The Soundscape Elite was Ensoniq's high-end ISA PC

sound card A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal expansion card that provides input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under the control of computer programs. The term ''sound card'' is also applied to external audio ...

offering. It offers the highest

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and ...

quality of any PC

Ensoniq produced. The board is an evolution of the company's previous Soundscape S-2000. The Soundscape ELITE was launched in March 1995. Ensoniq Elite Press Release - Elite: RAM/ROM samples with dual DSP
Google Groups, April 2, 1995.

Overview

The card's layout is quite similar to the Soundscape S-2000, and uses the same synthesizer chips and codecs. Changes include a revision of the 2 MiB patch

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...

equipped with new sounds, and the addition of a powerful digital signal processor (DSP) daughtercard. This DSP, called the Ensoniq Signal Processor (ESP), allows popular enhancement effects to be applied to the Elite's patch sounds. The ESP was used on Ensoniq's musical instruments as well, such as their ASR samplers, TS synthesizers, and the DP Series effects processors. The most popular effects used are

reverb Reverberation (also known as reverb), in acoustics, is a persistence of sound, after a sound is produced. Reverberation is created when a sound or signal is reflected causing numerous reflections to build up and then decay as the sound is abs ...

and

chorus Chorus may refer to: Music * Chorus (song) or refrain, line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse * Chorus effect, the perception of similar sounds from multiple sources as a single, richer sound * Chorus form, song in which all verse ...

, which are enabled by default on the card. The ESP is also fully configurable through a Windows utility (the "ENSONIQ Effects Tool Kit") and through standard sysex commands which can be issued in various ways (i.e. DOS utilities). Unfortunately the Effects Tool Kit never progressed beyond the

beta development stage A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

and is, as a result, not entirely stable or functional. Soundscape ELITE, like the original Soundscape, has several connections for the proprietary CD-ROM interfaces of the time. However, instead of the Soundscape S-2000's

Mitsumi was a Japanese manufacturer of consumer electronic components, founded in 1954. The company was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, was constituent of the Nikkei 225 stock index and provided its products through its subsidiaries in Asia, Euro ...

, Matsushita, and

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...

interfaces, the Elite gained a new IDE ATAPI interface which was a new standard implemented to improve the ease of utilizing CD-ROM drives. The board's chipset consists of Ensoniq's

OTTO Otto is a masculine German given name and a surname. It originates as an Old High German short form (variants ''Audo'', '' Odo'', ''Udo'') of Germanic names beginning in ''aud-'', an element meaning "wealth, prosperity". The name is recorded f ...

and Sequoia synthesizer chips with the

Motorola 68EC000 The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector ...

8 MHz controller, the ESP board, and an Analog Devices 1848KP

codec A codec is a device or computer program that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder on a signal or ...

for digital audio.

Specifications

* Ensoniq "

" Wavetable synthesizer ( sample-based synthesizer). Provides true simultaneous instruments, 16 channels, 32-note

polyphony Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, ...

. 2 MiB compressed wave and patch sets provide: ** GS instrument set, 7 drum kits, 128

General MIDI General MIDI (also known as GM or GM 1) is a standardized specification for electronic musical instruments that respond to MIDI messages. GM was developed by the American MIDI Manufacturers Association (MMA) and the Japan MIDI Standards Committe ...

instruments, MT-32 instruments, 61 drum programs *Ensoniq "

ESP ESP most commonly refers to: * Extrasensory perception, a paranormal ability ESP may also refer to: Arts, entertainment Music * ESP Guitars, a manufacturer of electric guitars * E.S. Posthumus, an independent music group formed in 2000, ...

Signal Processor Signal processing is an electrical engineering subfield that focuses on analyzing, modifying and synthesizing ''signals'', such as sound, images, and scientific measurements. Signal processing techniques are used to optimize transmissions, di ...

. Provides multiple simultaneous effects.

and

are enabled when Soundscape is initialized. *On-Board 68EC000 microprocessor. Provides software upgradeable OS and very low host CPU overhead. *Edge connectors: **MIC/line Input **CD/AUX Input **Audio output **15-Pin Joystick/ MPU 401

interface *Full 16-Bit digital play/record at up to 48 kHz stereo:

CD Quality The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then released in Oct ...

sound, very low noise **MS

ADPCM Adaptive differential pulse-code modulation (ADPCM) is a variant of differential pulse-code modulation (DPCM) that varies the size of the quantization step, to allow further reduction of the required data bandwidth for a given signal-to-noise ratio ...

A-Law An A-law algorithm is a standard companding algorithm, used in European 8-bit PCM digital communications systems to optimize, i.e. modify, the dynamic range of an analog signal for digitizing. It is one of two versions of the G.711 standar ...

, u-Law

Compression Compression may refer to: Physical science *Compression (physics), size reduction due to forces *Compression member, a structural element such as a column *Compressibility, susceptibility to compression * Gas compression *Compression ratio, of a ...

supported (except

Sound Blaster 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 pl ...

ADPCM) *Four CD-ROM interfaces: ** IDE ATAPI (with programmable base port) **

SONY , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...

proprietary **

Panasonic formerly between 1935 and 2008 and the first incarnation of between 2008 and 2022, is a major Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka. It was founded by Kōnosuke Matsushita in 1918 as a lightbulb ...

proprietary *System requirements ** IBM PC-AT or compatible, one 16-bit ISA expansion slot (full length) **4MB RAM,

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

3.3 or higher, Windows 3.xx,

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturi ...

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system. The first version of Win ...

, or

OS/2 OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 r ...

*Support for

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 ''Ad ...

and Sound Blaster 2.0 (except for the few software titles requiring SoundBlaster

), MT-32,

Windows Sound System Windows Sound System (WSS) is a sound card specification developed by Microsoft released at the end of 1992 for Windows 3.1. WSS featured support for up to 16-bit, 48 kHz digital sampling, beyond the capabilities of the popular contemporary S ...

2, MPC levels 1 and 2.

References

;Notes *Ensoniq Corp. Soundscape S-2000 Manual, Ensoniq, 1994. * * {{Creative Technology Sound cards