Hey everybody,
To me, the history of FM stuff is as complex as the way it makes music.
It doesn't seem as simple as NES -> 2a03 or even the Amiga -> PAULA, for example.
I wanted to make this thread because I think it might be helpful to grasp this and I also feel a lil guilty bothering Carl all the time lol
So this is what I gathered so far and I'm prepared for it to be horribly wrong so hmu!
This is specifically talking about desktops, because most laptops just had very compatible clone alternatives I think
ok so...
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>AdLib 1.0
Very popular add-on sound card early on
The AdLib sound card had a chip on it that uses FM, the Yamaha YM3812. This chip is also called "OPL-2."
The AdLib card could not do digital audio/PCM, instead it synthesized things like SFX using the FM from the YM3812/OPL-2.
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>Sound Blaster 1.0
So Creative comes along and makes their first Sound Blaster card to compete with AdLib. The Sound Blaster sported the same Yamaha YM3812/OPL-2 FM chip too, but could now also do mono sampled sound in addition. Sound Blaster now becomes more popular than AdLib
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>Sound Blaster Pro series introduced
Pro series has two YM3812/OPL-2s, one for each channel to create stereo images
Sound Blaster Pros evolved to use a single upgraded FM chip: the YMF262 (or OPL-3)
The YMF262/OPL-3 had twice the channels, extra waveforms, and simple LCR stereo so you didn't need two of them anymore
(*Apparently around here AdLib tried to compete with an YMF262/OPL-3 chip based card called AdLib Gold but it failed or something...? idk)
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>Sound Blaster 16 series introduced
Still had the YMF262/OPL-3 chip from the Sound Blaster Pro days
Higher quality audio sampling
Had the ability to be connected to the Wave Blaster, a wavetable sample-based General MIDI compatible synth
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>Sound Blaster AWE32 series introduced
Combines the previous Sound Blaster 16 specs plus a "MIDI Synthesizer" section from E-mu
The "MIDI Synth" includes an E-mu sampler and effects processor directly (making the Wave Blaster obsolete? I think???)
Still got dat YMF262/OPL-3 chip but combined with everything else this thing seems like a beast
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After this generation of Sound Blaster 32, the sound cards ditched the actual OPL-3 hardware in favor of software emulation for FM synthesis instead and for the context of this thread, I don't think people here would be as interested anymore lolol. These cards include Sound Blaster Live! and Ensoniq AudioPCI cards -> These cards are actually the first tools I used to compose music seriously in high school, using General MIDI software sequencers to play the wavetable samples. It's actually funny because while growing up I noticed that my General MIDI songs would sound a lot lamer on newer computers and it's taken me over a decade to realize that it probably was because Ensoniq's wavetable synthesis got thrown out.
s/o to the two guys who might kinda read this
Last edited by an0va (Jul 2, 2014 8:28 pm)
