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| Phonomenal! |
1993 - The AWE32
AWE32 PnP equipped with 8 MB RAM
However the sound was so humble, they wisely took the board off the market and replaced it with the Waveblaster II - which incorporated the EMU 8000, a chip developed by E-mu systems Inc., shortly bought by Creative Labs. These boards added a real MPU401-Interface the the SB 16.
Since these boards did their purposes better than expected, why not integrate them on a single card? Creative did exactly this, and the result was called "Advanced Wave Effects". The "32" also served more, to tell the consumer the advanced technics. Of course, the DSP's of the card still worked with 16 bits, merely the EMU 8000 could process 32 voices simultaneously.
This wavetable synthesizer was connected to an own sample RAM and ROM, which in the basic equipment were sized 512K (RAM) and 1 MB (ROM - UNCOMPRESSED, contrary to many different statements). It mixed with a better form of the interpolation, that should minimize distortions, and masters Reverb and Chorus.
Only the full version of the AWE could be memory-expanded in form of SIMM's, owners of the Value Edition went out empty. Maximum possible was a 28 MB expansion. The chip of course could access 32 MB, however the first 4 MB were already reserved for the ROM.
An also interesting capability of the card was the possibility to capture sound data of the E-mu chip directly with CD quality as digital signal in form of S/PDIF.
However, it became even more interesting if one knew that Creative saved once again. In order not to have to accommodate another third DAC, they decided to connect the OPL3 directly digitally to the E-mu.
On one hand you could capture so even the OPL3 data digitally, on the other hand however this way they "stole" the chip two voices! The EMU 8k can therefore only play 30 voices on the AWE32. Through driver optimization, however, Creative succeeded to compensate this mainly.
More annoying the following: they saved the MPU401-interface also again and favored the proprietary AWE interface instead. They handled compatibility merely in form of a driver or better: emulator, which didn't work in some situations.
Explanation in the FAQ concerning that kind of problems: "As more developers include support in native mode, this NMI problem will gradually disappear"...
In the whole, the AWE admittedly was only a "better" SB16, however its tonal qualities could expel competitors at least in the same price league. And so the card represented the tonal climax of ISA cards of the house Creative Labs.
Samples
| Monkey Island 1 | | [OGG] [MP3] | | AWE32 in MT-32 emulation mode -- awful!! | | Descent | | [OGG] [MP3] | | Descent I intro - a bit too much of hall |
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Links
| The Truth | The whole truth about the AWE - some interesting details | | Mobygames | Games supporting AWE32 |
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