Aureal Vortex 2 playing DOS Games - What does it sound like?

Yeah, FM is definitely this card's weak point. But back in the day, it could actually load dls sound banks into memory and play them through General MIDI under a DOS box, unlike the Sound Blaster Live!, so you probably would have been good as long as the DOS games you played tended to support General MIDI or MPU-401.

These days, there are better ways to do this on a real DOS or 95/98/ME machine with that one video that Phil made with MUNT and the Windows tablet.

Truly nasty sounding in some of the older games. Somehow Indiana Jones and Monkey Island sounded okay. Can't decide if it sounds worse than my Ensoniq Soundscape ES1370 at FM.

Lemmings isn't a fair test though. It's Amiga or nothing for that game.

Many seem to dislike this one, but I remember having one computer with this soundcard, and I absolutely love it though. A special charm somehow...

I can't believe that this sound worse than the SB16 emulation of the Live! card

A video about the SB-Link would be interesting.

I don't remember whether you've done it already or not, but are you planning on making a RAMBUS vs DDR RAM memory comparison on a P4 machine?

yeah......not a good card it's all distorted

You know what I like - small red tags in video thumbnails indicating whether the video is a review, a demo or a build. Thanks Phil. That's a welcome addition.

Absolutely no offence intended to anyone who love OPL sound, but this video is frighteningly representative of how a lot of SB Clone cards sounded back in the days, and one of the reasons why I felt it was such a massive upgrade when I got my first wavetable sound card. For me, it was the AWE64 Value, which meant a huge improvement in sound for DOS games in the transition period between DOS and Win95. Sure, FM synthesis can sound great, but mainly when we start talking about professional grade FM, like in the Yamaha DX7 and similar devices. For DOS games, very few games had music written specifically to make the most of OPL. One of the few rare exceptions, was Tyrian. That game sounded just as cool with OPL as it did with wavetable. Perhaps even better in some cases. But for retro gaming today, I can't think of any games I'd prefer to play with OPL compared to either my GUS or my Dreamblaster S1.

God, this sounds awful.

Really enjoyed this. Love hearing those old games.

Good video. Maybe next time try buying Matrox Parhelia :)

I remember playing Lemmings on Amiga 600 back in the day. Sound of Aureal Vortex 2 comparing to A600 is terrible.

Absolute garbage, impressively bad

To all the complainers, this demonstration was done using the default sound font and not a high definition one. It merely shows that the card works with dos games, and doesn't show how it sounds with a better sound font.

will the, Vintage Yamaha YMF724F-V Genius give me that OPL3 sound in doom?

it almost sounds like the fm synth is just poorly sampled emulation at points

soylentgreenb is probably triggered right now that his favorite card doesn't work on DOS right.




/S

This card makes System Shock to sound even worse.

wtf doom is a semitone flat

Hey Phil, will the Vortex 1 work as well? The Vortex 2 prices are out of this world where I live, sadly. I just recently got a Dell GX110 Small Form Factor PC for around $10 and it features an Ensoniq AudioPCI based Sound Blaster PCI64. Would like to upgrade my sound, but there is no ISA riser card for the 2 slot SFF chassis :D

so.. Vortex 2 PCI sound card verdict is:
for DOS game: not bad sound. little bit off but it is good enough(average). NOT the best if it is compared to OPL3 ISA sound card.
for Windows 9X game supports A3D(or EAX): it may be great.

Okay, seems you're a fan of the card. Question is... I think I came across one of these and was intending on using it in a Windows XP gaming pc. would it work in that Operating system?

Would this sound card work in Windows XP? Not really finding any information about whether it does or not..

ess1938 solo1 is WAY better!

Not very good in my opinion. If i remember right, playing Dos games was best with isa soundcards and dedicated yamaha opl chip. Some clones also sounded good, but different. Roland/midi was for the rich guys. Idid more like the sound syntehsis.

lol i got 4 of these aureal vortex 2 cards from my school still gotta test them

Sounds like software emulation with pretty low sampling rate, dull sound.

Can you disable FM emulation with this card under DOS? Or can you at least change FM emulation volume to zero without turning all volume down? I didn't figure this out yet. I am trying to use Vortex card (Vortex 1 model) together with YMF724 with games that failed to work alone with YMF724. I would use FM from YMF and digitized sound effects from Vortex with problematic games. SB Live allowed to turn FM volume down to zero but that card does not work with every game either. I have tried to make some changes to AU10DOS.INI but can't figure out which setting levels down volume or disables FM. I can only see master volume setting and actually don't know how to change that either. Tried different numbers and volume stays the same. I tried to add FM volume setting myself to INI-file but that didn't do anything. If I set FM address to zero (0), I get error message #7 and audio driver stops loading. If I set pseudo FM address, I still hear FM sounds in games example channel 999 works just fine. If I take FMBase line away from au10dos.ini, FM emulation sounds still work. I haven't installed this card under Windows. Should I? Will it make any difference? I am using WIN98SE.

Well I went ahead and tested it under Windows as well with two different drivers. Sound Blaster emulation failed. I was only able to make it work under DOS Mode. I couldn't get it working with YMF724 together at all. The best I was able to do was to initilialize YMF and disable Legacy audio. Then I was able to use them together. If I tried to use FM from YMF, games with FM sounds locked my computer. If I went to DS-XG setupds.exe and tried to test FM from my Yamaha card it just complained that the 0x388h channel was in use. I tested Doom with only sound effects and wasn't able to run the game at all even with YMF card set to disable sound blaster as long as part of legacy audio was enabled. Fortunately SB Live works great with some games under dos and has 16 bit sounds and can set Synth Vol to zero so I can use FM from YMF card. This combo works very well. At least my Vortex sound card can be used with some games that failed with others. Rayman is one of them allthough it works under Windows with YMF. Turrican 2 kind of works with Aureal but there is some weird background noise as long as audio is playing. I might try Aureal for A3D stuff later. Right now I'm more into DOS but Windows is there waiting for the future possibilities. Also EAX from SB Live as well for Windows stuff maybe later as well... I'm going to do some tests later with adlipt.exe and adpatch.exe to see how things work out and might later buy OPL3LPT to see if I can make it work together with my Vortex 1 sound card.

Got one for free from the local recycling centre Today I have there old computers and one of these were inside 😀 testing it on my p3 Beast Soon

Just bought Aureal Vortex 1, this card can do wavetabled sound in DOS, just use DOSbox. And you can load any DLS bank for it. Amazing sound =)

I have use Vortex2 playing System shock via DoxBox, although I have DB50XG and SCB55, I found Vortex2 does better synth sound than the other two.

Hi, I have a superquad pci vortex 2, i want to connect the digital out from my dvd drive to the sound card. I've bought the cable but cant find a pinout. could you help? you've done one for the creative which has a pinout

It's really low quality and pitched down a half step. Nothing beats a true OPL3 chip.

Sounds awful. I want to put one of these in my Win98 gaming PC along with an adlib card for FM.

I'd much, much rather have a real OPL chip... But I've heard worse OPL emulation.

DOS+Gravis Ultreasound is the best, Windows + Aureal Vortex 2 is the best, Sorry Sound Blaster Live! 2nd place

Sounds like shit tbh. Stick with real OPL 3

were is the bloody exe file

I have the Diamond Monster Sound MX300 which has the same chip, it also has a wavetable header. I use it in Win98 and a Yamaha ISA card for MSDOS mode, they work well together. Best of both worlds I guess.

someone should reimplement the Aureal OPL emulation because of how inaccurate It is.

Sounded better than expected, emulation is better than most PCI sound cards.

it sounds like some hot ass

I just picked up a similar card but it has the pins for the S/pdif breakout board. I don't think I'm going to find a loose breakout board so I'll buy a bracket from Alibaba. I'm going to do some experimenting to see if I can get 2 more channels using the quadzilla drivers.