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> The AWE32 was amazing. I remember being so frustrated that essentially no games seemed to take advantage of it. Gravis Ultrasound (?) falls into the same cat
by mschaef 4y ago
> The AWE32 was amazing. I remember being so frustrated that essentially no games seemed to take advantage of it.
Gravis Ultrasound (?) falls into the same category for me. Really interesting and capable hardware that didn't penetrate the market enough to warrant significant investment by game developers.
And once 16-bit/44KHz audio and powerful enough CPU's became common, the need for hardware accelerated audio generation for games really diminished. It's all now logically pretty similar to the DAC section of a SB16 with a bunch of software driving it.
It's nice that the level of capability is as high as it is, but I do miss some of the unique hardware designs from that era.
- JohnBooty 4y agoThat was somewhat surprising to read! I never owned a GUS, but I seem to remember most games having support for it. It always seemed to taunt me from the game's installer. Or maybe I'm just thinking of demos and modtrackers. A lot of them used to require a GUS for sound, I think?
- mschaef 4y agoYeah... Demos and mod trackers made a lot of GUS use. From what I remember, the audio synthesis model was fairly similar. I bet there was a lot of overlap between mod tracker authors and GUS enthusiasts. (And from what I remember, the MOD format itself was strongly derived from the capabilities of the Amiga audio hardware.)