Creative Audigy Driver

About "Creative Audigy"

History

At the beginning a computer sound was produced by a PC speaker which could only utter tones of a single frequency and gnash in DOS games. (As for me, I didn't stand aside at that time and even developed a software polyphonic MIDI synthesizer-sequencer for a 1-bit speaker in assembler in 1988). Nobody was pleased with such a situation and many of those who could use a soldering iron assembled simple DACs on a resistive matrix. Such devices were called Covox. The sound was much better than that of a PC speaker; you could hear a result of mixing of several digital streams, and many exchanged various sampler music editors - ScreamTrackers. But a PC platform with its crippled DOS in 80s and at the beginning of 90s was considered a solution for offices and beginning programmers. Major audio companies (manufacturers of professional hardware and software) didn't take it as a competitor for multifunctional Macintosh and ATARI home systems.

Creative had a different point of view. The first steps of the company (in 1987) were quite weak, but its audio solution was quite innovative for 1988. It had a appropriate 12-voice FM-synthesizer Creative Music System (C/MS) with a digital part (ADC/DAC) and a set of its own programs for creation and editing of music (C/MS Composer, C/MS Intelligent Organ and C/MS Multimedia Presenter). But priced at $400, this product wasn't very popular with users.

At the same time, the North-American AdLib company released a simple and relatively cheap sound card with an FM synthesizer OPL2 from Yamaha. The quality of the MIDI synthesizer YM3812 was even higher than that of the expensive C/MS from Creative. AdLib was for a certain time a leading standard for PC and was backed by game makers on a par with a PC speaker and Covox (in games at that time you had to indicate manually the type of a sound-reproducing device).

Creative did keep its head: it took the same OPL2 chipset from Yamaha and released an inexpensive sound card which outscored the AdLib's one in functionality and was compatible with the latter on a hardware level! It was the first Sound Blaster card which became the first normal mainstream PC sound card. Unlike the AdLib which could reproduce only MIDI music, the Sound Blaster card had 8-bit ADCs and DACs onboard which worked in the pseudo-stereo mode. At that time Creative clearly realized its first experience with a high-quality but expensive and unpopular sound system, and they didn't eager for high-quality cards. Everything is good in its season.

After that the company launched a Sound Blaster Pro card with normal stereo up to 22 kHz. It was still an 8-bit card. Microsoft which liked this standard declared it in its MPC (Multimedia Personal Computer) specification in 1991. Since that time Creative Labs got a lot of OEM customers because without a Sound Blaster Pro card inside a system block it was impossible to get the Multimedia PC certification from Microsoft.

Creative, thus, opened its branches in Europe and the USA. In 1992 the NASDAQ exchange released 4,800,000 shares under CREAF index.