Some later games will require Windows 95/98 however. Then you can pretty much play any game that came out between 1988 to 1999 or maybe even earlier. If you plan to do gaming though, then I would suggest going with the Pentium 3, and a decent graphics card. If you go the desktop route you can safely go up to a Pentium 3 processor, but everyone will just say its overkill. It is just the change from going to emulated fm synthesis SB16 to real fm synthesis SB16.Īll my laptops and desktops have Pentium I processors.

Everything sounds the same when changing from laptop to desktop, from what I have found personally. So, you can choose to either modify on the desktop to make it sound how you want or just record off the laptop and deal with the 'sound character loss.' If you are just doing sample tracking, it doesn't matter. Some of the instrument patches were way off, and others were even playing back at wrong volumes. There were times I have made a song on one of the laptops in Adlib Tracker II, then put in on the desktop to play back and record. You can run into some other issues as well. I use sb16 compatible laptops (ESS Audiodrive) when I play live, but I write and record off a desktop with a real Sound Blaster 16 since it sounds way better.

But yes, you will probably end up spending a little bit more money on getting a desktop up and running, but believe me, its WELL WORTH IT. There are also sound differences between different versions of Sound Blaster 16 cards, which I will get into later. And the desktop sound blaster 16 ISA cards have much better overall sound quality than any other sound blaster 16 compatible laptop. However, what I have discovered (during heavy testing and field comparisons) is that there is much tone difference between sound cards. I know a lot of you would prefer to go the laptop route, since it is a complete system in one. May your music flourish with each changing parameter. It is geared towards beginners that never had much experience with old pc's or ms-dos and want to try something new.Ĭongratulations!! Thank you for choosing Sound Blaster 16 as your song composing medium. This is the thread where I am going to give out all my information that I have learned over these past years when making music with ms-dos.

Sound blaster 16 ct1740