The History of PC Audio

https://thejpster.org.uk/blog/blog-2024-06-29/

by lapnect • 2 years ago

20 12 2 years ago

thejpster.org.uk

Where the article stops is AC'97 in 1997, which was replaced 7 years later by Intel HD Audio in 2004, still in active use and new production today, two decades later. There was a lot of changes in the early years but it seems that PC audio has (hopefully) stabilised now.

atmanactive2• 2 years ago

Also, the article is missing any mention of ASIO which propelled PC into the pro-audio world and is still a must today.

pantulis• 2 years ago

I guess the article is focusing on gaming and regular multimedia usage.

The pro-audio story of the PC is also a fascinating one with some legendary names like Ensoniq, Terratec, Yamaha, Guillemot, Creamware, E-MU, Korg... but all that stuff is relatively new compared to the days of bleeps and bloops.

aa-jv• 2 years ago

No mention of the Zefiro ZA2 sound card, which was the first generally available full-duplex SPDIF and AES/EBU digital soundcard for PC's:

http://www.dancetech.com/item.cfm?threadid=259

This card was standard fare for audiophiles for a few years in the 90's, given its designers attention to quality.

snvzz• 2 years ago

I feel fortunate I grabbed a bunch of PCs a school discarded... which included multiple "Sound Blaster Pro 2" cards.

They are very useful now, some 20 years later, for retro fun.

lynx232• 2 years ago

I still remember foldly my first sound card, roughly around '93. It was a LPT connected chip that did 22kHz (I believe mono) audio to 3.5mm. Was directly supported by ModEdit. I remember downloading the schematics as an ASCII file. Went to a local electronics shop and bought all the listed items. and handed it over to my cousin who was good with electronics at the time. He soldered the thing together, without a case... And I used it for about 2 years, without it ever breaking. Those were the days!

trq017582• 2 years ago

Yeah, these were quite popular, a resistor ladder DAC: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing

lynx232• 2 years ago

I was trying to remember how it was called, but failed, thanks for that link! I didn't realize it was pass through, never needed that...

barrkel• 2 years ago

Another milestone was audio mixing / virtual devices, allowing multiple apps to play sound at the same time. This gradually came in around the Windows 98 / XP transition with WDM rather than VxD drivers.

Honorable mention should go to Creative's EAX, a cool diversion that probably reached its apex in Thief and Thief 2, with environmental and 3D located sounds.

Brian_K_White• 2 years ago

Where is my PAS-16 which was neither SB nor GUS? Actually I guess it must have had some blaster compat mode since while I remember some games having special pas16 support, I don't remember many not working wothout it.

fekkn wierdball cd interface... glad I replaced the system before the drive died or before I wanted a simple upgrade for speed and new disc types.

trq017582• 2 years ago

I remember that my first soundcard was Miro that I thought would be a forgotten historical artifact but vogons even has a wiki for it https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Miro_Sound_PCM12. Such a strange device with multiple compatibility modes.

The History of PC Audio

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