Media Vision Pro AudioSpectrum
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Media Vision Media Vision Technology, Inc., was an American electronics manufacturer of primarily computer sound cards and CD-ROM kits, operating from 1990 to approximately 1995 in Fremont, California. Media Vision was widely known for its Pro AudioSpectrum ...
Pro AudioSpectrum (commonly referred to as "PAS") family of personal computer
sound card A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal expansion card that provides input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under the control of computer programs. The term ''sound card'' is also applied to external audio ...
s included the original 8-bit ''Pro AudioSpectrum'' (1991), the 8-bit ''Pro AudioSpectrum Plus'', 16-bit ''Pro AudioSpectrum 16'', ''Pro AudioSpectrum 16 Basic'' and 16-bit ''Pro Audio Studio''. All PAS cards with the exception of Pro AudioSpectrum 16 Basic could connect to CD-ROM drives — variants having
SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices, best known for its use with storage devices such as hard disk drives. SCSI was introduced ...
or various proprietary interfaces — and many were sold in multimedia kits with compatible CD-ROM drives. Though the 8-bit Pro AudioSpectrum cards were only modestly successful, the 16 bit-series cards aimed toward semi-professional users and hobby musicians were quite popular. These gave serious competition to the SoundBlaster 16. Most games in the mid-1990s had genuine support for the PAS cards, thus the lack of Sound Blaster Pro and
Sound Blaster 16 The Sound Blaster 16 is a series of sound cards by Creative Technology, first released in June 1992 for IBM PC compatible, PCs with an Industry Standard Architecture, ISA or conventional PCI, PCI slot. It was the successor to the Sound Blaster ...
compatibility was not much of a problem. Media Vision was the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of the
Logitech Logitech International S.A. ( ) is a Swiss multinational manufacturer of computer peripherals and software. Headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, the company has offices throughout Europe, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. It is a component of ...
SoundMan (also marketed as Pro AudioSpectrum 16 Basic) card, which was compatible with the PAS and could thus use the same drivers. The relevance of the PAS faded quickly as Media Vision was rocked by financial scandal and faded from existence.


Hardware description


Digital and FM audio

The 16-bit PAS cards employed a relabeled
CODEC A codec is a computer hardware or software component that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder o ...
chip made by
Crystal Semiconductor Crystal Semiconductor Corporation was an American computer company based in Austin, Texas, and active from 1984 to the early 2000s. Founded by Michael J. Callahan and James H. Clardy, the company originally specialized in the design and manufactur ...
s of
Austin, Texas Austin ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Texas. It is the county seat and most populous city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and W ...
(now part of
Cirrus Logic Cirrus Logic Inc. is an American fabless semiconductor company, fabless semiconductor supplier that specializes in analog, mixed-signal, and audio Digital signal processor, DSP integrated circuits (ICs). Since 1998, the company's headquarters have ...
) for digital audio playback and recording and an
AdLib Ad Lib, Inc. was a Canadian manufacturer of sound cards and other computer equipment founded by Martin Prevel, a former professor of music and vice-dean of the music department at the Université Laval. The company's best known product, the ''Ad ...
-compatible Yamaha
OPL3 The OPL (FM Operator Type-L) series is a family of sound chips developed by Yamaha Corporation, Yamaha. It consists of low-cost sound chips providing frequency modulation synthesis, FM synthesis for use in computing, music and video game applicati ...
FM music synthesizer. The 8-bit versions used different DAC and ADC parts for playback and recording and used dual
AdLib Ad Lib, Inc. was a Canadian manufacturer of sound cards and other computer equipment founded by Martin Prevel, a former professor of music and vice-dean of the music department at the Université Laval. The company's best known product, the ''Ad ...
-compatible Yamaha OPL2 FM music synthesizers to create stereo sound.


Sound Blaster compatibility

To provide true compatibility with the Sound Blaster's 8-bit playback on its 8-bit ''Pro AudioSpectrum Plus'' and 16-bit ''Pro AudioSpectrum 16'', Media Vision included the same sound processor chip it used on its Thunder Board card. Thus, there were actually two digital audio playback devices on these cards that could also be used at the same time. The analog output of each of the two digital audio channels was combined in the on-board analog mixer.


CD-ROM interface

All ''Pro AudioSpectrum'' cards included a CD-ROM interface. Most PAS cards were equipped with an NCR-designed 5380
SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices, best known for its use with storage devices such as hard disk drives. SCSI was introduced ...
controller made by
Zilog Zilog, Inc. is an American manufacturer of microprocessors, microcontrollers, and application-specific embedded System on a chip, system-on-chip (SoC) products. The company was founded in 1974 by Federico Faggin and Ralph Ungermann, who were soo ...
that boasted a data transfer rate of 690 kB/s using PIO ( DMA was not supported); though intended for use with
CD-ROM drive A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data computers can read, but not write or erase. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both computer data and ...
s, these could interface with other SCSI devices with drivers written by Trantor Systems;
Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...
includes drivers for the PAS SCSI interface and autodetects it as a PAS 16 Trantor SCSI host adaptor. Other PAS cards included proprietary interfaces to CD-ROM drives they were packaged with. These included drives made by
Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...
and Matsushita (
Panasonic is a Japanese multinational electronics manufacturer, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka, Kadoma, Japan. It was founded in 1918 as in Fukushima-ku, Osaka, Fukushima by Kōnosuke Matsushita. The company was incorporated in 1935 and renamed and c ...
). There was also variant with LMSI controller for LMSI Philips CM205, CM206 CD-ROM drives.


MIDI and game port

Each ''Pro AudioSpectrum'' sound card included a MPU401-compatible
MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...
and Gameport interface similar to those on
Sound Blaster Sound Blaster is a family of sound cards and audio peripherals designed by Creative Technology, Creative Technology/Creative Labs of Singapore. The first Sound Blaster card was introduced in 1989. Sound Blaster sound cards were the de facto stan ...
cards.


Other features

Other outstanding features of the PAS cards were the Win 3.x software (audio recorder, CD player and mixer) that fit on a 640x480 screen and worked well together, the quality of the user manual (even in the translated versions), jumperless configuration via software, the use of a 4 layer
printed circuit board A printed circuit board (PCB), also called printed wiring board (PWB), is a Lamination, laminated sandwich structure of electrical conduction, conductive and Insulator (electricity), insulating layers, each with a pattern of traces, planes ...
, and the
PC speaker A PC speaker is a loudspeaker built into some IBM PC compatible computers. The first IBM Personal Computer, model 5150, employed a standard 2.25 inch magnetic driven (dynamic) speaker. More recent computers use a tiny moving-iron or pie ...
support that was done by listening on the ISA bus rather than using an external cable like the Sound Blaster cards. With the PAS cards, Media Vision also began to include a popular player for
Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...
sound module (.MOD) files.


Software drivers

Driver support was available under
DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...
,
Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
3.x, Windows NT 3.5 and 4.0, Windows 9x,
OS/2 OS/2 is a Proprietary software, proprietary computer operating system for x86 and PowerPC based personal computers. It was created and initially developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci, ...
and
Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
(within
Open Sound System The Open Sound System (OSS) is an interface for making and capturing sound in Unix and Unix-like operating systems. It is based on standard Unix devices system calls (i.e. POSIX read, write, ioctl, etc.). The term also sometimes refers to ...
). It was also claimed to work under Windows ME or 2000/XP by using Windows 9x or Windows NT 4 / 2000 RC1Usenet post to alt.os.windows2000
/ref> drivers. Under DOS, a
terminate and stay resident A terminate-and-stay-resident program (commonly TSR) is a computer program running under DOS that uses a system call to return control to DOS as though it has finished, but remains in computer memory so it can be reactivated later. This technique ...
driver called ''mvsound.sys'' had to be used in order to initialize the card although most programs did not use this driver but rather programmed the PAS chip directly.


Reception

''
Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American Video game journalism, computer game magazine that was published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 199 ...
'' in 1993 stated that the Pro AudioStudio "should give the ''
Sound Blaster 16 The Sound Blaster 16 is a series of sound cards by Creative Technology, first released in June 1992 for IBM PC compatible, PCs with an Industry Standard Architecture, ISA or conventional PCI, PCI slot. It was the successor to the Sound Blaster ...
'' some good competition", with "much cleaner" digital audio.


See also

*
Media Vision Media Vision Technology, Inc., was an American electronics manufacturer of primarily computer sound cards and CD-ROM kits, operating from 1990 to approximately 1995 in Fremont, California. Media Vision was widely known for its Pro AudioSpectrum ...
*
Adlib Ad Lib, Inc. was a Canadian manufacturer of sound cards and other computer equipment founded by Martin Prevel, a former professor of music and vice-dean of the music department at the Université Laval. The company's best known product, the ''Ad ...
*
Sound Blaster Sound Blaster is a family of sound cards and audio peripherals designed by Creative Technology, Creative Technology/Creative Labs of Singapore. The first Sound Blaster card was introduced in 1989. Sound Blaster sound cards were the de facto stan ...


References

{{Commonscat Sound cards