9th February 2017, 9:12 PM
You can get a Titanium for PCI-E, which is what I'm using. It's a little out of date, but it still holds up since hardware accelerated sound has kinda died off. Creative's latest entry is the Z series, but frankly Creative has almost completely shifted their business to stuff like speakers and MP3 players (yes, dedicated MP3 players of all things, as though everyone doesn't have a phone capable of holding all their music). They dabble a bit in professional music making tools, but they're never going to match a company like Roland in that department and they know it. Their golden years are long behind them. Honestly, they never even made the best sound cards to begin with. They simply made the most affordable ones. My family got a Soundblaster 16 as the first dedicated sound card I actually heard in a PC, and a few years later it was upgraded to an Awe32. That's basically as good as it ever got for them, and their midi was never up to the quality of something like a Roland SC-55 or even a decent external keyboard hooked up through a midi port. Heck, even pre-midi devices like the Roland MT-32 were vastly superior to their SB16.
(Just listen to this! LISTEN TO IT! It's how King's Quest IV was supposed to sound. Now recall how your early 90's PC sounded and kill yourself. ... Don't kill yourself, you can emulate that sound device in the current version of SCUMMVM.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19r6RnReAf4
They did come up with EAX effects later on, and a number of games used it to impressive effect making environments sound real. I kinda missed it for a while, but modern sound designers (when they care to) are implementing the same effects in higher quality entirely through software. Heck, the X-Fi sound font isn't even as good as the AWE32 sound font, so I've taken to using coolsoft's software MIDI, shifting it all to my CPU. Since only old games are even using MIDI, it won't even hurt performance (aside from a bit of latency pulling up those sound fonts, which I think I might resolve by storing them on FLASH or even a RAM drive if I really want to). Sound effects have just never been as demanding on hardware as graphics, and the gap has been increasing by a large amount as the years go on. I'd love to say "go for broke and get the best", but if I'm completely honest with myself, there... really isn't a reason to get a dedicated sound card beyond support for retro games. Heck, the only reason I'm using my X-Fi is for old games like Doom 3 so I can get those EAX effects... and for the full set of 5.1 audio jacks. That's a reason I suppose.
Oh, and to really pile it onto Creative, their Z series doesn't even include MIDI support any more, so you'd have to go with a software solution anyway.
All that said, since I'm a collector and since even modern versions of Windows support the old MIDI plug (through a USB adapter), I might actually hook up an ancient MT-32 to my modern PC at some point. That's really more for crazy people like me though. I couldn't recommend you do that.
(Just listen to this! LISTEN TO IT! It's how King's Quest IV was supposed to sound. Now recall how your early 90's PC sounded and kill yourself. ... Don't kill yourself, you can emulate that sound device in the current version of SCUMMVM.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19r6RnReAf4
They did come up with EAX effects later on, and a number of games used it to impressive effect making environments sound real. I kinda missed it for a while, but modern sound designers (when they care to) are implementing the same effects in higher quality entirely through software. Heck, the X-Fi sound font isn't even as good as the AWE32 sound font, so I've taken to using coolsoft's software MIDI, shifting it all to my CPU. Since only old games are even using MIDI, it won't even hurt performance (aside from a bit of latency pulling up those sound fonts, which I think I might resolve by storing them on FLASH or even a RAM drive if I really want to). Sound effects have just never been as demanding on hardware as graphics, and the gap has been increasing by a large amount as the years go on. I'd love to say "go for broke and get the best", but if I'm completely honest with myself, there... really isn't a reason to get a dedicated sound card beyond support for retro games. Heck, the only reason I'm using my X-Fi is for old games like Doom 3 so I can get those EAX effects... and for the full set of 5.1 audio jacks. That's a reason I suppose.
Oh, and to really pile it onto Creative, their Z series doesn't even include MIDI support any more, so you'd have to go with a software solution anyway.
All that said, since I'm a collector and since even modern versions of Windows support the old MIDI plug (through a USB adapter), I might actually hook up an ancient MT-32 to my modern PC at some point. That's really more for crazy people like me though. I couldn't recommend you do that.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)