Lyrical digression - a bit of history

In August 1998 Creative Technology Ltd. has introduced the EMU10K1 audio processor to the world. This is an integrated circuit made according to the 0.35 micron process technology, containing 2.44 million transistors. The EMU10K1 features DirectSound hardware acceleration, EAX 1.0 and 2.0, as well as a high-quality 64-voice MIDI sample-based synthesizer and an onboard FX8010 DSP chip for real-time digital sound effects.

The EMU10K1 used PCI-accessible system memory for wavetable samples, instead of using expensive onboard memory. At that time, this was possible because systems were equipped with much more RAM than before, and PCI provided much faster and more efficient data transfer than the old ISA bus.

The Sound Blaster Live! featured higher sound quality than previous Sound Blasters because it digitally processes audio at every stage, and more chip integration that reduces analog signal loss on older, larger cards.

Modifications

Subsequently, in 1999, Creative Technology released a modification of the Sound Blaster Live! Platinum, in 2000 - Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 and Sound Blaster Live! Platinum 5.1

Sound Blaster Live! Dell OEM is a stripped-down version of Dell's Live. It used a different audio chip, not the EMU10K1, but the EMU10K1X. The chip does not accelerate DirectSound either in hardware or in EAX, which Dell "loudly kept silent" about, positioning it as a full-fledged replacement for Live (which, of course, is not). Therefore, in many tests of those times, the presence of a Live sound card did not give any advantage to the PC owner, and did not reduce the load on the central processor when playing and decoding audio. Keep this in mind when looking for a sound card for your PC. Marking on this model: SB0200/0203.

Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Digital (Dell OEM, SB0220) – this is a later, improved model. The EMU10K1 chip has been restored, as has the EAX/DirectSound/DirectSound3D hardware acceleration.

Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit (SB0410) - was not actually a full member of the Sound Blaster Live! family because it lacked the EMU10k1/10k2 processor. It was a stripped-down version of Audigy Value with 100 dB SNR, software EAX, no enhanced resolution DVD audio playback, and no Dolby Digital 5.1 or Dolby Digital EX 6.1 playback. Evidence of this is that on Linux operating systems, when using the ALSA sound system, the module that is used for Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit is "snd-ca0106", while the module used by Sound Blaster Live! - "snd-emu10k1".

E-MU APS is a series of professional sound cards manufactured by E-mu, which was owned by Creative and developed the EMU10K1 DSP chip featured at Creative's Live! products. Based on the later EMU10K2 chip, model numbers include 0404, 1212, 1616, and 1820. Their professional features included higher quality effects, drive bay front panel with headphone output, two mic/line inputs with physical level controls, digital coaxial I/O on both PCI card and drive bay, mixer with dB accuracy, phantom power for microphones (12V), ASIO, mixer presets, internal mixer redirection, 64 MIDI channels, use of 32 MB system RAM for SF2 (gigabyte expandable in WinXP) and expandable in the future with an additional card with multiple outputs. They also had line-in and line-out; all analog inputs and outputs were balanced with 6.3mm TRS jacks.

About use in Retro PC

Now let's talk about using Sound Blaster Live! from the point of view of retro technique and how much is it appropriate. Personally, in my opinion, this is a very good option that does not contradict my criteria for entering the family of retro components. So, these cards (or rather the main chip) were released before 2000, they support the first EAX, they work fine with Midi, and I am not a supporter of the assertion that retro sound is exclusively an ISA bus. Many copies have been broken on this score on forums, websites and in the comments to videos on the topic of retro sound. There is also an outright misconception that PCI sound cannot run in pure DOS, and this misconception is being replicated by the "misguided" in the retro community. Others claim that it is possible, but only if there is a 6-pin SB-Link (or PC-PCI) connector on the sound card and the motherboard connected by a cable.

6-pin SBLink connector on motherboard

To be honest, both are wrong. You need to understand that SB-Link is a hardware implementation of transferring a DOS program to a channel and interrupt program (DMA and IRQ), as if it were directly done by an ISA format card, however, no one prevents manufacturers from replacing this hardware implementation with a software one (driver, initialization program, resident interceptor).

This is the path that Creative Technology Ltd. took to implement sound in DOS with cards based on the EMU10K chip...

Lyrical digression - a bit of history, part 2

Ensoniq Corp. is an American electronics manufacturer widely known in the mid-1980s and 1990s for its musical instruments, mainly samplers and synthesizers.

Ensoniq was founded in 1982 by former MOS Technology engineers Robert ("Bob") Yannes (designer of the MOS Technology SID chip for the Commodore 64 home computer), Bruce Crockett, and Albert Carpentier. Ensoniq's products were highly professional. The selling points were both ease of use and "fat", rich sound characteristics.

In January 1998, Ensoniq Corp. was acquired by Creative Technology for $77 million and merged into the E-MU/Ensoniq division. The merger with E-mu Systems and Creative Technology did not lead to a revival of the brand: after releasing several entry-level products based on E-MU technologies under the Ensoniq brand, Creative Technology finally closed the E-MU / Ensoniq division in 2002, ceasing production and support of digital musical instruments.

The leading position of Creative Labs was under a big question - they had not created anything new for many years, they were only engaged in various modifications of the Sound Blaster AWE, a card that was advanced in its time, but quite expensive to manufacture and at the same time did not have either real 3D sound or full duplex.

So why was it necessary to acquire Ensoniq Corp. and then destroy it, just for the sake of eliminating a competitor?.. Not really, together with a competitor, Creative acquired all its developments (including patents), as well as Audio PCI - the first successful PCI audio solution, a chip for inexpensive and high-quality PCI kart.

The Emu10K1 chip, the result of a merger between Creative and Ensoniq, is not just an audio solution, but a real sound processor, like Aureal Vortex 1 (8820) and Vortex 2 (8830). A microcircuit capable of not only processing a lot of audio streams, but also doing it according to a flexible, externally specified, and not hard-wired program in hardware. Two million transistors and computing power equivalent to 1000 million operations of a conventional processor per second (yes, consider it analogous to the Pentium 90!). This is quite enough to support the new 3D sound technology "Emu Environmental Modeling", which combines support for a different number of speakers (from 2 to 8) and sound processing in accordance with the properties of the human ear. In addition, this technology supports audio tracing, i. real-time calculation of all its interactions with surrounding objects, such as reflections, absorptions or distortions. This technology will become a part of future versions of DirectSound and, as a result, will be widely supported by various software products.

Practical implementation

Enough of the lyrics, let's talk about our main task - the use of Sound Blaster Live! as a sound card in our retro machine.

Conditions and requirements:

- of course, the presence of a PCI connector on our motherboard;

- the DOS operating system installed on the hard disk (in my case it will be MS-DOS v6.22);

- It is desirable to have at least 16 MB of RAM available.

In principle, this is enough, but you probably felt the catch in the amount of memory in DOS, yes it is - this condition is mandatory: “loaded extended memory manager” (this can be EMM386, QEMM, etc.). Nothing will work without it, and as you know, many games completely refuse to work in this mode, so you have to live with it.

Installation in Windows 98

Installation on Windows is carried out from a CD, the image of which you can download from archive.org >>

It is very important to check the "DOS drivers" checkbox during installation, and sound card drivers under DOS will be written to a separate directory. In principle, nothing complicated, but there is one "BUT", it is necessary to add the line in the autoexec.bat file: «SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6» and also initialize the map:

SET CTSYN=C:\LIVE
LH C:\LIVE\SBEINIT.COM

This is necessary in order for the “Creative SBLive! SB16 Emulation" for DOS applications running in a Windows environment with the appropriate interrupt and channel. Yes, note that the "C:\LIVE" path needs to be replaced with the one you specified during installation and where your DOS drivers are located (by default it is C:\PROGRAM FILES\CREATIVE\SBLIVE\DOSDRV).

As you can see, everything is very simple, with the exception of a couple of nuances, when installing in DOS, everything is even easier...

Installation in MS-DOS

To install SoundBlaster Live! under DOS, you need to download the archive >>

Unzip the contents to the "C:" drive, then add the contents of the "AUTOEXEC.ADD" and "CONFIG.ADD" files to your "AUTOEXEC.BAT" and "CONFIG.SYS" respectively.

The "LIVE" folder contains a package of drivers and utilities for SBLive! under DOS and consists of the files: DOS4GW.EXE, SBECFG.EXE (information module of the current resource configuration), SBECORE.BIN, SBEGO.EXE (diagnostic utility), SBEINIT.COM (module for initializing hardware resources in the system), SBELOAD.EXE ( add-on module for initialization), SBEMIXER.EXE (audio output port volume control utility) and SBESET.EXE (resource configuration utility), as well as the DEFAULT.ECW instrument bank for MIDI playback and the CTSYN.INI environment parameter initialization file.

It should be noted that compatibility with DOS-applications has been preserved in subsequent products from Creative - the Audigy/Audigy2 families, for which the corresponding patch is contained in the "LIVE" folder. To use it, add the following line at the end of the "autoexec.bat" file: "C:\LIVE\AUDIGY12.EXE". Attention, the patch should be loaded strictly after loading the initialization module SBEINIT.COM!

If everything is done correctly (the correct path in "AUTOEXEC.BAT" to the file "SBEINIT.COM" is very important), you will hear a great SB16 sound in DOS with good General MIDI playback.

P.S. I added the “MT32.EXE” file to my archive, using the “ON|OFF” key you can switch your card to the “General MIDI” or “ROLAND MT-32” emulation modes. Yes, MT-32 emulation is not perfect, but it surprises with its quality.

All the best to you, friends, and I went to play "The Secret of Monkey Island" and enjoy the gorgeous music of maestro Michael Land!