« BackThe History of PC Audiothejpster.org.ukSubmitted by lapnect 8 months ago
  • userbinator 8 months ago

    Where the article stops is AC'97 in 1997, which was replaced 7 years later by Intel HD Audio in 2004, still in active use and new production today, two decades later. There was a lot of changes in the early years but it seems that PC audio has (hopefully) stabilised now.

    • atmanactive 8 months ago

      Also, the article is missing any mention of ASIO which propelled PC into the pro-audio world and is still a must today.

      • pantulis 8 months ago

        I guess the article is focusing on gaming and regular multimedia usage.

        The pro-audio story of the PC is also a fascinating one with some legendary names like Ensoniq, Terratec, Yamaha, Guillemot, Creamware, E-MU, Korg... but all that stuff is relatively new compared to the days of bleeps and bloops.

        • atmanactive 8 months ago

          If I remember correctly, my first encounter with ASIO was back in 1998 on Creative SoundBlaster AWE32. ASIO to record and playback high-quality multi-track audio in near-real-time and EMU8000 to play samples via MIDI packed as SoundFonts.

    • aa-jv 8 months ago

      No mention of the Zefiro ZA2 sound card, which was the first generally available full-duplex SPDIF and AES/EBU digital soundcard for PC's:

      http://www.dancetech.com/item.cfm?threadid=259

      This card was standard fare for audiophiles for a few years in the 90's, given its designers attention to quality.

      • trq01758 8 months ago

        I remember that my first soundcard was Miro that I thought would be a forgotten historical artifact but vogons even has a wiki for it https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Miro_Sound_PCM12. Such a strange device with multiple compatibility modes.

        • barrkel 8 months ago

          Another milestone was audio mixing / virtual devices, allowing multiple apps to play sound at the same time. This gradually came in around the Windows 98 / XP transition with WDM rather than VxD drivers.

          Honorable mention should go to Creative's EAX, a cool diversion that probably reached its apex in Thief and Thief 2, with environmental and 3D located sounds.

          • Brian_K_White 8 months ago

            Where is my PAS-16 which was neither SB nor GUS? Actually I guess it must have had some blaster compat mode since while I remember some games having special pas16 support, I don't remember many not working wothout it.

            fekkn wierdball cd interface... glad I replaced the system before the drive died or before I wanted a simple upgrade for speed and new disc types.

            • snvzz 8 months ago

              I feel fortunate I grabbed a bunch of PCs a school discarded... which included multiple "Sound Blaster Pro 2" cards.

              They are very useful now, some 20 years later, for retro fun.

              • lynx23 8 months ago

                I still remember foldly my first sound card, roughly around '93. It was a LPT connected chip that did 22kHz (I believe mono) audio to 3.5mm. Was directly supported by ModEdit. I remember downloading the schematics as an ASCII file. Went to a local electronics shop and bought all the listed items. and handed it over to my cousin who was good with electronics at the time. He soldered the thing together, without a case... And I used it for about 2 years, without it ever breaking. Those were the days!

                • trq01758 8 months ago

                  Yeah, these were quite popular, a resistor ladder DAC: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing

                  • lynx23 8 months ago

                    I was trying to remember how it was called, but failed, thanks for that link! I didn't realize it was pass through, never needed that...

                • undefined 8 months ago
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