Features
AudioPCI, while designed to be cheap, is still quite functional. It offers many of the audio capabilities of the Soundscape ELITE card and surpasses the other Soundscape cards. Notably, AudioPCI supports several digital effects (reverb, chorus, and spatial enhancement) when used with Microsoft Windows 95 and later versions of Windows.
AudioPCI had some surprises for the market. It was one of the first cards to have Microsoft DirectSound3D 4-speaker playback support. The 4-speaker mode is only activated by software supporting the DirectSound3D quadraphonic mode. An oddity is that the rear channel was connected to the same output jack as line input. The jack switches modes if 4-speaker output became active.
The DOS and Windows drivers support wavetable-synthesis through Ensoniq's ".ecw" patch set format. Several patch set choices are available, varying in size and instrument quality (2, 4, or 8 MB).
The ".ecw" file format (Ensoniq Concert Wavetable) was never made open as had been hoped for by enthusiasts. Consequently, there are very few custom wave sets available, in contrast to the huge availability of home-made releases in E-mu's SoundFont format. It was particularly unfortunate because the AudioPCI used system RAM for patch set storage which in itself offers tremendous potential for new patch sets over the traditional ROM storage previously used. It is also disappointing considering the incredible popularity and longevity of the Ensoniq ES1370 chipset and its descendants, some of which were still in use six years after the original AudioPCI board, and the fact that DOS drivers for the far newer Sound Blaster Audigy still use ".ecw" wave sets. These newer cards are unable to use SoundFonts in DOS, limiting them to the three official .ecw wavesets from the late '90s and one incomplete unofficial waveset.
Read more about this topic: Ensoniq Audio PCI
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