erek
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Ad Lib Soundcard 1987 Vintage plus books
- Thread starter erek
- Start date
I dunno, some people are willing to pay too much for stuff like this because they view it as a collatable. Of course it has no bids so far so...
Nobu
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Do the legit ones have those two chips (U6 & U7) scrubbed?
That's a good question!
CrimsonKnight13
Lord Stabington of [H]ard|Fortress
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For that model, it appears to be from all of the images I've seen for MOD 870324.
https://www.opl3.com/adlib-msc/
1990 versions look different
https://www.raphnet.net/electronique/adlib/adlib_en.php
They were probably trying to hide that it was just a Yamaha OPL2 chip, hoping other people wouldn't be able to easily clone it... which of course they figured out anyhow (was really obvious) and did.
Explains why the later ones didn't scrape it off.
III_Slyflyer_III
[H]ard|Gawd
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Was there something "special" about these cards? I know why some old ISA SB16's go for some decent coin for specific variations, but I know little about these AdLib cards...
They were the first mainstream soundcards for PCs. Basically all they did was take a Yamaha FM chip and put the components necessary to interface it with the PC on it. That worked well though because it was cheap (for the time) and you could now have some actual music in games. It absolutely took off, and the SoundBlaster was actually basically a knockoff with more features. They kept the Yamaha OPL2 FM chip and had the same interface, so pretty much if a game supported the Adlib for music it would work with the SoundBlaster, but then added an 8-bit DAC and DMA buffer so that it could play back PCM samples. That took off like wildfire and games used FM for music, PCM for sound effects and of course Creative Labe became the big name in PC audio.
But the Adlib was first. There were other sound cards that were out there, but none really caught on. The reasonable (for the time) price and the good quality (for the time) synthesis made it a winner.
However they failed to upgrade or innovate, they didn't release a response to the SoundBlaster for years, and ended up going out of business.
Thank you for the brief history! I remember the days when adlib was an option for sound on games.
michalrz
Supreme [H]ardness
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The 1987 is the design year.
The manufacturing date is week 1 of 1990. The week and year are to the upper right of the big note icon.
The manufacturing date is week 1 of 1990. The week and year are to the upper right of the big note icon.
pendragon1
Extremely [H]
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yup. second example is 42 of '89, and third one moved the date down to bottom left is 48 of '91.
other than being one of the first, theres not much special with these and imo not worth the money when you can get new repos for way less.
oh, looks like it didnt sell and its relisted for $20 less...
relapse808
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My first PC didn't have a sound card for a while(386). One of my happiest days as a kid was getting a soundcard. I did not go with the Ad Lib as I thought it was inferior to the Sound Blaster. That thing was a game changer. My parents did get a bit concerned when they heard my wingmen yelling "SHIT!" when they died in Wing Commander 2.
Nobu
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ngl, the music and sfx in Tie Fighter and Rebel Assault were pretty badass. C&C had good sfx too, but in a goofy way, and mostly fm/pcm(?)
I need to check the soundtrack for Rebel Assault out. We copied the CD using syquest disks and were one of the first people to copy a CD since they were so massive at the time. And I never tried it on our SB awe32 waveblaster with the yamaha wavetable--must have been awesome if it was a midi soundtrack. I would actually fire up descent just to hear the soundtrack via midi it was so good.
You weren't wrong. Part of what killed AdLib was how good the SoundBlaster was. While the OPL2 was great for music, it didn't work well for sound effects. I mean games still used it for such, but you really wanted PCM for that. Yamaha did make chips that had that (the OPN2 was one such) but the cheap OPL2 the AdLib used didn't have a DAC. The additon of a DAC just made things so much better for games, hence why it did so well. The joystick port didn't hurt either, since most computers didn't have one built in.
I still obsess over videogame soundtracks from that era, and play around with doing remasters using high quality modern instruments. The MIDI era holds a special place in my heart since it was so much of my gaming childhood.
Nobu
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Well it's not as good as I remember it, must've been too busy shooting for my life to pay much attention. Pretty much the same loop the whole time, aside from a few transitions. Pretty good for the time, though.
mvmiller12
[H]ard|Gawd
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The General MIDI soundtrack for Tie Fighter was amazing. It was such a disappointment that the CD Editions of that game jettisoned it in favor of recycled Jon Williams film score music in a loop.
Back on topic: I had an original AdLib in my 286 I built in the summer of 1989. After my step father got a Thunderboard (SoundBlaster clone) and I heard the music and SFX for Eye of the Beholder I had to have one. I got mine for $50 through a meetup with a guy I met on a local BBS and I had to paint a fence to earn the money to pay for it (I was 16 at the time). What I can tell you is that while the SoundBlaster was feature-rich with the DAC, the SoundBlaster cards were noisy as hell with constant loud hissing in the background. The AdLib was CLEAN - no added noise whatsoever.
I am such a nerd... Might & Magic II: Gates to Another World and Warlords made me build my first 286 (coming off of a fully decked out TRS-80 Color Computer 3) and Eye of the Beholder made me get a soundcard.
Back on topic: I had an original AdLib in my 286 I built in the summer of 1989. After my step father got a Thunderboard (SoundBlaster clone) and I heard the music and SFX for Eye of the Beholder I had to have one. I got mine for $50 through a meetup with a guy I met on a local BBS and I had to paint a fence to earn the money to pay for it (I was 16 at the time). What I can tell you is that while the SoundBlaster was feature-rich with the DAC, the SoundBlaster cards were noisy as hell with constant loud hissing in the background. The AdLib was CLEAN - no added noise whatsoever.
I am such a nerd... Might & Magic II: Gates to Another World and Warlords made me build my first 286 (coming off of a fully decked out TRS-80 Color Computer 3) and Eye of the Beholder made me get a soundcard.
Please share!!! One of things I was going to do but never did was a wave recording of the decent sound track through the awe32 with the yamaha wavetable. I would LOVE to hear that again!
Sounds like the perfect sound track for playing a game.
relapse808
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Moving from a Original Soundblaster to the Soundblaster 16 with the Waveblaster daughter board was also huge. I could not believe how much better the music was going from FM to General MIDI.
Most of the time I don't even save the session, never mind actually putting together a proper soundtrack. Once and awhile I do, so far the only full soundtracks I have are Doom, Heretic, Hexen and Xcom. Descent I always meant to get to, but never did more than mess with a couple tracks. You can find what I did with it here: http://sycraft.org/content/audio/apocrypha/descent/
If you desire that old school sound, the daughter board was probably a Roland SCB-55 which was a daughter board variant of the Roland SC-55mkII SoundCanvas. Well, they make a VST version that is the real deal, sound wise. It has some subtle differences since it runs at a 44.1kHz sample rate where as the OG was 32kHz but it really sounds the part. Kinda fiddly to make work with games as being a VST plugin you have to get something to host it in, but it can be made to work. Easier than buying and hooking up actual hardware (which can still be done).
mvmiller12
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My first exposure to that was actually with The 7th Guest, actually. CD2 of the game had an audio track with a lot of the game music on it, and I was surprised to learn that most of it was the raw output of the Roland SoundCanvas SC55 in General MIDI mode. It was mind-blowing to me at the time as a teen. That made me always want one... and now I have one! Early on in our marriage, before they got STOOPID expensive on eBay (so... a LONG time ago), my wife let me buy a Roland SoundCanvas SC-55 Mk II and a Roland MT-32 (Gen 1 v1.06). I sold The MT-32 last year after building a MT32-pi emulator box that sounds slightly better and can emulate 1st Gen MT-32, 2nd Gen MT-32 and the CM-32L as well as use SoundFonts for General MIDI.
They will, however, have to pry that SC-55 Mk II out of my cold, dead hands. I keep it and the MT32-pi connected to my PC using the Roland USB-to-MIDI adapter, and have DOSBOX set to output to them. I have a small mixer board I use to balance volume and to switch which device I am listening to.
So imagine going from no sound to the awe32 with the yamaha wavetable and the cambridge soundworks microworks setup--total game changer!
Too bad the only games I think we had was a demo for indycar, nascar racing, and decent, doom, and hexen.Now I have to figure out how to hear the Tie Fighter soundtrack after that accolade. I know I played xwing a lot on our 486 without sound and just played Dream Theaters 'Change of Seasons' when I played, so that's the soundtrack I have associated with xwing, lol.
Dude, I started on the c64, and when we got an IBM PS/2 30-286 as a Western Union terminal my dad specifically told me to 'leave this computer alone' after I basically took over the Commodore 64 setup he got for microsoft multiplan 1.0 and word processing duties. And I was so disappointed with the sound and graphics capability. But a 30MB hard drive was a real game changer. And then adding a scsi drive in an expansion slot and then a nic, upping the ram, changing the cpu to a 486slc, and in the end it could run win3.1. By then we had budget for our 486, but it was strictly for work so we never even thought to add a sound card because the c64 was the 'game machine'.
Thank you! Will give it a good listen when I get near my good cans.
I love hearing stories like this.
I still have our Yamaha PSR-47 and PSS-480 synths that we got to 'try to learn how to play' as kids and my goal one day was to hook them up to the awe32 and see how the general midi on them sounds.
relapse808
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I have bitwig(and a ton of hardware) but I'm not sure how I could make dosbox or scummvm route through the daw to that vst.
So what you do is use something like LoopBE to create a virtual MIDI loopback interface. DosBOX sends MIDI to it, it loops it back to an input you can feed to a VST host. You can host it in a full out DAW, but for something like this a single host like NanoHost works well which will more or less just load the plugin as a standalone.
I should add that it doesn't truly emulate an SC-55 as, sample rate aside, it always has 64 voices of polyphony and also has selectable SC-88, SC-88Pro and SC-8820 patch sets. That said in SC-55 mode it basically sounds like a real one, but better, to my ears. It's a little crisper and smoother at the high end, probably on account of the higher sample rate, and there's no noise at all on the output.
When I decide I want to play with doing a modern version of an old MIDI soundtrack, it is what I use as a reference for how the balance and timbre should be. I just wish they'd update it to a VST3.
mvmiller12
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Now I have to figure out how to hear the Tie Fighter soundtrack after that accolade. I know I played xwing a lot on our 486 without sound and just played Dream Theaters 'Change of Seasons' when I played, so that's the soundtrack I have associated with xwing, lol.
Dude, I started on the c64, and when we got an IBM PS/2 30-286 as a Western Union terminal my dad specifically told me to 'leave this computer alone' after I basically took over the Commodore 64 setup he got for microsoft multiplan 1.0 and word processing duties. And I was so disappointed with the sound and graphics capability. But a 30MB hard drive was a real game changer. And then adding a scsi drive in an expansion slot and then a nic, upping the ram, changing the cpu to a 486slc, and in the end it could run win3.1. By then we had budget for our 486, but it was strictly for work so we never even thought to add a sound card because the c64 was the 'game machine'.
Thank you! Will give it a good listen when I get near my good cans.
Ask and ye shall receive...
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p_5CKuxPBA
This is the raw SC-55 output of the game music. Now note that Tie Fighter used the iMuse system, and so the music was very dynamic when actually in combat. Also, they have other MIDI versions that have been touched up using more orchestral patch sets to sound "better", but this is what you would have heard in-game playing with the premium SoundCanvas synth connected to it in 1994. What I particularly enjoyed about this is that the music is original composition for the game, but is clearly VERY inspired by the John Williams score, borrowing and expanding upon his Imperial themes without aping them. It also sounds very "naval" to my ears.
Roland did some black fucking magic with the SoundCanvas. The whole sample set, all 300+ instruments and variations, fit into 4MB of ROM. While the instruments don't sound near as good or real as modern sample sets, it still sounds very good and again was 4MB IN TOTAL. They really did an amazing job with clever sampling, compression, modulation, etc, etc to produce something pretty amazing with real limited tech.
OMG this is unreal when I teleport myself back to that era!! There was nothing like this except in the arcades at the time and you're right about the expansion they did on the original score. I'm only a few minutes in, but it's already stunning--and the still artwork is just as stunning considering what was 'cutting edge' back then. Thank you so much!