blaster 16 Value, Sound Blaster 16 Vibra, and Sound Blaster 16 WavEffects sound cards are all cheaper/cost reduced cards which definately could affect the overall audio quality, which I think is the case in this matter.

Also, yes, all Vibra chip cards have NO bass/treble control, this however is not true for all Sound Blaster 16 Value as they have bass/trebel control; as long as it doesn't have a Vibra chip.

So to sum things up, apparently having a real Sound Blaster 16 card (original models) and not later models is a must have for superb quality and clearity.

[Plaz]

Hmmm.... are these type things valuable at all? I still have my original ISA 8 bit Sound Blaster card from what... 1988-89? Box, manual, static bag, disk. Keep things long enough and it becomes a collectable. I origianlly bought it to play Ultima V on my PC if I recall correctly.

Plaz

[Plaz]

BTW, my vote for the best affordable pro vintage sound cards goes to Turtle Beach. Not quite a Sunrize AD516, but a darn good card for the PC in it's day. It's been so long I'm not sure which model I had (Pinnacle maybe?), but it's still here in a box some where.


Plaz

[alexh]

What a freaky thing to collect? Old PC's! ;-)

[Invisix]

alexh wrote:
What a freaky thing to collect? Old PC's! ;-)

LOL. I only got it for classic gaming, amongst other things.  :-D

[Invisix]

Plaz wrote:
Hmmm.... are these type things valuable at all? I still have my original ISA 8 bit Sound Blaster card from what... 1988-89? Box, manual, static bag, disk. Keep things long enough and it becomes a collectable. I origianlly bought it to play Ultima V on my PC if I recall correctly.

Plaz

Yeah they are collectible. 8-Bit ISA original SB eh? In that condition, i'd hang on to it... those are getting harder to find.

[Invisix]

I just realized something... with my new Sound Blaster 16 SCSI-2 CT1770 I hear 0 hiss from speakers, not even through headphones, unlike with the SB16 Value or SB16 Vibra where hiss was very noticeable.

Hmmm seems my theory from a post earlier up in this thread is correct... Creative Labs used much higher quality chips, etc for their earlier Sound Blaster 16 models, thus making for higher quality sound output. Sweet! :-D

[keropi]

LAPC-I's rule. you can't be a respected pc retro-gamer without one.
as for the sb16's... older and NON-PNP cards are ALWAYS better. from a point on, they just started integrating chips in bigger ones, and that is not always good... just see the number of chips on the 1740 and on the vibra cards... vibra cards lack tremble/bass controlls, they use some freaky mpu401 emulation, they have an integrated yamaha-FM chip that does not always sound right...

here is some 8bit glory: (this sb also happens to work 1000000% on goldengate cards btw)




and here is some of my Roland stuff to challenge Amigaz:




 :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:

[Amigaz]

@Keropi

Didn't know you had an SCC-1 too  :-o
Haven't tried mine yet

It was Keropi's DOS retro game mania that got me into it too

 :lol:

[keropi]

LOL  :lol:
did you notice the boxed MPU-401/AT and the boxed SCB-55 daughterboard? (basically a scc-1 wavetable daughterboard)
 :-D