Sound Boards: ESS products


 * ESS 1688, 1788, 1859, 1868 PnP, 1888, 688

Last update: 12/26/97

Phone:

Fax:

BBS:

e-mail:

web:
 * http://www.esstech.com

Type:
 * Varies (??)

OS/2 Drivers:
 * Available

Drivers from:
 * OS/2 4.0 Box, http://www.esstech.com/techsupp/updates/intro_ud.htm

Boards using this chipset include:
 * Audio Drive, Sound Conductor, Precision Instruments, Newcom 16 and 32PnP Wavetable, Behavior Tech, probably many others

Comments:
 * These seem to be chipsets used in a number of "generic" boards, and OS/2 4.0 includes driver support as part of the main MMPM/2 installation. There are also drivers available on the above web site. One report I've received on such a board indicates that the drivers from the web site install and work well under Warp 3.0. I don't know if any of these chipsets support wavetable sound, or if so whether the OS/2 drivers support the board's wavetable features. I've received one other report to the effect that the IDE and MPU-401 ports on one ESS-based product (a "Music Mad" board) attempt to "share" an interrupt, which is a no-no under OS/2. The result is that the sound board can be made to work, but only if the IDE port isn't required. The person making this report had four IDE hard drives on another EIDE controller, though, and the sound board was a "plug-and-play" model, so it's possible this was a matter of the system running out of available IRQs, and that it would work better on a less "crowded" system. Apparently the latest ESS drivers allow OS/2 programs to access the sound board even when Windows programs are active, presumably by having the Windows drivers "talk" to the OS/2 drivers to prevent conflicts. ESS has recently started to introduce PCI chipsets, but as near as I can determine, they have no OS/2 drivers for them as of yet. ESS products don't have a good reputation for producing high-quality sound. Specifically, they're reputed to produce poor signal/noise ratios. This may not be a big deal in many cases, but it can be for others (say, if you want to transfer LPs to CD using a sound card and a CD-R drive).