Three-isa-audio-cards (cropped) Media Vision Pro Audio

The

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 au ...

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. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, electrical, optical and logical interface ...

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 Sound Blaster is a family of sound cards designed by Singaporean technology company Creative Technology (known in the US as Creative Labs). Sound Blaster sound cards were the de facto standard for consumer audio on the IBM PC compatible system p ...

and

Sound Blaster 16 The Sound Blaster 16 is a series of sound cards by Creative Technology. They are add-on boards for PCs with an ISA or PCI slot. Sound Blaster 16 Sound Blaster 16 (June 1992), the successor to the Sound Blaster Pro, introduced CD-quality di ...

compatibility was not much of a problem. Media Vision was the

original equipment manufacturer An original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is generally perceived as a company that produces non-aftermarket parts and equipment that may be marketed by another manufacturer. It is a common industry term recognized and used by many professional or ...

(OEM) of the

Logitech SoundMan Logitech International S.A. ( ; often shortened to Logi) is a Swiss multinational manufacturer of computer peripherals and software, with headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Newark, California. The company has offices throughout Europe, ...

(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 device or computer program 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 on a signal or ...

chip made by

Crystal Semiconductor Cirrus Logic Inc. is an American fabless semiconductor supplier that specializes in analog, mixed-signal, and audio DSP integrated circuits (ICs). Since 1998, the company's headquarters have been in Austin, Texas. The company's audio process ...

s of

Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson co ...

(now part of

Cirrus Logic Cirrus Logic Inc. is an American fabless semiconductor supplier that specializes in analog, mixed-signal, and audio DSP integrated circuits (ICs). Since 1998, the company's headquarters have been in Austin, Texas. The company's audio proces ...

) 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 ''A ...

-compatible

Yamaha Yamaha may refer to: * Yamaha Corporation, a Japanese company with a wide range of products and services, established in 1887. The company is the largest shareholder of Yamaha Motor Company (below). ** Yamaha Music Foundation, an organization estab ...

OPL3 The OPL (FM Operator Type-L) series are a family of sound chips developed by Yamaha. The OPL series are low-cost sound chips providing FM synthesis for use in computing, music and video game applications. Internal operation The internal operation ...

FM music synthesizer. The 8-bit versions used different DAC and ADC parts for playback and recording and used dual

-compatible

OPL2 The OPL (FM Operator Type-L) series are a family of sound chips developed by Yamaha. The OPL series are low-cost sound chips providing FM synthesis for use in computing, music and video game applications. Internal operation The internal operati ...

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 The Thunder Board was an 8-bit mono personal computer integrated circuit sound card from Media Vision, that had Sound Blaster compatibility at a reduced price. It was widely advertised as “proudly made in the USA”; possibly a reference t ...

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. Three-isa-audio-cards (cropped) Media Vision Pro Audio (cropped) Z0538010VSC

Most PAS cards were equipped with a NCR-designed 5380

controller made by

Zilog Zilog, Inc. is an American manufacturer of microprocessors and 8-bit and 16-bit microcontrollers. It is also a supplier of application-specific embedded system-on-chip (SoC) products. Its most famous product is the Z80 series of 8-bit microp ...

that boasted a data transfer rate of 690 kB/s using PIO (

DMA DMA may refer to: Arts * ''DMA'' (magazine), a defunct dance music magazine * Dallas Museum of Art, an art museum in Texas, US * Danish Music Awards, an award show held in Denmark * BT Digital Music Awards, an annual event in the UK * Doctor of M ...

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—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both compute ...

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 as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufactu ...

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 , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

and Matsushita (

Panasonic formerly between 1935 and 2008 and the first incarnation of between 2008 and 2022, is a major Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka. It was founded by Kōnosuke Matsushita in 1918 as a lightbulb ...

). 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 The MPU-401, where ''MPU'' stands for MIDI Processing Unit, is an important but now obsolete interface for connecting MIDI-equipped electronic music hardware to personal computers. It was designed by Roland Corporation, which also co-authored the ...

-compatible

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, an ...

and

Gameport The game port is a device port that was found on IBM PC compatible and other computer systems throughout the 1980s and 1990s. It was the traditional connector for joystick input, and occasionally MIDI devices, until made obsolete by USB in the ...

interface similar to those on

Sound Blaster Sound Blaster is a family of sound cards designed by Singaporean technology company Creative Technology (known in the US as Creative Labs). Sound Blaster sound cards were the de facto standard for consumer audio on the IBM PC compatible system ...

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 printed wiring board or PWB) is a medium used in electrical and electronic engineering to connect electronic components to one another in a controlled manner. It takes the form of a laminated sandwich str ...

, 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 introduced by Commodore International, Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and sign ...

sound module (.MOD) files.

Software drivers

Driver support was available under

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

, Microsoft Windows 3.x, Windows NT 3.5 and 4.0, Windows 9x,

OS/2 OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 ...

and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

(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 computer game magazine 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 1993. It expanded greatly through t ...

'' in 1993 stated that the Pro AudioStudio "should give the ''

'' some good competition", with "much cleaner" digital audio.

Hardware description

Digital and FM audio

Sound Blaster compatibility

CD-ROM interface

MIDI and game port

Other features

Software drivers

Reception

References

See also