First post, by McMick
- Rank
- Newbie
I'll try to make it short. Once upon a time a de facto standard arose with the Creative Labs cards becoming dominant, and everyone made their software compatible with the SBPro/SB16. For a long time, people attempted to make clones, but they mostly sucked, and they were never fully SB16 compatible. Then one day a design company in California, Avance Logic, came up with a good SB16 clone chip. It was PnP but it had DOS drivers, and although whoever made it (in China presumably) used cheap components which meant that the cards would die somewhat frequently, it was (as far as I'm aware) the first SB16 clone to be 100 percent (more or less) compatible. I used a few of these cards and they worked with everything I ever threw at them, and sounded just like a real SB16, even on games with midi music. They worked with old games and new games and with Windows games too.
Then a giant semiconductor manufacturer with logo that looks like a digital crab bought Avance Logic. This is why all your Realtek sound chips start with the code ALC! This is also why onboard sound became good enough for the common user. This is why nobody but "serious" audiophiles or studio professionals buy sound cards anymore!
DISCLAIMER: This may be full of inaccuracies but I think I have the gist of it down.