Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
a different name. Play back the various versions, and determine the lowest quality (and
smallest file size) you can use without serious degradation to sound quality.
Early PC Sound Cards
Whenthefirstsoundcardswereintroducedinthelate1980sbycompaniessuchasAdLib,
Roland, and Creative Labs, they were aimed squarely at a gaming audience, were gener-
ally not compatible with each other, and often cost more than $100.
ThefirstsoundcardforPCstoachievewidespreadsoftwaresupportwastheAdLibMusic
Synthesizer Card released in 1987, which used a Yamaha chip that produced sound via
FM synthesis. Around the same time, Creative Labs introduced a competing but incom-
patible product called the Creative Music System, later renamed as the Game Blaster.
The Game Blaster, which was compatible with only a handful of games, was replaced by
the Sound Blaster in 1989, which was itself compatible with the AdLib sound card and
the Creative Labs Game Blaster card. This enabled it to support games that specified one
sound card or the other. The Sound Blaster included a built-in microphone jack, stereo
output, and MIDI port for connecting the PC to a synthesizer or other electronic musical
instrument. Thisestablished abaseline offeatures thatwouldbesupportedbyvirtually all
other sound cards and onboard sound features up to the present. Finally, the audio adapter
hadthepotentialforusesotherthangames.Thefollow-upSoundBlasterProfeaturedim-
provedsoundwhencomparedtotheoriginalSoundBlaster.TheSoundBlasterProandits
successors eventually triumphed over earlier rivals to, for years, become de facto standar-
ds for PC sound reproduction.
Limitations of Sound Blaster Pro Compatibility
Through the mid-1990s, although MS-DOS was the standard PC gaming platform, many
users of non-Creative Labs sound cards struggled with the limitations of their hardware's
imperfect emulation of the Sound Blaster Pro. Unfortunately, some cards required two
separate sets of hardware resources, using one set of interrupt request (IRQ), direct
memoryaccess(DMA),andI/OportaddressesfornativemodeandasecondsetforSound
BlasterProcompatibility.OthersworkedwellwithinWindowsorwithinanMS-DOSses-
sionrunningwithWindowsinthebackgroundbutrequiredtheusertoinstallaDOS-based
Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) driver program to work in MS-DOS.
Microsoft Windows and Audio Support
The rise of Windows games made audio support simple by comparison with the steps re-
quiredinMS-DOS.WindowsapplicationsusetheOS'sdriverstointerfacewithhardware,
relieving the software developer from needing to write different code for different sound
