The AdLib Gold clone! Testing the GoldLib sound card
The legendary Adlib Gold 1000 card has been cloned! Along with its elusive surround sound module. more info here: pcmidi.eu/goldlib.html
Жүктеу.....
Пікірлер: 319
@destineerrush2632 Жыл бұрын
For anyone interested, the "Surround Module" is a Yamaha YM7128B. Even the official datasheet calls it a "surround processor" so that's probably why AdLib did also. It's actually a fairly simple chip. it has 16 audio taps (8 each for L/R channels), with customizable gain and delay times. It also only has a single feedback tap, which is why the "reverb" sounds so fluttery/echo-y. The reverb effect on an AWE32 or similar card is actually much better, but for 1992, this would have been the only game in town short of an expensive external midi module.
@ThoughTMusic
Жыл бұрын
I was interested, thank you for the further details.
@Caluma122
Жыл бұрын
I think everyone is interested 😂
@georgen9838
6 ай бұрын
I wonder what else was on that surround board. Most of the chips on the AdLib Gold itself may be unobtainium, but the YM7128B definitely isn't... be pretty sweet to have a repro of even just that surround board still available.
@bituniverse8677 Жыл бұрын
I loved this. Just the 20 minutes of just about nothing but MIDI goodness.
@Dark.Shingo
Жыл бұрын
I've been hooked listening to this on my speakers, it's just delightful!
@paperpanak
Жыл бұрын
next time I'll hear canyon.mid my speakers gonna learn to fly, damn i HATE midi :)
@Ikkepop
Жыл бұрын
@@paperpanak midi is awesome dude
@nednettapp
Жыл бұрын
It's not MIDI, it's FM synth.
@paperpanak
Жыл бұрын
@@Ikkepop depends ... i was listening to this kind of music on daily basis for half of 90's, because my brother loved it. It is burned in my memory, i cannot change it ;)
@kairon156 Жыл бұрын
My ears and Philips headphones thank you. These sounded amazing. the 2nd last one gave me a vague memory of a game called Afterlife but only a few notes of it. Now I miss 80's to 90's PC music. As a fan of old school point and click games I had no idea Dune had one as well. Though it's a much older era than what I enjoy. That flight takeoff is super cool.
@MathiasShaw637 Жыл бұрын
I just love how the community keeps the support going for these old machines. ^_^
@stephenthomas1492
Жыл бұрын
It makes me feel like I was around for a special time in the history of computing. Back in the days where it was just us nerds and gamers into these machines.
@zxcvb_bvcxz
Жыл бұрын
Until the rare chips are all gone. Hope someone decapped a couple.
@PlasticCogLiquid
Жыл бұрын
@@stephenthomas1492 It was better that way
@AlyxxTheRat Жыл бұрын
Very glad I listened to this in headphones. Those effects sound really good to me. The Stadium effect almost gave it a SNES vibe. Also this card would've been perfect to play Blake Stone Aliens of Gold with lmao
@aner_bda Жыл бұрын
I miss the days when good soundcards were something sought after as much as graphics cards. Nowadays, most people, at best, just plug headphones into a cheap USB DAC and call it a day when gaming. I miss the good ole days sometimes.
@K-o-R Жыл бұрын
Funny how musical pieces that were probably designed to show off the capabilities of the sound card tend to be real bangers.
@freeculture
Жыл бұрын
The video of the guy who ported this music is somewhere in youtube. He ported actual cd audio music into fm synth, its just amazing what he did. They had one of the rare boards sent to developers which is why they had this for Dune and some other game.
@PXAbstraction Жыл бұрын
Doing a replay of DUNE is on my to-do list for my live streams. This game was so overshadowed at the time by DUNE II, but it was a really interesting management adventure game and yeah, that soundtrack is absolutely stellar.
@freeculture
Жыл бұрын
Those were different types of games, the second most famously introduced the RTS genre, but this plays more like a simple adventure game. As a game itself is super easy, too easy in fact. Its almost like watching some movie i guess. What is impressive is how cool the music was ported to the Gold FM synth, because believe it or not, a real audio CD exists of this Dune music.
@DeinonychusCowboy Жыл бұрын
I don't even know much about retro audio or audio in general and I still went "oh dang that sounds amazing" as soon as it started playing
@Ve55el Жыл бұрын
Could you record a playlist before sending it back? The Win midis and a few games? This really sounds cool...like nostalgia dipped in chocolate!
@YzsForLife
Жыл бұрын
this would be awesome
@CaveyMoth Жыл бұрын
Psh..screw the RTX 4060ti. We've got a new AdLib clone! Holy crap, Dune sounds a lot like it does on SEGA CD. And that's how I like it best.
@proCaylak
Жыл бұрын
rtx 4060 ti... for a card of that size, screwing is optional. but getting screwed is not.
@Ikkepop Жыл бұрын
God I love that OPL sound, it reminds of me a child playing the Sega Genesis and PC DOS Games, it has this gritty, dirty quality to it, and it doesn't feel like it aged at all, as opposite to something like the SNES (or many other wavetable based synth systems from the period) which has low bitrate samples as basis for it's instruments, they sounded impressive at the time bud aged so badly. No reverb will ever save a low bitrate sample, it will always just sound like its playing from under a blanket.
@TheRealLetharos Жыл бұрын
So the surround worked on my home theater system. The songs were coming through all sides on surround. When dropped to mono it only came out the center. Neat stuff. Great tunes! It's like Carpenter Brut.
@spawnkano316
Жыл бұрын
Yea same here with mine, it sounded so cool as the settings were being changed😊
@KarlHamilton
Жыл бұрын
Spunds like it must be Prologic encoded then.
@slightlyevolved Жыл бұрын
I think Adlib's marketing team really did a disservice to this by just calling it a "surround" module instead of really pushing the DSP functionality. If theyd made it clearer how much it actually did, it might have sold better back in the olden times
@jamesrowden303
Жыл бұрын
Yeah, Creative were much more into promoting that side of their products.
@AlexCBrandon
Жыл бұрын
They didn't do much to sell the card period unfortunately. As mentioned Creative was the Microsoft / 800 pound gorilla they were up against. Sad really since one would figure the success of the first card could be dumped into more marketing. But eh...
@Njuregen
Жыл бұрын
Quality means little if you not have promotion, many companies went under with better quality things over the lesser qualified but better promoted ones.
@BanazirGalpsi1968
Жыл бұрын
Great for music soundtrack and soundscapes
@rich1051414
Жыл бұрын
I mean, we still call this "virtual surround" do this day.
@DS08 Жыл бұрын
What kind of sorcery is this? My 5.1 surround sound was playing things in ways I've never heard, I didn't even think KZread supported that.
@RickBaconsAdventures
Жыл бұрын
most surround sound units decode the channels just from the channel mixing on a stereo source since 5.1 content is rare
@henryokeeffe5835 Жыл бұрын
I love that that Altera (Intel) FPGA could probably hardware emulate an entire PC from that era
@proCaylak
Жыл бұрын
FPGA is the present and the future of emulation. the real hardware is getting rarer and less approachable :(
@alphaLONE
Жыл бұрын
that's just a little 1270 LE CPLD. Doubt you could do anything this grand with it, like fitting a soft 8086 in it. Wouldn't be surprised if some wizard managed to, but I don't expect much from this one.
@nalinux
Жыл бұрын
I just noticed Altera was bought by Intel in 2015 ...
@medes5597
Жыл бұрын
I don't think this kind of thing is that impressive anymore. A few years ago it was kind of an amazing fun fact. But at this point its true of like 95% of modern day retro cards, upgrades, remakes etc and has been for a few years. We're basically at the point where its more notable when they use something less powerful.
@rommix0
Жыл бұрын
@@nalinux and Xilinx (another well known FPGA maker) was bought out by AMD.
@IRWPD Жыл бұрын
That card looks like a piece of art.
@rudodejong Жыл бұрын
The Dune soundtrack sounds amazing on this card!
@BocaRetroGames Жыл бұрын
Damn this fm music is from heaven
@GL1zdA Жыл бұрын
I've managed to pass all tests on a Pentium 75. The surround module is the most speed sensitive, without it would work with something like VIA C3 downclocked to around 300 MHz.
@Dodo-bf3dm Жыл бұрын
These sounds are so nostalgic! So many games from the day used the Adlib features of the SB, that I can't hear the adlib without remembering so fondly every PC game from that era!
@BlackDragon-xn2ww Жыл бұрын
I really noticed the effects on my kenwood and pioneer speakers and receiver hardware really brings out the sound even have push buttons to bring effects as well no need for a card for that but the cards filled a void back in those days
@christophero1969 Жыл бұрын
Great sound from the 486 era. I wish IBM or Microsoft would come out with an updated DOS 9.0, just for 386 and up machines and adding USB 3.2 driver support.
@themaritimegirl
Жыл бұрын
FreeDOS with the USBDOS package more or less provides this.
@christophero1969
Жыл бұрын
@@themaritimegirl Not really, but good suggestion.
@absalomdraconis
Жыл бұрын
@@christophero1969 : Honestly, at this point wanting a new DOS from IBM or Microsoft is just unreasonable. Looking to things like FreeDOS is the right choice.
@christophero1969
11 ай бұрын
@@absalomdraconis No... IBM ALREADY HAS THE CODE for 2003 servers. IBM would just have to recompile the code for 32-bit architecture and add modern USB and LARGE DISK SUPPORT. I have used FreeDOS, and NOPE, JUST Nope.
@antoinegx Жыл бұрын
Dune ❤ Stephane Picq is a musical genius🥇Rémi Herbulot is the other genius behind the curtain of this epic cinematic game
@joe--cool
Жыл бұрын
Last I heard was him working to get the rights back to release the Soundtrack again. There is a CD but it's not on Spotify afaik.
@freeculture
Жыл бұрын
@@joe--cool Yup and its totally not in youtube, nope, don't search it, move along 🙂
@KzintiCV Жыл бұрын
The music playing through that card is probably the best Dune-related thing I've ever encountered.
@visualdarkness Жыл бұрын
It's incredible how great MiDi like this can sound. It's so darn clean and dynamic.
@Njuregen
Жыл бұрын
Back in the day I'd have long lists of midi songs on drive to listen to from games in the late 90's, early 00's even.
@mrb5217
Жыл бұрын
Adlib music isn't really MIDI. It's music directly programmed for the OPL.
@wizard-pirate
Жыл бұрын
@@mrb5217 he's surprised it sounds 'like' midi.
@freeculture
Жыл бұрын
@@Njuregen I still do. There is this thing called fluidsynth which can take any .sf2 files for midi samples so its nearly the same as having a midi module back, as long as the midis don't use SysEx which they rarely do, sound identical. For Example Doom music composed for the SC-55 sounds the same with a certain file called Scc1t2.sf2. Older windows used to provide a soft midi "device" with a subset of these very same samples, so its a very familiar sound for the old games. I believe there are ways for ScummVM and dosbox to use fluidsynth or similar one way or another. There are a bunch of Sierra/Lucas/etc midis out there, with like the whole score of the game in a single midi, you can play that and get half hour orchestral music in a minuscule 200k .mid file.
@freeculture
Жыл бұрын
@@mrb5217 Yeah that's how it should have been, and actually was. Then came the cheaters who uses pre-programmed "instrument sets" for "midi like" use. Eww. Even Sierra, Lucas and others went this route, compose for like Sound Canvas and the rest whatever degraded result can get. Kinda like designing for VGA and let the lower cards display what they can which resulted in awful results compared to the "properly designed for" for the lesser types but less dev time i guess. Microsoft didn't help either by treating synth devices like midi doing the same.
@btizef2008 Жыл бұрын
Always loved the amiga soundtrack to dune but that adlib did a much better job than I thought possible!
@RetroGamingWithEdgarRivera Жыл бұрын
Oh my goodness a brand new pristine and gorgeous looking Ad Lib Gold Clone and I freaking love it and it's about time that someone make a Ad Lib Gold Clone since the Original Genuine Ones are hideously expensive. So yeah I'm super excited to see a clone of one of the most Super Rare Soundcard of the 90's which is of course the Ad Lib Gold.
@adammedbery4454 Жыл бұрын
I watch KZread vids in my living room with my home theater. The dune stuff was very. very enjoyable. Thank you for the demo!
@fmsyntheses Жыл бұрын
Wonderful video. Thanks again for doing what you do.
@GadgetUK164 Жыл бұрын
Loved this! Added to my list of things that aren't available to buy lol - fully expect the 2nd hand value of these to exceed the OG Adlib Gold too!
@BrassicGamer Жыл бұрын
It does indeed sound very cool! Thanks for sharing.
@MH-ht2rw Жыл бұрын
Such a lovely episode.
@UncleAwesomeRetro Жыл бұрын
That surround module makes a HUGE difference! Dune sounds great :)
@notthatfatboy6519 Жыл бұрын
11:06 gave me Sega Road Rash vibes. For a clone, this thing is amazing. Good video as always Jeremy!
@phill80 Жыл бұрын
Owning the CD Version of Dune for DOS, i can agree, this is amazing and sounds very authentic. Good choice of game to demo the card on LGR.
@Not-Great-at-Gaming Жыл бұрын
Glad they didn't outsource the manufacturing to Mars or Venus.
@andre060 Жыл бұрын
Wow, Dune sounds amazing on this! Great stuff.
@summer_xo Жыл бұрын
That is the best ive ever heard adlib sound, excellent sound card, direct capture and upload quality. If you were inclined to rip and upload the adlib test tracks and Dune before you sent it back, we would be forever in your debt.
@Psyden5757 Жыл бұрын
It would be awesome to have one of these to record all the sample tracks in FLAC as cleanly as possible Or if someone could do that and upload the flacs....
@ronpopeil6346 Жыл бұрын
Dune sounds amazing. Thanks for this.
@YzsForLife Жыл бұрын
this is awesome love this vintage community
@OmegaPrecept9 ай бұрын
ohh man talk about memories, geez... Brings me back.
@SolarMoth Жыл бұрын
sounds so nice
@mayw6571 Жыл бұрын
Glorious. I wonder if by 'surround' they meant 'surroundings' as in where its trying to simulate. Either way, it's a weirdly named feature.
@abx42 Жыл бұрын
That looks and sounds freaking fantastic. I just wish I found out about it before it went the way of the dodo bird 🤣🤣🤣🤣
@MichaelEilers Жыл бұрын
Hey Clint, make a music-only, ad-free version of this for Patrons!
@colinwatt9387 Жыл бұрын
No. Mr Clint, I expect you to Blerb!
@eduardocarrasco8830 Жыл бұрын
Just heard this with my headphone while I was working and just wooooow that adlib is amazing !!!!
@MacMelmac Жыл бұрын
Wow! Black and orange looks som good together! Yeah and gold as well of course.
@utp216 Жыл бұрын
That sounds freaking nice!
@thebluemarauder Жыл бұрын
Part of me wants to call this thing the Adlib Pyrite. Not as catchy as GoldLib, but very thematically appropriate since Iron Pyrite is Fool’s Gold and this is a clone (ie fake) Adlib Gold.
@charlesswansonii9319 Жыл бұрын
Absolutely beautiful.
@chrisbekker9698 Жыл бұрын
Sounds So Good!
@PimpinBassie2 Жыл бұрын
Still waiting for a FPGA based ISA sound card that emulates all major card types (SB, GUS etc). Do not want to dole out $$ for a one game card.
@whosonedphone Жыл бұрын
I can tell through KZread that that is the best sounding card Ive heard. The FM tones have such shape and each tonne exist in its own space. I personally do not care for the surround module. It's a funtouch though. I'm very upset I missed out on this.
@TheRealMespotine11 ай бұрын
I wished you had played the Dune Soundtrack in its entirety. It sounds so awesome on this card! ❤
@frankwhite2072 Жыл бұрын
Sounds really good.
@Carstuff111 Жыл бұрын
Oh man...that thing's ability to produce deep bass! Wow! The soundtrack for Dune is glorious on these cards! I so want that music uploaded from one of these cards!
@skuzzbunny Жыл бұрын
yeah, that pseudo-"surround" effect was a bit of a thing for a while well before real surround stuff was more widely practical, I believe Impulse Tracker contained a similar effect, i think it is just some kind of stereo-"phased" reverb, but can def sound fairly uniquely interesting.....)
@arlandi Жыл бұрын
this card is just beautiful.
@Lachlant1984 Жыл бұрын
Wow, this card does sound good, even without all the surround sound/sound enhancement effects.
@aaronsnowden6311 Жыл бұрын
Great video, thanks to the person that loaned this to you.
@mousex876710 ай бұрын
I use a Creative card for Adlib sounds in music production and sound design. The surround sound is so good. This is so unique.
@raptorchow329 Жыл бұрын
I like the Dune music, very nice!
@Kniffel101 Жыл бұрын
No matter how much or little use most people will get out of it, this card is BEAUTIFUL! =O
@superangrybrit Жыл бұрын
It's beautiful! 😘
@BertGrink Жыл бұрын
Holy moly that music from Dune was just so beautiful!
@JustinEmlay Жыл бұрын
Wow, I just want to get that card so I can frame it! AdLib was my first hardware purchase and I never regretted a single penny!
@FrontSideBus Жыл бұрын
Listening this on a pair of Proac D2R's being driven by a Chord SPM 1050 and a Parasound P6.... the effects sound pretty good!
@michaelturner4457 Жыл бұрын
I'd never heard of this Adlib Gold. But then I'm not in America. I did like the "pseudo" mode, that sounded really wide on my MacBook Pro speakers.
@megatronstoner Жыл бұрын
Sounds amazing
@--Zook-- Жыл бұрын
The dune music sounded awesome on my old Logitech X530 5.1 system with a modern Audigy sound card in my gaming pc.
@Dallen9 Жыл бұрын
Really takes me back to the days I was a kid. All this was New and everything was looking up and up. Now I just get depressed cause everything is moving towards an I am Ran and 1984 dystopian derp. The Days when Disk space was sparse and everyone was trying to cram everything on floppys when Midi was king.
@johnsimon8457 Жыл бұрын
Homebrew hardware gives me the warm and fuzzies, especially with a non-standard pcb color.
@_JPlays_ Жыл бұрын
Would have loved to hear how Ultima 8 sounded (as you had it in your games folder). That is one game you never hear about anymore.
@EM-do9em Жыл бұрын
Your channel is Soo much better than the rest of the retro community, Great job.
@jayperez3431 Жыл бұрын
lol listening to this on a evga nu audio and its like a blast from the past. sound cards are not dead. it sounds 10,000% better than my onboard, so much more fidelity and clarity.
@marcuspatzer2392 Жыл бұрын
Very Nice Video as always. 👍
@comicsgrinder9 ай бұрын
Quite the gold theme indeed!
@jamesburke2759 Жыл бұрын
I found my new favourite sound card the other day. Diamond Monster Sound MX300 its amazing and yo notice the difference when you boot into windows 98.
@grimmpickins2559 Жыл бұрын
That is one cool soundcard, shame it doesn't exist... anymore... I don't even run early era 486 type stuff... (my 90s stuff is Mac, I kinda dig AGP across the board, my pile gets more PCs after 2002-3...) I keep thinking about DOS gaming - as I emulate it across platforms, but I've never had a native one. And, this card made me consider it more seriously. Even if I can't have it. Sigh.
@Jef_Vermassen Жыл бұрын
Mmm, that is some good ol Dune tunes. Even better with the 'surround'.
@faenethlorhalien Жыл бұрын
Ah, the Adlib Gold... back in the day it solved a problem no one needed solved. By the time Creative had the sound blaster cards out with proper pcm as well as fm synth, Adlib had lost the war. The name Adlib was already too closely tied to "it has music, but not sound samples" for games, and most people wouldn't understand what this card brought to the table at the ridiculous price it costed.
@Heike--
Жыл бұрын
Adlib Gold was gold-plated Monster cables before audiophiles were really a thing.
@freeculture
Жыл бұрын
Are you kidding? This was done before the SB16, but Creative played dirty with Yamaha and starved Adlib of the chips until their product was out in large quantities first. There was also the Gravis Ultrasound, a completely different approach, its a PCM multichannel board, tracker music style which is the same thing the SNES did but with better quality of course. That made much more sense than "SoundFonts" in midi, but eventually CPUs were strong enough to do everything in software with a regular pcm stereo output. Before the SB Live! there was a much superior product from another rival that Creative bought into oblivion, this was a 4 channel with real samplerate oscillation change, not do all at 48khz and resample the rest realtime like they did with their inferior but better marketed product SBLive. It was the Ensoniq AudioPCI. Heck, even Roland put out a midi board with pcm, the RAP-10. You would normally just use Sound Blaster + Sound Canvas, but alas, that didn't took off and it was a dead end as well (the Sound Canvas was simply a read only sample library for midis). Finally AC97 and their current modern equivalent finished Creative for good, nobody needs them anymore. Only a few discrete sounds boards exist for professional multichannel use, with chips from VIA, etc, but Creative is just gone.
@georgekwok9182 Жыл бұрын
nice roland speaker👍👍
@freeculture
Жыл бұрын
Always wanted those, never could. Its in the back of my SCC-1 box... But fine, have bigger speakers+amp from the 90ies.
@jonothanthrace1530 Жыл бұрын
This is definitely the bassiest video I've ever heard on KZread!
@AdamsOlympia9 ай бұрын
Sounds incredible on my Adam A7X monitors. Would love to record some music with this bad boy!
@megamanfan310 ай бұрын
Every time I hear an OPL chip in action, I am reminded of the Sega Genesis.
@AndrewFremantle Жыл бұрын
I recognize Highway2! An evolution of Highway from the old Adlib Jukebox program from the early/mid-80s. I gotta say though, compared to other options contemporaneous with this thing, adding all this post-processing to OPL is kinda like putting lipstick on a pig....
@christiand.79303 ай бұрын
We had an Adlib Gold back in 93 in our first PC, an AMD 386 DX40. I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered the decent support for it in Dune 2 including voice samples, but always wanted a soundblaster due to better game support. The card went who knows where when we updated to a Pentium 100, possibly got scrapped some time after 😔
@AlejandroRodolfoMendez Жыл бұрын
Wow it uses a fpga, I wonder what would it take for making something compatible that is not that expensive. It's like the vampire cards for the amiga or the raspberry pi replacements that are more powerful than the actual pc.
@adultkarate18204 ай бұрын
Well, the “surround” effects certainly fooled my cat, one of those midi tom rolls made her jump (I have wide stereo separation here) 😄
@weepingscorpion8739 Жыл бұрын
Sounds and looks really cool this card... but now I'm really wondering if I should get the Orpheus-II card... it's a bit expensive too but damn, it's so tempting
@JeordieEH Жыл бұрын
While I love this old hardware and adlib was cool in a lot of ways. In no way would I go out of my way buying one of these. It is pretty neat, but thanks for sharing the awesomeness of the card. It does look pretty cool, but I would never be able to put it to good use. I mean it was videos like these that made me appreciate good opl3 playback. I was never that big of a fan back in the day of midi, but I occasionally would have friends who would find midi music and we'd share them and listen to them. I mean I love a good sound card, but i'm glad there are collectors out there who let us see this stuff with out having to waste hundreds or thousands on something obsolete.
@SlavicCelery Жыл бұрын
Give the AdLib Gold clones a few years and they're going to be worth $2k soon enough. They'll not get all the way up to a real deal ALG card, but they're going to get close in price. Impressive little piece of kit. I love watching these videos. As a kid playing on a 486, I remember wondering what some of the settings would be like. Hercules cards were a bit of a disappointment to see IRL.
@daPabOu11 ай бұрын
That Dune soundtrack 🥰
@arcadeages3917 Жыл бұрын
It’s the NEC SuperGrafx of sound cards
@johnsouthern6089 Жыл бұрын
Great tech that could've really took off if it had some of what SB Pro had going for it.
@PCUSER486 Жыл бұрын
Wish I could find one of those!
@RRRRRRP Жыл бұрын
❤ Dune music is so nostalgic, spent so many hours playing Dune 2 😂
Пікірлер: 319
For anyone interested, the "Surround Module" is a Yamaha YM7128B. Even the official datasheet calls it a "surround processor" so that's probably why AdLib did also. It's actually a fairly simple chip. it has 16 audio taps (8 each for L/R channels), with customizable gain and delay times. It also only has a single feedback tap, which is why the "reverb" sounds so fluttery/echo-y. The reverb effect on an AWE32 or similar card is actually much better, but for 1992, this would have been the only game in town short of an expensive external midi module.
@ThoughTMusic
Жыл бұрын
I was interested, thank you for the further details.
@Caluma122
Жыл бұрын
I think everyone is interested 😂
@georgen9838
6 ай бұрын
I wonder what else was on that surround board. Most of the chips on the AdLib Gold itself may be unobtainium, but the YM7128B definitely isn't... be pretty sweet to have a repro of even just that surround board still available.
I loved this. Just the 20 minutes of just about nothing but MIDI goodness.
@Dark.Shingo
Жыл бұрын
I've been hooked listening to this on my speakers, it's just delightful!
@paperpanak
Жыл бұрын
next time I'll hear canyon.mid my speakers gonna learn to fly, damn i HATE midi :)
@Ikkepop
Жыл бұрын
@@paperpanak midi is awesome dude
@nednettapp
Жыл бұрын
It's not MIDI, it's FM synth.
@paperpanak
Жыл бұрын
@@Ikkepop depends ... i was listening to this kind of music on daily basis for half of 90's, because my brother loved it. It is burned in my memory, i cannot change it ;)
My ears and Philips headphones thank you. These sounded amazing. the 2nd last one gave me a vague memory of a game called Afterlife but only a few notes of it. Now I miss 80's to 90's PC music. As a fan of old school point and click games I had no idea Dune had one as well. Though it's a much older era than what I enjoy. That flight takeoff is super cool.
I just love how the community keeps the support going for these old machines. ^_^
@stephenthomas1492
Жыл бұрын
It makes me feel like I was around for a special time in the history of computing. Back in the days where it was just us nerds and gamers into these machines.
@zxcvb_bvcxz
Жыл бұрын
Until the rare chips are all gone. Hope someone decapped a couple.
@PlasticCogLiquid
Жыл бұрын
@@stephenthomas1492 It was better that way
Very glad I listened to this in headphones. Those effects sound really good to me. The Stadium effect almost gave it a SNES vibe. Also this card would've been perfect to play Blake Stone Aliens of Gold with lmao
I miss the days when good soundcards were something sought after as much as graphics cards. Nowadays, most people, at best, just plug headphones into a cheap USB DAC and call it a day when gaming. I miss the good ole days sometimes.
Funny how musical pieces that were probably designed to show off the capabilities of the sound card tend to be real bangers.
@freeculture
Жыл бұрын
The video of the guy who ported this music is somewhere in youtube. He ported actual cd audio music into fm synth, its just amazing what he did. They had one of the rare boards sent to developers which is why they had this for Dune and some other game.
Doing a replay of DUNE is on my to-do list for my live streams. This game was so overshadowed at the time by DUNE II, but it was a really interesting management adventure game and yeah, that soundtrack is absolutely stellar.
@freeculture
Жыл бұрын
Those were different types of games, the second most famously introduced the RTS genre, but this plays more like a simple adventure game. As a game itself is super easy, too easy in fact. Its almost like watching some movie i guess. What is impressive is how cool the music was ported to the Gold FM synth, because believe it or not, a real audio CD exists of this Dune music.
I don't even know much about retro audio or audio in general and I still went "oh dang that sounds amazing" as soon as it started playing
Could you record a playlist before sending it back? The Win midis and a few games? This really sounds cool...like nostalgia dipped in chocolate!
@YzsForLife
Жыл бұрын
this would be awesome
Psh..screw the RTX 4060ti. We've got a new AdLib clone! Holy crap, Dune sounds a lot like it does on SEGA CD. And that's how I like it best.
@proCaylak
Жыл бұрын
rtx 4060 ti... for a card of that size, screwing is optional. but getting screwed is not.
God I love that OPL sound, it reminds of me a child playing the Sega Genesis and PC DOS Games, it has this gritty, dirty quality to it, and it doesn't feel like it aged at all, as opposite to something like the SNES (or many other wavetable based synth systems from the period) which has low bitrate samples as basis for it's instruments, they sounded impressive at the time bud aged so badly. No reverb will ever save a low bitrate sample, it will always just sound like its playing from under a blanket.
So the surround worked on my home theater system. The songs were coming through all sides on surround. When dropped to mono it only came out the center. Neat stuff. Great tunes! It's like Carpenter Brut.
@spawnkano316
Жыл бұрын
Yea same here with mine, it sounded so cool as the settings were being changed😊
@KarlHamilton
Жыл бұрын
Spunds like it must be Prologic encoded then.
I think Adlib's marketing team really did a disservice to this by just calling it a "surround" module instead of really pushing the DSP functionality. If theyd made it clearer how much it actually did, it might have sold better back in the olden times
@jamesrowden303
Жыл бұрын
Yeah, Creative were much more into promoting that side of their products.
@AlexCBrandon
Жыл бұрын
They didn't do much to sell the card period unfortunately. As mentioned Creative was the Microsoft / 800 pound gorilla they were up against. Sad really since one would figure the success of the first card could be dumped into more marketing. But eh...
@Njuregen
Жыл бұрын
Quality means little if you not have promotion, many companies went under with better quality things over the lesser qualified but better promoted ones.
@BanazirGalpsi1968
Жыл бұрын
Great for music soundtrack and soundscapes
@rich1051414
Жыл бұрын
I mean, we still call this "virtual surround" do this day.
What kind of sorcery is this? My 5.1 surround sound was playing things in ways I've never heard, I didn't even think KZread supported that.
@RickBaconsAdventures
Жыл бұрын
most surround sound units decode the channels just from the channel mixing on a stereo source since 5.1 content is rare
I love that that Altera (Intel) FPGA could probably hardware emulate an entire PC from that era
@proCaylak
Жыл бұрын
FPGA is the present and the future of emulation. the real hardware is getting rarer and less approachable :(
@alphaLONE
Жыл бұрын
that's just a little 1270 LE CPLD. Doubt you could do anything this grand with it, like fitting a soft 8086 in it. Wouldn't be surprised if some wizard managed to, but I don't expect much from this one.
@nalinux
Жыл бұрын
I just noticed Altera was bought by Intel in 2015 ...
@medes5597
Жыл бұрын
I don't think this kind of thing is that impressive anymore. A few years ago it was kind of an amazing fun fact. But at this point its true of like 95% of modern day retro cards, upgrades, remakes etc and has been for a few years. We're basically at the point where its more notable when they use something less powerful.
@rommix0
Жыл бұрын
@@nalinux and Xilinx (another well known FPGA maker) was bought out by AMD.
That card looks like a piece of art.
The Dune soundtrack sounds amazing on this card!
Damn this fm music is from heaven
I've managed to pass all tests on a Pentium 75. The surround module is the most speed sensitive, without it would work with something like VIA C3 downclocked to around 300 MHz.
These sounds are so nostalgic! So many games from the day used the Adlib features of the SB, that I can't hear the adlib without remembering so fondly every PC game from that era!
I really noticed the effects on my kenwood and pioneer speakers and receiver hardware really brings out the sound even have push buttons to bring effects as well no need for a card for that but the cards filled a void back in those days
Great sound from the 486 era. I wish IBM or Microsoft would come out with an updated DOS 9.0, just for 386 and up machines and adding USB 3.2 driver support.
@themaritimegirl
Жыл бұрын
FreeDOS with the USBDOS package more or less provides this.
@christophero1969
Жыл бұрын
@@themaritimegirl Not really, but good suggestion.
@absalomdraconis
Жыл бұрын
@@christophero1969 : Honestly, at this point wanting a new DOS from IBM or Microsoft is just unreasonable. Looking to things like FreeDOS is the right choice.
@christophero1969
11 ай бұрын
@@absalomdraconis No... IBM ALREADY HAS THE CODE for 2003 servers. IBM would just have to recompile the code for 32-bit architecture and add modern USB and LARGE DISK SUPPORT. I have used FreeDOS, and NOPE, JUST Nope.
Dune ❤ Stephane Picq is a musical genius🥇Rémi Herbulot is the other genius behind the curtain of this epic cinematic game
@joe--cool
Жыл бұрын
Last I heard was him working to get the rights back to release the Soundtrack again. There is a CD but it's not on Spotify afaik.
@freeculture
Жыл бұрын
@@joe--cool Yup and its totally not in youtube, nope, don't search it, move along 🙂
The music playing through that card is probably the best Dune-related thing I've ever encountered.
It's incredible how great MiDi like this can sound. It's so darn clean and dynamic.
@Njuregen
Жыл бұрын
Back in the day I'd have long lists of midi songs on drive to listen to from games in the late 90's, early 00's even.
@mrb5217
Жыл бұрын
Adlib music isn't really MIDI. It's music directly programmed for the OPL.
@wizard-pirate
Жыл бұрын
@@mrb5217 he's surprised it sounds 'like' midi.
@freeculture
Жыл бұрын
@@Njuregen I still do. There is this thing called fluidsynth which can take any .sf2 files for midi samples so its nearly the same as having a midi module back, as long as the midis don't use SysEx which they rarely do, sound identical. For Example Doom music composed for the SC-55 sounds the same with a certain file called Scc1t2.sf2. Older windows used to provide a soft midi "device" with a subset of these very same samples, so its a very familiar sound for the old games. I believe there are ways for ScummVM and dosbox to use fluidsynth or similar one way or another. There are a bunch of Sierra/Lucas/etc midis out there, with like the whole score of the game in a single midi, you can play that and get half hour orchestral music in a minuscule 200k .mid file.
@freeculture
Жыл бұрын
@@mrb5217 Yeah that's how it should have been, and actually was. Then came the cheaters who uses pre-programmed "instrument sets" for "midi like" use. Eww. Even Sierra, Lucas and others went this route, compose for like Sound Canvas and the rest whatever degraded result can get. Kinda like designing for VGA and let the lower cards display what they can which resulted in awful results compared to the "properly designed for" for the lesser types but less dev time i guess. Microsoft didn't help either by treating synth devices like midi doing the same.
Always loved the amiga soundtrack to dune but that adlib did a much better job than I thought possible!
Oh my goodness a brand new pristine and gorgeous looking Ad Lib Gold Clone and I freaking love it and it's about time that someone make a Ad Lib Gold Clone since the Original Genuine Ones are hideously expensive. So yeah I'm super excited to see a clone of one of the most Super Rare Soundcard of the 90's which is of course the Ad Lib Gold.
I watch KZread vids in my living room with my home theater. The dune stuff was very. very enjoyable. Thank you for the demo!
Wonderful video. Thanks again for doing what you do.
Loved this! Added to my list of things that aren't available to buy lol - fully expect the 2nd hand value of these to exceed the OG Adlib Gold too!
It does indeed sound very cool! Thanks for sharing.
Such a lovely episode.
That surround module makes a HUGE difference! Dune sounds great :)
11:06 gave me Sega Road Rash vibes. For a clone, this thing is amazing. Good video as always Jeremy!
Owning the CD Version of Dune for DOS, i can agree, this is amazing and sounds very authentic. Good choice of game to demo the card on LGR.
Glad they didn't outsource the manufacturing to Mars or Venus.
Wow, Dune sounds amazing on this! Great stuff.
That is the best ive ever heard adlib sound, excellent sound card, direct capture and upload quality. If you were inclined to rip and upload the adlib test tracks and Dune before you sent it back, we would be forever in your debt.
It would be awesome to have one of these to record all the sample tracks in FLAC as cleanly as possible Or if someone could do that and upload the flacs....
Dune sounds amazing. Thanks for this.
this is awesome love this vintage community
ohh man talk about memories, geez... Brings me back.
sounds so nice
Glorious. I wonder if by 'surround' they meant 'surroundings' as in where its trying to simulate. Either way, it's a weirdly named feature.
That looks and sounds freaking fantastic. I just wish I found out about it before it went the way of the dodo bird 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Hey Clint, make a music-only, ad-free version of this for Patrons!
No. Mr Clint, I expect you to Blerb!
Just heard this with my headphone while I was working and just wooooow that adlib is amazing !!!!
Wow! Black and orange looks som good together! Yeah and gold as well of course.
That sounds freaking nice!
Part of me wants to call this thing the Adlib Pyrite. Not as catchy as GoldLib, but very thematically appropriate since Iron Pyrite is Fool’s Gold and this is a clone (ie fake) Adlib Gold.
Absolutely beautiful.
Sounds So Good!
Still waiting for a FPGA based ISA sound card that emulates all major card types (SB, GUS etc). Do not want to dole out $$ for a one game card.
I can tell through KZread that that is the best sounding card Ive heard. The FM tones have such shape and each tonne exist in its own space. I personally do not care for the surround module. It's a funtouch though. I'm very upset I missed out on this.
I wished you had played the Dune Soundtrack in its entirety. It sounds so awesome on this card! ❤
Sounds really good.
Oh man...that thing's ability to produce deep bass! Wow! The soundtrack for Dune is glorious on these cards! I so want that music uploaded from one of these cards!
yeah, that pseudo-"surround" effect was a bit of a thing for a while well before real surround stuff was more widely practical, I believe Impulse Tracker contained a similar effect, i think it is just some kind of stereo-"phased" reverb, but can def sound fairly uniquely interesting.....)
this card is just beautiful.
Wow, this card does sound good, even without all the surround sound/sound enhancement effects.
Great video, thanks to the person that loaned this to you.
I use a Creative card for Adlib sounds in music production and sound design. The surround sound is so good. This is so unique.
I like the Dune music, very nice!
No matter how much or little use most people will get out of it, this card is BEAUTIFUL! =O
It's beautiful! 😘
Holy moly that music from Dune was just so beautiful!
Wow, I just want to get that card so I can frame it! AdLib was my first hardware purchase and I never regretted a single penny!
Listening this on a pair of Proac D2R's being driven by a Chord SPM 1050 and a Parasound P6.... the effects sound pretty good!
I'd never heard of this Adlib Gold. But then I'm not in America. I did like the "pseudo" mode, that sounded really wide on my MacBook Pro speakers.
Sounds amazing
The dune music sounded awesome on my old Logitech X530 5.1 system with a modern Audigy sound card in my gaming pc.
Really takes me back to the days I was a kid. All this was New and everything was looking up and up. Now I just get depressed cause everything is moving towards an I am Ran and 1984 dystopian derp. The Days when Disk space was sparse and everyone was trying to cram everything on floppys when Midi was king.
Homebrew hardware gives me the warm and fuzzies, especially with a non-standard pcb color.
Would have loved to hear how Ultima 8 sounded (as you had it in your games folder). That is one game you never hear about anymore.
Your channel is Soo much better than the rest of the retro community, Great job.
lol listening to this on a evga nu audio and its like a blast from the past. sound cards are not dead. it sounds 10,000% better than my onboard, so much more fidelity and clarity.
Very Nice Video as always. 👍
Quite the gold theme indeed!
I found my new favourite sound card the other day. Diamond Monster Sound MX300 its amazing and yo notice the difference when you boot into windows 98.
That is one cool soundcard, shame it doesn't exist... anymore... I don't even run early era 486 type stuff... (my 90s stuff is Mac, I kinda dig AGP across the board, my pile gets more PCs after 2002-3...) I keep thinking about DOS gaming - as I emulate it across platforms, but I've never had a native one. And, this card made me consider it more seriously. Even if I can't have it. Sigh.
Mmm, that is some good ol Dune tunes. Even better with the 'surround'.
Ah, the Adlib Gold... back in the day it solved a problem no one needed solved. By the time Creative had the sound blaster cards out with proper pcm as well as fm synth, Adlib had lost the war. The name Adlib was already too closely tied to "it has music, but not sound samples" for games, and most people wouldn't understand what this card brought to the table at the ridiculous price it costed.
@Heike--
Жыл бұрын
Adlib Gold was gold-plated Monster cables before audiophiles were really a thing.
@freeculture
Жыл бұрын
Are you kidding? This was done before the SB16, but Creative played dirty with Yamaha and starved Adlib of the chips until their product was out in large quantities first. There was also the Gravis Ultrasound, a completely different approach, its a PCM multichannel board, tracker music style which is the same thing the SNES did but with better quality of course. That made much more sense than "SoundFonts" in midi, but eventually CPUs were strong enough to do everything in software with a regular pcm stereo output. Before the SB Live! there was a much superior product from another rival that Creative bought into oblivion, this was a 4 channel with real samplerate oscillation change, not do all at 48khz and resample the rest realtime like they did with their inferior but better marketed product SBLive. It was the Ensoniq AudioPCI. Heck, even Roland put out a midi board with pcm, the RAP-10. You would normally just use Sound Blaster + Sound Canvas, but alas, that didn't took off and it was a dead end as well (the Sound Canvas was simply a read only sample library for midis). Finally AC97 and their current modern equivalent finished Creative for good, nobody needs them anymore. Only a few discrete sounds boards exist for professional multichannel use, with chips from VIA, etc, but Creative is just gone.
nice roland speaker👍👍
@freeculture
Жыл бұрын
Always wanted those, never could. Its in the back of my SCC-1 box... But fine, have bigger speakers+amp from the 90ies.
This is definitely the bassiest video I've ever heard on KZread!
Sounds incredible on my Adam A7X monitors. Would love to record some music with this bad boy!
Every time I hear an OPL chip in action, I am reminded of the Sega Genesis.
I recognize Highway2! An evolution of Highway from the old Adlib Jukebox program from the early/mid-80s. I gotta say though, compared to other options contemporaneous with this thing, adding all this post-processing to OPL is kinda like putting lipstick on a pig....
We had an Adlib Gold back in 93 in our first PC, an AMD 386 DX40. I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered the decent support for it in Dune 2 including voice samples, but always wanted a soundblaster due to better game support. The card went who knows where when we updated to a Pentium 100, possibly got scrapped some time after 😔
Wow it uses a fpga, I wonder what would it take for making something compatible that is not that expensive. It's like the vampire cards for the amiga or the raspberry pi replacements that are more powerful than the actual pc.
Well, the “surround” effects certainly fooled my cat, one of those midi tom rolls made her jump (I have wide stereo separation here) 😄
Sounds and looks really cool this card... but now I'm really wondering if I should get the Orpheus-II card... it's a bit expensive too but damn, it's so tempting
While I love this old hardware and adlib was cool in a lot of ways. In no way would I go out of my way buying one of these. It is pretty neat, but thanks for sharing the awesomeness of the card. It does look pretty cool, but I would never be able to put it to good use. I mean it was videos like these that made me appreciate good opl3 playback. I was never that big of a fan back in the day of midi, but I occasionally would have friends who would find midi music and we'd share them and listen to them. I mean I love a good sound card, but i'm glad there are collectors out there who let us see this stuff with out having to waste hundreds or thousands on something obsolete.
Give the AdLib Gold clones a few years and they're going to be worth $2k soon enough. They'll not get all the way up to a real deal ALG card, but they're going to get close in price. Impressive little piece of kit. I love watching these videos. As a kid playing on a 486, I remember wondering what some of the settings would be like. Hercules cards were a bit of a disappointment to see IRL.
That Dune soundtrack 🥰
It’s the NEC SuperGrafx of sound cards
Great tech that could've really took off if it had some of what SB Pro had going for it.
Wish I could find one of those!
❤ Dune music is so nostalgic, spent so many hours playing Dune 2 😂