Difference between revisions of "Ensoniq"

Revision as of 16:05, 23 February 2013

Ensoniq was a popular electronic musical instrument and sound processor company that produced sound cards during the 1990s. Their cards competed against Creative Labs' offerings. At the end of the decade they were suffering financially and were purchased by Creative and merged with the E-mu subsidiary.

Cards

Soundscape S-2000

Based upon the OttoR2/Sequoia/MC68EC000 chipset and an AD1848KP DAC/ADC, the Soundscape S-2000 was a high-quality wavetable sound card in 1994. It has clean, quality output, especially noticeable when compared to Creative Labs' ISA cards. There is no MIDI effects processor but the samples have reverb/chorus pre-computed.

I/O ports are configured by jumpers. DMA, IRQ, SB emulation and some other settings are software configurable.

Soundscape DB

This is a Waveblaster-compatible daughtercard with the Otto/Sequoia/MC68EC000 chipset on board with 1 or 2MB ROM. Again there is no effects processor but the samples have pre-computed effects.

Soundscape PnP / OPUS

This is an OEM-only cost-reduced product with similar specifications to the S-2000. It uses the AD1845JP and a MIDI chipset consisting of Cow and Opus. It has compatibility problems with some DOS games because of the use of I/O addresses not used by S-2000 (games don't always support them). Again there is no effects processor but the samples have pre-computed effects.

Hardware settings are configured by PnP and by the SSINIT program.

Soundscape Elite

This is a revision of the S-2000 board. The Elite model includes an effects DSP daughtercard, called the "ESP", that is fully programmable by a Windows application and by sysex commands. The patch set is revised and has notably stronger percussion samples. The Elite was released in 1995.

I/O ports are again configured by jumpers. DMA, IRQ, SB emulation and some other settings are software configurable. PnP is not supported.

Soundscape II

The Elite without the ESP daughtercard and possibly a different patch set.

Soundscape VIVO 90

This card uses the Mark 5 / OttoR2 MIDI chipset and an AD1845JP DAC/ADC. This card replaced the Opus card as an OEM favorite and was available at retail. Aside from the disappointing 1MB patch set, the card is the first to require EMM386 for DOS support, creating problems for some old games that conflict with EMM386. Settings are configured by PnP and by the SSINIT program.

AudioPCI

The final sound card from Ensoniq is a very cost-reduced PCI card that is almost entirely host-driven (software-based). MIDI is a soft-synth in both Windows and DOS and has limitations that make it impossible to produce a patch set that rivals the older cards with 2 megabyte ROMs.

When Creative purchased Ensoniq, a driver update was released renaming the card to Sound Blaster PCI 64. This also added some new features. In Windows 9x it has rudimentary DirectSound3D 4-speaker support and minimal A3D/EAX emulation.

The ES1370 is not AC97 compatible and is actually natively 44.1 kHz. 48 kHz playback plays with a higher-than-normal pitch. Apparently the chip lacks sample rate conversion.

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  Soundscape S-2000

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  Soundscape OPUS

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  Soundscape Elite

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  Soundscape VIVO 90

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  AudioPCI

Elite FX Toolkit

Windows 3.x application that allows the user to control the ESP effects processor. Works on Windows 9x as well.

Comparison table

Related links

• Ensoniq within Internet Archive
• AudioPCI .ecw patch set information