DOS Compatibility
The AudioPCI boasted excellent DOS support for a PCI sound card. The competing Monster Sound from Diamond Multimedia was limited to running DOS games in Windows 9x-based DOS command windows, meaning DOS compatibility was frequently only reliable through an additional ISA sound card. Creative was struggling with the challenge of legacy support as well, and had created the SB-Link, an interconnect between the card and their special port design included on many of the first PCI motherboards, in order to achieve DOS compatibility for their Sound Blaster AWE64-variant PCI sound cards. However, Ensoniq's DOS driver successfully simulated having a real Sound Blaster-compatible ISA sound card in the computer. Compatibility was achieved through the clever use of the PC's NMI and a TSR program that together virtualized the Sound Blaster hardware. This was a tremendous step forward for the time. However, the DOS driver required a memory manager such as EMM386 to be loaded, potentially reducing compatibility with games. This is not a requirement exclusive to AudioPCI, however, as a number of ISA sound cards used it as well, including the Creative AWE ISA series.
The AudioPCI DOS driver included Ensoniq Soundscape 16-bit digital audio and wavetable support, along with support for Sound Blaster Pro, AdLib Gold, General MIDI, and MT-32. However, without actual hardware for FM synthesis, FM music was simulated using the Ensoniq wavetable, resulting in FM soundtracks sounding inauthentic. DOS MIDI utilizes the same .ecw patch set files as Windows MIDI.
Read more about this topic: Ensoniq Audio PCI
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