Yamaha

Yamaha is a Japanese company that manufactures audio equipment, among many other products. Their audio chips are often used on third-party sound cards.

Sound chips

OPL2

The Yamaha OPL2 (YM3812) is the chip used on the original AdLib card and clones. This is an FM-synthesizer chip, featuring 9 two-operator channels. OPL2 is an abbrevation of 'FM Operator type L2'.

OPL3

The Yamaha OPL3 (YMF262) is an extended version of the original OPL2 chip, adding an extra register base for a total of 18 two-operator channels. Twelve of these channels may be combined to form six four-operator channels. Each channel can be routed to a maximum of 4 output channels, though there are no sound cards that actually use all four. Normally only the first two channels are connected to a DAC (YAC512), providing crude stereo support. OPL3 is an abbrevation of 'FM Operator type L3'.

OPL3-SAx

The Yamaha OPL3-SAx is an all-in-one sound chip, featuring SBPro2, WSS and OPL3 compatibility. Chipsets featuring it include YMF-701, YMF-711, YMF-715, YMF-718 and YMF-719. The last two are probably rebranded YMF-715s. Drivers include a XG-compatible softsynth which although having some tuneable options is largely inferior to other such solutions from Yamaha. Sound cards using these chips were manufactured by Aopen, Labway, Genius and Addonics, possibly others.

Wave Blaster modules

OPL4

...?

DB50XG

The Yamaha DB50XG is a wavetable synthesizer daughter card fore the Wave Blaster connector. It is compatible with General MIDI and the Yamaha XG standards. The unit features 676 Normal Voices, 16 Parts and maximum 32-note polyphony. It features 2 operation modes: XG and TG300B. The software synthesizer S-YXG50 is 100% identical to this particular series of hardware, with the 4 MB soundfont possibly being a dump of this card's ROM.

DB60XG

The Yamaha DB60XG is an extended version of the DB50XG, sold only in Japan. In the rest of the world this card is known as the NEC XR385. It is exactly identical to the DB50XG, with two extra analog sound inputs that can be routed through the effects processor. It is rumored that the analog inputs were meant for karaoke or related applications.

Expansion cards

SW60XG

16-bit ISA expansion card, standalone version of the DB50XG/DB60XG. Not a fully-featured soundcard.