Custom PC - UK (2019-12)

Creativebooth.I showedhimthedemo and presented our

technology,andhestayedfor 30 minutes, even though his

minderswantedtousherhimawayafter five minutes.

Obviouslyhewasawed.

AtComdex,peoplelinedupin20-person queues in front of

threecashiersinourtiny 300 squarefoot booth – we sold one

SoundBlastereveryfourminutes.Thiswas a phenomenal

successandSoundBlastertookofflikea rocket after that. To

date,over 400 millionunitsofSoundBlaster have been sold.

Infact,allPCstodaystillretaintheoriginal Sound Blaster

compatibilityintheOS.

CPC:Whatwerethelimitationsofthese old cards in

comparisonwithlaterSoundBlasters?

SimWongHoo:TheSoundBlasterwas an 8-bit sound card

witha lowsamplingrate.Theaudioquality was coarse and

verybadbytoday’sstandards.Butgoing from no sound to

‘gotsound’wasa giantstepforthePCat that time. Users

werethrilledbythisnewcapability,andits highly affordable

mass-market price.

The OPL2 synthesiser

wasa two-operator FM

synthesis chip and could

onlygenerate nine-voice

mono music. ‘Two-operator’

means it uses only two sine

waves to modulate each

otherand generate different

kindsof musical

instrumental sounds. While it sounded slightly better than our

own 12-voice stereo synthesiser, it was still rudimentary in the

realm of electronic music instruments.

CPC: The first Sound Blaster used a Yamaha OPL2 FM

synthesiser, making it AdLib compatible. If AdLib hadn’t done

this first, do you think the first Sound Blaster cards have had

different MIDI synthesis?

Sim Wong Hoo: The first Sound Blaster did have a different

music synthesis system – that was already in our Cubic CT PC

in 1986. In fact, the first generation of Sound Blaster supported

both the Yamaha OPL2 FM synthesiser and our own 12-voice

synthesiser, so by default, it automatically supported a wider

range of software from the two standards, giving users the best

of both worlds.

CPC: The first Sound Blaster made a killer product by

combining PCM audio with FM synthesis, but its sampling rate

was limited to 23KHz. Why was the sample rate so low?

Sim Wong Hoo: The sampling rate was low simply due to

component cost, and the performance of PCs at the time. A

mass-market 8-bit analogue-to-digital converter wasn’t

available at that time, so analogue-to-digital sampling was

performed in software using the digital-to-analogue converter.

Because it was software, it was limited by the speed of the PCs

at that time. Anyway, a 23KHz sampling rate is good enough for

8-bit, as the benefit of increasing the sampling rate is drowned

out by the coarse 8-bit output anyway.

CPC: PC games had very limited audio features at this time –

how did you go about getting game developers to implement

Sound Blaster support?

Sim Wong Hoo: After the initial success of Sound Blaster, we

started to engage the entire gaming industry, and supported

developers to put audio into their games. We provided them

with a free Sound Blaster Developer Kit, which was the first of its

kind in the industry, as well as free consultancy. We even helped

game developers certify their games as ‘fully Sound Blaster

compatible’ at no cost.

CPC: What was the thinking behind adding gameports to the

backplates of Sound Blaster cards?

Sim Wong Hoo: It was very simple to do, and we had the space

on the backplate to include a gameport. This also saved a

precious slot for users who wanted to play games with joysticks.

CPC: It took a while for Creative to make the MIDI output of

Sound Blasters MPU-401-compatible. Why was this?

Sim Wong Hoo: MIDI wasn’t our focus at the time – it was a

small, niche and hard-to-service market. The original Sound

Blaster did have a MIDI interface hidden in the gameport. It was

put there to give a positive answer to curious people who asked

about MIDI but didn’t need it. This limited MIDI features didn’t

cause any loss Sound Blaster sales. We eventually did make our

MIDI interface MPU-401-compatible and, as we had expected, it

made no difference to our sales. The fact is that almost all our

users didn’t care much about this compatibility.

CPC: The Sound Blaster Pro came on a 16-bit ISA card, but

was still only an 8-bit card really. Why did it need a 16-bit

ISA interface?

Sim Wong Hoo: The Sound Blaster Pro was a stereo version of

the Sound Blaster, which was a requirement of the Microsoft

Multimedia PC standard. It supported additional interrupt and

DMAs, which were only found on the 16-bit bus.

CPC: The Sound Blaster Pro also came with an IDE interface to

control a CD-ROM drive. What was the thinking behind this?

THE AUDIO

QUALITY WAS

COARSE AND BAD

BY TODAY’S

STANDARDS

TheSoundBlaster 16 madefulluseofthe16-bitISA interface,
enabling CD-quality 16-bit/44KHz sampling