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The purpose of this page is a brief overview of soundcards and music devices that were involved in early home PC history from 1981 to 1998
PC COMPUTER the compatible PC aka "IBM PC compatible" music devices history began in 1980. At that time the IBM PC were mainly designed for small business company and definitely not for music / games, consequently sound and music systems were really primitive.
PC home music-sound milestone:
- 1981 Pc speaker buzzer "beeper"
- 1987 Adlib soundcard
- 1987 Roland MT-32 Midi
- 1988 Creative Soundbaster CMS - ISA card at 8 bits
-
1992 Creative Soundblaster 16 PNP- ISA card at 16 bits
- 1994 Creative Soundblaster Awe32- ISA card with wavetable
- 1998 Creative Soundblaster
series PCI.
Voice
monophonic analog synthesizer. A voice is composed by 2 VCO oscillators + 1 white or pink noise circuit.
PC speaker
in 1981 PC compatibile systems were unappealing featuring poor graphic CGA coulour and lacking any decent sound devices. In the meantime, incredible Commore 64 "SID" Chip system was able to generate 3-channels music with lightweight code - not to mention the later (1985) Commodore Amiga PAULA chip with 4 PCM stereo voices.
This first PC sound wailing was a primitive buzzer sysem is played through a mono speakers, mainly used to signal some specific boot issues.
ADLIB:
AdLib Music Synthesizer Card in 1987 Canadian society lead by Martin Prevel released the "Adlib" 8-bits ISA soundcard based on FM synthesis - frequency modulation- developed from 1973 by John Chowning then commercialized by Yamaha Corporation in many synthesizers, including the most known and best-seller model Yamaha DX7.
OPL:
ADLIB sound is mainly generated by a chip IC YM3812 also known as a OPL2 (Operator Type L2) featuring 9 voices polyphony, 2 Operators per channel, 2 algorithms and 4 waveforms (classic sinewave + 3 harmonic variations) - relative DAC is an YM-3014.
FIRST ADLIB SUCCESS:
in 1988 the famous adventure games society Sierra released the first ADLIB soundtrack (King's Quest IV hear a clip below) which boosted sales around the world. Year later, a yet-not-so famous society CREATIVE LABS launched the Soundblaster with same OPL chip + PCM sample engine - a fatal hit for the Canadian society which closed in 1992.
Roland Mt-32
Not really a sound card but a module expander released by famous synth society Roland in 1987 compliant to MIDI system that can be hooked to a PC with any old or modern Midi interface. PC-card equivalent is the ISA Roland LAPC-1 but definitely less famous.
SYNTHESIS:
MT sound generation is based on short samples transients + some PCM waves stored on the internal ROM. PC was practically CPU load-free and sound was quite realistic for soundtrack the time e.g: a drums began to sound like a true one.
As a pure synth fan, the MT-32 got old has nothing so interesting: 32 voices based on a low-cost version of L.A synthesis whose flagship is ROLAND D-50. Check out -
polynominal dedicated ROLAND MT32 PAGE.
MT32 GAMING: the still actual popularity of the MT-32 is as a music playback device for PC retro-games and nothing more - besides it is NOT compatible with official MIDI-GS/GM/XG protocol. About 1992, the MT32 protocol were replaced by wavetable Soundcanvas module/boards for a short period, then gradually and forever replaced by full sampled music about 1998.
SOUNBLASTER STORY
In 1988 Creative Labs made some deal with Yamaha to have the OPL2 license: the CMS card (Creative Music System) a king of Soundblaster prototype was born.
The CMS keeps same FM music system and OPL chip adding a mono PCM digital sample player (rate for Playback/Recording Mono: 5 kHz / 22.1 kHz) at 8 bits resolution based on Phillips SAA-1099 IC.
-1991 SB PRO: the Soundblaster "PRO" version upgraded sampling to up to 22.05 kHz stereo / 44.1 kHz mono, then following "PRO2" replaced the OPL2 YM with a new backward-compatible OPL3 chip YMF262 which adds more polyphony, 4 more sinewave variations and more.
-1992 CD QUALITY: the new 16 bits plug-and-play SOUNDBLASTER 16 was introduced with finally 16 bits 44 kHz cd quality, a dual OPL2 and a waveblaster connector able to play WAVETABLE Midi tracks.
The following model "Awe32" introduced internal RAM to play own sampled sounds: the ADLIB FM synthesis (and MT32) began to decline replaced by far more realistic WAVETABLE sampled synthesis, furthermore last AWE32 generation did feature some (not so good) EMU/ENSONIQ ADLIB-Chip emulation missing YM OPL chips.
-1998 PCI: In 1998 the PCI format permanently killed OPL chips and from there on, even wavetable music began to gradually disappear to be replaced by full-sampled soundtracks and effects.
- from 2001 AUDIGY to TODAY RAM and system are now so powerful they can manage any sampled sources at 5.1 at full quality, but all of these are often produced in recording studio using VST and plugins system... but this is a another story.
Audio demo:
Video Clip:
Review
OK: n/a
NOT : n/a
"The PC beeper won't do much for your music :) FM can still be a good swiss army if you have an old PC with ISA bus for quite no money. Wavetable and sampling soundcards are just obsolete: every day replaced by far better models. For oldschool geeks :)"
Text , review, special demos copyright polynominal.com / Eric Pochesci