Cloudschatze wrote:Are you mistakenly referring to the Aureal debacle? I've never encountered a mention of Creative suing, or attempting to sue, Ensoniq.
No, I thought this was another instance of the same sort of strategy. I may be remembering incorrectly, but I thought there were a number of lawsuits related to Sound Blaster compatibility, with Ensoniq among the targets. I haven't managed to find any documentation of this, so consider it [citation required] for now. I'll keep looking if I have time, and will post a link if I find credible supporting documentation.
swaaye wrote:Their Sound Blaster compatibility actually wasn't very good and it's mono-only with Soundscape, but they did well getting native support from game companies.
If you were referring to their FM emulation, then I agree; it was rather abysmal. The digital audio side of things was pretty solid, as far as I remember (though mono-only, as well, I think). The distinct advantage was that absolutely no TSRs were required; once the code was uploaded to the on-board 68000, emulation was completely hardware-based.
If they were so inclined, and unafraid of Creative's legal department, they could probably have done stereo and Sound Blaster 16 support. The hardware was already more than capable, and the design likely flexible enough.
It was a superior solution to Creative's cost-reduced emulation TSRs on the AWE line. Unfortunately, Ensoniq resorted to the same tactics to reduce the cost of their later ISA cards, which lends credibility to the claims that they weren't doing too well financially (though I don't remember reading about that at the time).
swaaye wrote:The Soundscape Elite was actually available direct for $160 in mid/late 1995.
Yes, I probably used a similar, earlier version of that offer. This was slightly before the Elite shipped, and they were taking used cards as part of a trade-in offer. Later, I guess not wanting to deal with the large number of cards being sent in, they expanded the offer, but said, "just throw it out" of the old card.