Is this really the going price for a Gravis Ultrasound Ace?

[zzip]

It's the only auction I could find for one,  but hard to believe that's what they are going for.

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Gravis-Ultrasound-GF1-ACE-Version-1-0-Soundkarte/114213950740?hash=item1a97ae9514:g:rcMAAOSw6xZescHP

[youxia]

Some retro PC components have shot up in price in recent years, but I think this one also suffers from "German syndrome". I've seen a lot of really crazy retro item prices coming from there, with huge mark ups over the rest of Europe.

 

And of course "Die Karte ist eine absolute Rarität." Maybe so, but 1000E...please.

[Keatah]

Mmm.. yeh.. Should be selling in the $100 - $300 range. It's just the budget version anyways.

[zzip]

4 hours ago, Keatah said:

Mmm.. yeh.. Should be selling in the $100 - $300 range. It's just the budget version anyways.

Correct.   The full featured Gravis Ultrasounds are selling in that range.   So it's crazy that the ACE version would be that high.   I suppose if it's rarer, but still.

 

But I'm interested because I have an Ace in an old 486,  I would definately list it on eBay tomorrow if it could really fetch over $1000 ?

[Keatah]

Right. I could imagine that some PC parts will trade in that high price range in the future, when they are rare AND if hobbyists still interested. It's of course a moving window. It will "scroll over us". Prices will increase, then decrease and then no more sales.

 

We're at the tail end of that phenomenon with Apple II accelerator cards. They used to sell for cheap, then went to $400, and are now back down to $100-$150. Exception is like a TransWarpGS or ZipGSX, they're still hot.

 

Of course the best accelerator chip for an Apple II is an i7 or i9. Running an emulator gets us hundreds of MHz of improvement. HA!!

[Keatah]

NOTE:

 

I was once offered just under $500 for my original BITD SoundBlaster 16 w/ASP upgrade chip, the 2X CD-ROM, and the Waveblaster II MIDI daughtercard.

 

It was something I didn't entertain. It's a significant subsystem of my first PC. The 486 I always like to brag about from time to time. Despite not being as good (so I'm told) as Roland or Gravis, it has a vintage sound with the right amount of distortion both in FM and MIDI.

[zzip]

20 hours ago, Keatah said:

I was once offered just under $500 for my original BITD SoundBlaster 16 w/ASP upgrade chip, the 2X CD-ROM, and the Waveblaster II MIDI daughtercard.

I have the same Soundblaster 16 ASP in this 486.   The Gravis ACE card was the perfect compliment..  You could configure your games to play music with the SB16's OPL3 or with the GUS's Wavetable based on personal preference.   Wavetable usually gives richer, real instrument type sounds, but the music to something like Doom is so iconic with the SB16 OPL3 that playing it any other way just sounds wrong.

[Keatah]

6 hours ago, zzip said:

Wavetable usually gives richer, real instrument type sounds, but the music to something like Doom is so iconic with the SB16 OPL3 that playing it any other way just sounds wrong.

Amusingly I'm divided on that. I mean the first version of Doom needs to be played with OPL3. No question. But Doom II is partly a MIDI game for me and I could swing either way.

 

Other notable OPL3 games (for me) were Tyrian, Nova9, Stellar7, NanoTank, Tubular Worlds, Commanche, and likely more.

 

 

[youxia]

I'm glad I'm not an audiophile. Have recently bought FM-801 based card for my DOS PC, it's supposed to have decent OPL3. It costed me 10USD

[Keatah]

I've never been big into PC audio. I still have a 2.1 sound system from the very late 1990's. I do like hundreds and thousands of watts however. When it's that loud it doesn't matter what direction the noise comes from.

 

The highest fidelity soundcard I have is either an SB Live or AWE64 Gold. But vintage OPL3 is my favorite.

[zzip]

On 9/7/2020 at 4:35 AM, youxia said:

I'm glad I'm not an audiophile. Have recently bought FM-801 based card for my DOS PC, it's supposed to have decent OPL3. It costed me 10USD

The Gravis Ace was a relatively cheap card BITD.  A real audiophile would have probably gone for something like a Roland.  ?

 

Since I first owned my Atari XL,  I dreamed of having computer sound that sounded like real instruments, not just "beep boop".  Wavetable was the realization of that dream.

 

These days though, CPUs are fast enough to emulate wavetable in software if you even need it.  Most games use digitized music and don't need a synth anymore,  and $10 soundcards are adequate.

On 9/7/2020 at 5:21 AM, Keatah said:

The highest fidelity soundcard I have is either an SB Live or AWE64 Gold. But vintage OPL3 is my favorite.

SB AWE64 Gold can fetch up to $200 on eBay for just the card.   I have one of those as well that I may sell.   Soundblaster Lives are only worth like $10 though,  I have two or three of those lying around too.

 

Obviously I don't need all these sound cards,  I would just like to keep one working retro PC around, and convert the rest into cash where possible   :)

[+-^CrossBow^-]

There is a reason I'm still holding onto both my Roland SCB-55 and my LAPC-I boards even though for classic DOS gaming I have an actual MT-32 and my MT-200 and SD-20 sound modules for actual MIDI.

 

[Keatah]

17 hours ago, zzip said:

Since I first owned my Atari XL,  I dreamed of having computer sound that sounded like real instruments, not just "beep boop".  Wavetable was the realization of that dream.

I kind of was like that a little. I got the Mountain Music System for the Apple II+ BITD. And it was like early MIDI. Had a clean synth sound with no digitization artifacts or noise. But of course it was a vertical product with little or no software support outside professional applications. IIRC it was used in the production of TRON for designing sounds.

 

17 hours ago, zzip said:

These days though, CPUs are fast enough to emulate wavetable in software if you even need it.  Most games use digitized music and don't need a synth anymore,  and $10 soundcards are adequate.

Yes they are. And even cards like my 1080 GTX play sound straight through the HDMI interface. Where it's synthesized or DAC'd I'm not sure.

 

17 hours ago, zzip said:

SB AWE64 Gold can fetch up to $200 on eBay for just the card.   I have one of those as well that I may sell.   Soundblaster Lives are only worth like $10 though,  I have two or three of those lying around too.

Yes I think it has to do with the ISA interface and DOS support. And those memory modules are expensive too. But a modern-day company makes a daughtercard that uses a standard 32MB SIMM. Same company makes new MIDI daughtercards with soundbanks for cards with wavetable headers.

 

17 hours ago, zzip said:

Obviously I don't need all these sound cards,  I would just like to keep one working retro PC around, and convert the rest into cash where possible  

I never got into collecting soundcards much. I have a carton of SB boards currently but my "collection" consists of a few ISA/PCI SB boards and their related add-ons.

 

I DID get into graphics cards at one time. Had three bookcases going. But it became as hopeless as building a wall of cartridges and all their variations. I just kept the cards I actually used which comes down to a shoebox (or two) sized stash today. Some flunky gave me buku bucks for the whole shebang, probably because of the Voodoo 6 board.

 

10 hours ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

There is a reason I'm still holding onto both my Roland SCB-55 and my LAPC-I boards even though for classic DOS gaming I have an actual MT-32 and my MT-200 and SD-20 sound modules for actual MIDI.

What's the reason.. Sentimental? Quality?

 

[youxia]

20 hours ago, zzip said:

The Gravis Ace was a relatively cheap card BITD.  A real audiophile would have probably gone for something like a Roland.  ?

 

Since I first owned my Atari XL,  I dreamed of having computer sound that sounded like real instruments, not just "beep boop".  Wavetable was the realization of that dream.

 

These days though, CPUs are fast enough to emulate wavetable in software if you even need it.  Most games use digitized music and don't need a synth anymore,  and $10 soundcards are adequate

 

For us chickens Gravis was too dear back in the day too. Anyway, I meant that FM-801 card was for my DOS PC, running Win 98, not my other modern machine. For these kinda builds PCI cards can be problematic, the SB Live and its ilk which are indeed very cheap cause problems in DOS. That's why other ISA SBs are much more expensive, 50-200 USD around here.

[zzip]

5 hours ago, Keatah said:

I never got into collecting soundcards much. I have a carton of SB boards currently but my "collection" consists of a few ISA/PCI SB boards and their related add-ons.

I wasn't collecting them so much as I was also building PCs for a couple family members and passing parts around.  Eventually MOBO's had no ISA slots and required PCI cards, and then everything had integrated sound, and now boards don't even have vanilla PCI,  so now I have a pile of sound cards :)

[+-^CrossBow^-]

6 hours ago, Keatah said:

What's the reason.. Sentimental? Quality?

Originally nothing of the sort. I just had a tendency to hold onto my old stuff as I changed it out and would sometimes pass them along to others or sell them cheap. In the case of my LAPC-I and my SCB-55, I got those in a time frame where no one else but me was interested in MIDI music since it was becoming more common to see redbook audio and other compressed actual music on the games themselves. 

 

In the early 2000s I was glad I had kept these items because I built up a DOS gaming PC and figured it would be the ultimate if it had a fully decked out SB-16 with the ASP/DSP upgrade chip in it plus my SCB-55 attached to handle GM/GS stuff and the LAPC-I for the even older games that supported the MT-32 standard. And that is why I still have them in that old full size tower. But in more recent years I was alerted to the value of those two cards as well and there is no use in trying to get rid of them or sell them if I end up wanting them back in the future since they will never be as cheap to get again as they were the first time I bought them.