Sound Blaster

Sound Blaster
Sound Blaster - a family of sound cards produced by Creative Technology, for IBM PC-compatible computers. Sound Blaster cards have long been the de facto standard.Sound Blaster cards predecessor was Creative Music System (C / MS), released in August 1987. Since 1988, the card is distributed through a network of Radio Shack stores under the name Game Blaster. 12-voice stereo FM synthesizer.Sound Cards Family Sound Blaster:

• Sound Blaster - November 1989. The card was compatible with its competitor AdLib. Supports 11-voice FM-synthesis chips with Yamaha YM3812, also known as OPL2. Also supports recording and playback of monaural sound with sampling frequencies 12 kHz and 23 kHz respectively.
• Sound Blaster 1.5 - 1990. Produced without the chips C / MS, required for compatibility with the previous sound card Creative - Creative Music System (Game Blaster).
• Sound Blaster 2.0. Added support for continuous audio output from the double-buffered in the Sound Blaster 2.01 - playing a sound with a frequency of 44.1 kHz.
• Sound Blaster Pro - May 1991, the main advantage was the stereo sound with a frequency of 22 kHz. Also been revised and expanded FM synthesizer frequency mono signal to 44 kHz.
• Sound Blaster Pro 2
• Sound Blaster 16 - June 1992, this board was first to market with an interface for CD-ROM, and with the possibility of upgrading.She became the first 16-bit card with built-in effects processor ASP (ASP - Advanced Sound Processor). ASP allows you to change the depth and timbre of sound, creating the effect of Surround sound. Creative also has provided a new board connector for CD-ROM. Improved FM-stereo synthesizer OPL 3 and possible improvements through the installation of the module board Wave-table synthesis MIDI (Music Instruments Digital Interface). The first edition of the standard General MIDI MIDI device includes the ability to reproduce 128 different instruments, as well as about 50 drummers from a standard set of percussion instruments. The main purpose of MIDI - to ensure compatibility and coherence of different sounding songs on synthesizers. The sound card's synthesizer is more or less compatible with the specification General MIDI.
• Sound Blaster AWE32 - March 1994, the first board with the wave synthesizer of "family" AWE (AWE - Advanced Wave Effects). Figure 32 corresponds to the number of hardware voices. The heart is a processor AWE32 EMU8000, allows you to use when playing MIDI tracks with 32 votes rate 44,1 kHz, and to assign sound effects, a whole set of Chorus and Reverberation. Architecture chip allowed him to address up to 28 MB of memory. In the standard sample used tools from General MIDI ROM at 1 megabyte. The board also found 512 kilobytes of memory that is compatible with the standard GS.Memory were grown by standard 30-pin modules. AWE32 has captivated the hearts of professionals and casual users.
• Sound Blaster AWE64 - November 1996, and AWE64 Gold for professionals - almost studio quality, and 4 megabytes of memory to store samples (originally 512 KB).
• Sound Blaster PCI64 - April 1998, or Sound Blaster AWE64D - transfer beautifully to the bus proved AWE64 PCI, the only difference - the use of system memory for storing samples.
• Sound Blaster PCI128 - July 1998,
• Sound Blaster PCI512
• Sound Blaster 16 PCI
• Sound Blaster Ensoniq Audio PCI
• Sound Blaster Vibra128
• Sound Blaster 4.1 Digital
• Sound Blaster Live! - August 1998, EAX 1.0 - the first professional card available to ordinary consumers. 64-voice hardware MIDI synthesizer, with the possibility of using the library of samples up to 32 megabytes, 128 independent hardware accelerated flows Direct Sound 3D, full emulation Sound Blaster 16 and DOS applications support and EAX API.
• Sound Blaster Audigy - August 2001, EAX 3.0
• Sound Blaster Audigy 2 - September 2002, EAX 4.0 (software)
• Sound Blaster Audigy 4, EAX 4.0 (software)
• Sound Blaster X-Fi - August 2005. EAX 5.0