Greetings and welcome to an LGR thing!
And today's thing is the TexElec
Resound OPL3 8-bit ISA sound card released in February of 2018 and
currently costing $77.99.
So yep this is yet another
newly-made retro sound card with AdLib compatibility.
That itself is
nothing new, there are several good AdLib clones floating around these days.
But the Resound has one heck of a neat gimmick that sets it apart.
This not only
uses the OPL3 sound chip instead of an OPL2 -- you know this was the sound chip
that was really popular with tons of early 90s sound cards like the
Sound Blaster 16 and compatibles -- but it also introduces, get this: four channels
of OPL3 sound!
That's right, surround sound AdLib is
technically possible!
Before we go any further this is not a sponsored
video and they didn't give this to me for free or anything.
I just bought it
and I happen to like it.
So let's talk about it!
For one thing I just enjoy the
visual design of this card, it's a very striking look and it's clean looking and
there's a few items on it that stand out from your normal
AdLib clone kind of thing.
First off is this dip switch bank here for changing the base I/O address
from the AdLib's default of 388h.
At this point there's really not much
reason to ever want to change this but the option is there in case you do.
It also has a set of line level input pins up here acting as an auxiliary input in
case you want to daisy-chain other sound devices.
And you see all these red blocky
things here?
These are WIMA film capacitors, which it uses instead of your
normal electrolytics, which are paired with some input and output decoupling
capacitors to try and block DC noise in the audio path to get a much cleaner
sounding output.
It also has its own 14.31818MHz
oscillator instead of just relying on the ISA bus of whatever PC
you install it in.
This is done to prevent any pitch-changing on select
older machines with differing bus speeds than maybe the AdLib or the game expects.
And of course you have two 3.5mm audio outputs
one for the front left and right speakers
and the other for the rear left and right.
And being that this is an
AdLib-compatible kind of thing the installation is quite simple.
As long as
you have a free 8-bit ISA slot you're good.
But for the games I want to play I
like using it on 486 machines like this Unisys CWD-4002 I'm installing this
one in right here.
And that's it for basic usage, you don't have to set up any
drivers or software.
If an old game is gonna look for AdLib it's gonna look
for 388h, which is what this uses.
So let's hit up a few of the pros of the
device straight away.
And for one thing there is no emulation, as I mentioned
earlier this is a proper FM synth on-board: a Yamaha YMF262
OPL3 sound chip, ah!
Not only is it a great chip but it
has really clean output on this card, probably the best I've heard from any
sound card with an OPL3 chip.
Seriously it's dead silent if there's nothing
playing, and all the games I tried sound just as they should.
Listen to some of this stuff and enjoy!
*good AdLib stuff plays for a while*
*mmm, Tyrian. Sounds like OPL3 but it's using OPL2!*
*doooooooooooom*
*the lesser-played latter half of the Space Quest III theme*
Then there's the surround sound mode which just amuses me to no end that it exists!
Apparently while designing the card and researching the OPL3 datasheet
they noticed a feature which does not seem to have ever been implemented on
a commercial sound card back in the day.
Which is that on the OPL3 chip there
were two more channels beyond the usual two for stereo that are supported
straight from the factory.
It's worth noting this is different than what the Surround Sound Module did
with the Adlib Gold card in 1992.
That simply layered some reverb and echo effects on top of existing games and added simulated
stereo depth to a few games that supported that, but did not have any output for separate
additional sound channels and rear speakers like the Resound does.
Now at this point there are no games or really
anything that supports it except this one demo program that comes with the
sound card itself from TexElec.
But hey, it's there!
So you can get your
normal speakers, plug those into the front, and then two more speakers.
Like, I just have some random ones here we're gonna put behind the camera.
This is not a surround sound video, so it's only in stereo, it's
not gonna be the best example.
But yeah, just listen to this!
*front left channel plays*
*front right channel plays*
*rear left channel plays*
*rear right channel plays*
Yeah there are four distinct channels
all around you with AdLib sound coming out of it!
That's just so cool to me,
I hope that somebody does something with this in the future.
And that's really the whole idea of this feature of the card: put the hardware out
there and then hope that somebody in the homebrew scene does something with it.
And I really hope someone does because I want to hear more things coming through
and OPL3 chip all around me.
It does have some cons at the moment and
this is the 1.1 version of the card and hopefully some of these things will
change in the future.
But one of the biggest ones is that you cannot adjust
the volume, either on the card or through software.
And this is kind of an issue
because games with FM synth and AdLib support are loud, and then soft, and
everywhere in between.
I mean, just look at this line out recording of these
different games: they're just all over the place as far as their levels and
some of them do peak a little bit.
Or some are just really, really quiet.
So unless the game allows you to adjust it through software you're kind of outta
luck and you've just got to rely on external audio adjustment at this point
in time, like some good speakers or your amplifier or something like that.
But the bigger issue for me is that actually making full use of
its OPL3 capability is unpredictable at best.
The way you normally get OPL3
support in games is by setting it up to directly address a supported device,
usually something like the Sound Blaster Pro 2 or Sound Blaster 16.
The problem is that doing this with the Resound card typically won't provide
anything but an error message.
I'm not saying I expected this to work, I'm just pointing out one
of the inherent issues in making a card with this approach.
Considering there was
never a standalone OPL3-only card like this manufactured back in the day, it
makes sense that games don't always look for the YMF262 directly, and might rely
on detecting some component or a TSR something else this card doesn't have.
As a result, with games like Dune and Theme Hospital you're stuck with OPL2 support
for the time being, even though games like this technically
are able to support the more advanced OPL3 features that this card has.
That's just with DOS though: Windows 95 and 98 are a bit of a different story, since you
can just tell it to use the default AdLib Gold drivers from Windows and it
shows up straight away.
You still don't get any Windows volume adjustments since
that would require the card to have Windows Sound System support,
which it does not.
But you can at least use the OPL3 as a MIDI playback device in Windows.
So yeah, canyon.mid sounds pretty great!
*pretty great-sounding canyon.mid file plays through OPL3 sound chip*
And all this raises the question: who exactly is this card for?
At $80 it still costs a whole lot less than an original AdLib card,
that's for sure. But it's also
on-par with or costlier than a good Sound Blaster 16 or any number of common
clones from back in the day that'll be more useful to more DOS games.
And as cool as the surround sound possibilities are in theory, it's not much of a selling
point right now since nothing supports it yet.
So I guess the Resound OPL3 is
made for full-time PC geeks like me who just like to cram fresh new homebrew
cards in slots and see what happens.
And I'll admit, it's been a blast to screw
around with for me, even with its technical setbacks and quirks.
Stuff like this is just straight-up cool in my mind and it's very close
to being a fantastic OPL3-based card.
And as far as support for the original AdLib goes with OPL2, this is the nicest I've ever
heard just because of how clean it is.
So if you want a dedicated OPL2 card that just happens to have some other stuff added
then this is a great choice.
But at the moment it'll be sitting around while I wait for
greater software and game support, especially in DOS.
And if you enjoyed this look at a custom made retro device then let me know.
I've got actually
quite a few more of these things to cover that I haven't yet.
In the meantime though there
are plenty of other videos on my channel and new ones coming
every Monday and Friday here on LGR.
And as always thank you very much for watching!