Soundstorm audio MCP-T

R

Ratha

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 22, 2003
Messages
328
Well, apologies for not havng any clue where to dump this one, its been awhile since i was around here to post, i thought there was an audio section round here someplace, but i didnt see it this time around.

Anyway, im currently running an Abit NF7-S 2.0 mainboard, and im runnin an SB LIVE in it. My main question revolved around asking how the SB compares to the soundstorm, and what the dos capabilities of the soundstorm are.

I would like to have a good soundblaster compatible dos sound, and ive found that the live is rather lacking at that in general. Or rather, its just poorly emulated in some cases, and has quite a few conflicts with the older games that i tend to run somewhat often.

This said, 'upgrading' to the soundstorm unit was in mind, but i cant possibly imagine it having a better capability for dos sound than the soundblaster has. And general windows based sound aswell. In cases ive heard it rivals the audigy2 for performance, so id be pretty sure that it would leave my live in the dust.

Does anyone have any experience using the two sound units? Ive looked for some reviews and i found about two. In truth i do not think either of them mentioned dos based sound, or sound in a dos prompt while in windows.

Id like to get an opinion from someone who knows more about it before i just jump into it, id have to rip my case open and do a bit of reconfiguration were i to really decide to switch, and rather than infect my system with drivers that are going to compete with my live and have hardware conflicts and whatnot, i thought id ask you guys. Ive always had the soundstorm audio disabled at the bios level.

Any help you guys could give me would be greatly appreciated.


Ratha


OS: Win98 SE
MB: Abit NFS-7 2.0 - (Bios 1.6)
Processor: AMD XP 2500+ Barton @ 1.837ghz @ 333mhz
Ram: 2x 256 Corsair PC3200 @ 2-2-2-6-? @ 333mhz (CMX256A-3200C2)
Video: ATI Sapphire Radeon 9500np (128 bit)
Sound: Creative Soundblaster Live
HDD1: Western Digital 120 w/8mb cache
HDD2: Western Digital 120 w/8mb cache
DVD: Samsung - DVD SD-608 - 40x8
CDRW: Lite-On - LTR-52246S - 52x24x52
Power: Antec - PP352X 350 Watt
Case: 3DCOOL Tornado 1000
Monitor: Cybervision - 15" C50
Keys: AT&T - RT101 - 120275-101 Rev B
Mouse: Logitech TrackMan - T-CC2-9F
NIC: Linksys
Router: Linksys - BEFSR41 Rev 2
 
idk i would have just stuck with soundstorm to save money but sb live is pretty good, but sb live is only really better than soundstorm when ur running like 4 speakers and a subwoofer. If you only running 2 speakers its almost the same performance
 
Well, ive been running my SB live for 4-5 years or more now, so theres not much about saving money to that one :p

Im running 4 speakers (2 old hi-fi computer speakers and 2 in the rear channel (speakers from a 120 watt stereo)

No sub in it at all.

Anyone else have any thoughts between the Live! and Soundstorm setups? I truely never expected anyone to choose the live over the soundstorm considering the age of the technology involved and the abilities of each card.

The soundstorm is capable of more voices, more eax and other audio modes (atleast i dont think the live can do eax 2.0) hardware dolby encoding, and whatnot else that it has on it that the live cant do.

My biggest concern is getting sound/driver support in either pure dos, or a command prompt from within windows, to get dos sound going with the soundstorm APU. Windows performance and sound quality is also in question. Digital audio support, those kinds of things.

If its less resource intense, i wouldnt mind the 'upgrade' as long there wasnt any cdrom hiss or disk access causing audio degredation. There are times i can hear my cdroms spin in my headphones and in my speakers with my live.

Other onboard sounds ive used in the past (and i shudder at that thought of ever using one of those again) were terribly scratchy, poor audio.. you listen hard enough you could hear radio transmissions.. lol. Poor drivers, audio that skipped/repeated/crashed, you name it, it did it.

Anymore thoughts on the matter would be helpful, thanks guys.


Ratha
 
I went from a SBLive! 5.1 to SoundStorm and there was HUGE difference in sound quality. I would say it sounds almost twice as good, and I am not exaggerating. The digital works great from my experience also.

About the EAX, from what I have read most people will tell you to leave it off in games if you want the best sound. Creative isn't very open with EAX. This could be the one of the downfalls about SoundStorm considering a lot of games use EAX.

I am not sure about support in pure DOS, but check out the nforcershq.com forums and go to the audio forum, should be able to find an answer there.

It uses very little CPU cycles, less than the Audigy 2 if you can believe that.

I have noticed no crackling, hissing, etc. Clear as crystal.

Also, get the idea of shitty onboard sound out of your head - SoundStorm is of a whole different level :) .

Edit: Just did some reading and apparantly there is no DOS support :( .
 
SoundStorm Digital > * almost. (> all but the Audigy 2)
SoundStorm Analog is sub par but acceptable

SoundStorm does NOT work in Dos, OR Win98 for that matter. I don't think the ME drivers are up to par either...

Solution: Use soundstorm with a digital out on WindowsXP, and Virtual PC to run Windows98 and your old games (what I do). Then the sound is routed through Directsound, and all is good. Takes some fiddling in DOS, but it works :)

Just ask if you need help on a particular game. The only one I can't get to work so far is Novastorm.
 
Hmm, well, if i had any plans to upgrade, i think that now i have no good reason to.

I figured that the Soundstorm would atleast have WDM drivers for win98..

I have to say that sofar my experiences with win XP were quite disappointing. It felt kindof similar when going from a win98 system to one version of XP or another, like taking a step backwards, except it was more bloated. More of a hastle to use, and just annoying in general.

Maybe it was just me lol.

Anyway, thanks for the assist guys, i suppose i will just end up sticking with this card till i can afford something a bit more new that will meet my needs and be an improvement.


Ratha
 
Good luck ever upgrading without switching OS's any more. MS announced that as of Dec. of last year, there would be no more support/drivers/etc for many products, the 9x line being one of them. ME drivers will stop showing up very soon, so you can forget using 9x anymore. In fact, you can't even get windows update for 9x at all now. It's gone. Retired. Finito. Poof.

The 9X core doesn't support any of the new technologies that the newer cards need, so you can't use them.

It's time to upgrade. Spend some time customizing XP, and you can make it as clean or as bloated as you want.

Or, hell, use 2k.
 
Ive not used 2k, but ive heard that its not such a bad OS, still dosnt support much of legacy anything however. And a good set of the things i run are legacy. Keeping a second machine around for legacy work might be the only remaining option once that happens.

I didnt hear about microsoft killing the windows updates, i thought they were going to 'stop supporting further development' instead of stop supporting entirely.

Out of all the operating systems ive run across win98 seems to be the most versatile and stable at being that way. Keeping the hybrid operating system alive for another few years would be a good call id think, but maybe not. Dont know what the 'more stable' thing about XP was myself, when i used it i crashed it constantly, lots of hardlocks and lagouts. Once i get my win98 platform set up, i rarely crash it unless im doing something i know im not supposed to.

XP was released and it was kindof like lopping off a leg. Im very curious about how future software developers are going to handle it, chances are they wont drop software support for win98/me till a few years after microsoft does.

Anyway, just my thoughts on the matter. I just run so many legacy programs and hardware that going between two, three, or four operating systems can be a real pain, so far ive stuck with 98, as it has always good back-reach and a nice forward stab.


Ratha
 
Originally posted by Ratha
Ive not used 2k, but ive heard that its not such a bad OS, still dosnt support much of legacy anything however. And a good set of the things i run are legacy. Keeping a second machine around for legacy work might be the only remaining option once that happens.

I didnt hear about microsoft killing the windows updates, i thought they were going to 'stop supporting further development' instead of stop supporting entirely.

Out of all the operating systems ive run across win98 seems to be the most versatile and stable at being that way. Keeping the hybrid operating system alive for another few years would be a good call id think, but maybe not. Dont know what the 'more stable' thing about XP was myself, when i used it i crashed it constantly, lots of hardlocks and lagouts. Once i get my win98 platform set up, i rarely crash it unless im doing something i know im not supposed to.

XP was released and it was kindof like lopping off a leg. Im very curious about how future software developers are going to handle it, chances are they wont drop software support for win98/me till a few years after microsoft does.

Anyway, just my thoughts on the matter. I just run so many legacy programs and hardware that going between two, three, or four operating systems can be a real pain, so far ive stuck with 98, as it has always good back-reach and a nice forward stab.


Ratha
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They didn't have a choice. The lawsuit with Sun over the included JavaVM was what killed it. It also killed more recent things (Office XP is no longer supported :eek: ) I too liked 98, but it's done now. They (MS) couldn't legally support it any more, they had to get rid of it. I still use 98 on one of my laptops, it's small and fast and works.

Probably time to upgrade, or soon. Start replacing things with newer hardware that is legacy free.
 
Just out of curiosity, if you use so many legacy programs, why not just throw some old parts together to have legacy machine running win98 and then keep your new stuff in a machine running a newer operating system (2k or a customized XP), and then just switch between the two using a KVM switch? I would think that would remove a lot of the conflicts.
 
Ahh, i wasnt keeping up with that whole event.. i guess that makes sense.. pretty not cool there. Thanks for the update on that. I wondered what exactly had happened there.

For the most part, my system is as of now, legacy free, but i run so much in the areas of old dos software, and early windows software that keeping a legacy capable system is nice.

Unfortunatly its my only real running system currently. I dont have the finanaces (or space) to actually set up a legacy system here with my main platform, so i multitask quite a bit with this one.

I just popped by the windows update site and they were still offering win98 updates seemingly, maybe not anything new, but all the old stuff was there, so atleast for now that is a relief. I do hope that they do not stop hosting the older files for those systems like i had thought you implied in the first.

Every system i run nowdays from 75mhz pentium to my current rig runs win98se exclusively.. need to keep em updated after every reinstall (and there are alot)

Thanks for all the help and the heads up.


Ratha
 
Originally posted by Ratha
Ahh, i wasnt keeping up with that whole event.. i guess that makes sense.. pretty not cool there. Thanks for the update on that. I wondered what exactly had happened there.

For the most part, my system is as of now, legacy free, but i run so much in the areas of old dos software, and early windows software that keeping a legacy capable system is nice.

Unfortunatly its my only real running system currently. I dont have the finanaces (or space) to actually set up a legacy system here with my main platform, so i multitask quite a bit with this one.

I just popped by the windows update site and they were still offering win98 updates seemingly, maybe not anything new, but all the old stuff was there, so atleast for now that is a relief. I do hope that they do not stop hosting the older files for those systems like i had thought you implied in the first.

Every system i run nowdays from 75mhz pentium to my current rig runs win98se exclusively.. need to keep em updated after every reinstall (and there are alot)

Thanks for all the help and the heads up.


Ratha
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Odd. I can't get windows update here on any of my 98 machines. Oh well. If I were you, I'd download the whole catalogue and have it standing by. It's under customize on windows update.

What old-school programs do you run that would require DOS mode?
 
I run alot of emulation programs, and a good handful of old dos games that ive accumulated over the last 10 years. Roughly 50 dos games on cd, a couple on disk, doom, doom2, quake, hexen, heretic, all those old ID and 3d realms games, some microprose games, x-com.

I run a bunch of old music programs, mostly nothing absolutly imperative, but stuff that is nice to have access to anyway.

If you would like, i can download most/all of the win98/se updates and send them to you, im in the process of doing so right now, i did skip a few, but i selected pretty much everything except the language packs, directx, and a handful of other things.

Seemingly its going to turn out between 150 and 200 megs.


Ratha
 
Originally posted by Ratha
I run alot of emulation programs, and a good handful of old dos games that ive accumulated over the last 10 years. Roughly 50 dos games on cd, a couple on disk, doom, doom2, quake, hexen, heretic, all those old ID and 3d realms games, some microprose games, x-com.

I run a bunch of old music programs, mostly nothing absolutly imperative, but stuff that is nice to have access to anyway.

If you would like, i can download most/all of the win98/se updates and send them to you, im in the process of doing so right now, i did skip a few, but i selected pretty much everything except the language packs, directx, and a handful of other things.

Seemingly its going to turn out between 150 and 200 megs.


Ratha
Click to expand...

I've got most of the updates already. I was lucky ;)

As for the games:
DosBOX, and there is another SB emulator for XP, etc. there are ways to get them to work without too much fiddling. I've found that with a bit of work, I can get almost ANYTHING to run under XP, or just nab VirtualPC and run it through that. It emulates a SB16.
 
I have to say that sofar my experiences with win XP were quite disappointing. It felt kindof similar when going from a win98 system to one version of XP or another, like taking a step backwards, except it was more bloated. More of a hastle to use, and just annoying in general.
Click to expand...
I hated it also when I switched from 98 to XP, but once you get it setup right it grows on you. As of now I would never go back to 98.

Edit: Whoa I just realized you are in Missoula, so am I. I go to the U. Also your sig is kinda big, the limit is 11 lines. Thought I would let you know before a mod does. Your tag sounds farmilar, did you play CS? Own GoodWebs?
 
Originally posted by FiZ
I hated it also when I switched from 98 to XP, but once you get it setup right it grows on you. As of now I would never go back to 98.

Edit: Whoa I just realized you are in Missoula, so am I. I go to the U. Also your sig is kinda big, the limit is 11 lines. Thought I would let you know before a mod does. Your tag sounds farmilar, did you play CS? Own GoodWebs?
Click to expand...

What sig? I don't see a sig on him.
 
That wasnt a sig, just an edit to the post, i copied my hardware profile from my system specs file. Its long, thats why i dont use it for a sig, but thanks for the heads up anyway, i thought a mod might mistake it for that when i posted though.

So FiZ, you finally reply to my inquiry lol, i sent ya a message a long time ago, nearly 9 months asking whereabouts in missoula you were located, but it missed ya i guess. Im up on the north end of reserve. Nice to see you are still around heh.

Anyway, i sure hope if i ever use XP that it dosnt grow on me.. i dont like fungi either. :p

If i could get XP to look (and consume about the same resources) as win98, and function on the same level, or better, without any of its tidbits for the window user who dosnt have a clue what they are doing, i might consider switching to it. But i felt like i was going back to preschool when i toyed with XP the last time. I was surprised i didnt get popups telling me how to click the left mouse button, or what a keyboard is for lol.

The default XP settings just bloat too much of the screen, and resources. Running on a tiny moniter at a low res like i do, a single window of anything in XP would take up my entire screen. Not to mention that bubbly-bloated look that everything has is awful and takes up valuable moniter realestate. Too bad i cant charge rent fees.

Im sure there must be a way to slim it down some, i havnt had the time to fiddle so much with it on the machine that i used it on.

I had also never tried dosbox, i heard about it once or twice, wondered whether or not it would work so well. Anyway, maybe ill go out and look for a copy of those programs and try em out sometime. I currently dont have any operating systems above 98 to test em out on though, so it would be a bit redundant.


Ratha
 
So FiZ, you finally reply to my inquiry lol, i sent ya a message a long time ago, nearly 9 months asking whereabouts in missoula you were located, but it missed ya i guess. Im up on the north end of reserve. Nice to see you are still around heh.
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Heh, sorry man must have missed it. I live up Mullan a few miles.

You can make XP very minimalistic by getting a hacked Uxtheme.dll file and replacing the old one, or just pick the classic theme. If you are at all curious about the Uxtheme.dll route just ask. You can check out how my XP looks on the second to the last page in the Desktop thread under Digital Art, I tried to get it as functional and sleek as I could. I couldn't stand how XP looked default either.
 
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