Mail Archives: djgpp/1999/09/06/15:13:50
Alan McFarlane writes:
> I recently purchased a SoundBlaster PCI64v sound card which is
> (imho) crap!
>
> It works (ish) under Windows, although I continually have to
> readjust the volume controls... It works under Dos for some
> games - although the sound quality if you are running in a Dos
> box is terrible... I havn't tried it under Linux yet - need to
> get round to downloading RedHat 6... It works under Allegro
> only if I am running in a Dos box with inevitable problems -
> poor quality, and timer resolution...
Yeah, soundcards suck. They have always sucked to some extent, mostly
because everyone was just copying the original SB design which isn't
really all that good, but these days things are getting a lot worse
because people are finally moving on from the SB system, but haven't
replaced it with any other good standards. This is no problem if you
are running under Windows, because the hardware manufacturers provide
Windows drivers for everything they make, but if you prefer to use
some alternative OS, you are pretty much stuck with no drivers, no
specs, and no hope of rescue.
(and before someone leaps to suggest this, no, you cannot realistically
use Windows drivers from a DOS program. Write a Windows program if you
want to do that. Or provide some working code to prove me wrong, but
it gets very boring when people keep suggesting this idea but without
having any idea how to actually go about implementing it).
At the moment most cards do try to have some backward compatibility
by emulating the SB, usually in software. Unfortunately this doesn't
tend to work very well, hence the fact that very few modern soundcards
will actually work reliably with DOS programs, and this situation seems
likely to go on getting steadily worse for the forseeable future.
> So, what do I do?
>
> A. Purchase an original (and genuine) SoundBlaster Pro 2.
> B. Complain bitterly to Creative Labs about not giving Shawn the tech ref.
> C. Give up computers altogether and become a lawyer <g>
> D. Ask you lot, if anyone has solved the problem.
You already tried (D), but unfortunately I don't have any good answers
for you :-)
(A) looks like a pretty good choice to me, if you can find such a thing.
I'm not an expert on all the various soundcards currently being
manufactured, but I do know enough to recommend that none of the current
Creative Labs lineup are good choices if you want to run DOS programs.
(B) is also a good thing to do. Creative Labs have a long history of
being unhelpful and moronic about not supporting software developers:
personally, I intend to never buy any of their hardware because they
suck very much indeed. And while I'm at it, ATI graphics cards are
well worth avoiding for the same reasons. At the moment NVidia and
Matrox take the crown for being enlightened people who give out
useful specs, but unfortunately I don't know of any major soundcard
manufacturers who are doing this.
Sorry for not being able to say anything more positive.
Personally, I'm betting on Linux as our only hope for having decent
graphics and sound hardware support outside of a Windows environment.
I won't be really happy until all hardware comes with truly open
programming specs, but at least the hardware people are starting to
release binary drivers for using their stuff under Linux, which is
an improvement over it not working at all...
Shawn Hargreaves.
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