Do any games take advantage of the Phasor ort sound better?

[oblivion]

I have a Mockingboard and I was wondering if it's worth "upgrading" to the phasor card. I know the phasor is capable of more sounds and is supposedly 100% backward compatible with the Mockingboard. Do any games take advantage of the extra sounds of the Phasor or do any games just sound better on the phasor? is it really 100% backward compatible with all Mockingboard games?

 

[Cloudschatze]

Ultima V has native support for the Phasor, but despite the card having twelve voices of polyphony available to it, only two of the fifteen music tracks in the game leverage more than just the six voices that a Mockingboard A or C provides. The difference isn't exactly noteworthy.

Title                    Max Polyphony
--------------------------------------
Ultima Theme                         7
Britannic Lands                      4
Cap'n Johne's Hornpipe               3
Engagement and Melee                 5
Stones                               3
Greyson's Tale                       6
Fanfare for the Virtuous             3
The Missing Monarch                  6
Villager's Tarantella                4
Halls of Doom                        6
Worlds Below                         6
Lord Blackthorn                      7
Dream of Lady Nan                    3
Joyous Reunion                       6
Rule Britannia                       6

Furthermore, an unmodified Phasor/clone produces output that is significantly more filtered than that of the Mockingboard/clones. For my part, I removed my Phasor and went back to the Mockingboard C.

 

[olePigeon]

@Cloudschatze Technically it's exactly 1 note worthy.

@oblivion If you have an Apple IIgs, it might be worth it. I don't know how many games were affected, but I seem to recall that Ultima V won't work with a Mockingboard in a IIgs because of some sort of bug. The Phasor fixes said bug. So if you want to play Ultima V on a IIgs with fancy music, you'll need a Phasor.

 

[VERAULT]

This is a bit of a dissapointment. I have wanted to get a soundcard for a while for my Apple II for some time and I just assumed the Phasor was top of the list. I guess a 3rd party mockingboard is where to go. And if thats the case who sells a standard mockingboard clone thats worth it?

 

[oblivion]

Thanks for the info guys, I guess I'll stick to my Mockingboard clone then.

This is a bit of a dissapointment. I have wanted to get a soundcard for a while for my Apple II for some time and I just assumed the Phasor was top of the list. I guess a 3rd party mockingboard is where to go. And if thats the case who sells a standard mockingboard clone thats worth it?

this is the one I recently purchased https://www.reactivemicro.com/product/mockingboard-assembled-or-kit/

 

[olePigeon]

@VERAULT The MEGA Audio by A2Heaven is the best audio card, but it's practically a lottery to get one right now. It's a 7-in-1 sound card. He's a one-man assembly plant, and all you can do is check the website every day and hope what you want is in stock.

It's $105 with a cool LED audio level indicator. $85 without. It's completely bonkers:

2 x Mockingboard-cards (no support for SSI-263 speech chips emulation)
1 x A.L.F.-card
4 x S.A.M.-cards (4 x DAC)

 

[skate323k137]

There should be a U5 mockingboard on GS patch still floating around, but I have lost track of it as I have an IIe as well so I generally just use that. But I recall having to patch the disk(s) with a utility to fix mockingboard support.

My IIgs is heavily geared toward sound, it has a Darksound card, mockingboard, and the internal summed mono output run to a 3 channel mixer. I am a DJ in addition to apple/Mac collector and user of decades so my setups tend to favor that.

With Ultima5 I ended up using a mockingboard and a MIDI card from a2heaven. That midi card has a Yamaha Bluetooth transmitter and receiver plugged into it; I can channel the midi out to my synths with a simple patch bay app, making it really nice to not have to run a midi cable into the machine.

 

[magnusfalkirk]

I did some searching and found the Ultima 5 for GS patch for the Mockingboard here:

Apple II software mirrors

A collection of past and current Apple II FTP sites. ftp.apple.asimov.net is synced daily.

mirrors.apple2.org.za

The file name is U5MBwGSlnch.shk. So it's an Apple II Shrink It file, which you'll have to get on your Apple IIGS and unshrink there to patch the sound. Hope this helps.

Dean