RETRO TECH / ANALYSIS
on the PC. Many of these cards suffered high returns as
users found them not to be that Sound Blaster-compatible.
After the returns, the users would usually then buy original
Sound Blasters.CPC: Take us through the development of the EMU chips for
the later 16-bit Sound Blasters – what were you looking to
achieve with this level of advanced synthesis?
Sim Wong Hoo: The EMU was the grandfather of wavetable
synthesis, earlier than Yamaha and Roland, pioneering
wavetable synthesis way back in the early 1970s. EMU joined
the Creative family in 1993, and we started using its
wavetable chips in Sound Blasters to provide much better
music synthesis and FM synthesis. It was a major
breakthrough for PC sound cards at that time.
The subsequent EMU chips – for example, EMU10K1 –
besides doing wavetable synthesis, were also fully
programmable acoustic digital signal processing engines
that powered our game-changing Environmental Audio
eXtension (EAX) system. This enabled multiple
simultaneous voices to be processable in hardware.CPC: Even though so many decent MIDI sounds were
available, via the AWE 32, AWE 64 and various wavetable
cards, OPL2/OPL3 is still considered the ‘sound’ of the era –
it’s the default in DOSBox, for example. Why do you think
wavetable synthesis didn’t quite catch on in the same way
as FM synthesis?
Sim Wong Hoo: FM synthesis supported many old games,
which is why it’s still found to be the default in DOSBox. As
PCs got a lot faster, and supported larger memory, I guess it
was easier for developers to stream music directly in games.
Some of them used their own software audio engines.CPC:TheAWE32wasexpandableviastandard30-pin
SIMMs,buttheAWE64wasn’t.Whatwasthereasonfor
thisdecision?
SimWongHoo:TheAWE64wastargetinga muchbiggerSim Wong Hoo: The CD-ROM drive that met the performance
requirement specifications of the Multimedia PC initiative was
originally a very expensive, Japan-made CD-ROM drive with a
complicated and expensive SCSI interface, which cost over
$2,000 US. This expensive drive would have immediately
derailed the multimedia PC initiative.
So Creative solved this nightmarish scenario by
co-developing a new and inexpensive CD-ROM drive
with MKE (Japan). Creative significantly improved the
performance of this low-cost drive by developing a
proprietary CD-ROM drive interface on the Sound Blaster,
as well as new driver software. This innovative driver went
against conventional wisdom of needing an Interrupt
and DMA for high-speed data transfer. Instead, it used
the CPU to access the CD-ROM drive directly and create
a huge buffer of data in advance, thereby increasing
performance tremendously.
Putting the CD-ROM interface on the Sound Blaster was
an obvious advantage in that you also didn’t require an
additional expansion slot for a CD-ROM drive controller. It
also simplified the sales of our Multimedia PC Upgrade Kits,
which comprised a sound card, CD-ROM drive and some
CD-ROM titles.
CPC: The Sound Blaster Pro 2 introduced OPL3 synthesis –
what could this do that you couldn’t do on OPL2?
Sim Wong Hoo: OPL2 had two operators and nine voices,
while OPL3 had four operators, 18 voices and stereo output.
FM synthesis with four operators used four sine waves to
synthesise music, which provided a richer timbre and thus
created better-sounding musical instruments.
CPC: Several competitors started producing cheaper
‘Sound Blaster Pro-compatible’ cards in the early 1990s –
how did these affect your sales,andwasthereanylicensing
involved in claiming compatibilitywithyourcards?
SimWongHoo:Theseso-calledcompatiblesoundcardshad
negligibleeffectsonoursalesdespitesellingatlowerprices
SimWo n gHoo:TheAWE64wastargetingamuchbigger
marketand,tobecost-effective,wehadtoremovethe
negligibleeffectsonoursales,despitesellingatlowerprices.
In fact,theyhelped to create alarger awareness for sound
In the heyday of
MIDI gaming audio,
the massive AWE32
could be expanded
using 30-pin SIMMs