Sound Blaster 16

Sound Blaster 16

Sound Blaster 16 (CT2940), without ASP/CSP chip
Date invented	June 1992
Invented by	Creative Technology
Connects to	Motherboard via one of: ISA Socket built-in SCSI adaptor CD-ROM Drive via: ATAPI IDE interface
Common manufacturers	Creative Technology

The Sound Blaster 16 is a series of sound cards by Creative Technology. They are add-on boards for PCs with an ISA or PCI slot.

Sound Blaster 16

Sound Blaster 16 (CT2230).

Sound Blaster 16 (June 1992), the successor to the Sound Blaster Pro, introduced 16-bit digital audio sampling to the Sound Blaster line. The Sound Blaster 16 also added an expansion-header for add-on MIDI-daughterboards with sample-based synthesis capabilities complying to the General MIDI standard, a socket for an optional digital signal processor dubbed the Advanced Signal Processor, later Creative Signal Processor (ASP, or later CSP), and an MPU-401 compatible UART for communication with external MIDI-devices.

The Sound Blaster 16 retained the Yamaha OPL-3 chip for FM synthesis, and was mostly compatible with software written for the older Sound Blaster and Sound Blaster Pro sound cards. Later Sound Blaster 16 models integrated the OPL-3 function into the chipset (notably into the CT1747 chip, though later products including many based on the ViBRA chipsets featured CQM synthesis). The SB16's MPU-401 emulation was limited to UART (dumb) mode only, but this was sufficient for most MIDI software. When a daughterboard, such as the Wave Blaster, Roland SCB-7, Roland SCB-55, Yamaha DB50XG, Yamaha DB60XG was installed on the Sound Blaster, the Wave Blaster behaved like a standard MIDI device, accessible to any MPU-401 compatible MIDI software.

The ASP or CSP chip added some new features to the Sound Blaster line, such as hardware-assisted speech synthesis (through the TextAssist software), QSound audio spatialization technology for digital (PCM) wave playback, and PCM audio compression and decompression. Software needed to be written to leverage its unique abilities, yet the offered capabilities lacked compelling applications. As a result, this chip was generally ignored by the market.

The Sound Blaster 16 featured the then widely used TEA2025 operational amplifier which, in the configuration Creative had chosen, would allow approximately 700 milliwatts (0.7 watts) per channel when used with a standard pair of unpowered, 4-Ohm multi-media speakers. By setting an onboard jumper, the user could select between line-level output (bypassing the TEA2025) and amplified-output. Later models (typically ones with ViBRA chips) used the also then-widely used TDA1517 operational amplifier.

Early Intel PCs built after the IBM PC/AT typically only included support for one ATA interface (which controlled up to two ATA devices.) As computer needs grew it became common for a system to need more than 1 ATA interface. With the development of the CD-ROM, many computers could not support it since both devices of the one channel were already used. Several Sound Blaster 16 boards provided an additional IDE interface to computers that had no spare ATA-ports for a CDROM, though the additional drive interface typically only supported one device rather than two, it typically only supported CD ROM drives, and it usually could not support additional hard drives.

The Sound Blaster with the SCSI controller (SB 16 SCSI-2) was designed for use with "High End" SCSI based CD-ROM drives. The controller did not have the on-board firmware (Boot BIOS) to start an OS from a SCSI hard drive. Normally that meant that SCSI device ID-0 and ID-1 were not used. As well, if the computer did have a SCSI hard drive with the required SCSI controller then the settings for the SCSI controller on the SB card had to be selected so that the SB SCSI-2 interface did not conflict with the main SCSI controller.

The following model numbers were assigned to the Sound Blaster 16:^[1]

• CT12**: CT1230, CT1231, CT1239, CT1290, CT1291, CT1299
• CT17**: CT1730, CT1740, CT1749, CT1750, CT1759, CT1770, CT1779, CT1780, CT1789, CT1790, CT1799
• CT22**: CT2230, CT2290
• CT27**: CT2700, CT2740, CT2750, CT2770
• CT28**: CT2830
• CT29**: CT2910

Note: various PCBs with the same model number were shipped with a different configuration regarding CD-ROM interfaces, sockets and presence/absence of the ASP/CSP chip. The following models were typically equipped with a ASP/CSP socket: CT1740, CT1750, CT1770, CT1790, CT2230, CT2740, CT2950, CT2290. The Sound Blaster Easy 16 (CT2750) was sold with the ASP/CSP chip and a parallel CD-ROM port and 1 audio out.^[2]

Sound Blaster VIBRA 16

The Sound Blaster VIBRA 16 was released as a cost-reduced Sound Blaster 16 that supported Plug and Play for Microsoft Windows operating systems. It lacked separate bass and treble control, an ASP/CSP socket and Wave Blaster connector. Several different revisions of the VIBRA chipset exist. ViBRA16C and ViBRA16X integrated a cost-reduced replacement for the OPL-3 FM support termed CQM synthesis, which largely emulated the features of the OPL-3 chip.^[3] However, as it was not a true OPL-3, its output tended to sound noticeably different from that of a real OPL-3, though it was still much more faithful-sounding than the wavetable-generated output of the later AudioPCI-based sound cards. Earlier VIBRA products based on the VIBRA16S chip had an external Yamaha OPL-3 chip for FM synthesis, though some later VIBRA16S boards featured a Creative CQM chip instead.

The following model numbers were assigned to the Sound Blaster VIBRA 16:^[1]

• CT12**: CT1260, CT1261, CT1262
• CT22**: CT2260
• CT28**: CT2800, CT2810, CT2860, CT2890
• CT29**: CT2900, CT2940, CT2941, CT2942, CT2943, CT2945, CT2950, CT2960, CT2970, CT2970, CT2980, CT2990
• CT41**: CT4100, CT4101, CT4102, CT4130, CT4131, CT4132, CT4150, CT4173, CT4180, CT4181, CT4182

Note: various PCBs with the same model number were shipped with a different configuration regarding CD-ROM interfaces and sockets.

Sound Blaster 16 WavEffects

Sound Blaster 16 WavEffects (CT4170).

The Sound Blaster 16 WavEffects was released in 1997 as a cheaper and simpler redesign of the Sound Blaster 16. It came with Creative Technology's WavEffects wavetable software.

The following model numbers were assigned to the Sound Blaster 16 WavEffects:^[1]

• CT417*: CT4170, CT4171, CT4173

Sound Blaster 16 PCI

In 1998, Creative Technology acquired Ensoniq and subsequently released the Sound Blaster 16 PCI. The Sound Blaster 16 PCI was based on Ensoniq AudioPCI technology and is therefore unrelated to the ISA Sound Blaster 16, Sound Blaster 16 VIBRA and Sound Blaster 16 WavEffects.

The following model numbers were assigned to the Sound Blaster 16 PCI:^[1]

• CT47**: CT4700, CT4730, CT4740, CT4750, CT4790
• CT58**: CT5801, CT5803, CT5805, CT5806, CT5807

Daughterboard bugs

A large number of Sound Blaster 16 cards have a flawed digital sound processor on board that causes various issues with MIDI daughtercards attached to the Wave Blaster header. The problems include stuck notes, incorrect notes, and various other flaws in MIDI playback. The particular Sound Blaster 16 cards that are affected carry DSP versions 4.11, 4.12 and some 4.13. Older DSP versions such as 4.05 do not suffer from this bug. There is no workaround for this flaw and it occurs with all operating systems since it is an issue at the hardware level.^[4][5][6] The DSP version can be checked by running the "DIAGNOSE" utility in DOS or looking at the DSP chip on the sound card. A version number is printed on the CT1740A chip usually near the CT1745A mixer chip.

References

External links

• Sound Blaster 16 FM emulator and online player for FM music