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82-520: Though the 8-bit Pro AudioSpectrum cards were only modestly successful, the 16 bit-series cards aimed toward semi-professional users and hobby musicians were quite popular. These gave serious competition to the SoundBlaster 16. Most games in the mid-1990s had genuine support for the PAS cards, thus the lack of Sound Blaster Pro and Sound Blaster 16 compatibility was not much of a problem. Media Vision

164-598: A 9-voice (11 voices in drum mode) FM synthesizer using the Yamaha YM3812 chip, also known as OPL2 . It provided compatibility with the market leader AdLib sound card, which had gained support in PC games in the preceding year. Creative used the "DSP" acronym to designate the digital audio part of the Sound Blaster. This stood for Digital Sound Processor, rather than the more common digital signal processor , and

246-466: A CD-ROM interface. Most PAS cards were equipped with a NCR -designed 5380 SCSI controller made by Zilog that boasted a data transfer rate of 690 kB/s using PIO ( DMA was not supported); though intended for use with CD-ROM drives , these could interface with other SCSI devices with drivers written by Trantor Systems; Windows 95 includes drivers for the PAS SCSI interface and autodetects it as

328-463: A PAS 16 Trantor SCSI host adaptor. Other PAS cards included proprietary interfaces to CD-ROM drives they were packaged with. These included drives made by Sony and Matsushita ( Panasonic ). There was also variant with LMSI controller for LMSI Philips CM205, CM206 CD-ROM drives. Each Pro AudioSpectrum sound card included a MPU401 -compatible MIDI and Gameport interface similar to those on Sound Blaster cards. Other outstanding features of

410-548: A PCI busmaster interface to access sample-data stored in the host-PC's system memory. A/D- and D/A- converters as well as analogue mixing is done by an AC'97 chip running at 48 kHz sampling rate. All members of the SB Live! family have at least four-channel analog audio outputs and a 15-pin MIDI/Joystick multiport. For game titles, EAX 1.0 (and later 2.0) ( environmental audio extensions , which briefly competed with

492-490: A PCI busmaster interface. Analogue interfacing is done by a codec chip, which runs at a fixed sampling frequency of 44 (Ensoniq Audio PCI) or 48 kHz (Creative's versions). (ISA soundcards had not resampled but switched between different time bases.) ES137x do not support SoundFonts but a filter-less MIDI engine with wavetable ( sample table) sets of 2, 4, and 8   MB size. When the Sound Blaster Live!

574-508: A PCIe interface, but lacks the EMU10K DSP. Computer Gaming World Computer Gaming World ( CGW ) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983 , it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through the 1990s and became one of the largest dedicated video game magazines, reaching around 500 pages by 1997. In

656-493: A fully decoded MIDI interface with separate Input and Output (along with on mini-DIN converter.) The Gold highlighted many features aimed at music composition; ease-of-use ( plug-and-play for musicians), real-time loopback-recording of the MIDI-synthesizer (with full freedom of Soundfonts, and environmental effects such as reverb, etc.), and bundled MIDI-software. The mainstream model was the Sound Blaster Live! Like

738-457: A fully-compatible Sound Blaster card that came with a game port, saved a slot, and included the "DSP" for not much more in price, many consumers opted for the Sound Blaster. In-game support for the digital portion of the card did not happen until after the Sound Blaster had gained dominance. When Microsoft announced Multimedia PC (MPC) in November 1990, it suggested to developers that they use

820-499: A guest appearance by Erik Wolpaw , formerly of Old Man Murray . For many years, CGW never assigned scores to reviews, preferring to let readers rate their favorite games through a monthly poll. Scores were finally introduced in 1994, but beginning in April 2006, CGW stopped assigning quantifiable scores to its reviews. In May of the same year, CGW changed the name of its review section to "Viewpoint", and began evaluating games on

902-528: A more diverse combination of factors than a its content. Elements considered include the communities' reaction to a game, developers' continued support through patches, and whether a game's online component continued to grow. The reviews were formerly based on a simple five-star structure, with five stars marking a truly outstanding game, and one star signalling virtual worthlessness. Three games, Postal² by Robert Coffey, Mistmare by Jeff Green, and Dungeon Lords by Denice Cook "...form an unholy trinity of

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984-441: A proprietary memory format which could be (expensively) purchased from Creative. The main improvements were better compatibility with older SB models, and an improved signal-to-noise ratio . The AWE64 came in two versions: A standard version (later rebranded as Value ) with 512   KB of RAM and a Gold version with 4 MB of RAM and a separate S/PDIF output. In 1998, Creative acquired Ensoniq Corporation , manufacturer of

1066-513: A single floppy with the basic utilities and game patches to allow Sierra Online 's games using the Sierra Creative Interpreter engine to play music with the card and it also included a later revision of the game Silpheed that added C/MS support. In 2017 hobbyists developed a clone CT1300 PCB. The Sound Blaster 1.0 (code named " Killer Kard "), CT1320A, was released in 1989. In addition to Game Blaster features, it has

1148-550: A sister magazine to Computer Gaming World , entitled PC Gaming World , in the United Kingdom. It was the region's third-largest computer game magazine by August 2000. In 1998, journalist Stuart Campbell described PC Gaming World as a publication with a predominantly American bent, thanks to its "sober, serious, text-heavy style". He considered it to be out of step with the British game audience. Campbell later called

1230-641: A time when print magazines were struggling with the growing popularity of the Internet. Jones had been the editor-in-chief of CNET Gamecenter , and had before that been a staffer at CGW between 1994 and 1996. He was replaced by Jeff Green in the summer of 2001. On August 2, 2006, Ziff Davis and Microsoft jointly announced that CGW would be replaced with Games for Windows: The Official Magazine . The new magazine replaced CGW as part of Microsoft's Games for Windows initiative. In their press release, Ziff Davis indicated that much of CGW's core content and

1312-741: A total of 7438 pages covering 11 years of gaming. The archive was created by Stephane Racle, of the Computer Gaming World Museum, and is available in PDF format . Every issue was processed through optical character recognition , which enabled the creation of a 3+ million word master index. Although Ziff Davis has taken its CGW Archive site offline, the magazines can be downloaded from the Computer Gaming World Museum. CGW featured reviews, previews, news, features, letters, strategy, and columns dealing with computer games . While console games are occasionally touched on, these are primarily

1394-466: A year's subscription of six issues. These early bimonthly issues were typically 40–50 pages in length, written in a newsletter style, including submissions by game designers such as Joel Billings (SSI), Dan Bunten (Ozark Software), and Chris Crawford . Also, early covers were not always directly related to the magazine's contents, but rather featured work by artist Tim Finkas. In January/February 1986 CGW increased its publication cycle to nine times

1476-406: A year, and the editorial staff included popular writers such as Scorpia , Charles Ardai , and M. Evan Brooks. CGW survived the video game crash of 1983 , which badly hurt the market; by summer 1985 it was the only survivor of 18 color magazines covering computer games in 1983. In autumn 1987 CGW introduced a quarterly newsletter called Computer Game Forum (CGF), which was published during

1558-518: Is a simple microcontroller from the Intel MCS-51 family (supplied by Intel and Matra MHS , among others). It can play back 8-bit monaural sampled sound at up to 23 kHz sampling frequency and record 8-bit at up to 12 kHz. The sole DSP-like features of the circuit are ADPCM decompression and a primitive non-MPU-401-compatible MIDI interface. The ADPCM decompression schemes supported are 2 to 1, 3 to 1 and 4 to 1. The CT1320B variety of

1640-564: Is essentially an Audigy 2 with updated DAC and op-amps . Audigy 2 ZS uses the Cirrus Logic CS4382 DAC together with the op-amps and can produce an output SNR of 108 dB. There were a few slight printed circuit board modifications and 7.1 audio support was added. Sound Blaster Audigy 4 Pro (November 2004) was an Audigy 2 ZS with updated DACs and ADCs , the new DAC being the Cirrus Logic CS4398, boosting

1722-563: Is misleading—see the pictures for size comparison). It offered similar features to the AWE32, but also had a few notable improvements, including support for greater polyphony , although this was a product of 32 extra software-emulated channels (the additional channels could also be obtained on AWE32 hardware by using the AWE64's driver software). The 30-pin SIMM slots from AWE32/SB32 were replaced with

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1804-525: Is more in line with the Audigy 2 Value series. The Audigy 4 had a shorter life span than its predecessors, due to the short window between it and the next-generation Sound Blaster X-Fi. Sound Blaster Audigy Rx (September 2013) is similar to the Audigy 4 but with a dedicated 600-ohm headphone amplifier and a PCIe 1x interface. Sound Blaster Audigy Fx (September 2013) also features a 600-ohm amplifier and

1886-466: The Origins Award for Best Professional Adventure Gaming Magazine of 1987 . The New York Times repeatedly praised CGW, placing it as one of the premier computer game publications of its time. In 1997 the newspaper called it "the leading computer game magazine", In 1999 "the bible of computer game purists", and in 2005 "one of the top computer game magazines". Ziff Davis also published

1968-643: The Sound Blaster 16 for the OEM market. Creative Labs also used this chip for the Sound Blaster 32, Phone Blaster and Phone Blaster 28.8 (VIBRA plus modem, CT3120 and CT3220.) and many other value-edition cards. External Yamaha OPL3 FM music synthesis was retained in earlier boards built around the ViBRA16 or ViBRA16s controllers, whilst the later (and more common) ViBRA16 boards used CQM (Creative Quadratic Modulation) developed by E-mu Systems . This series included

2050-586: The Southern Baptist Convention ministry. A fan of computer games, he realized in Spring, 1981 that no magazine was dedicated to computer games. Although Sipe had no publishing experience, he formed Golden Empire Publications in June and found investors. He chose the name Computer Gaming World ( CGW ) instead of alternatives such as Computer Games or Kilobaud Warrior because he hoped that

2132-636: The Vibra chip to reduce component count, which meant bass/treble/gain control was limited compared to the AWE32. The loss of onboard RAM is offset by the inclusion of 30-pin SIMM RAM sockets, which allow up to 28 MB RAM to be installed and used by the EMU engine. The AWE32's successor, the Sound Blaster AWE64 (November 1996), was significantly smaller, being a "half-length ISA card" (that term

2214-470: The 3.5 mm jack ports as an SPDIF out, which allowed the connection of an external decoder. Creative also released a Sound Blaster Live! Player 1024 edition, which is identical to the regular Sound Blaster Live! , but with the addition of some extra software. The Sound Blaster PCI 512 (CT4790) is an EMU10K1-based sound card designed to fill a lower cost segment than the Live! Value. It is capable of most of

2296-632: The AWE32 design, the Sound Blaster 32 (SB32) was a value-oriented offering from Creative. Announced on June 6, 1995, the SB32 became the new entry-level card in the AWE32 product-line (previously held by the AWE32 Value .) The SB32 retained the AWE32's EMU8000/EMU8011 MIDI-synthesis engine and built-in instrument ROM, but dropped the onboard RAM , the Wave Blaster header, and the CSP port. The SB32 used

2378-558: The AudioPCI, a card popular with OEMs at the time. It was a full-featured solution with wavetable MIDI ( sample-based synthesizer ), 4-speaker DirectSound3D surround sound, A3D emulation, and DOS legacy support via a terminate-and-stay-resident program . It was cheap due to lack of hardware acceleration. It is full-duplex but at least in MS Windows cannot play back several sources at once. Creative released many cards using

2460-609: The C/MS board in particular, the Philips chips had white pieces of paper with a fictitious "CMS-301" inscription on them. Real Creative parts usually had consistent CT number references. Surprisingly, the board also contained a large 40-pin DIP integrated circuit bearing a "CT 1302A CTPL 8708" (Creative Technology Programmable Logic) serigraphed inscription and looking exactly like the DSP of

2542-581: The Creative digital audio section (audio codec , optional CSP/ASP chip socket, Yamaha OPL3), and the E-mu MIDI synthesizer section. The synthesizer section consisted of the EMU8000 sampler and effects processor, an EMU8011 1 MB sample ROM, and 512 KB of sample RAM (expandable to 28 MB). To fit the new hardware, the AWE32 was a full-length ISA card , measuring 14 in (360 mm). A derivative of

Media Vision Pro AudioSpectrum - Misplaced Pages Continue

2624-779: The Creative/Tandy Multimedia Sound Adapter, 849–3030. This Sound Blaster Pro derived card was factory installed in Tandy Multimedia PCs. It combined the CT1330 with Tandy joystick and MIDI ports (not MPU-401 compatible). The revised version, the Sound Blaster Pro 2, CT1600, replaced the YM3812s with a more advanced Yamaha YMF262 ( OPL3 ). Otherwise it is functionally identical to the original Sound Blaster Pro. Shortly after

2706-461: The EMU10K1 in the original Live!), and all audio had to be resampled to 48 kHz in order to be accepted by the DSP (for recording or rendering to output.) Sound Blaster Audigy 2 (September 2002) featured an updated EMU10K2 processor, sometimes referred to as EMU10K2.5, with an improved DMA engine capable of 24-bit precision. Up to 192 kHz was supported for stereo playback/record, while 6.1

2788-415: The EMU10K1 processor that shipped with the Sound Blaster Live! . The Audigy could process up to four EAX environments simultaneously with its upgraded on-chip DSP and native EAX 3.0 ADVANCED HD support, and supported up to 5.1-channel output. The Audigy was controversially advertised as a 24-bit sound card. The EMU10K2's audio transport (DMA engine) was fixed at 16-bit sample precision at 48 kHz (like

2870-562: The GFW Radio Penny Arcade Expo reunion, Jeff Green claimed that the deal with Microsoft allowed CGW/GFW to continue operating, and that if it had not occurred, Ziff Davis would have shut down CGW . Simultaneously with the release of the final CGW issue, Ziff Davis announced the availability of the CGW Archive, which features complete copies of the first 100 issues of CGW , as well as the two CGF issues, for

2952-463: The Gold, the Live featured multi-speaker analog output (up to four channels), and identical music/sound generation capabilities (without the bundled MIDI software and interfacing-equipment.) Later versions of the Live!, usually called Live! 5.1 , offered 5.1-channel support which adds a center channel speaker and LFE subwoofer output, most useful for movie watching. The Live! 5.1 could also use one of

3034-475: The ISA bus. While at first glance it appears to be a 16-bit ISA card, it does not have 'fingers' for data transfer on the higher "AT" portion of the bus connector. It uses the 16-bit extension to the ISA bus to provide the user with an additional choice for an IRQ (10) and DMA (0)m channel only found on the 16-bit portion of the edge connector. A short lived joint developed project between Creative and Tandy resulted in

3116-401: The Live! Value's features aside from being limited to 512 MIDI voice polyphony (a software-based limitation), lacking digital I/O , removal of expansion headers , and only stereo or quadraphonic output support. The card's circuit layout is somewhat simpler than that of the Live! series. The Sound Blaster Audigy (August 2001) featured the Audigy processor (EMU10K2), an improved version of

3198-521: The Microsoft MPC standard. . The Sound Blaster Pro supported faster digital input and output sampling rates (up to 22.05 kHz stereo or 44.1 kHz mono), added a " mixer " to provide a crude master volume control (independent of the volume of sound sources feeding the mixer), and a crude high pass or low pass filter. The Sound Blaster Pro used a pair of YM3812 chips to provide stereo music-synthesis (one for each channel). The Sound Blaster Pro

3280-571: The PAS cards were the Win 3.x software (audio recorder, CD player and mixer) that fit on a 640x480 screen and worked well together, the quality of the user manual (even in the translated versions), jumperless configuration via software, the use of a 4 layer printed circuit board , and the PC speaker support that was done by listening on the ISA bus rather than using an external cable like the Sound Blaster cards. With

3362-547: The PAS cards, Media Vision also began to include a popular player for Amiga sound module (.MOD) files. Driver support was available under DOS , Microsoft Windows 3.x, Windows NT 3.5 and 4.0, Windows 9x, OS/2 and Linux (within Open Sound System ). It was also claimed to work under Windows ME or 2000/XP by using Windows 9x or Windows NT 4 / 2000 RC1 drivers. Under DOS, a terminate and stay resident driver called mvsound.sys had to be used in order to initialize

Media Vision Pro AudioSpectrum - Misplaced Pages Continue

3444-542: The SB/Live family was the SB Live! Gold . Featuring gold tracings on all major analog traces and external sockets, an EMI -suppressing printed circuit board substrate and lacquer , the Gold came standard with a daughterboard that implemented a separate 4-channel alternative mini-DIN digital output to Creative-branded internal- DAC speaker sets, a S/P-DIF digital audio Input and Output with separate software mappings, and

3526-514: The Sound Blaster 1.0 typically has C/MS chips installed in sockets rather than soldered on the PCB, though units do exist with the C/MS chips soldered on. Some sources note that the original Sound Blaster 1.0 was produced under the CT1310 number. This however is a topic of ongoing debate. Creative refers to CT1310 for the Sound Blaster 1.0 on its website. In less than a year, the Sound Blaster became

3608-476: The Sound Blaster 1.5, CT1320C, dropped the C/MS chips, which were no longer popular with game developers. Instead, the board had two empty sockets, which could be user upgraded by purchasing the C/MS chips directly from Creative or Phillips SAA-1099s from another source. Otherwise the card functions identically to the Sound Blaster 1.0. The CT1320U variety has the same layout as the CT1320C. The final revision of

3690-505: The Sound Blaster Pro. The kit bundled the sound card, a Matsushita CD-ROM drive (model 531 for single-speed, or 562/3 for the later double-speed (2x) drives), and several CD-ROMs of multimedia software titles. As CD-ROM technology was new, the kit included CD-ROM software, representing a very good value to customers. One such kit, named "OmniCD", included the 2x Matsushita drive along with an ISA controller card and software, including Software Toolworks Encyclopedia and Aldus PhotoStyler SE. It

3772-451: The Sound Blaster as it was the only sound card that came close to complying with the MPC standard. The press speculated that Microsoft based the MPC standard on the Sound Blaster's specifications. By 1993 Computer Gaming World wondered "why would a gamer" buy a competing AdLib card that was not Sound Blaster-compatible. Creative advertised the Sound Blaster 16 ("the 16-bit sound standard") with

3854-458: The Sound Blaster's 8-bit playback on its 8-bit Pro AudioSpectrum Plus and 16-bit Pro AudioSpectrum 16 , Media Vision included the same sound processor chip it used on its Thunder Board card. Thus, there were actually two digital audio playback devices on these cards that could also be used at the same time. The analog output of each of the two digital audio channels was combined in the on-board analog mixer. All Pro AudioSpectrum cards included

3936-550: The ViBRA16 (CT2501), ViBRA16s (CT2502, CT2504), ViBRA16c (CT2505) PnP and ViBRA16XV (CT2511) chips. The primary advantage of the ViBRA16 was the inclusion of a 14.4 kbit/s telephony Modem; it also functioned as a telephone. Released in March 1994, the Sound Blaster AWE32 (Advanced WavEffects) introduced an all new MIDI synthesizer section based on the EMU8000. The AWE32 consisted of two distinct audio sections;

4018-539: The auto-init DMA and new MIDI capabilities of the Sound Blaster 2.0 but not the expanded sampling rates. The upgrade was necessary for full compatibility with the Windows 3.0 Multimedia Extensions upgrade. Sound Blaster MCV, CT5320, was a version created for IBM PS/2 Model 50 and higher and their ISA-incompatible Micro Channel architecture . The MCV Sound Blaster has some issues outputting audio while running on PS/2s with CPUs running faster than 16 MHz. However,

4100-581: The card although most programs did not use this driver but rather programmed the PAS chip directly. Computer Gaming World in 1993 stated that the Pro AudioStudio "should give the Sound Blaster 16 some good competition", with "much cleaner" digital audio. Sound Blaster Pro Sound Blaster is a family of sound cards and audio peripherals designed by Creative Technology/Creative Labs of Singapore . The first Sound Blaster card

4182-439: The card itself, it failed for a number of DOS games that either were not fully compatible with this CPU mode or needed so much free conventional memory that they could not be loaded with the driver occupying part of this memory. In Microsoft Windows , there was no problem, as Creative's Windows driver software could handle both ISA and PCI cards correctly. The Sound Blaster ViBRA16 was an inexpensive single-chip implementation of

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4264-434: The early 2000s its circulation was about 300,000, only slightly behind the market leader PC Gamer . But, like most magazines of the era, the rapid move of its advertising revenue to internet properties led to a decline in revenue. In 2006, Ziff announced it would be refocused as Games for Windows , before moving it to solely online format, and then shutting down completely later the same year. In 1979, Russell Sipe left

4346-456: The entire staff will be transferred to the new magazine. Because of these announcements, Ziff Davis' actions appeared more on the order of a rebranding of CGW , rather than an actual cancellation. The final CGW -labeled issue was November 2006, for a total of 268 published editions. On April 8, 2008, 1UP Network announced the print edition of Games for Windows: The Official Magazine had ceased, and that all content would be moved online. At

4428-473: The first half of 2001; Computec moved the publication's subscribers to PC Gameplay , which nevertheless struggled to grow its base. The company "relaunched" PC Gameplay as PC Gaming World in 2003, but did not release the new publication's subscriber count through the Audit Bureau of Circulations during the first half of that year. Writing for GamesIndustry.biz , Kristan Reed noted that this decision

4510-433: The information that you've been having to dig out of three or four or five (or six...). Get it." Page 6 reviewed Computer Gaming World and stated: "Quite apart from being an interesting read, you will get more out of your existing games and will have a much better idea of what to buy as your next piece of software. No other computer magazine that I can think of will give you reviews of such depth." In 1988, CGW won

4592-597: The joystick interface is still inoperable on PS/2s it was designed for due to the slow-speed Schottky chips that have been installed. None of these timing issues affect the Yamaha YM3812. Some of the MCV Sound Blasters were released with faster Schottkys which eradicated some of the problems. Model CT1330, announced in May 1991, was the first significant redesign of the card's core features, and complied with

4674-434: The later Sound Blaster. Software, including Creative's own, use this chip to automatically detect the card (by trying certain register reads and writes). A year later, in 1988, Creative marketed the C/MS via Radio Shack under the name Game Blaster . This card was identical in every way to the precursor C/MS hardware. Whereas the C/MS package came with five floppy disks full of utilities and song files, Creative supplied only

4756-503: The launch of the Sound Blaster 16 and related products. Rich Sorkin was General Manager of the global business during this time, responsible for product planning, product management, marketing and OEM sales. Moving the card off the ISA bus, which was already approaching obsolescence, meant that no line for host-controlled ISA DMA was available, because the PCI slot offers no such line. Instead, the card used PCI bus mastering to transfer data from

4838-591: The magazine an "oddity" that was "clearly aimed primarily at a 40-something audience and beyond", in comparison to more youthful rivals such as PC Gamer UK and PC Zone . In July 2000, Ziff Davis sold its publishing arm in Europe to Verenigde Nederlandse Uitgeverijen (VNU), including three magazines in Germany, three in France and four in the United Kingdom. PC Gaming World migrated with these publications. At

4920-464: The magazine to Ziff Davis —by then the magazine was so thick that a reader reported that the December issue's bulk slowed a thief who had stolen a shopping bag containing it —but continued on as publisher until 1995. The magazine kept growing through the 1990s, with the December 1997 issue weighing in at 500 pages. In January 1999, Wilson left the magazine and George Jones became editor-in-chief, at

5002-488: The magazine would both review games and serve as a trade publication for the industry. The first issue appeared in November, about the same as rivals Electronic Games and Softline (Sipe's religious background led to " Psalm 9:1–2 " appearing in each issue. His successor as editor, Johnny L. Wilson, was an evangelical Christian minister). The first issues of Computer Gaming World were published from Anaheim, California , and sold for $ 2.75 individually or $ 11 for

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5084-521: The main memory to the D/A converters. Since existing DOS programs expected to be able to initiate host-controlled ISA DMA for producing sound, backward compatibility with the older Sound Blaster cards for DOS programs required a software driver work-around; since this work-around necessarily depended on the virtual 8086 mode of the PC's CPU in order to catch and reroute accesses from the ISA DMA controller to

5166-426: The now defunct A3D 2.0 ) added hardware-accelerated acoustic effects. The EMU10K1 provided high-quality 64-voice sample-based synthesizer (marketed as "Wavetable"), with self-produced or third-party customized patches or "Soundfonts", and the ability to resample the audio output as input and apply a range of real-time DSP effects to any set of audio subchannels present in the device. The first model and flagship of

5248-485: The off-months of CGW . The newsletter never became popular; only two issues were published before it was cancelled. Some of CGF's content became part of CGW , which became a monthly. The magazine went through significant expansion starting in 1991, with page counts reaching 196 pages by its 100th issue, in November 1992. During that same year, Johnny Wilson (who started as a contributor in 1983), became editor-in-chief, although Sipe remained as publisher. In 1993, Sipe sold

5330-621: The only games in CGW history to receive zero-star reviews." According to MDS, CGW had a circulation slightly above 300,000 as of 2006. In this regard, it was slightly behind industry arch-rival PC Gamer . Bruce F. Webster reviewed the first issue of Computer Gaming World in The Space Gamer No. 48. Webster commented that "I strongly recommend this magazine to computer gamers, and just one reason alone will (in my opinion) suffice: You can now start getting from just one publication

5412-465: The opening music of Space Quest III with the card as "extraordinary", praising the quality compared to the Roland MT-32 and Ad Lib versions. Compute! approved of the card's DMA and Creative's dissemination of technical information, and concluded that while the more-expensive MT-32 was superior, Sound Blaster's audio quality was better than that of Ad Lib or Game Blaster. Released in 1990,

5494-533: The original AudioPCI chip, Ensoniq ES1370 , and several boards using revised versions of this chip ( ES1371 and ES1373 ), and some with Creative-labeled AudioPCI chips. Boards using AudioPCI tech are usually easily identifiable by the board design and the chip size because they all look quite similar. Such boards include Sound Blaster PCI64 (April 1998), PCI128 (July 1998), Creative Ensoniq AudioPCI , Vibra PCI and Sound Blaster 16 PCI . An ES137x chip contains three stereo sample rate converters, some buffers and

5576-524: The original Sound Blaster, the Sound Blaster 2.0 was released in October 1991, CT1350, added support for " auto-init " DMA , which assisted in producing a continuous loop of double-buffered sound output. Similar to version 1.0 and 1.5, it used a 1-channel 8-bit DAC. However, the maximum sampling rate was increased to 44 kHz for playback, and 15 kHz for record. The DSP's MIDI UART was upgraded to full-duplex and offered time stamping features, but

5658-413: The output SNR to 113 dB. Other than a breakout box , it has no distinguishable difference from the Audigy 2 ZS. The DSP is identical to the Audigy 2 ZS's but Creative put an "Audigy 4" sticker to cover the chip, making it appear as if it is a new chip. The Audigy 4 Pro is not to be confused with the Audigy 4 (Value) which contains lower quality DACs and does not have golden plated jacks. The Audigy 4 (Value)

5740-731: The release of the Creative Music System ("C/MS") CT-1300 board in August 1987. It contained two Philips SAA1099 integrated circuits, which, together, provided 12 channels of square-wave "bee-in-a-box" stereo sound, four channels of which can be used for noise. These ICs were featured earlier in various popular electronics magazines around the world. For many years Creative tended to use off-the-shelf components and manufacturers' reference designs for their early products. The various integrated circuits had white or black paper stickers fully covering their tops to hide their identities. On

5822-502: The release of the Sound Blaster Pro 2 version, Creative discontinued the original Sound Blaster Pro. The Sound Blaster Pro 2 was also sold with the following on-board CD-ROM controllers: Packaged Sound Blaster cards were initially marketed and sold into the retail-channel. Creative's domination of the PC audio card business soon had them selling the Sound Blaster Pro 2 OEM , CT1680, to customers for integration into pre-assembled PCs. Creative also sold Multimedia Upgrade Kits containing

5904-405: The slogan "Get Real", emphasizing its "real 100% Sound Blaster compatibility" and rhetorically asking "why those other manufacturers spend so much time comparing themselves to Sound Blaster". Compute! in 1989 stated that with Sound Blaster, "IBM-compatible computers have taken the lead in sound and music for personal computers". Naming it a Compute! Choice, the magazine described the quality of

5986-409: The territory of CGW's sister magazine. Electronic Gaming Monthly . In 2006, two of the most popular features were "Greenspeak", a final-page column written by editor-in-chief Jeff Green, and "Tom vs. Bruce", a unique "duelling-diaries" piece in which writers Tom Chick and Bruce Geryk logged their gameplay experience as each tried to best the other at a given game. "Tom vs. Bruce" sometimes featured

6068-527: The time, The Register reported that VNU saw PC Gaming World as a poor match for its business model, which left the magazine's future uncertain. The publisher sold PC Gaming World to Computec Media a month after the purchase, citing its lack of synergy with VNU's existing brand. This transition was set to be completed in October 2000. According to Golem.de , Computec planned to fold PC Gaming World together with its own PC Gameplay magazine, which it launched in 2000. PC Gaming World had closed by

6150-423: The top-selling expansion card for the PC. It achieved this by providing an AdLib-compatible product, with additional features, for the same, and often lower, price. The inclusion of a game port was important to its early success. PCs of this era did not include a game port. Game port cards were costly (around US$ 50) and used one of the few expansion slots PCs had at the time. Given the choice between an AdLib card or

6232-470: Was capped at 96 kHz. In addition, Audigy 2 supported up to 6.1 (later 7.1 ) speakers and had improved signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) over the Audigy (106 vs. 100 decibels ( A )). It also featured built-in Dolby Digital EX 6.1 and 7.1 decoding for improved DVD play-back. The Audigy 2 line were the first sound cards to receive THX certification. Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS (September 2003)

6314-489: Was compliant with the MPC Level 2 standard. The Sound Blaster Pro 2 MCV, CT5330, was a version created for IBM PS/2 model 50 and higher and their MicroChannel bus. The next model, the Sound Blaster 16, announced in June 1992, introduced: Eventually this design proved so popular that Creative made a PCI version of this card. Creative's audio revenue grew from $ 40 million per year to nearly $ 1 billion following

6396-511: Was fully backward compatible with the original Sound Blaster line, and by extension, the AdLib sound card. The Sound Blaster Pro was the first Creative sound card to have a built-in CD-ROM interface. Most Sound Blaster Pro cards featured a proprietary interface for a Panasonic ( Matsushita MKE ) drive. The Sound Blaster Pro cards are basically 8-bit ISA cards, they use only the lower 8 data bits of

6478-860: Was introduced in 1989. Sound Blaster sound cards were the de facto standard for consumer audio on the IBM PC compatible platform until the widespread transition to Microsoft Windows 95 and the integration of commoditized audio electronics in PCs. Windows 95 standardized the programming interface at the application level and thereby eliminated the importance of backward compatibility with Sound Blaster cards. By 1995, Sound Blaster cards had sold over 15 million units worldwide and accounted for seven out of ten sound card sales. To date, Sound Blaster has sold over 400 million units, and their current product lineup includes USB -powered DACs as well as other audio adapters. The history of Creative sound cards started with

6560-574: Was introduced in August 1998, the use of a programmable digital signal processor in PC-audio was not unprecedented, as IBM had already done that with cheap Mwave sound- and modem-cards and Turtle Beach with their professional Hurricane soundcards. The Live! was built around Creative's new EMU10K1 chip, which contained 2.44 million transistors and was advertised of processing a flashy 1,000 MIPS . The EMU10K1 (and its successors) did not use on-card RAM/ROM storage for instrument samples, instead it used

6642-549: Was not yet compatible with the MPU-401 interface used by professional MIDI equipment. The Sound Blaster 2.0's PCB -layout used more highly integrated components, both shrinking the board's size and reducing manufacturing cost. Owners of previous revision Sound Blaster boards could upgrade their board by purchasing the V2.00 DSP chip from Creative Labs, and swapping the older DSP V1.0x with the newer replacement. The upgraded board gained

6724-839: Was the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of the Logitech SoundMan (also marketed as Pro AudioSpectrum 16 Basic) card, which was compatible with the PAS and could thus use the same drivers. The relevance of the PAS faded quickly as Media Vision was rocked by financial scandal and faded from existence. The 16-bit PAS cards employed a relabeled CODEC chip made by Crystal Semiconductors of Austin, Texas (now part of Cirrus Logic ) for digital audio playback and recording and an AdLib -compatible Yamaha OPL3 FM music synthesizer. The 8-bit versions used different DAC and ADC parts for playback and recording and used dual AdLib -compatible Yamaha OPL2 FM music synthesizers to create stereo sound. To provide true compatibility with

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