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Sound Blaster Pro
Sound Blaster is a family of sound cards designed by Singaporean technology company Creative Technology (known in the US as Creative Labs). Sound Blaster sound cards were the de facto standard for consumer audio on the IBM PC compatible system platform, until the widespread transition to ''Microsoft'' Windows 95, which standardized the programming interface at application level (eliminating the importance of backward compatibility with Sound Blaster), and the evolution in PC design led to onboard audio electronics, which commoditized PC audio functionality. By 1995, Sound Blaster cards had sold over 15 million units worldwide and accounted for seven out of ten sound card sales. Creative Music System and Game Blaster Creative Music System The history of Creative sound cards started with the release of the Creative Music System ("C/MS") CT-1300 board in August 1987. It contained two Philips SAA1099 integrated circuits, which, together, provided 12 channels of square-wave "bee-i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Creative Technology
Creative Technology Ltd. is a Singaporean multinational technology company headquartered with overseas offices in Shanghai, Tokyo, Dublin, and Silicon Valley (where in the US it is known as Creative Labs). The principal activities of the company and its subsidiaries consist of the design, manufacture and distribution of digitized sound and video boards, computers and related multimedia and personal digital entertainment products. It also partners with mainboard manufacturers and laptop brands to embed its Sound Blaster technology on their products. History 1981–1996 Creative Technology was founded in 1981 by childhood friends and Ngee Ann Polytechnic schoolmates Sim Wong Hoo and Ng Kai Wa. Originally a computer repair shop in Pearl's Centre in Chinatown, Singapore, Chinatown, the company eventually developed an add-on memory board for the Apple II family, Apple II computer. Later, Creative spent $500,000 developing the Cubic CT, an IBM-compatible PC adapted for the Chine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sierra Online
Sierra Entertainment, Inc. (formerly On-Line Systems and Sierra On-Line, Inc.) was an American video game developer and publisher founded in 1979 by Ken and Roberta Williams. The company is known for pioneering the graphic adventure game genre, including the first such game, ''Mystery House''. It is also known for its graphical adventure game series '' King's Quest'', '' Space Quest'', ''Police Quest'', '' Gabriel Knight'', '' Leisure Suit Larry'', and ''Quest for Glory'', as well as being the original publishers of Valve's ''Half-Life'' series. After seventeen years as an independent company, Sierra was acquired by CUC International in February 1996 to become part of CUC Software. However, CUC International was caught in an accounting scandal in 1998, and many of the original founders of Sierra including the Williamses left the company. Sierra remained as part of CUC Software as it was sold and renamed several times over the next few years; Sierra was formally disestablished ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sampling (signal Processing)
In signal processing, sampling is the reduction of a continuous-time signal to a discrete-time signal. A common example is the conversion of a sound wave to a sequence of "samples". A sample is a value of the signal at a point in time and/or space; this definition differs from the usage in statistics, which refers to a set of such values. A sampler is a subsystem or operation that extracts samples from a continuous signal. A theoretical ideal sampler produces samples equivalent to the instantaneous value of the continuous signal at the desired points. The original signal can be reconstructed from a sequence of samples, up to the Nyquist limit, by passing the sequence of samples through a type of low-pass filter called a reconstruction filter. Theory Functions of space, time, or any other dimension can be sampled, and similarly in two or more dimensions. For functions that vary with time, let ''S''(''t'') be a continuous function (or "signal") to be sampled, and let samp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monaural
Monaural or monophonic sound reproduction (often shortened to mono) is sound intended to be heard as if it were emanating from one position. This contrasts with stereophonic sound or ''stereo'', which uses two separate audio channels to reproduce sound from two microphones on the right and left side, which is reproduced with two separate loudspeakers to give a sense of the direction of sound sources. In mono, only one loudspeaker is necessary, but, when played through multiple loudspeakers or headphones, identical signals are fed to each speaker, resulting in the perception of one-channel sound "imaging" in one sonic space between the speakers (provided that the speakers are set up in a proper symmetrical critical-listening placement). Monaural recordings, like stereo ones, typically use multiple microphones fed into multiple channels on a recording console, but each channel is " panned" to the center. In the final stage, the various center-panned signal paths are usually mixed d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Matra
Matra (an acronym for Mécanique Aviation Traction) was a French industrial conglomerate. During its years of operation, it was engaged in a wide range of business activities, primarily focused around automobiles, bicycles, aeronautics and weaponry. Following the acquisition of vehicle manufacturer Automobiles René Bonnet, the company formed Matra Automobiles during the 1960s and made the Matra brand famous through the production of a range of racing cars and sports cars. Its car division worked closely with other vehicle manufacturers, most significantly Renault, prior to the decline and sale of Matra Automobiles during the early 2000s. In addition to road cars, Matra entered into a wide range of businesses, eventually diversifying into media, weaponry, aeronautics, automobiles, and music distribution. Matra was at one point owned by the Floirat family. Throughout much of the company's existence, French businessman Jean-Luc Lagardère served as the CEO of Matra. During 1988 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intel 8051
The Intel MCS-51 (commonly termed 8051) is a single chip microcontroller (MCU) series developed by Intel in 1980 for use in embedded systems. The architect of the Intel MCS-51 instruction set was John H. Wharton. Intel's original versions were popular in the 1980s and early 1990s, and enhanced binary compatible derivatives remain popular today. It is an example of a complex instruction set computer (but also possessing some of the features of RISC architectures, such as a large register set and register windows) and has separate memory spaces for program instructions and data. Intel's original MCS-51 family was developed using N-type metal-oxide-semiconductor ( NMOS) technology, like its predecessor Intel MCS-48, but later versions, identified by a letter C in their name (e.g., 80C51) use complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology and consume less power than their NMOS predecessors. This made them more suitable for battery-powered devices. The family was conti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 series of instruction sets, the instruction sets found in most personal computers (PCs). Incorporated in Delaware, Intel ranked No. 45 in the 2020 ''Fortune'' 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue for nearly a decade, from 2007 to 2016 fiscal years. Intel supplies microprocessors for computer system manufacturers such as Acer, Lenovo, HP, and Dell. Intel also manufactures motherboard chipsets, network interface controllers and integrated circuits, flash memory, graphics chips, embedded processors and other devices related to communications and computing. Intel (''int''egrated and ''el''ectronics) was founded on July 18, 1968, by semiconductor pioneers Gordon Moore (of Moore's law) and Robert Noyce ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Digital Signal Processor
A digital signal processor (DSP) is a specialized microprocessor chip, with its architecture optimized for the operational needs of digital signal processing. DSPs are fabricated on MOS integrated circuit chips. They are widely used in audio signal processing, telecommunications, digital image processing, radar, sonar and speech recognition systems, and in common consumer electronic devices such as mobile phones, disk drives and high-definition television (HDTV) products. The goal of a DSP is usually to measure, filter or compress continuous real-world analog signals. Most general-purpose microprocessors can also execute digital signal processing algorithms successfully, but may not be able to keep up with such processing continuously in real-time. Also, dedicated DSPs usually have better power efficiency, thus they are more suitable in portable devices such as mobile phones because of power consumption constraints. DSPs often use special memory architectures that are able t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AdLib
Ad Lib, Inc. was a Canadian manufacturer of sound cards and other computer equipment founded by Martin Prevel, a former professor of music and vice-dean of the music department at the Université Laval. The company's best known product, the ''AdLib Music Synthesizer Card'' (''ALMSC''), or simply the ''AdLib'' as it was called, was the first add-on sound card for IBM compatibles to achieve widespread acceptance, becoming the first de facto standard for audio reproduction. History After development work on the AdLib Music Synthesizer Card had concluded, the company struggled to engage the software development community with their new product. As a result, Ad Lib partnered with Top Star Computer Services, Inc., a New Jersey company that provided quality assurance services to game developers. Top Star's President, Rich Heimlich, was sufficiently impressed by a product demonstration in Quebec in 1987 to endorse the product to his top customers. Sierra On-Line's '' King's Quest IV'' be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
OPL2
The OPL (FM Operator Type-L) series are a family of sound chips developed by Yamaha. The OPL series are low-cost sound chips providing FM synthesis for use in computing, music and video game applications. Internal operation The internal operation of the chips is completely digital. Each FM-tone is generated by a digital oscillator using a form of direct digital synthesis. A low-frequency oscillator and an envelope generator drive an FM operator to produce floating-point output for the DAC. Decapsulation of the chips shows two look-up tables, one for calculating exponents and one for log-sine. This allows the FM operator to calculate its output without any multipliers, using the formula \exp log \sin[\varphi_2 + \exp [\log \sin [\varphi_1+ A_1">varphi_2_+_\exp_[\log_\sin_[\varphi_1.html" ;"title="log \sin[\varphi_2 + \exp [\log \sin [\varphi_1">log \sin[\varphi_2 + \exp [\log \sin [\varphi_1+ A_1 + A_2] and two 256-entry look-up tables. Both tables are stored as pairs of values r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yamaha YM3812
The OPL (FM Operator Type-L) series are a family of Sound chip, sound chips developed by Yamaha Corporation, Yamaha. The OPL series are low-cost sound chips providing frequency modulation synthesis, FM synthesis for use in computing, music and video game applications. Internal operation The internal operation of the chips is completely digital. Each FM-tone is generated by a digital oscillator using a form of direct digital synthesis. A low-frequency oscillator and an envelope generator drive an FM operator to produce floating-point output for the DAC. Decapsulation of the chips shows two look-up tables, one for calculating exponents and one for log-sine. This allows the FM operator to calculate its output without any multipliers, using the formula \exp [\log \sin[\varphi_2 + \exp [\log \sin [\varphi_1] + A_1 + A_2] and two 256-entry look-up tables. Both tables are stored as pairs of values rounded to the nearest whole number, with the second value represented as the difference b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frequency Modulation Synthesis
Frequency modulation synthesis (or FM synthesis) is a form of sound synthesis whereby the frequency of a waveform is changed by modulating its frequency with a modulator. The frequency of an oscillator is altered "in accordance with the amplitude of a modulating signal". FM synthesis can create both harmonic and inharmonic sounds. To synthesize harmonic sounds, the modulating signal must have a harmonic relationship to the original carrier signal. As the amount of frequency modulation increases, the sound grows progressively complex. Through the use of modulators with frequencies that are non-integer multiples of the carrier signal (i.e. inharmonic), inharmonic bell-like and percussive spectra can be created. FM synthesis using analog oscillators may result in pitch instability. However, FM synthesis can also be implemented digitally, which is more stable and became standard practice. Digital FM synthesis (implemented as phase modulation) was the basis of several musical instru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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