If you want, you may try your game with this mod:

http://www.siedler25.org/index.php?com=dynamic&mod=2&type=stable

(you have to put your installed S2 game inside this mod's folder)

from what I've seen on youtube, bird sounds are less frequent and less annoying. I can't check myself, because I left my cds in the other apartament.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ysHhjmanRY

and the original for comparison:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DDeJHyx51w

A lot of sound in old IBM PC games could best be described as digital farting.

Well here is one from the Sega Genesis 32X:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2oyweqZ7WM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbroOMBYBYU

Compared to SNES:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUBIRnlcaoI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPwC1sRNtpk

Slightly off topic, best sound => the original death scream from "Abuse".

Yeah, the SNES really pissed on a lot of other platforms at its peak. That's how it should sound alright.

I don't think I'll play Settlers 2 anytime soon but I'll check it tomorrow because I'm a bit curious about it ;)

The original 3 Ultima games have the single worst sound system I have ever had the pleasure of hearing.

Don't forget the Intellivision's Intellivoice! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdPYC8NKysc

Yeah, the sound chip in the SNES might be the best sound chip in consoles.

While I agree with you, to be perfectly honest I was disturbed by the chirping sounds of the Settler 2 birds already back then. They just didn't fit in and where to loud in contrast to the rest of the sounds, if I remember them correctly.

Anyway, I remember I had a software voice emulation for my Apple ][ europlus which I spend hours typing in stupid letters and words.
Since I only knew German back then and the voice emulation tried to sound like English, I spent hours laughing my ass off trying to let it pronounce German cuss-words. Like "Arschloch" or "Dünnbrettbohrer" or "Vollidiot"
Is it me or was it much easier having fun back in those days...

Yeah, at least the PC versions, same is true for their eye cancerous graphics. However, with some community patch you can get a decent MIDI soundtrack for Ultima 3 (based on the Apple version or something), with the patch applied and a nice soundfont U3 actually sounds pretty good.

Didn't Sony make the Snes sound chip?

It doesn't work with my boxed version because you need to have Gold edition or Veni, vidi, Vici + missiob CD and I only have the former. I tried GOG version and it does work. It really help with birds but the music is missing. I'm not willing to spend my time trying to fix it at the moment. TBH I prefer switch off the sounds completely and having the original music so I doubt I'll use this mod. Thanks for the heads-up anyway.

I think there is some tool in this mod to convert in game music to .ogg format and play it, but yeah, if you can disable the sounds in the original and you're fine with that, so be it ;-)

I think the birds sound frequency is the original one in the mod though, and dosbox makes it unbearable.

I think I'll play with the mod sometime later, but I'm one of the 'Settlers 3 wins' flock.

Thanks for trying it out.

The soundtrack is included in extras in GOG version ;)

For me it's the opposite: it did my very best to like Settlers 3 but I just couldn't. Settlers 2 is the ultimate settlers game for me ;)

Yeah, and it wasn't the only cooperation Sony had with Nintendo in the production of the console. They also worked with Nintendo on the unreleased SNES CD add on - that went on to form the basis for the original Playstation.