Designers of the SoundBlaster range, Creative Labs recently unveiled their next generation soundcard, the AWE64 Gold. Paul White discusses the future of PC soundcards with Creative lads Franco de Bonis and Mike Chandler.
Creative Labs was founded in Singapore just 15 years ago by Sim Wong Hoo, a man who clearly saw a healthy future in the computer games market when those around him viewed it as a mere curiosity. Today, the ubiquitous SoundBlaster trademark he created has been widely adopted as the generic term for soundcards in general, rather like Hoover, Biro and Thermos in their respective areas, an image that Sim Wong Hoo said he was keen to build upon at a recent product launch.
Until recently, computer game soundcards have been just that — sounds for games. But as the quality expectations of end users continue to increase, and the demands of multimedia users develop, soundcards are growing more sophisticated at a breathtaking rate. By virtue of the economy of scale, the PC user can now tap into some very serious audio technology for a fraction of the cost of stand‑alone studio components — and it's this fact that saw me attending a preliminary demonstration of Creative Labs' next generation of soundcard, the AWE64 Gold.
In his launch speech, Mr Sim Wong Hoo confirmed the company's commitment to becoming more active in the home studio arena, not just with cheap and cheerful soundcards, but with on‑card technology capable of being used for serious recording and composition. My impression was that the Gold card we were about to see was just the beginning of a very exciting future for PC‑based studio owners.
After the demonstration, I managed to catch a few minutes with Creative Labs' UK Product Support Group Manager, Franco de Bonis, and Mike Chandler, European Brand Marketing Manager for the company. I wanted to know whether a Gold card invariably resulted in an overdraft!
Gold Card Status
Mike Chandler: "There are actually two new cards due to be released, the AWE64 and the AWE64 Gold, though I feel the Gold model is the one that the MIDI musician will be most interested in, because of its high‑quality signal path and digital output. We've used multi‑layer circuit boards and newly‑designed electronics to bring the noise figures down to the level you'd more normally associate with stand‑alone MIDI sound modules, plus there's an S/PDIF digital output so that you can record the card's output directly to DAT if you need to.
"Like most soundcards, the AWE64 Gold performs several different jobs, and one of these is to transfer stereo audio into and out of the computer. It's also a very powerful synthesizer — actually several synthesizers, plus a MIDI interface using real DIN connectors, not a joystick adaptor cable. The standard 1Mb ROM‑based sounds of the AWE32 have been retained, though they'll sound cleaner through the new electronics, and there's also 4Mb of onboard RAM, upgradable to 16Mb, which provides additional synthesizer functions. This block of RAM holds further sound banks, which are loaded up from the hard drive. Once loaded, the user has access to virtually unlimited high‑quality wavetable sounds plus the standard 128 onboard sounds. There's also waveguide‑based sound modelling, designed to make certain sounds appear more realistic. The overall polyphony of the card is 64 parts."
Physical Modelling?
'Waveguide modelling' sounds very much like the type of physical modelling where you take a source sound and then shape it, rather than creating the entire sound from scratch mathematically.
"It is a type of modelling that has been described to us as a kind of positive filter which adds movement and articulation to existing wavetable sounds that would otherwise be static. There are just 15 instrument types in the AWE64 at the moment, but more will be added before the board goes onto the market. Even at this stage, some of the examples are extremely realistic, especially the classical guitar; the technology was developed by Seer Systems, based on work done at Berklee university.
"The new card also supports SoundFonts, an existing Creative Labs technology for loading and playing back samples that I believe to be as yet under‑utilised in the MIDI music field."
Soundfonts
Are the RAM‑based synth sounds packaged with the AWE64 supplied in SBK format or are they SoundFonts?
"All the loadable wavetable sounds are in SoundFont II format — there's a high‑quality GM bank which comes up in place of the ROM‑based synth sounds, plus additional banks into which you can load any of the supplied SoundFonts. A SoundFont is like the audio equivalent of a printer font — in sampler terms, it comprises a set of multisamples complete with all their program data relating to keygroups, envelopes, looping and so on. The various SoundFont samples are provided on a sound bank CD‑ROM that comes with the card, and the amount of memory they occupy depends very much on the sounds themselves. For example, if you're sampling a sitar, you might be able to get away with just a couple of fairly short samples per octave, whereas a piano needs a lot of multisamples to make it sound convincing. You can also create your own samples by importing or recording a .WAV file, then editing it using the supplied software tools. The included Vienna software package allows you to change envelopes, add certain effects and so on, then turn the resulting .WAV sample into SoundFont II format. Having done that, you use the control panel to load it into the card's memory and the GM SoundFonts come up in place of the 1Mb AWE GM ROM sounds; any additional SoundFonts appear in alternative banks."
In terms of discrete hardware equivalents then, this card ostensibly provides a set of high‑quality stereo audio converters, a basic GM synth bank, a 4Mb enhanced SoundFont‑based synth bank which you load up before use, a physical modelling process, plus a SoundFont sampler complete with editing software, not to mention a CD‑ROM full of samples and all kinds of support software. Even accepting that stand‑alone equipment probably offers more facilities and better quality in some areas, that still sounds like an incredibly attractive package, especially as it can all be utilised within a typical MIDI + Audio PC sequencer. I understand that there's also a 3D sound system in there for good measure!
3D Games
"The modern games market demands exciting sound to go with the visuals, and we've used a 3D audio system developed by Emu Systems, who are part of the Creative Labs group of companies. You can actually move the sound around through 360 degrees — the timbre will change to give the illusion that the sound is actually moving right outside the loudspeakers, and even behind you. We're already working closely with games developers, so that they can take advantage of this system to make the audio action match the positions of the action on screen."
It's obvious that the games market is responsible for making these very low prices possible, but what access will the musician have to these 3D facilities, and will they be musically useful?
"The 3D positional audio processing can only be applied to sound effects loaded in the form of SoundFonts — the 3D algorithm is not suitable for music sounds, because it introduces an initial delay which is not acceptable for musical purposes."
PC Headaches
When musicians move up from, say, an Atari to a PC, they can get into awful trouble with PCs, especially when having to deal with complicated hardware installations. What are Creative Labs doing to make life as easy as possible for these people?
"Things are definitely stabilising. When Windows 95 was first released, there was a problem with plug‑and‑play, because old versions of it were built into the BIOS and didn't work properly with the final thing. You'd plug in a card, the BIOS would configure the card, but then it might not report it properly to Windows 95, so it wouldn't work. Modern PCs have either not included plug‑and‑play in the BIOS, so that Windows 95 deals with everything — which it does beautifully — or they've put in an up‑to‑date version."
Does that mean you may still experience problems with an older PC that may have an old BIOS?
"It is possible, but a simple solution is to disable the plug‑and‑play in the BIOS and let Windows 95 deal with your card. We ship utilities with our cards for DOS and Windows 3.1 users, where you run a software plug‑and‑play configuration manager — again, disable it in hardware and let the software do it.
"Most PCs have an option where you press some key combination during startup to enter the setup mode, and once you're in there, you'll find an option called something like 'plug‑and‑play configuration', 'PCI setup' or something similar. In the tradition of the PC, it'll be buried in there somewhere, but normally it will have something like 'plug‑and‑play BIOS on/off', or 'plug‑and‑play managed by...' and the selectable options will be 'OS' or 'hardware'. You should set it to 'OS'. That seems to solve most plug‑and‑play problems that occur with older PCs. I'd say that most PCs sold after Windows 95 was released should be OK."
Busses And Drivers
One criticism levelled at some budget soundcard packages is that the included software drivers can only talk to one piece of software at a time, yet if you have a software synth editor, you'll probably want to run it at the same time as your sequencer so that you can hear the effect of any changes in situ. Can we expect multi‑client MIDI drivers, and can you confirm that there will be full‑duplex audio operation on the AWE64 to allow you to record and monitor audio at the same time?
"As it stands, the AWE64 card doesn't have a hardware duplex capability, but there will be a software duplex driver that allows monitoring in 8‑bit quality when you're overdubbing, rather as you can now do with the AWE32. At the moment, you can't work in duplex mode at the same time as using the waveguide modelling, so it's a case of using the wavetable sounds first, then adding the modelling when you're finished, although this is only temporary and will be addressed in the next month or two. The MIDI drivers are not multi‑client — different MIDI device drivers use different ports."
What is the AWE64 Gold card likely to cost?
"The exact price hasn't been set, but translating from the dollar price and adding tax, we expect it to be around £240, give or take a few pounds."
Future Sounds
Will Creative Labs continue to build multi‑purpose PC soundcards, or do you see yourselves creating dedicated synthesizer cards?
"I think we'd probably stick to the hybrid card approach. There is a new chip being developed to succeed the Emu 8000, and this new chip will be at the heart of our new cards, along with PCI, and that chip should allow us to provide all the features musicians are looking for. With the possible exception of the real high‑end musician, I think the example AWE64 Gold we have shown you is already sufficiently powerful."
What it doesn't offer is compatibility with the huge sample library of Akai‑compatible CD‑ROMs. Is there any likelihood that a utility will become available that will enable sample CD‑ROMs to be converted into SoundFonts or SBK file formats?
"We have no plans to do this in the near future, though there is third‑party software available that can perform the conversion."
Mr Sim Wong Hoo mentioned Creative Labs' intention to build a prestige range of PC products for those who were prepared to pay more for extra quality; he used the analogy of Lexus cars. Can we therefore expect to see you taking on the big synth companies who are already producing some very good dedicated synth soundcards?
Franco de Bonis: "I think Mike would agree with me that the home studio market for soundcards wasn't that large 12 months ago, but now that PCs have grown faster and cards are available, more people are doing it and the market size is increasing. That's obviously of great interest to Creative.
"You can expect to see our cards handling a greater number of voices though hardware alone, a dramatic improvement in signal‑to‑noise ratio and certainly more in the way of digital I/O. We see there is a market, and the number of potential users is great enough for Creative to go out and provide them with what they need."
Expansion Plans
Gazing into the crystal ball, it seems likely that more and more discrete studio equipment will be replaced by PC cards, but how many cards can a PC address before it runs out of free IRQs or physical slots?
"Eventually, there is the promise of the Universal Serial bus which could be used to connect up any kind of peripheral, from mice and keyboards to printers and modules. It's a fair way off yet, and what will happen first is that the ISA slots in PCs will gradually give way to more PCI slots. The obvious answer is to move to PCI cards, which will alleviate the problem in the short term, and that's something we're looking at."
Is an expansion chassis a practical solution?
"I don't think so, because PCI cards communicate directly with the processor to achieve their speed. Moving things outside the PC may incur noise or timing problems, and in any event, you'd run out of available IRQs. Long term, we're going to have to look for a completely different solution, but probably still based on PCI cards. Some things are already being taken out of the card slots and built onto the motherboard, which frees up physical slots, but they still take up interrupts (IRQs), so that's where the limit occurs."