The objective of this guide is to answer the most commonly asked questions about Creative Technology Sound Blaster cards. The intention is to help you understand the sound card features available and to assist you in selecting the right Sound Blaster for your needs.
This page, like the entire Creative Zone, is being updated and improved on a regular basis, so keep checking back!
The computer multimedia industry today is growing at a astounding rate. It seems as though everyone either has a computer or knows someone who does and has heard about all the new and exciting things computers can do. In the beginning, computers were mostly used for calculations and word processing. They were as big as a house and the speed in which they did their calculations was painstakingly slow. As far as multimedia was concerned, it was basically nonexistent. Most monitors were monochrome (black and white/yellow) and any sound you heard was in the form of a bleep from a 2" speaker in your computer.
Today Creative Technology has 3D Positional Audio and wave-table synthesis. With the combination of Creative's video cards, high-speed modems, CD-ROM drives and wave-table sound cards, computers today are a becoming a staple in virtually all businesses and many homes. By far one of the most compelling aspects of the multimedia experience is the overwhelming advancement in sound quality.
Sound cards bring the listener's multimedia audio experience to a new level. You not only hear sound in front of you, but all around you. 3D sound is here! But it wasn't always that way. Sound cards were first manufactured with 8-bit digital audio and FM synthesis sound quality (Sound Blaster / Sound Blaster Pro). This technology was great, for its time. It allowed you to discover a whole new world of sound. For the first time, the user was able to experience digital audio. Then came 16-bit sound cards (Sound Blaster 16/Pro/Value PnP), with even better sound quality. Now games and educational and business applications started getting more interesting. The sound was fuller and richer and sound effects were more realistic.
Now there's the Sound Blaster 32 PnP and AWE32 PnP with wave-table synthesis. This break-through in high-quality sound reproduction now sets the standard for audio on PC. With Creative Technology wave-table sound cards your games and educational and business applications literally put you in the middle of the multimedia experience. A key part of this is the pristine digital 3D Positional Audio. This technology positions objects (sounds) in the listeners environment. It gives the listener the sensation that sounds can be heard from above and behind you, not just in front. The difference between a 16-bit FM sound card and the Sound Blaster 32 PnP or AWE32 PnP wave-table sound card will blow you away.
FM Synthesis
FM synthesis sound cards create a sound or musical instrument by manipulating sine waves for playback, changing a sine wave for each sound that is created. It's like artificially creating sounds.
Wave-table
Creative's wave-table synthesis uses digitally sampled sounds of real instruments. The result is true reproduction of musical instruments when played back.
To upgrade your existing 16-bit sound card, you need the Wave Blaster II. Wave Blaster II is an add-on daughter board that adds wave-table synthesis to your existing 16-bit sound card. Along with the powerful E-mu Synthesizer, the Wave Blaster II also includes 2 MB of real instrument sounds in sample ROM.
Upgrading your 16 bit sound card with a Wave Blaster II gives you the ultimate in wave-table synthesis sound and MIDI playback. Your sound card must have the industry standard Wave Blaster connector to use the Wave Blaster II.
Sixty days for software, one-year limited hardware warranty covering parts and labor.
Plug-and-Play is a hardware/software architecture standard that enables ease of installation of add-on devices to your computer. By using Windows 95, when you install a new sound card to your computer Windows 95 will automatically configure your new device to work properly on your system.
Yes. Included with the Sound Blaster AWE 32 PnP and Sound Blaster 32 PnP is the Configuration Manager Software. This software configures the sound card to work with the DOS and Win 3.1 environments which do not support Plug-and-Play functionality.
Yes. After turning off and unplugging your system, remove the cover of your computer and look for a free 16-bit ISA expansion slot on the motherboard. Remove the screw and the metal plate on the free slot. Align your cards 16-bit slot connector with the expansion slot and gently lower the card into the free slot. Secure the card to the expansion slot with screw from the metal plate and put the cover back on your computer.
IDE stands for Integrated Device Electronics. IDE is a specification for internal devices and a protocol for data transfer. Enhanced IDE (EIDE) transfers data at speeds of up to 13.3 MB per second on internal disk drives as large as 8.4 Gigabytes. Drives are accessed sequentially, not simultaneously, and are limited to 2 devices per interface. IDE is an affordable and good solution for desktop computing needs. All of Creative Technologys' Sound Blaster Plug-and-Play sound cards have a built-in IDE interface.
MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. A musical communication standard that lets you (with the help of a MIDI Keyboard/Guitar) instruct a sound to play from your synthesizer. When you connect (with a MIDI cable), your keyboards MIDI OUT jack to the joystick port of your sound card, you can press a key and this will command the sound cards synthesizer to play a sound.
No, 32 Note Polyphony means the number of notes the AWE32 PnP and the SB 32 PnP can play simultaneously.
This new ground breaking 3D sound technology generates from the E-mu 8000 chip on board the SBAWE32 PnP and SB32 PnP (with memory upgrade). This technology positions objects (sounds) in the listener's environment. It gives the listener the sensation that sounds can be heard from above and behind you, not just in front.
The E-mu 8000 chip changes the sound according to X, Y and Z coordinates. This lets game developers create a full 3D sound experience for the end user. This technology helps games and business applications written for the E-mu 8000 respond to virtual changes in the listener's location and orientation.
Creative 3D stereo enhancement technology brings clarity and realism to your audio playback. It makes the stereo field seem wider, more spacious. It decentralizes your speakers, reduces speaker cross-talk and dynamically enhances stereo and mono audio sound.
A Sound Blaster AWE32 PnP, SB32 PnP or the SB16 Value PnP sound card.
No. 3D Stereo Enhancement Technology can be used with any game or other software that requires audio enhancement.
SoundFonts are digital audio samples of musical instruments or sound effects. They can be used in various ways for play-back on a computer equipped with a wave-table sound card and MIDI software.
Yes, from E-mu Systems Inc.
With Voyetra MIDI Orchestrator Plus (bundled with the AWE32 PnP), a MIDI sequencer that lets you arrange, edit and record MIDI music into your own musical compositions. To use the SoundFont banks you've created in Vienna, open the AWE control panel to load them into the card's memory. Now you can use your own instrument sounds.
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