Digital sound revolution

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Digital sound revolution refers to the adoption of digital audio technology during the 1980s. Previously, audio signals in computers were commonly created through the use of analogue oscillators. These audio signals were then processed with analogue filters and effects; a good example of this is the MOS Technology 6581/8580 SID chip which was used in the Commodore 64. This approach was replaced with completely digital audio hardware, ie. systems in which the signal was generated as digital information, and was only at the last stage converted to analogue electric signal by a Digital to Analogue converter (D/A).

The first computer to feature a digital sound processor was the Commodore Amiga released in 1985. The 8364 Paula chip featured four independent 8-bit D/A converters. This gave Paula four mono audio channels, or two combined stereo channels. This meant for the first time a computer could play digital samples from memory without heavy CPU usage, or any clever software tricks.