Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Sound Blaster AWE64?

The Sound Blaster AWE64 is the next generation of the Sound Blaster audio card providing 64 voice, true instrument reproductions with new WaveSynth/WG and advanced wave-table synthesis technology. With full-duplex hardware audio and 16-bit, CD quality stereo recording and playback, your multimedia experience has never been better. In addition to realistic instrument sounds amplifying from your PC, you get 512K of onboard memory for SoundFont and E-mu 3D positional audio support. All this in an easy to install plug-n-play card and exciting Internet software to surf and communicate on the World Wide Web. The AWE64 is targeted at gamers, multimedia enthusiasts and consumers who are looking for the latest technology and Sound Blaster compatibility.

Is the AWE64 truly a 64 voice Sound Card?

The AWE64 achieves the 64 voice count through the combination of E-mu's synthesizer (EMU8000) and the Creative WaveSynth/WG synthesizer. Thus, 32 voices are hardware and 32 voices are software. There are two perspectives to answering this question; from a typical multimedia user's point of view and the musicians' perspective:

For the typical users, one must first understand that it is not possible to:

• Play back a 64 voice MIDI file on a single sound board as most of them can only handle 32 notes.
• Even if combining a sound board with a daughter board such Wave Blaster, a 64 voice file may only be played back on a MIDI sequencer and not on a regular MIDI player such as the Creative Ensemble MIDI player.

Multimedia / Typical User
With the AWE64, users can seamlessly create or listen to a 64 voice MIDI file using any Windows MIDI player (in addition to a sequencer). During installation, the AWE64 installs a unique driver that empowers the regular MIDI player with this capability. Users need only assign the various instrument patches to their favorite synthesizer in the Creative MIDI instrument mapper to make this happen.

Musician
Today, a musician wanting to create a 64 voice music file can only do so if he outputs his music through two separate synthesizers using two MIDI ports. With the AWE64, the musician need not buy two synthesizers to achieve a 64 voice count. The AWE64 lets the musician allocate voices in one of two ways:

• Allocate voices to specific MIDI channels using two seperate MIDI ports or
• Assign voices by MIDI patches (when mapped to a synthesizer in the Creative MIDI Instrument Mapper)

What is Creative WaveSynth/WG? Is it comparable to hardware Wave-table?

Creative WaveSynth/WG is a software-based wave-table synthesizer that is incorporated into the Sound Blaster AWE64 family of sound cards. Like its hardware counterpart, Creative WaveSynth/WG also produces high quality music for Windows multimedia applications and games. WaveSynth/WG is not only a software implementation of wave-table synthesis. Creative WaveSynth/WG also includes another technology called WaveGuide that makes its instruments more expressive than those found in wave-table synthesizers. This technology uses a new method of music reproduction called physical modeling. Physical modeling builds mathematical models simulating actual instruments, while taking into consideration the physics of sound in that instrument. In doing so, the AWE64 offers instruments that let musicians express themselves as if they are playing the real instrument. The AWE64 family combines the best synthesizer technologies today to achieve accuracy and fluency, and takes advantage of these features where they are most appropriate.

While the Creative WaveSynth/WG is capable of producing quality equivalent to some competitive wave-table cards, it can be computationally intensive and memory hungry, like other software wave-table synthesizers. Its playback can be effected when the system's resources are occupied with processing of other similar resource-hungry applications. This is not a problem given the CPU power of PCs today and the very affordability of Pentium computers.

The regular AWE (EMU8000) synthesizer, combined with Creative WaveSynth/WG makes the AWE64 stand out in terms of quality, expressive sound and sets the standard for 64 voice polyphony.

What is the CPU utilization when using WaveSynth/WG on the AWE64, on say, a Pentium 133? or, will there be a noticeable slowdown when playing a file with a large voice count?

Like all software wave-table synthesizer, several factors will determine if there is a slow down:

• Maximum polyphony at one time
• Whether WaveGuide voices are involved (the more WaveGuide instrument used, the more the CPU utilization)
• Whether reverb is turned on
• Whether the musician does real-time pitch-shifting using pitch bend

To better manage the system's resources, the AWE64 comes with a WaveSynth applet that lets you dynamically allocate memory to the sound samples according to the required need. It is also tightly integrated with the Windows Memory Manager to maximize the memory size and manage the memory usage more effectively.

On average, usually 10-15% of the CPU power is used if a moderately complicated MIDI file is played.

How is AWE64 comparable to AWE32+Creative WaveSynth/WG? What's the difference? Or is the AWE64 a repackaged AWE32?

While the AWE64 may seem to look like a combination of an AWE32 and Creative WaveSynth/WG (since both has a 1 MByte ROM and 512KByte DRAM), the opposite is true. The AWE64 and the AWE32 are two different boards in terms of design and architecture. Efforts were made to improve the signal-to-noise ratio on the AWE64 to enhance the audio quality. Another notable feature is that AWE64 no longer uses SIMM sockets but uses memory headers. The memory modules will be available from Creative.

Why upgrade to AWE64?

Wave-table sound cards offer better quality MIDI music. Most games and windows applications use MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) to produce music that is played back by the built-in synthesizer on a sound card. The quality of this built-in synthesizer determines the quality of the MIDI music you hear. Unlike regular cards which artificially create the sound of instruments, wave-table cards use wave-table synthesis to record the actual wave sample of real instruments which are then used to generate high quality music.

The overall result is that the background music (and to a certain extent, sound effects) that accompanies CD-ROM applications and games sound much more pleasant and realistic.

The AWE64 and Windows 95
The AWE64, like its predecessor, offers features that other sound cards do not offer. While it supports DirectSound, the AWE64 in addition, allows the user to modify their General MIDI synthesizer settings. General MIDI defines an instrument map of 128 instruments which all General MIDI devices comply to.

In simple terms, the AWE64 lets the user modify the synthesizer to add more reverb and chorus effects. With the bundled editor called Vienna SF studio, the instrument sounds can be tweaked to add more flavor. Or even change it! If the user is tired of hearing the same old sounds in Windows 95 games, new sounds can be created with the synthesizer that consists of their favorite instruments (that conforms to the GM standard).

The AWE64 also supports an important technology called SoundFont. SoundFont basically allows the user to create or play back any sample and turn it into a MIDI instrument. The result? Record virtually anything and turn it into a musical instrument (or what is called a SoundFont). The technology of SoundFont are flexible when it is used in games or applications. For example, if a Win 95 game uses a SoundFont instrument that is a "Scream", there is the flexibility of replacing the "Scream" with a different sound of the user's choice.

Can I upgrade the AWE64 with additional RAM? What type of RAM does it require?

Like the AWE32, the family of AWE64 cards can be upgraded with additional RAM for downloading SoundFonts. Instead of using 30 pin SIMM's, the AWE64 requires memory modules that are available from Creative.