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The Wave Blaster was an add-on MIDI-synthesizer for Creative Sound Blaster 16, Sound Blaster AWE32, and AWE64 family of PC soundcards. It was a sample-based synthesis General MIDI compliant synthesizer. For General MIDI scores, the Wave Blaster's wavetable-engine produced more realistic instrumental music than the SB16's onboard Yamaha-OPL3. The Wave Blaster attached to a SB16 through a 26-pin expansion-header, eliminating the need for extra cabling between the SB16 and the Wave Blaster. The SB16 emulated an MPU-401 UART, giving existing MIDI-software the option to send MIDI-sequences directly to the attached Wave Blaster, instead of driving an external MIDI-device. The Wave Blaster's analog stereo-output fed into a dedicated line-in on the SB16, where the onboard-mixer allowed equalization, mixing, and volume adjustment. The Wave Blaster port was adopted by other sound card manufacturers who produced both daughterboards and soundcards with the expansion-header: Diamond, Ensoniq, Guillemot, Oberheim, Orchid, Roland, TerraTec,〔 Note: they also sold Microwave PC (multiple-wavetable synthesizer module). 〕 Turtle Beach,〔 (【引用サイトリンク】 url = http://www.amoretro.de/2014/07/turtle-beach-homac-rockwell-kurzweil-wavetable-daughterboard-4mb.html ) Note: using Kurzweil sound on Rockwell chip. 〕 and Yamaha. The header also appeared on devices such as the Korg NX5R MIDI sound module, the Oberheim MC-1000/MC-2000 keyboards, and the TerraTec Axon AX-100 Guitar-to-MIDI converter. Since 2000, Wave Blaster-capable sound cards for computers are becoming rare. In 2005, Terratec released a new Wave Blaster daughterboard called the ''Wave XTable'' with 16mb of on-board sample memory comprising 500 instruments and 10 drum kits. In 2014, a new compatible card called Dreamblaster S1 was produced by the Belgian company Serdaco. In 2015 that same company released a high end card named Dreamblaster X1, comparable to yamaha and roland cards. ==WaveBlaster II== Creative released the Waveblaster II (CT1910) shortly after the original Waveblaster. Waveblaster II used a newer E-mu EMU8000 synthesis-engine (which later appeared in the AWE32). Despite using a smaller 2MB instrument ROM (vs 4MB of the original Waveblaster), the Waveblaster II delivered better renditions in most MIDI-scored games, likely due to better sample refinement and balancing between instruments. While the original Waveblaster greatly improved upon the acoustic quality of the SB16's built-in FM-synthesis, the acoustic quality of its instrument-set was poorly regarded. By the time the SB16 reached the height of its popularity, competing MIDI-daughterboards had already pushed aside the Waveblaster. In particular, Roland's Sound Canvas daughterboards (SCD-10/15), priced only slightly more than Creative's offering, were highly regarded for their unrivalled musical reproduction in MIDI-scored game titles. (This was due to Roland's dominance in the production aspect of the MIDI game soundtracks; Roland's daughterboards shared the same synthesis-engine and instrument sound-set as the popular Sound Canvas 55, a commercial MIDI module favored by game composers.) By comparison, the WaveBlaster's instruments were improperly balanced, with many instruments striking at different volume-levels (relative to the de facto standard, Sound Canvas.) 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Creative Wave Blaster」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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