Some of you may have seen this elsewhere, but if not you may find it interesting, nostalgic, or just plain boring.

For our members who can remember starting with Commodore sound chip SID 6581 and those of us who had no idea.

http://www.yvan256.net/soundcards/

Check out this site for the complete history:

http://www.crossfire-designs.de/?lang=en...icle=soundcards


Dolby Digital, dts, EAX... all being terms, that advertising world throws around.
Sound possibilities, that were only located in cinemas some time ago, already find move in our home. You hear the Enterprise already coming from the back. You can localize your opponents in Games after your hearing. Full sound always and everywhere.
You could think, it has never been different, probably you don't want to imagine that it has ever been different. We actually are much too pampered - are we?! After all, you should consider that meanwhile our oh-so-styled miracle crates were gray as mice not far ago, and their acoustic possibilities haven't been a large difference.
Limited to a simple whistle, at least in different pitches...
but stop here! It's very unlikely that we just switched from PC Speaker to 5.1 sound from just one day to another - in the opposite!
How did we actually get to the point, where we are these days? What do all these sound options mean in the old games? Does MIDI really sound so bad as you remembered?
This article should bring little light behind these questions, it explains the technology in the interesting years of development from its origin until approximately 1995, and should show, what we actually already knew, but often won't see: that a name and good marketing often mean more than advance and innovation...

For the complete correctness of the content, I don't take over any liability - the article originated in extensive investigations. Heavy effort flowed into avoiding wrong statements, however this definitely could not exclude their appareance either...
Any information regarding this is welcome!



Index


Introduction
Continuing
1981 - PC Speaker
1983 - PCJr / Tandy
1986 - Covox Speech Thing
1987 - The real sound...
1988 - Game Blaster and LAPC-1
1989,1991 - The first Sound Blasters
1991 - Competition!
1992 - 16 Bit by market leader, SCC-1
1993 - The AWE32
1995 - End of an era: GUS PnP
Conclusion and links
Background
Glossary

Dang....This is addicting.

http://www.reverbnation.com/roberttrippmusic