Sound Blaster 16

Sound card by Creative Technology

The Sound Blaster 16 is a series of sound cards by Creative Technology, first released in June 1992 for PCs with an ISA or PCI slot. It was the successor to the Sound Blaster Pro series of sound cards and introduced CD quality digital audio to the Sound Blaster line. For optional wavetable synthesis, the Sound Blaster 16 also added an expansion header for add on MIDI daughterboards, called a Wave Blaster connector, and a game port for optional connection with external MIDI sound modules. The Sound Blaster 16 retained the Pro's OPL 3 support for FM synthesis, and was mostly compatible with software written for the older Sound Blaster and Sound Blaster Pro sound cards. The SB16's MPU 401 emulation was limited to UART (dumb) mode only, but it 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 Sound Blaster 16 was hugely popular. Creative's audio revenue grew from US$40 million per year to nearly US$1 billion following the launch of the Sound Blaster 16 and related products. Rich Sorkin was General Manager of the global business during this time, responsible for product planning, product management, marketing and OEM sales. Due to its popularity and wide support, the Sound Blaster 16 is emulated in a variety of virtualization and/or emulation programs, such as DOSBox, QEMU, Bochs, VMware and VirtualBox, with varying degrees of faithfulness and compatibility.

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 ASP was a SGS Thomson ST18932 DSP core with 16K of program RAM and 8K of data RAM. The Sound Blaster 16 also featured the then widely used TEA2025 amplifier IC (integrated circuit) which, in the configuration Creative had chosen, would allow approximately 700 milliwatts per channel when used with a standard pair of unpowered, 4 Ohm multi media speakers. Later models (typically ones with ViBRA chips) used the also then widely used TDA1517 amplifier IC. By setting an onboard jumper, the user could select between line level output (bypassing the on board amplifier) and amplified output.

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. Some Sound Blaster 16 boards (CT2940 for example) 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. Proprietary CD ROM standards were also supported by several Sound Blaster 16 cards. Mitsumi (CT2700) and Philips/LMSI (CT1780) for example. Most Sound Blaster 16 cards came with the Panasonic / Matsushita interface, which resembles IDE with the 40PIN connector. The Sound Blaster with the SCSI controller (SB 16 SCSI 2, CT1770, CT1779) 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 (operating system) 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. Most Sound Blaster 16 cards feature connectors for CD audio input. This was a necessity since most operating systems and CD ROM drives of the time did not support streaming CD audio digitally over the main interface. The CD audio input could also be daisy chained from another sound generating device, such as an MPEG decoder or TV tuner card.

Sound Blaster 16 cards sold separately feature a CT1747, a chip which has the discrete Yamaha YMF262 OPL 3 FM synthesizer integrated. Some post 1995 cards (notably the CT2910) feature the fully compatible YMF289 FM synthesis chip instead. Starting in late 1995, Creative utilized a cost reduced, software compatible replacement for the OPL 3 FM support termed CQM synthesis. However, its synthesis was far from being entirely faithful to the OPL 3 chips, producing considerable distortion along with high pitched 'squeaking' or 'ringing' artifacts in FM synthesized music and sound effects. Boards utilizing CQM synthesis feature a CT1978 chip, or they may have CQM integrated in the case of ViBRA16C/X based boards.

The Sound Blaster VIBRA 16 was released as a cost reduced, more integrated Sound Blaster 16 chipset targeting OEMs and the entry level to mid range markets. Some variants support Plug and Play for Microsoft Windows operating systems. It lacked separate bass, treble and gain control (except CT2502 chip), and an ASP/CSP socket. Some models even lacked the Wave Blaster connector while others came equipped with the connector. Several different revisions of the VIBRA chipset exist:
VIBRA16S, the first revision, with an external YMF262/YMF289 OPL 3 or CT1978 CQM synthesis chip. The CT2501, CT2502 and CT2504 chips are ViBRA16S parts. The smaller CT2504 does not incorporate a bus controller, and may depend on external jumpers or a Plug and Play compatible CT1705 chip for its logical configuration. The larger CT2501 and CT2502 integrate the bus controller. VIBRA16C, the next revision, which integrates Creative's CQM synthesis and a Plug and Play compatible bus controller into the CT2505 chip. The CT2505 is also featured as an on board sound chip on some motherboards and on Asus Media Bus cards. VIBRA16CL, revision used on VIBRA CT4100 and CT4130 with CT2508 chip. VIBRA16X/XV, a much smaller CT2511 chip extensively featured on later WavEffects cards, which also utilizes CQM synthesis.

The following model numbers were assigned to the Sound Blaster VIBRA 16: The WavEffects line also supports CQM synthesis for Adlib/OPL compatibility.

The following model numbers were assigned to the Sound Blaster 16 WavEffects: 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.

Computer Gaming World in 1993 stated that "We were not impressed with the quality of the digital audio" of the Sound Blaster 16 or 16 ASP, reporting "pops and extra noise" and incomplete Sound Blaster compatibility. The magazine instead recommended the "almost foolproof" Sound Blaster Pro or the original Sound Blaster.