Creative Music System: Upgrading my Sound Blaster 1.5

Back in Jr High School, I got my first PC. My first sound card was a Sound Blaster card which included Adlib (OPL-2) compatibility. Back then, there was an alternative to the FM Synthesis of the Adlib and it was the Creative Music System or CMS. (Later sold as the Creative Game Blaster.) CMS gave the PC 12 voices of square wave audio (with volume envelope and noise.) This was a huge upgrade from the single voice of square wave output all PCs had.

I now have a card which can be upgraded to include CMS compatibility, so in this video I do just that.

More info on the CMS upgrade: (for Sound Blaster 2.0 people)

You'll hear CMS audio on Silpheed, Police Quest 3 and The Secret of Monkey Island.

Creative Music System (CMS) ISA card photo by:
the Sound Card database

[oddhap]

This is what I love about old hardware, just throw in a couple of chips and you get a completely different experience.

[MrBrianms]

The music sets the scene. Got to have a great soundcard. The new 12 Volt fan fitted into an 80's Power Supply Unit compatibility across the decades. Brilliant. Thanks.

[mqb]

Omg! The SoundBlaster was awesome. I remember when my brother and I installed one in our 386 and were blown away. Wing Commander II with voice acting...

[jeffreyphipps]

Oddly, I had never heard of the Adlib cards until after I had gotten my first Sound Blaster card (never needed it until I needed MIDI ports). By that time there were several cards on the market, but Adlib and Sound Blasters were high on the list. I continued to use Sound Blaster cards. Today I don't need MIDI, but I did need better sound because every computer seemed to have crap sound (including boards for game computers I built). So I went and found that Sound Blaster made an EXCELLENT USB device that had software that could be adjusted many different ways (since MS removed the treble and bass controls in W10).

This video was really informative. Thanks!

[travisbeamon]

Honestly i think that the PC Speaker monkey island theme is absolutely the pinnacle of PC speaker sound experiences. I love it so much, its my ring tone.

[Hellhound]

Great memories. I could rerember ordering those CMS-chips for my soundblaster way back then. The sounds of the demo-scenes back then was unbelievable for me back then.

[kaitlyn__L]

Damn, I wasn’t expecting to prefer the CMS in Police Quest or Monkey Island, but here we are! The marimba (or whatever hammer and flat instrument it is) sounds nice in Monkey Island, but they really made the most of all 12 voices! So many arpeggios, a bit of a counterpoint here and there, and also some nice diddly-doo flourishes. Very nice!

[peteuk]

Any video with the Monkey Island theme in full gets a thumbs up from me :)

[camouflage]

I love the Monkey Island intro with CMS. Try it though a real receiver with some good speakers. (Y)

[johanpeturdam]

You can tell that LucasArts with The Secret of Monkey Island put more effort into making the CMS sound good. Could also be the music style of Secret suits the CMS better, I don't know. Anyway, time for me to try and find a Sound Blaster of this era and add that to my collection. Great video!

[theSoundCarddatabase]

Amazing video, thanks all the info!
Took me a moment to realize, but the picture of CMS you printed is actually mine :) Glad it's been useful! And strange thing is that my SB1.5 is also missing its pot wheel - got to fix it... someday. Cheers!

[BandanazX]

These were cool. My friend had one back in the day. Not much stuff supported it, and he upgraded to the SoundBlaster soon after mostly for the Adlib compatibility.

[roggesnell]

The Monkey Island Theme really gives me goosebumps! Love it! Especially in CMS.

[Runicen]

Any intention of fixing/replacing the volume knob and headphone jack?

[IAMSolaara]

In some cases i love quite a bit more the CMS sound, that harsh sound... oh yes

[stefanocrespi]

In Silpheed, F1 toggles music on/off, F2 does the same for sound effects.

[mattalki]

The CMS almost sounds like the Tandy 1000 sound amped up to 11. Pretty neat! My Sound Blaster isn't missing the volume wheel, but the headphone jack is shot on it. It only comes out on one channel. Someday I need to fix it.

[EvilTurkeySlices]

The part with monkey island I a bit cool as I have a midi if the theme and I have played it on an Aureal Vortex Advantage, a Sound Blaster Live, and a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS. It’s nice to compare early sound cards with more modern ones to see how far hardware accelerated music has come.

[tbbw]

Funny to see that PSU's rating... back in those days most of the grunt was the 5v rail... nowdays it's mostly in the 12v rail (bloody gpu's realy hungry).

[infinitecanadian]

The Secret of Monkey Island's intro theme sounds really good on this, even though it is only square wave. By the way, I recommend a pair of toothless duck-bill pliers to straighten pins, because the teeth on ordinary needle nose pliers can wear away the pins.