Welcome to part 4 of my Building a Retro Gaming Rig series. Today I’ll be looking at some sound cards for the build.
Back in the early nineties when I first started taking an interest in PC gaming, most entry-level systems didn’t come with a proper sound card. I still remember playing the original Wolfenstein 3D using the integrated PC speaker on my friend’s 386 system. All of the beeps, boops and tones that speaker could produce still feel somewhat nostalgic to me. We had a lot of fun with games of that era so didn’t really think much about it. It wasn’t until 1994 that I got my first 486 system and a proper Sound Blaster 16. It was then that I really realized what I was missing out on. Despite having really crappy non-amplified speakers, the FM synthesized MIDI music and sound effects were just so awesome. And who can forget messing around with ‘Sound Recorder’ or playing CD audio in Windows 3.11!
With all that in mind, it was clear that I needed a proper sound card for my retro build. But that really isn’t just a ‘checkbox’ to tick – on machines of this era there really was quite a difference between cards and to get the proper vintage experience I’d have to choose correctly.
vswitchzero 