Retro Review: Aztech Sound Galaxy Pro 16 IIB-3D PnP - Part 1
13th July 2026
Today's retro review is for the Aztech Sound Galaxy Pro 16 IIB-3D PnP. It was part of their 3rd-generation with the AZT-2316 at its core, and along with a Crystal CS4231A provided compatibility with Sound Blaster Pro II and Windows Sound System.
It differs from the similarly-named Aztech Multimedia Pro 16 IIB-3D in more ways than one - it's not just the Plug & Play variant of its slightly older sibling.
This one has been in my collection since 2017, and while I've gone as far as testing that it works, I've never done audio recordings and properly compared it to other sound cards of the era. I have a fair few Aztech cards and they tend to be incredibly noisy - we'll see if this one is any better.
Aztech Sound Galaxy Pro 16 IIB-3D PnP (FCC ID I38-MMSN845, ca. 1996)
Bought in November 2017 for £25
I'm not sure if this card was ever sold to OEMs like Packard Bell, Dell, Compaq, and others - something very common for Aztech to do. This one has no evidence of it being so - the OEM variants typically have stickers on the main chips or on the rear that would indicate so, or other silkscreen markings. This card appears to be a version 1.2 based on the crude stamp to the left of the Crystal IC - I've also seen a v1.1A variant out there.
This Sound Galaxy Pro 16 IIB-3D PnP was Aztech's first ever Plug & Play sound card.
It should also not be confused with the later Aztech Sound Galaxy Pro 16 III-3D which is a 4th-gen card. In all, there were seven cards that carried the 'Pro' moniker (not including WaveRider cards):
| Name | FCC ID | Year | Gen | PnP | 3D | WT Header | OPL3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pro 16 | I38-MMSN810 | 1994 | 1 | No | No | Some (Wave Blaster) | Yamaha or clones |
| Pro 16 II | MMSD822 or I38-MMSN822 | 1995 | 2 | No | Yes | Yes (WaveTide) | Yamaha |
| Multimedia Pro 16 | I38-MMSN837 | 1995 | 3 | Yes | Yes | Yes (WaveTide) | Yamaha |
| Multimedia Pro 16 IIB-3D | I38-SN96103 | 1996 | 3 | No | Yes | Yes (Wave Blaster) | Yamaha |
| Pro 16 IIB-3D PnP | I38-MMSN845 | 1996 | 3 | Yes | Yes | Yes (WaveTide) | Yamaha |
| Multimedia Pro 16 ABI/ABO | I38-MMSN850 | 1996 | 3 | Yes | No | Yes (WaveTide) | Yamaha |
| Pro 16 III 3D PnP | I38-MMSN853 | 1997 | 4 | Yes | Yes | Yes (Wave Blaster) | (Embedded) |
A Quick Flypast
So what component parts make up this 16-bit ISA sound card? It appears to have:
- A real Yamaha YMF262-M, also known as OPL3
- A real Yamaha YAC512-M DAC chip
- The Aztech AZT2316R audio chipset
- A Crystal CS4231A-KL audio controller/codec
- A TDA1517P audio amplifier along with a C4074
- Several jumper blocks
- A 26-pin wavetable header
- An IDE CD-ROM interface header
- On the faceplate: Line In (stereo), Mic In (mono), Line Out (mono), Amplified Speaker Out (stereo), and a 15-pin game/MIDI port
- Pin headers for the jacks and some just with solder pads
Their 3rd-generation cards like this have the 100-pin Aztech AZT2316R, which combined several ICs from the 2nd-gen into one.
It also worked much better on faster systems [where previous generations had timing issues on anything faster than a 486], and had the ability to read/write its settings to an EEPROM. Incidentally, the DSP on this card reported itself as DSP version 3.01.
Per the 2nd gen chipset, this too had full MPU-401-compatibility.
The YMF262-M OPL3 chip is capable of 4-channel output when used with two YAC512-M DAC chips, but in most cases, this card included, only one DAC is present which gives the card its stereo FM audio output.
Aztech cards were known to often use clones or copies of Yamaha chips, so it's good to see we have the real deal here.
The YAC512-M is the digital-to-analog converter which takes the processed audio and converts it into an analogue signal for the audio output jacks.
The Crystal CS4231A-KL audio CODEC chip was very widely used in PC sound cards at this time since its introduction in 1993. The 'A' variant here is a minor upgrade on the earlier CS4231. I believe it operated in CS4248 mode ("Mode 1"), meaning it runs without ADPCM support. The audio CODEC chip provides the analog-to-digital conversion (for inbound audio), digital-to-analog conversion (for outbound digital [non-FM] audio), interface with the ISA bus, DMA transfers, and does all the digital audio mixing and sampling.
The wavetable header is Creative Labs Wave Blaster-compatible. Aztech had their own wavetable daughterboards called WaveTide.
WaveTide-compatible daughterboards would connect to both the 26-pin wavetable header as well as the Expansion Connector (EXPCON) nearer the bottom of the card.
The TDA1517P is a 2 x 6W (6 watts per channel) amplifier, so plenty powerful enough - it provides a higher output than most sound cards such as those that use the TEA2025B.
This card also appears to have a separate [pre?] amplifier for the wavetable header (see top of pic to the right). If you know what this might be for, do let me know.
Despite this being an ISA Plug & Play card, there are some jumpers in the lower left corner as well as just below the MIDI header.
Most of them are clearly marked on the silkscreen, but for the purpose of writing it up here, they can be used to:
- Set the sound card base address to either 22xh or 24hx
- Configure the microphone to be either a condenser type or carbon one.
- Enable/disable the onboard IDE interface
- Set the IDE interface's IRQ which can be 10, 11, or 15.
- Set the card to either use the onboard EEPROM to store/recall the card's PnP configuration, or just rely on the software driver settings.
The one that isn't marked well is at JX1, just below the wavetable header. The traces from these pins appear to go from the wavetable header pins to that pre-amp I mentioned.
There are also pin headers behind each of the four 3.5mm jack sockets which you can optionally use to redirect input/output somewhere else within your system, for example, a front drive bay audio module or other audio panel. There's also solder pads just below the CD audio header (likely for the different type of CD audio connector) also also pads above the wavetable header for PC speaker. This allows you to connect your motherboard's PC speaker out to the card so that any bleeps and bloops can be fed through the sound card's amplifier circuitry and mixed into its outputs - nice!
Now we've explored the card, let's move to Part 2 where I install the drivers.