AWE64 Legacy: A Premium New ISA Sound Card in 2022

I was able to borrow this AWE 64 Legacy sound card, and wow is this thing impressive. A modern 16-bit ISA sound card with just about all the bells and whistles you could ask for in a Sound Blaster of this type. So let's check it out on a Pentium III Windows 98 PC and the LGR Woodgrain 486!

[LGRBlerbs]

The filename is _ride'em cowboy.xm_

[danielbarnes]

As a former Creative Labs employee, I really enjoyed seeing this. I didn't know it existed. I wrote Audio Stream Recorder that shipped with some of the later sound cards, and I consider myself fortunate to have been able to work with these sound cards.

[stackhat]

Had an AWE64 with the black jacks before they were rebranded as 'Value' and had color coded jacks. Came with onboard 512KB RAM. I got a mic and started messing around and recorded myself making stupid sounds and uploaded it to the onboard RAM and then forgot about it.

A little while later I was playing Hexen late at night and started hearing my voice come through in the sounds and freaked the hell out. Eventually realised that Hexen was using the stupid sounds stored in the memory of the AWE64 that I had forgotten about.

[GalileoAV]

The sheer quality of this community produced card is a testament to the kind of dedication folks have in retro computing.

[TheInternetHelpdeskPlays]

For $500 I'd say it was expensive, but looking at the quality there and the fact you can see the love and passion that went in to it, I think it's the perfect price point.
This is proof of what happens if you have a good community.

[cody]

I was born in 2010 but I still think it's cool that you old people like this kind of stuff. Sometimes I play with my iPhone 8 for nostalgia

[MadMac]

Ever since I saw the original Vogons thread three years ago, I wanted one of these cards but could never justify the $500+ expense (especially when converted to Canadian Dollars). It would let me avoid juggling sound cards in my Windows 98 retro PC (PII-450, 440BX motherboard, Voodoo2, GeForce2 GTS); at the moment I need to use a Sound Blaster 16 for my OPL3 needs, a Vortex2 card for A3D games, and a SB Live Value for EAX games. Even if they were still available, it would be hard to tell my wife "Sorry, I can't buy a new crib for the baby, I just spent all of our money importing a retro sound card from Russia." 😅

[kaitlyn__L]

Also, I will never get tired of watching that Gateway monitor resync. Seemingly every other CRT flickers quickly or does it totally unnoticeably — I love the gentle yet dignified resizing of screen geometry on this unit.

[electronash]

12:37 - When changing Soundfonts / banks, you often need to play the MIDI from the start again, else the patch changes don't occur, and most of the sounds will default to Piano.

Very nice-looking card.

[RetroSwim]

I was a tester for this card, got my prototype safely in my Dual MMX box. It really is something very special. The guys did a phenomenal job on the whole project.

[Dwoluschuk]

wow, those people did a good job putting that together. It's definitely boutique and priced accordingly but you can tell they built it to be as good as possible instead of just another marginal clone card.

[molivil]

I used to use FT2 for a while to make tracker music. FT2 utilizes software mixing. It loads samples to system RAM, not in the AWE64 RAM. That is the reason it uses system RAM when loading samples. GUS may be different, but in Sound Blaster mode, mixing is done in software. Also, despite what the software says, it seems to play samples in 8-bit while in live preview, but can render 16-bit WAV files as output for best quality.

[ronpopeil]

The song at 17:45 damn. I was such a audio card nerd in highschool and my college years. I was preaching the word of Audigy to anyone who would listen. Loved this vid.

[domm]

Man, that fast tracker clip ....that music is like food for the soul. Takes me straight back to 90s gaming. Same with the descent music. Amazing. Fantastic.

[harleyn]

I love tracker and mod files. I used to listen to them for hours. This takes them to a whole new level. If this card was cheaper and available, I'd want one just for that purpose.

[Macho_Fantastico]

I know Soundcards aren't exactly a thing anymore, but that thing is awesome. It looks amazing too.

[ATomRileyA]

Really amazing what the retro computing community comes out with, looks beautiful i remember getting a AWE32 back in the day and it was a real big deal for me and my dad. I can vividly remember trying out all the things it could do and my dad was interested in using it for making music and such.
man i miss those days where everything was new and seemed like endless progress and now seems a little stagnant except for VR stuff.

[rpm]

That might be the best looking card I've ever seen. Shows how passion and dedication can make a difference.

[ms-dosman]

Awesome seeing it on Blerbs! Been following the Vogons thread for a long time but the 540 USD was a bit too steep for me. Especially since I already own a Awe64 Gold.

Got mine a few years ago from a seller who offered a box of random cards. Mostly generic AGP cards and NICs but then my keen eye spotted that gold PCB in the bottom of the box. Got the entire box for 40 EUR.. it was a good day :)

[RussianSevereWeatherVideos]

I'm very happy that the postal services are still working so that you could delight us with such a review as well as show off that well-drawn Nu Pogodi art.