Opinions Please: which sound card?

[PhilC]

Hi All.

Could I please have your opinion on which of six sound cards you think I should fit to my Raven.

Photos as below but also have a Picogus which is presently in use in the Raven.

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[exxos]

Sound Blaster Audigy

[PhilC]

Sound Blaster Audigy

Can you even get them in ISA? and be4sides, I've already got this little lot

[JezC]

I think it should be Wolfgang....and then you can have the 'fun' of getting all those different CD/HDD interfaces working with the Raven as well!

[PhilC]

I think it should be Wolfgang....and then you can have the 'fun' of getting all those different CD/HDD interfaces working with the Raven as well!

Not sure if call that fun JezC, especially since the case has no external drive bays.

[agranlund]

I would have picked the ESS but @JezC brings up a good point about the Mozart

Soundblaster standard can only do PIO in 8bit mono and has no fifo, so you need to feed it a single byte at a time from your own timer interrupt — a tremendous cpu overhead in interrupt servicing.

ESS has the advantage of having extended features on top of the standard SB stuff, specifically for DMA-less operation.
It can provide a fifo half-empty interrupt where you know you can copy 128 bytes to it, and it has no limitations on sample formats in pio mode.

[PhilC]

@agranlund or I could try and find an ESS card with the IDE interface built in?

[mrbombermillzy]

Yeah, Id say go for the ESS after seeing all that fancy extra FM voice stuff it can do.

But then Im trying to save you from going insane, otherwise I would have got you to buy a Creative 3DO blaster card and get that to work in the Raven.

[PhilC]

Yeah, Id say go for the ESS after seeing all that fancy extra FM voice stuff it can do.

But then Im trying to save you from going insane, otherwise I would have got you to buy a Creative 3DO blaster card and get that to work in the Raven.

Hope you're not in a hurry then

[PhilC]

I'm surprised so far that nobody has suggested the Yamaha one as it's OPL3.