Instrument sounds

2003-01-05 07:19 am

I have been very happy with an old, probably cheap, soundcard based on the ESS1688 chip. I was installed on a Win 95 PC using the Windows 95 installation CD for the drivers etc. It produced very good "Choir Ahs" without any of the problems referred to in https://forum.noteworthycomposer.com/?topic=1987. The sound was clean and well sustained which is important to me as I use it to learn my part in a Barbershop (a-capella) chorus.

Now I have installed it in a new PC running Win 98 and I cannot achieve the same sound. It now sounds like any old (or new) expensive card.

Can anyone throw any light on this?

Thanks

Re: Instrument sounds

Reply #1 – 2003-01-08 03:28 pm

You probably won't get too much comment on this, since most people want to improve the quality of the instrument sounds they hear. Your post reads as though you want to make your card sound worse, rather than better.

You have 128 standard MIDI sounds to work with in trying to find one that sounds to your liking. If you cannot find one that sounds like your old card, you might try exploring the world of software synths that support sound fonts. With sound font technology, you can load up a suitably "cheap sounding" set of instruments, thus emulating the sound of your old card. Since you desire that old sound, your preferred font should also have the added benefit of having a fairly small memory footprint. Search on soundfont for more details.