MIDI is a technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and related audio devices for playing, editing, and recording music.
A sound card is an internal expansion card that provides input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under the control of computer programs. The term sound card is also applied to external audio interfaces used for professional audio applications.
Wavetable synthesis is a sound synthesis technique used to create quasi-periodic waveforms often used in the production of musical tones or notes.
Sound Blaster is a family of sound cards and audio peripherals designed by Singaporean technology company Creative Technology. The first Sound Blaster card was introduced in 1989.
Digital waveguide synthesis is the synthesis of audio using a digital waveguide. Digital waveguides are efficient computational models for physical media through which acoustic waves propagate. For this reason, digital waveguides constitute a major part of most modern physical modeling synthesizers.
The Environmental Audio Extensions are a number of digital signal processing presets for audio, present in Creative Technology Sound Blaster sound cards starting with the Sound Blaster Live and the Creative NOMAD/Creative ZEN product lines. Due to the release of Windows Vista in 2007, which deprecated the DirectSound3D API that EAX was based on, Creative discouraged EAX implementation in favour of its OpenAL-based EFX equivalent – though at that point relatively few games used the API.
Yamaha XG is an extension to the General MIDI standard, created by Yamaha. It is similar in purpose to the Roland GS standard.
The Gravis UltraSound or GUS is a sound card for the IBM PC compatible system platform, made by Canada-based Advanced Gravis Computer Technology Ltd. It was very popular in the demoscene during the 1990s.
SoundFont is a brand name that collectively refers to a file format and associated technology that uses sample-based synthesis to play MIDI files. It was first used on the Sound Blaster AWE32 sound card for its General MIDI support.
A sound module is an electronic musical instrument without a human-playable interface such as a piano-style musical keyboard. Sound modules have to be operated using an externally connected device, which is often a MIDI controller, of which the most common type is the musical keyboard. Another common way of controlling a sound module is through a sequencer, which is computer hardware or software designed to record and playback control information for sound-generating hardware. Connections between sound modules, controllers, and sequencers are generally made with MIDI, which is a standardized interface designed for this purpose.
There have been various families of Yamaha audio controllers labelled as YMF7xx.
The SoundscapeDB is an Ensoniq-designed and produced MIDI daughtercard designed to interface with the "Waveblaster" pin header available on many older sound cards. It was released in 1994.
The Ensoniq AudioPCI is a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI)-based sound card released in 1997. It was Ensoniq's last sound card product before they were acquired by Creative Technology. The card represented a shift in Ensoniq's market positioning. Whereas the Soundscape line had been made up primarily of low-volume high-end products full of features, the AudioPCI was designed to be a very simple, low-cost product to appeal to system OEMs and thus hopefully sell in mass quantities.
The Roland SC-55 is a GS MIDI sound module released in 1991 by Roland. The SC-55 was the first sound module to incorporate the new General MIDI standard. It was the first in the Roland Sound Canvas series.
Sound Blaster Live! is a PCI add-on sound card from Creative Technology Limited for PCs. Moving from ISA to PCI allowed the card to dispense with onboard memory, storing digital samples in the computer's main memory and then accessing them in real time over the bus. This allowed for a much wider selection of, and longer playing, samples. It also included higher quality sound output at all levels, quadrophonic output, and a new MIDI synthesizer with 64 sampled voices. The Live! was introduced on August 11, 1998 and variations on the design remained Creative's primary sound card line into the early 2000's.
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.
The Sound Blaster AWE32 is an ISA sound card from Creative Technology. It is an expansion board for PCs and is part of the Sound Blaster family of products. The Sound Blaster AWE32, introduced in March 1994, was a near full-length ISA sound card, measuring 14 inches (356 mm) in length, due to the number of features included.
Windows Sound System (WSS) is a sound card specification developed by Microsoft, released at the end of 1992 for Windows 3.1. It was sold as a bundle which included an ISA sound card, a microphone, a pair of headphones and a software package.
E-mu Systems was a software synthesizer, audio interface, MIDI interface, and MIDI keyboard manufacturer. Founded in 1971 as a synthesizer maker, E-mu was a pioneer in samplers, sample-based drum machines and low-cost digital sampling music workstations.
