Sound Blaster 16 - Sound Blaster 16

Sound Blaster 16

Sound Blaster 16 (June 1992), the successor to the Sound Blaster Pro, introduced 16-bit digital audio sampling to the Sound Blaster line. The Sound Blaster 16 also added an expansion-header for add-on MIDI-daughterboards with sample-based synthesis capabilities complying to the General MIDI standard, a socket for an optional digital signal processor dubbed the Advanced Signal Processor, later Creative Signal Processor (ASP, or later CSP), and an MPU-401 compatible UART for communication with external MIDI-devices.

The Sound Blaster 16 retained the Yamaha OPL-3 chip for FM synthesis, and was mostly compatible with software written for the older Sound Blaster and Sound Blaster Pro sound cards. Later Sound Blaster 16 models integrated the OPL-3 function into the chipset (notably into the CT1747 chip, though later ViBRA-based chips featured CQM synthesis). The SB16's MPU-401 emulation was limited to UART (dumb) mode only, but this was sufficient for most MIDI software. When a daughterboard, such as the Wave Blaster, Roland SCB-7, Roland SCB-55, Yamaha DB50XG, Yamaha DB60XG was installed on the Sound Blaster, the Wave Blaster behaved like a standard MIDI device, accessible to any MPU-401 compatible MIDI software.

The ASP or CSP chip added some new features to the Sound Blaster line, such as hardware-assisted speech synthesis (through the TextAssist software), QSound audio spatialization technology for digital (PCM) wave playback, and PCM audio compression and decompression. Software needed to be written to leverage its unique abilities, yet the offered capabilities lacked compelling applications. As a result, this chip was generally ignored by the market.

The Sound Blaster 16 featured the then widely used TEA2025 operational amplifier which, in the configuration Creative had chosen, would allow approximately 700 milliwatts (0.7 watts) per channel when used with a standard pair of unpowered, 4-Ohm multi-media speakers. By setting an onboard jumper, the user could select between line-level output (bypassing the TEA2025) and amplified-output. Later models (typically ones with ViBRA chips) used the also then-widely used TDA1517 operational amplifier.

Early Intel PCs built after the IBM PC/AT typically only included support for one ATA interface (which controlled up to two ATA devices.) As computer needs grew it became common for a system to need more than 1 ATA interface. With the development of the CD-ROM, many computers could not support it since both devices of the one channel were already used. Several Sound Blaster 16 boards provided an additional IDE interface to computers that had no spare ATA-ports for a CDROM, though the additional drive interface typically only supported one device rather than two, it typically only supported CD ROM drives, and it usually could not support additional hard drives.

The Sound Blaster with the SCSI controller (SB 16 SCSI-2) was designed for use with "High End" SCSI based CD-ROM drives. The controller did not have the on-board firmware (Boot BIOS) to start an OS from a SCSI hard drive. Normally that meant that SCSI device ID-0 and ID-1 were not used. As well, if the computer did have a SCSI hard drive with the required SCSI controller then the settings for the SCSI controller on the SB card had to be selected so that the SB SCSI-2 interface did not conflict with the main SCSI controller.

The following model numbers were assigned to the Sound Blaster 16:

• CT12**: CT1230, CT1231, CT1239, CT1290, CT1291, CT1299
• CT17**: CT1730, CT1740, CT1749, CT1750, CT1759, CT1770, CT1779, CT1780, CT1789, CT1790, CT1799
• CT22**: CT2230, CT2290
• CT27**: CT2700, CT2740, CT2770

Note: various PCBs with the same model number were shipped with a different configuration regarding CD-ROM interfaces, sockets and presence/absence of the ASP/CSP chip.