Path: news1.icaen!news.uiowa.edu!uunet!in3.uu.net!128.230.129.112!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!newsflash.concordia.ca!not-for-mail From: spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2 Subject: Re: What is the Best Sound card for the IIgs? Date: 24 Sep 1997 02:13 -0500 Organization: Concordia University Lines: 48 Distribution: world Message-ID: <24SEP199702130245@vax2.concordia.ca> References: <604j2a$bap$2@mentor.telis.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: vax2.concordia.ca NNTP-Posting-User: SPEC News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.50AXP In article itsme writes... >What is the best sound card for the IIgs? I would like options like >stereo, microphone input, software controllable output... > >What are some good sound cards, and what features do they have? The best one out there is probably Applied Engineering's Audio Animator. That consisted of an interface board with a Z8530 serial chip that connected up to an external sound mixer box. It used its own ADC (inside the shielded box) to digitize sound at a much higher quality than the Ensoniq's own ADC, and with the ability to capture in true stereo (some cards did not offer this). The mixer included two 1/4" phono connectors and four RCA connectors for input/output, as well as volume sliders to control sound levels. Another nice touch was that it also provided MIDI compatibility and had three standard DIN5 connectors for that. Another good card (and probably just as good as the AE AA) was the Applied Visions FutureSound card. It too used its own ADC to digitize sound and gave very clean stereo output, though these are a little on the rare side to find. Other options worth checking into are the MDIdeas SuperSonic Stereo card, which gave clean output (if you jumpered the card using the 'LN' output) and had a piggyback digitizer option. However that used the ADC from the Ensoniq and generally was very hissy and noisy from my own experience with at least three of these boards. There was the 'Digitizer Pro' option which was a full sized card, and like the others above used its own ADC, but this is extremely rare and hard to find (so few people have owned them I have no idea how well it worked). Although it was decent, I was never fond of the MDIdeas card because all the connectors were internal, forcing you to run wires and speaker connectors _inside_ the GS's case (I damaged a pair of speakers having to wedge the 1/8" phono's tail up against the back of the case). The only stereo/digitizer board you can still purchase new is the Alltech (formely Econ) SoundMeister card. It's an average card, it works but nothing to say beyond that. I list it here because you can still buy it, not because it was an exceptional card. There are of course other cards out there, but they're mostly mediocre ones (speaking of mediocre, avoid the AE SonicBlaster, that was a poorly designed card that wasn't properly shielded and had problems with output at certain levels I recall). Mitchell Spector spec@vax2.concordia.ca Path: news1.icaen!news.uiowa.edu!NewsNG.Chicago.Qual.Net!nyd.news.ans.net!newsfeeds.ans.net!news.idt.net!news-peer-east.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!newsflash.concordia.ca!not-for-mail From: spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2 Subject: Re: Sound Boards Date: 13 Aug 1998 02:53 EDT Organization: Opus One Lines: 85 Distribution: world Message-ID: <13AUG199802534868@vax2.concordia.ca> References: <35D20115.11F9@terra.cira.colostate.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: vax2.concordia.ca News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.50AXP Xref: news1.icaen comp.sys.apple2:138054 In article Jeff Lemke writes... >Can anybody give me a comparison of the sound capabilities of the >Applied Engineering Phasor and the native sound capabilties of the IIgs? The Phasor: Well the Phasor was an optional plug-in board designed for the Apple II Plus and IIe (which had no sound capabilities built-in, other than a speaker which could be toggled on/off to produce a click or beep like PC's). It used 4 General Instrument AY-3-8913 sound chips, an SSI-263 speech chip (with the option of adding a second) and had a built-in 4 watt amplifier which could output in true stereo. There were DIP switches on the card which would allow it to emulate other Apple II sound cards, such as the old Mockingboard or Echo+ speech card (I was never able to get the latter emulation to function). Each AY-3-8913 (identical to the AY-3-8910 as far as I know, only it came in a smaller package) could produce 3 independant voices, plus a 4th channel for a white noise generator. With all the chips combined, that gave it 12 voices, 4 white noise channels and 1 or 2 synthesized speech channels. The AY-3-8910 could be used to produce sounds and music and was commonly used in old arcade machines in the 80's (not to mention a couple of computers, like the TI99/4a, Intellivision, Atari ST, etc). It was limited though in that it could only produce sound using pre-calculated waveforms (squarewave, sinewave, tringlewave and so on) so it was rather artifical sounding. It was similar to IBM sound cards like the AdLib and SoundBlaster, only those were much more advanced and used FM synthesis. The Apple IIgs: The IIgs came standard with a sound coprocessor chip built-in every machine. That chip was the Ensoniq 5503 Digital Oscillator Chip (Ensoniq DOC). It had 32 oscillators, which could either be used independantly or paired with others to create richer sound. The Apple IIgs paired them (with two reserved, for timing control I believe) and had 15 voices. Some programs unpaired them to get near 32 voices (e.g. Diversi-Tune) while others paired them twice to get better sound (e.g. synthLAB, which has 7 voices). Unlike the Phasor and other sound chips, the Ensoniq could do wavetable synthesis. In otherwords, it could use an unlimited spectrum of waveforms to create all sorts of sound variations and of course, very realistic ones (you could digitize the sound of a real piano or real violin as a basis for your waveform. Nothing exciting today, but back in 1986 this was unheard of in a personal computer). The Ensoniq 5503 worked in 8-bit sound resolution, and could play back at sampling rates up to 44.1 kHz and even _much_ higher [I'll leave out any comments about the low pass filter as I'm a little confused about it presently, as half the people out there say it is bad, while the other half say its good. Oh, and no need to repost those article clippings, Supertimer and Scott G. ;-)] It had both a DAC and ADC built-in, so you could play back and record digital sound recordings. It also had 8 independant stereo channels through which each of the 32 oscillators could play through, potentially giving the GS the ability to have stereo sound came out of multiple speakers (sound in front, back, sides, up and down). Unfortunately Apple wired all 8 channels into one monorail channel through the 1/8" headphone jack, but they made the signals available through a molex connector on the mainboard. All existing third party stereo cards only decoded two channels, so you only got left/right stereo, like most computers and home audio equipment today. In summary, while you could do interesting sound and speech with the Phasor card, the Ensoniq chip in the IIgs complete blew it away (as well as all other computers back in the 80's--and most in the early 90's). The Ensoniq was a professional music synthesizer chip, the same one used in the Mirage keyboard. It could do everything the Phasor was capable of, including speech synthesis, not to mention even emulate the Phasor's AY-3-8913 chips. Today its fairly obsolite compared with modern versions of the Ensoniq and other wavetable chips and technologies (you can see that if you try to use it to play MIDI files ;-) though still quite impressive for a 12 year old machine! For example, you can play 8 voice MOD files using a stock 2.6 MHz Apple IIgs as the chip acts as a coprocessor (the Macintosh Plus and SE, with its more powerful 68000 but lesser 4 channel DAC, cannot play MODs at all). Mitchell Spector spec@vax2.concordia.ca