Just curious, but is creative labs going the way Commodore has -- as in making a comeback?

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Re: Creative Labs
By: Warp 4 to All on Fri Sep 05 2025 12:08 pm

Just curious, but is creative labs going the way Commodore has -- as in making a comeback?

I don't know, but I've been seeing some of their ads on Facebook saying they're planning to release something, and it looks like it might have old-school vibes. But they've been vague about it.

I always thought the Sound Blaster cards were pretty cool in adding significant sound capability when IBM-compatible PCs at the time could only produce simple beeps & such. And the MIDI capabilities too.. A couple of my favorite Sound Blaster cards were the Sound Blatser 16 and the AWE32.

Nightfox

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Re: Creative Labs
By: Nightfox to Warp 4 on Fri Sep 05 2025 17:18:09

Just curious, but is creative labs going the way Commodore has -- as in
making a comeback?

I don't know, but I've been seeing some of their ads on Facebook saying couple of my favorite Sound Blaster cards were the Sound Blatser 16 and

I still have a system rocking the Sound Blaster 16, complete with the demo talking parrot.

Oh those were the days showing off that the computer could talk to everyone
who couldn't have cared less :D

Though, my main system is running a Sound Blazter Z there is sadly no talking parrot under Linux.


73,
de ZL4KJ

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Re: Creative Labs
By: ZL4KJ to Nightfox on Tue Sep 09 2025 01:47 am

I still have a system rocking the Sound Blaster 16, complete with the demo
talking parrot.

Oh those were the days showing off that the computer could talk to everyone who couldn't have cared less :D

Though, my main system is running a Sound Blazter Z there is sadly no talking parrot under Linux.

Yeah, I miss those cool programs they used to include. Those were the days when things like sound cards like that were novel, so they included those demo programs to let you play with the sound card and show it off. :)

Nightfox

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Re: Creative Labs
By: Nightfox to ZL4KJ on Mon Sep 08 2025 09:10:07

Yeah, I miss those cool programs they used to include. Those were the days when things like sound cards like that were novel, so they included

My first sound card was an AdLib along with getting Space Quest III for my birthday in '89. I can still hear the opening music :)

I kind of regret not keeping a hold of the AdLib when I originally upgraded to the Sound Blaster, It would have made a good addition to vintage collection.

Though the AdLib was a far cry from the 5.1 Surround sound I have setup with the Sound Blaster Z.
73,
de ZL4KJ

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Re: Creative Labs
By: ZL4KJ to Nightfox on Tue Sep 09 2025 08:28 am

I kind of regret not keeping a hold of the AdLib when I originally upgraded to he Sound Blaster, It would have made a good addition to vintage collection.
Though the AdLib was a far cry from the 5.1 Surround sound I have setup with th Sound Blaster Z.

That would have been cool to keep.

A few years ago, I heard about a company called RetroWave that was making USB devices that had an OPL3 chip on them, for a genuine Adlib-compatible device. It appears as a serial device, and there's a version of DOSBox where you can configure it to route AdLib audio requests to a serial device, so you could use one of these USB devices to get genuine AdLib audio from a DOS game. The device has its own analog speaker/headphone output:

https://tinyurl.com/4wh2chmh

I'm not sure if they're still making that anymore, but it looks like there is a RetroWave OPL3 Express currently available, which may be a newer version:

https://shop.sudomaker.com/products/retrowave-opl3-express

Nightfox

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Re: Creative Labs
By: Nightfox to ZL4KJ on Mon Sep 08 2025 14:48:45

ZL>> I kind of regret not keeping a hold of the AdLib when I originally

That would have been cool to keep.

If only I could go back in time and tell myself a few things. haha, Not that
I would have listened to myself.

A few years ago, I heard about a company called RetroWave that was making USB devices that had an OPL3 chip on them, for a genuine Adlib-compatible https://shop.sudomaker.com/products/retrowave-opl3-express

That is cool. I remember having high hopes for AdLib, I was a little dissapointed they couldn't compete with Creative, I reluctantly got my SB16 in late '92, though I admit I never looked back once I had it installed :)

I'd like to think someone, somewhere is still using the AdLib board I swapped it out for though.
73,
de ZL4KJ

...My other computer is a 486.

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Re: Creative Labs
By: ZL4KJ to Nightfox on Tue Sep 09 2025 11:29 am

That is cool. I remember having high hopes for AdLib, I was a little dissapoint d they couldn't compete with Creative, I reluctantly got my SB16 in late '92, t ough I admit I never looked back once I had it installed :)

I never had an actual Adlib board; I started out with Sound Blaster cards, and I thought they provided great sound & good capabilities. Once they started making the Sound Blaster 16 (which I think was the first that provided 16-bit audio), I think that made their sound on par with CD audio quality, which allowed for totally realistic sound (though I thought the 8-bit Sound Blaster 2.0 I had was pretty good too).

At one point, I had a 386sx-16, and I remember having one or two WAV files (with simple sound effects) that it struggled to play - the audio would come out choppy. I guess that system at the time was a bit too slow for some audio, although I thought the Sound Blaster 16 did audio processing in hardware on the card. Maybe it was an issue sending the audio data to the card..

Nightfox

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Re: Creative Labs
By: Nightfox to ZL4KJ on Tue Sep 09 2025 10:22:53

I never had an actual Adlib board; I started out with Sound Blaster cards,

My first SB was the 16, got it with an upgrade to a 486 dx2-66 with Windows 3.11 early '94

about the same time dad and I ran Lantastic through the house.

I remember having some teething problems on the 486 with sketchy sound if the system was doing too much or messing with IRQ conflicts.

To think the crap I have open on a desktop now and can have uninterrupted sound playing in surround.

73,
de ZL4KJ

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Re: Creative Labs
By: ZL4KJ to Nightfox on Wed Sep 10 2025 01:56 pm

My first SB was the 16, got it with an upgrade to a 486 dx2-66 with Windows 3.11 early '94

about the same time dad and I ran Lantastic through the house.

I remember having some teething problems on the 486 with sketchy sound if the system was doing too much or messing with IRQ conflicts.

To think the crap I have open on a desktop now and can have uninterrupted sound playing in surround.

Yeah, it's amazing what computers can do these days. And it's common for computers these days to have multiple cores & threads, making it very easy to have lots of tasks running at the same time.

Nightfox

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Re: Creative Labs
By: Nightfox to ZL4KJ on Mon Sep 08 2025 09:10 am

ZL>> Though, my main system is running a Sound Blazter Z there is sadly no

talking parrot under Linux.

Yeah, I miss those cool programs they used to include. Those were the days when things like sound cards like that were novel, so they included those demo programs to let you play with the sound card and show it off. :)

I remember mine came with a text-to-speech program where you could even enter note values and lengths to make it sing. Very fun, but also really annoying to everyone else who happens to be in the room :D

...Things too stupid to be spoken are sung.
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Nightfox wrote to ZL4KJ <=-

Yeah, it's amazing what computers can do these days. And it's common
for computers these days to have multiple cores & threads, making it
very easy to have lots of tasks running at the same time.

The change in computing in 2006-2009 was amazing - at work, we started
bringing in hyperthreaded pentium and dual core systems, and having one
more core was like night and way when system processing, like indexing
or virus scans ran during the day.

SSDs were rarities, but Hybrid SATA drives came around - SATA drives
with a 4-16 GB NAND cache slapped on the side. It'd boot up like a SATA
drive, but feel much faster once your apps got cached.

I just signed a lease for my company for all-new laptops. The "basic"
model has 8 cores and 12 threads!



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