The Original Sound Blaster : A Retrospective

We take a look at my somewhat rare CT1350B, the SoundBlaster 2.0 from Creative Labs from the original SoundBlaster Series. I take a look at how it works, some historical advertising and diskettes, a SoundBlaster book by Demosceners and their demo using the SoundBlaster.

Sound Blaster Documentation:

Image credits:

Adlib Sound Card - Austriacus (Wikipedia) Public Domain Image

Game Blaster - Bratgoul (Wikipedia) CC-BY-SA 3.0

[necro_ware]

Thanks for the shout out! As I saw the card the first second I thought, that I know it. I used to write CMS with the pencil on the GAL chip. What a funny surprise :D
There have been made couple of video about the CT1350B card already, but this one is the best by a huge margin. Thank you very much!

[Baoran]

For indy 500 dos game you can get adlib sound by using command line parameter /a. You can also use /c for cga /e for ega and /m for mcga. There is also /t option for tandy sound and video mode.

[multeemedia]

I vaguely remember programming audio demos using these cards as a teen using assembler. I must say having direct access to the hardware was so much more satisfying.

[drei-zwei-eins]

Oh 🦌.... I loved wave studio when i was baby child in the 80s... Reversing own voice was the reason to have a computer 😂

[thepirategamerboy]

For Indy 500 to produce Adlib sound, you need to type indy /adlib.

[corneliusantonius]

The Philips SAA1099 sound generator is a 6-voice sound chip used by some 1980s devices. It can produce several different waveforms by locking the volume envelope generator to the frequency generator, and also has a noise generator with 3 pre-set frequencies which can be locked to the frequency generator for greater range. It can output audio in fully independent stereo.

The Yamaha YM3812 also known as the OPL2 (OPL is an acronym for FM Operator Type-L) is a sound chip (i.e. integrated circuit) created by Yamaha Corporation and famous for its wide use in IBM PC-based sound cards such as the AdLib and Sound Blaster.

[Norstator]

This was my first sound card I bought as a kid off my savings for 79, - DM in 1995 which is around 60€ now. I replaced it a year later with an SB16 and gave this one away to a friend for free. I know this might sound silly but I don't miss the 8-Bit quantization noise. But compared to fuzzy PC-speaker it was a huge improvement.

[st_ProCactus]

As a teen I worked at a computer shop, we used to look through every computer customers brought in for repair... One day I discover a bunch of creative labs libraries for a bunch of languages. One was designed for QB45.. I struck gold and knew it.
From then I could use all the features of the SB16 directly from QB45, including the DrSbaitso text to voice. I made some awesome alarm clocks with that. A DOS based CD player done with ANSI. A basic wave editor and a few other little things. Good times

[dabombinablemi]

Since my old 386 PC came with a Soundblaster when it was handed down to me in 2003, and said 386 DX40 was manufactured in 1992, 8bit cards were definitely still period correct when your 386 PC was manufactured.

Still got it and its board in working order since it used an external battery pack (unlike my 286 and 486SX), and its original IO controller and 80MB HDD as well. If I ever set it up though I'll end up using an ESS Audiodrive 1868F that I repaired - sounds nearly indistinguishable next to my Intel SE440BX-2's integrated Yamaha audio.

[mthecritic]

To break the OPL stuck notes, I used to run the AdLib TEST program which would silence itself after ending.

[ruthlessadmin]

This takes me back. I was about 10 or 11 when I got my first Sound Blaster for Christmas...idk if it was a 2.0 but it was 8-bit.

[alpaykasal]

I came for the history... I stayed for the Ultraforce demo!

[rkirke]

From memory Soundo'LE did a bit more than just record and playback. I had a Sound Blaster Pro 2 which shipped with the same software bundle and was learning Visual Basic 3 at the time. Soundo'LE allowed you to use Microsoft OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) to add a sound control in VB projects (and Office documents too IIRC) which would allow recording and playback. Back then it was pretty amazing to be able to include sound support without needing hardware level knowledge or linking to arcane DLLs! I would have killed for a copy of that Sound Blaster book though..

[DxDeksor]

To me the sound blaster as a whole wasn't really used at its max potential.

Most games used crappy midi to opl2 converters, DSP was used for sfx and CMS was totally unused.

But I saw a creative demo that used both DSP and CMS, and I also saw a game that used both the DSP and the OPL2. So my assumption is that it's very likely you can use all three of them together.

Also the CMS chips are a bit more capable than what you may think if you check the datasheet.
They're not only 6 channels each, but they're also capable of stereo sound, volume control, noise and have some sort of envelope control (although for the latter it hasn't been documented by creative and I couldn't get it to work on my card. Not sure if creative gimped the chips or if that was just my sloppy code).
But since they were used even less that the OPL2, they never had a chance to shine.
Sure they're "only" doing squarewaves, but the Tandy 1000 and the Master system used a three voice mono chip and got away with great tunes, so this thing could have been an absolute monster with 12 stereo voices !


This is the only game (perhaps the only piece of software) I know on PC that did this on a sound blaster (the adlib gold had some demo musics that did that). This is quite frustrating to thing that something could have been made more often, but almost nobody ever tried :(
This kind of thing was much more common on the megadrive which has similar capabilities.

I've always wondered what the SB1.x/2.0 was truly capable of if you used DSP + CMS + OPL2. All these chips complete one another quite nicely if you ask me !
If you want a lot of voices or stereo ? The CMS has got you covered.
You want smooth sounds ? The OPL2 is ready for you
You want realistic sounds ? The DSP is your best friend

[Pix]

My first sound card was the slightly earlier CT1320 which I'm still running in a 286 to this day. I was one of the very few who bought the CMS upgrade as it happens although I only needed the 2 CMS chips for that card so I've had the other rarer chip sat in the packaging for all these years since. Never knew anyone was looking for these things! I don't think they were too expensive to buy back then but I really can't remember after all this time. Silpheed and Times Of Lore have two of the better CMS soundtracks from what I recall but I never used CMS much having got it.

This card blew my mind when I got it having had nothing but 48k Speccy and PC beepers for about a decade previously. I had it hanging out of the top of a Sinclair PC200 at first which wasn't exactly ideal given that machine was only built for half height cards.

[Jivemaster]

Good video of the Sound Blaster 2.0- Maybe not the "original Sound Blaster" but a later iteration of it. The CT1320A was the first model and often called "Sound Blaster 1.0". The follow up revision is often called "Sound Blaster 1.5" and has the model number CT1320C ... might have been a CT1320B but I have never seen one

[BlackEpyon]

I'm running a Sound Blaster 2 Pro (16-bit card) in an XT of mine. This works perfectly fine, so long as you configure the IRQ and DMA settings to what an 8-bit slot can handle (IRQ 7 & DMA 3 or lower), and you're not using the CD-ROM connector. Just let the 16-bit edge hang off the end of the 8-bit ISA connector, and make sure it doesn't touch anything. So I find nothing at all odd about a 386 running an 8-bit card. There's enough XT games that support Ad-lib, or early Sound Blaster for it to be worthwhile adding a Sound Blaster to an XT if you can support it, not to mention Jim Leonard's 8088 Domination Demo (which never fails to impress). You could probably get a non-PnP Sound Blaster 16 to work on an XT as well, but I don't have the relevant card to test that with.

Sure there's more XT games that support Ad-Lib than Sound Blaster, but more of us probably have old non-PNP Sound Blasters kicking around than genuine Ad-Libs.

[nigelrhodes]

I own about 30 different models of ISA sound card (several bit including a CT1350B included), these are nice but I don't think I would use it in a build I would use every day. I own an Adlib remake card and find that a much better option on an 8 bit system.

IMO the best SoundBlaster cards were the ones in the same series as the CT1600, they have clear audio, great compatibility, real OPL3 and no hanging note bug. I tend to use ESS cards in most of my DOS builds now as they are quite compatible, while most do not have real OPL3 and might be a deal breaker for a lot of people I use the Roland SC-55, SD-35 or SC-88 Pro for FM synth.

[the_holy_forestfairy]

How I loved my Soundblaster...
I had a 5.1 sound system, DIY. The problem with many sound cards was that although they separated low, mid and high sounds, they still chased high and mid sounds through the woofer.
With Soundblaster and the Creative-Software i was able to fine-tune the Frequency for Low, mid and high sounds. Simply THE perfect sound card with the perfect Software!

[VAZHURERACING]

I had a Turtle Beach sound card... Sound Blaster was very expensive