30h March, 1995 - Creative Labs - the world leader in bringing multimedia functionality to PCs, today announced the Sound BlasterT Multimedia Home CD, the newest addition to its expanding range of upgrade kits. The kit has a suggested retail price of around £339 + VAT and is expected to ship in April 1995.

Sound Blaster Multimedia Home CD offers an internal quad-speed CD-Rom drive, a Sound Blaster 16 sound card, speakers and a hands-free microphone. With over 20 software titles from leading publishers including Microsoft and Electronic Arts, Sound Blaster Multimedia Home CD is a high value/high performance upgrade kit for education, home working and play.

"The Multimedia Home CD meets all the needs of the thousands of home users who'll buy an upgrade kit this year," said Dave Askew, Creative's UK sales and marketing manager. "Not only does the kit offer consumers the latest in CD-Rom technology, the bundled software represents tremendous value."

Sound Blaster Multimedia Home CD features industry standard hardware. The quad-speed CD-Rom drive provides a 600KB per second transfer rate; a better than 250ms access rate; and is multi session, Kodak Photo CD compatible. Its IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) interface, unlike proprietary interfaces, is better suited to handle the high-speed transfer rates of quad-speed drives. Sound Blaster 16, which provides CD quality stereo sampling and playback, is upgradeable to wave table synthesis for symphonic instrument sounds and special effects.

Sound Blaster Multimedia Home CD features the following software from The Microsoft Home Collection:

Microsoft Cinemania '95		
Microsoft Golf, Multimedia Edition
Microsoft Encarta '95			
Microsoft Bookshelf '94
Microsoft Ancient Lands		
Microsoft Dangerous Creatures
Microsoft Musical Instruments		
Microsoft Works 3.0 Multimedia Edition
Microsoft Publisher			
Microsoft Scenes: Undersea Collection
Microsoft Publisher Design Pack: Special Occasions

Three entertainment titles from ORIGIN Systems:- PaganT: Ultima VIII, Strike Commander and Wing Commander II; an entertainment title from Electronic Arts:- Syndicate Plus(tm) and a selection of audio utilities from Creative are also bundled in the kit.

About Creative...
Creative Labs UK is a subsidiary of Creative Technology, the world leader in the development, manufacture and marketing of multimedia products for PCs. Best known for establishing its Sound Blaster system as the industry standard for PC audio - with over 6 million users worldwide - Creative also leads the market in multimedia upgrade kits, video boards and voice recognition technology.

Creative Technology was founded in 1981 and is based in Singapore. The company's subsidiaries include Creative Labs in China, Europe, Japan, Taiwan and the US. The European head office is based at Ruscombe, near Twyford. In January 1994, Creative opened its technical support group in Dublin, which provides telephone support to French, German and English-speaking customers across Europe. Creative's stock is traded on the NASDAQ exchange, with record sales in 1994 of $658 million - a 126% increase on 1993.