Uploaded January 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
Hello friends, in the last video we compare a few different GM/GS soudfonts on the SB Live!, because its feature tu utilize soundfonts ony limited by your amount of ram is pretty unique.
Today, lets listen to its FM capailities. We start with an Adlib / OPL2 tune, because this is less demanding to the emulation as an opl3 stereo tune.
As in my other comparisons (Yamaha vs. the Clones, see Playlist) I choose "Innoid", music from the DOS-game "The Whale's Voyage, composed by Hannes Seifert.
(In a further video we will see if the Live! will struggle with OPL3 emulation or not)
My conclusion: Creative Labs optimizes the emlation very well and the result here is quite acceptable. Not perfect, also not as good as the DosBox FM emulation as an example, but fairly well. A slight amount of reverb gives a nice experience and some instruments-sounds like bells are quite good - but on the other hand there a slight distortions and an unpleasant high-pitched clank in some parts.
Maybe you remember when they fail with their first attempt on FM emulation with the Sondblaster PCI? So this really is a big improvement.
(If not, see here: youtu.be/1dOSDhPP3fM )
History:
Creative Labs acquired Ensoniq for 77$ Million. At this point, Creative Labs did not have developed any PCI based soundcard, and so they sold Ensoniqs Audio PCI card (ES137X series) as Soundblaster PCI,, the precedessor of the Live! card. The Ensoniq Audio PCI aka. Soundblasterer 64/128 PCI was lacking FM in hardware because Ensoniq had a history in FM emulation thats reachs back futher in the era of ISA-cards. CPU power was limited and so the emulation was optimized for low CPU utilization instead of acuracy pretty sure. Later on CPU power increases massively, so this could be the reason for the improvements in FM emulation. But this is just my assumption - if someone knows better, please let me know in the comments!
listen - enjoy - like -- subscribe
Ernie,
PC-SOUND-LEGACY
Hello friends, in the last video we compare a few different GM/GS soudfonts on the SB Live!, because its feature tu utilize soundfonts ony limited by your amount of ram is pretty unique.
Today, lets listen to its FM capailities. We start with an Adlib / OPL2 tune, because this is less demanding to the emulation as an opl3 stereo tune.
As in my other comparisons (Yamaha vs. the Clones, see Playlist) I choose "Innoid", music from the DOS-game "The Whale's Voyage, composed by Hannes Seifert.
(In a further video we will see if the Live! will struggle with OPL3 emulation or not)
My conclusion: Creative Labs optimizes the emlation very well and the result here is quite acceptable. Not perfect, also not as good as the DosBox FM emulation as an example, but fairly well. A slight amount of reverb gives a nice experience and some instruments-sounds like bells are quite good - but on the other hand there a slight distortions and an unpleasant high-pitched clank in some parts.
Maybe you remember when they fail with their first attempt on FM emulation with the Sondblaster PCI? So this really is a big improvement.
(If not, see here: youtu.be/1dOSDhPP3fM )
History:
Creative Labs acquired Ensoniq for 77$ Million. At this point, Creative Labs did not have developed any PCI based soundcard, and so they sold Ensoniqs Audio PCI card (ES137X series) as Soundblaster PCI,, the precedessor of the Live! card. The Ensoniq Audio PCI aka. Soundblasterer 64/128 PCI was lacking FM in hardware because Ensoniq had a history in FM emulation thats reachs back futher in the era of ISA-cards. CPU power was limited and so the emulation was optimized for low CPU utilization instead of acuracy pretty sure. Later on CPU power increases massively, so this could be the reason for the improvements in FM emulation. But this is just my assumption - if someone knows better, please let me know in the comments!
listen - enjoy - like -- subscribe
Ernie,
PC-SOUND-LEGACY
