Hi guys, today I installed this card in my retro machine using win98se drivers and software from original awe64gold cd. The card is working, but I have problem with MIDI. In this AWE panel, there are options to enable/disable sound effects, change MIDI fonts etc. I tried to load these some fonts (I guess it was gm35recv.sf2 file) and I'm not sure if there got loaded and I can hear any sound difference, but definitely I could not disable these hall/reverb effects. Can you suggest how to overwhelm this card? Some custom drivers? Some good soundfonts?

You are searching for answers in a wrong place my friend :) Try the vogons forum for retro-sound stuff:
http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewforum.php?f=46&sid=6f2f4136efc32993ae2f0c96f31ab0f9
You will find a lot of infos about old AWE cards, midi setup and soundfonts.

As for your problem directly, make sure the 'midi device' in control panel is set correctly (what devices do you have there?). What sound fonts are you trying to load? How much memory do you have available on your AWE64?

If you have at least 8mb, you can try the chaos sound font (8mb version). If you have more (28mb) use Chorium. As for other, smaller SF - I never tried them, but check the vogons, maybe they did.

AWE64 is a great retro card, but it's not so good at MIDI. Of course that MIDI sounds better on AWE64 than on SB16 or something "middle class" from that period, but the difference is not huge.

You can try playing with MIDI port (change it from 330).

But I really recommend getting a MIDI daughterboard if you want the best MIDI quality. Yamaha DX50XG is one of the best, if you can find one you won't regret it.

elfuego is right, you'd better ask about sound cards, MIDI and that kind of stuff in VOGONS. There you'll find both of us again, and we'll give you the same advices again, but it's the right place after all. I'll tell you some brief points anyway.

Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold is a nice ISA sound card, maybe the best ISA Sound Blaster ever made, but it's not perfect. It has 4 mb of onboard memory, and that's not enough for big soundfonts (previous AWE cards were even worse, with only 512 kb, which are virtually useless). That 3.5 mb soundfont is one of the biggest soundfonts you will be able to load without a RAM upgrade. You can't load any 8 mb soundfont, and of course you can't load Chorium, Unison, GeneralUser, AnotherGS or any of the several 28/32 mb soundfont available out there.

The MIDI daughterboard is a good idea, I have one of those Yamaha DB50XG and also some NEC XR385, which is a very affordable clone of Yamaha DB60XG, easy to find in eBay. However, your AWE64 Gold does not have a daughterboard connector, so you would need another sound card to attach it. Still not a bad idea, most people use two or even more sounds cards on the same system, because there's no single sound card that supports all the standards needed: AdLib FM Synthesis, Creative Sound Blaster, Roland LA Synthesis and Roland General MIDI.

Well I'm not that freaky MIDI fan ;) The problem is already solved, I set the proper MIDI device in Control Panel. Thanks for all replies, any further questions will go to Vogons.