Ensoniq ES1370

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[edit] PCI Bus Digital Audio and Music Controller

The AudioPCI ES1370 sound chip was the next-generation in sound technology from the now defunct technology company Ensoniq. One of the more important innovations found within was the move from ISA to the PCI bus. It was one of the first sound card solutions to offer full MS-DOS legacy compatibility. When paired with a capable codec, such as the AK4531 (pre-AC'97), the ES1370 supported the then-latest in 3D audio positioning through 4-speaker surround sound. The chip was also a PCI bus master device that was designed to provide high-speed access to system RAM and resources, for wavetable data and effect processing. Depending on the drivers, it may also be called the Sound Blaster 64/128 in the device manager.

ES1370 was one of the first audio chips to support the then-burgeoning Microsoft DirectSound3D audio API. When programs took full advantage of the API's capabilities, the ES1370 was capable of both global spatial and localized 3D sound effects, in both 2 and 4-speaker mode. The chip was capable of spatializing all audio automatically, but still required DirectSound3D usage for specific localization of sounds.

The ES1370 is also emulated as a piece of virtual hardware in Qemu.

ENSONIQ SoundScape wavetable synthesis
2 and 4 MByte downloadable sound sets (2MB=GM, 4MB=GM+GS+10 drum kits)
Uses system RAM for sound storage(Memory locked or dynamic OS control)
Multi-algorithm reverb and chorus
Multiple level spatial 3D sound
Microsoft DirectSound3D compatible (4 speaker 3D sound with AK4531 CODEC)
16-bit Record & Playback at up to 48 kHz
Hardware rendering
Support for OpenAL
Low system overhead
100% DOS Legacy Compatible
Unlimited Digital Audio Streams
32 simultaneous MIDI voices
I2S input
High performance PCI Bus Master
OPL-FM and MPU-401 emulation
Only a single, shared IRQ required
No ISA signals required
No Distributed DMA signals required
Drivers: DOS, Windows 3.1x, Win'95, WinNT, (WinNT (DEC Alpha), Sun Solaris (SPARCengine Ultra AX), Linux, and BeOS available)