ElBrunzy wrote:kodai : ok I wont get confused with the name "waveblaster" when I thiink about a waveblaster... the fuck ?! Yeah you are right, it was so time consuming (actualiy it was) to load a 28mb soundfount into the memory of a emu8k. But the waveblaster was 4mb rom, that was pretty fast to load, and why not load some more on demand. Your argumentation is pretty weak, my guess now is that the waveblaster was for the rich uncle who wanna be cool wihout the burden of understanding how it work
No, it was not for the "rich uncle who wanna be cool wihout the burden of understanding how it work". It was for people who could not afford to spend $1000.00 or more for external modules and hookup gear. It was meant to be a cost saving option. For example: In 1995/1996 I decide I want roland GS sounds for composing and or gaming. I would have to buy a MIDI interface card and cables (which could cost more than $300 depending on brand and features), a quality external mixer and yet more cables, and maybe a pair of monitors (which are high end, accurate studio speakers) for hundreds more, and then either an external Roland sound module or instrument which could cost between $500 to $3000 depending on what I picked. Or I could get a sound card with basic GM support onboard and the option to add GS with a much cheaper Roland brand wavetable card and save many hundreds or even thousands of dollars. I could also make my own soundfonts or load any number of third party, commercial soundfonts.
In the end, the musicians decided that the AWE32 line of cards was a very poor attempt by Creative to use for making music. After that, it was pretty much used by gamers. It offered good value for its high price as it allowed the gamer to have FM for older games, the EMU8K and its ram to load different soundfonts for MIDI games under Windows, and a wavetable port for other MIDI soundfonts like XG and GS.
It seems that you dont like or at the least, dont understand the AWE32's features as well as understand the time period it came out. There were many costly limitations for the average gamer and musician back then. Anything that offered cost effective options was taken very serious by both groups, and the AWE32 did impress at first. It did very well for a while, but standards changed and the AWE line of cards died out. Nowadays you can find and load up a GS soundfont easy and free. Back then, that was not an option. If you wanted GS, you bought hardware and it cost a lot, unless you bought a wavetable card.