Sound Blaster 16
The Sound Blaster 16 is a series of sound cards by Creative Technology, first released in June 1992 for PCs with an ISA or PCI slot. It was the successor to the Sound Blaster Pro series of sound cards and introduced CD-quality digital audio to the Sound Blaster line. For optional wavetable synthesis, the Sound Blaster 16 also added an expansion-header for add-on MIDI-daughterboards, called a Wave Blaster connector, and a game port for optional connection with external MIDI sound modules.
Sound Blaster 16 (CT2940), without ASP/CSP chip | |
| Date invented | June 1992 |
|---|---|
| Invented by | Creative Technology |
| Connects to | Motherboard via one of:
CD-ROM Drive via one of:
|
| Common manufacturers | Creative Technology |
The Sound Blaster 16 retained the Pro's OPL-3 support for FM synthesis, and was mostly compatible with software written for the older Sound Blaster and Sound Blaster Pro sound cards. The SB16's MPU-401 emulation was limited to UART (dumb) mode only, but it 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 Sound Blaster 16 was hugely popular. Creative's audio revenue grew from US$40 million per year to nearly US$1 billion following the launch of the Sound Blaster 16 and related products. Rich Sorkin was General Manager of the global business during this time, responsible for product planning, product management, marketing and OEM sales. Due to its popularity and wide support, the Sound Blaster 16 is emulated in a variety of virtualization and/or emulation programs, such as DOSBox, QEMU, Bochs, VMware and VirtualBox, with varying degrees of faithfulness and compatibility.