First post, by OBSystem
Hi,
My first posting here. I am a retro-computerist that occadionally play around compusing music on vintage music trackers (both FM and digital). I fancy vintage soundcards and i've been a frequent reader of Vogon soundcard posts. I don't have much freetime for this hobby but I am getting back into FM synthesis, for example composing dual opl2 tracks for a soundblaster pro 1 which I have had lying around.
Recently, I came across this oddity. I acquired it given it looked so much like a soundcard and that it was from a Canadian company... I was just too curious to look at it up close.
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=414319243 … 162573803788042
i've had alot of difficulty finding info on it, but I have made some progress, namely by using the wayback machine in internet archives.com.
It turns out it is in fact a sound card for PC computers, but for a very specialised function, for analog input, and digital playback for broadcasting. It can play wave file and the company's own format (DAVE?). Some of the component appear high quality, such a the presence of three NE5532N amp chips. It come with its own software and apparently has features for speech recognition (but that is maybe only the software). Those two twin chips really looked like opl2 chips but in fact they are Dallas DS2011. Also, and this is more mysterious, it is said the card can generate sine wave sounds in mono or stereo of specified frequency (FM synthesis?). It come with a small program to do so.
This thing packaged with the software had a price tag of 2000$ in the 1990s.
Sorry for the bad quality, I can list the chips if anyone is interrested in more details. I'll post more about it once I will have organised the info I found on old websites from 1997-1998.
My goal is the make it work in a PC, if not as a main soundcard then as an added asset to manipulate sounds and see what productivity I can get from it for music or sound projects.
cheers!