The Ensoniq Soundscape OPUS (SS-3016-NCD) is a

Gateway 2000 Gateway, Inc., previously Gateway 2000, is an American computer hardware company. The company developed, manufactured, supported, and marketed a wide range of personal computers, computer monitors, servers, and computer accessories. It was acq ...

OEM

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 ...

, and possibly was used by other

OEM An original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is generally perceived as a company that produces non-aftermarket parts and equipment that may be marketed by another manufacturer. It is a common industry term recognized and used by many professional or ...

s, but was never sold to Ensoniq's customers directly. It was a Soundscape-like board, using the Ensoniq "OPUS" multimedia sound chip that only was used on these OEM boards. It had a 1MB patch set

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 * ...

chip, resulting in a lesser

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 compared to the Soundscape and Soundscape ELITE. The "OPUS" cards again carry the Motorola 68EC000 CPU. The variety of CD-ROM interfaces have been removed. Otherwise, however, the card is simply a cost-reduced Soundscape-compatible board with similar capabilities. While Ensoniq always stated on their site that they did not support the card, the regular Soundscape's driver package functions on it. Ensoniq's support page referred to the boards as Soundscape OPUS. In a bit of humor, the board holds a chip labeled "COW". No doubt this is related to the card being a Gateway OEM board, a company known for their cow-related image.

ENSONIQ ES-5530 "OPUS" Multimedia Sound Chip

The Ensoniq ES-5530 OPUS chip was used on Ensoniq's OEM Soundscape PC audio card. It was primarily found in

computers as an Ensoniq

sound board.

Sound cards 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 ...

based on this chip were never available at retail. Soundscapes based upon this chip had similar capabilities to their retail Soundscape counterparts, which were themselves based upon the Ensoniq ' wavetable'

sample-based synthesis Sample-based synthesis is a form of audio synthesis that can be contrasted to either subtractive synthesis or additive synthesis. The principal difference with sample-based synthesis is that the seed waveforms are sampled sounds or instruments ...

chip pair '

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'. The chip was a low-cost, highly integrated ' wavetable'

solution designed for the burgeoning

multimedia PC The Multimedia PC (MPC) was a recommended configuration for a personal computer (PC) with a CD-ROM drive. The standard was set and named by the "Multimedia PC Marketing Council", which was a working group of the Software Publishers Association (SPA ...

market. It supported Microsoft MPC Level I & II standards and was

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 ...

compatible. It was manufactured on a 0.8

micrometer Micrometer can mean: * Micrometer (device), used for accurate measurements by means of a calibrated screw * American spelling of micrometre The micrometre ( international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures; ...

double-metal

VLSI Very large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining millions or billions of MOS transistors onto a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when MOS integrated circuit (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) ...

CMOS process. The major features of OPUS were: *' wavetable'

with 32 independent voices * Oversampled 18-bit d/a converter *Integrated AT bus interface including: **Built in flexible CD-ROM interface **Built in joystick interface **Real time digital filters **5 channel stereo serial communication port - 3 inputs 2 outputs **Industry standard data formats **Programmable clocks for defining serial protocol

References

* * * {{Gateway, Inc. Gateway, Inc. hardware Sound cards