Re: Adi Audio Codec Ad1882 Driver Windows 10
Fabulously Favuzza
There is a lot more to a sound card that can affect audio quality than just these three, but as the core components, they certainly set the baseline for a sound card's capabilities. There are about 120 different ICs mentioned, including drivers and datasheets where I have managed to find them. In some cases, I have also included the original press release.
The FM synthesizer determines the number of independent "voices" that can be output at the same time, as well as the sounds that are played, their duration and effects (attack, sustain, decay, etc). FM synthesizers modulate a waveform to produce a different pitch and timbre (the distinctive sound that makes it different, like the fact a piano sounds different to a guitar). Inside an FM synthesizer are typically a number of "operators". An operator is a group of components that interact with each other to make up a single building block of the FM synthesis setup. Each operator has an input, oscillator, amplifier, and an output. The operator's input sound can be manipulated by feeding in a MIDI input into the oscillator and an envelope generator can be fed into the amplifier portion of the operator to change the timbre that will be output.
In a 2-operator chip, the waveform input coming in is taken through two groups of these (Operator 1 and Operator 2), where the output of the first operator is fed in as the input to the second. This allows the final outgoing waveform to be manipulated twice, further changing what it sounds like. A 4-operator setup has four groups of these (Operator 1, Operator 2, Operator 3 and Operator 4), so the final outgoing waveform (the "voice") is manipulated with up to four different MIDI inputs and envelope generators. You can imagine therefore that a 4-operator FM synth chip can produce a more variable number of unique sounds over a 2-operator chip.
In a typical sound card scenario, the synthesizer chip has a certain number of voices, each of which would have 2 operators or 4 operators. In a stereo scenario the number of available voices is often thought of as being halved (split into left channel and right channel), where each set of two is usually programmed to output the same timbre. This does not change the fact that each voice has its own set of operators, so in theory the left side of the sound can be made to sound completely different from the right.
The job of the audio codec ("COder-DECoder") is to encode and decode a digital stream of data or signal, working in conjunction with the DAC (see further down this page). Codecs will often have more than one input line, and sometimes up to 6 stereo inputs (12 lines in total), coming from a microphone, line-in, and so on.
Usually a codec will perform a number of tasks, including conversion of the inbound analog signal to a digital stream of data, filtering it, mixing it with other inputs coming into the codec, then converting it back into an analogue audio signal to be output.
DACs (Digital- to Analog- Converters) are used in almost all sound cards, since the FM synthesizer chip outputs its audio in digital form. The DAC converts these digital I/O signals into analog signals ready for your sound card to mix it or send it straight out to your loudspeakers.
In early FM synthesizer setups during the DOS era, Yamaha's YAC-512 (or a clone of it) was the most common DAC used. From around 1996 when Windows Sound System v1.0 arrived, sound cards tended to use the Analog Devices AD1848 DAC. The later Windows Sound System 2.0 used Crystal CS4231.
This is also known as "OPL2" as it was an incremental upgrade to the earlier Yamaha YM3526. It is pin-compatible with its forebear and uses the same serial DAC (digital-to-analog converter), but adds three additional waveforms.
The YM3812 found widespread use because it was the chip used on the very popular Ad Lib sound card and since the Ad Lib became the de facto backward-compatible standard for PC audio for many years, the OPL2 chip enjoyed a life beyond its natural years. Due to its huge popularity, it was illegally cloned by other chip manufacturers.
OPL2 stands for "FM Operator Type L2". The "OPL2" as it was called, was later used on the first Sound Blaster card by Creative Labs, and two OPL2s were used on the early Sound Blaster Pro for stereophonic sound where it had up to 22 channels in total, divided between the left chip and right chip, so 11 channels on the left and 11 channels on the right.
It was mostly sold in a 24-pin SOP package (see pic above) and provides an 8-bit parallel interface to the registers, requires a stable clock source of 14.318 MHz and one or two separate DACs. The YMF262 is capable of four-channel output (front left, front right, rear left, and rear right, for example) using two of the YAC512 stereo signal DACs designed to accompany it, but most applications feature only two channels (left and right), so just one YAC512 is implemented on such cards.
This is a later "OPL3" chip designed and made by Yamaha, called OPL3-SA, SA2 or SA3 (the model family is sometimes referred to as "OPL3-SAx"). The SA, SA2 or SA3 refers to the generation of OPL3-SA chip, as these evolved over time, adding further functions on top of the previous generation. Within all of them though is a real embedded OPL3, which provides the card with a core of Ad Lib, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro, Windows Sound System and MPU-401 (UART) compatibility.
There are several flavours of YMF719, including YMF719-S, YMF719B-S and YMF719E-S. Windows 2000 and XP support this chipset out of the box, so no external drivers are needed. They are known for their low noise and excellent compatibility. Their MPU-401 interface does not suffer from the "hanging note" bug present in other OPL3 chips. For best quality the internal amp should be disabled via a jumper and all settings in the mixer set to 0 and setting the output type to hi-fi.
They had an integrated OPL3-SA3 for backward compatibility to Ad Lib, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro and Windows Sound System, and also have the same MPU-401-compatible interface for external General MIDI synthesizers. In addition, the YMF724 includes a 64-voice GM/DS-XG wavetable synthesizer with 2-channel output, interface to AC'97 codec, S/PDIF output, a Dolby AC-3 decoder, and 3D positional audio via DirectSound3D and QSound.
The YMF278 chip , also commonly called OPL4, is usually accompanied with a separate 2 MB ROM chip which holds approximately 330 instrument samples that are compatible with the General MIDI standard.
It incorporates both an FM synthesizer and a PCM sample-based synthesizer. The FM synthesizer is essentially a YMF262 (OPL3) so is also backwards-compatible with YM3526 (OPL) and YM3812 (OPL2), but can support 6 channels instead of 4. The PCM sample-based synthesizer supports up to 24 simultaneous voices. It can access up to 4MB of external memory for wave data and a maximum of 512 instrument samples.
Yamaha created the YMF704 in late 1996, which is essentially the same as the YMF278 but with an integrated 1 MB ROM for samples and and MPU-401 interface. The sample ROM contains the same instrument set as the standalone ROM which was certified by Fat Labs.
It supports 22 voice channels, 52 operators and employs OPTi's own OPTiFM(TM) music synthesizer with enhanced bass. It also has an MPU-401 interface common for this era. It is Plug & Play so expect cards that use this to all be PnP (good for Windows, more difficult to configure in pure DOS).
It supports 22 voice channels, 52 operators and employs OPTi's own OPTiFM(TM) music synthesizer with enhanced bass. It also has an MPU-401 interface common for this era. It is Plug & Play so expect cards that use this to all be PnP.
It also gets a built-in third-generation 16-bit Sigma-Delta codec by ECTIVA, which is further integrated with a low distortion complex mixer featuring 3D audio expansion. The OPTiSound 82C933 produces a spatial or widened stereo image from ordinary left and right channel inputs, without any initial encoding of input signals.
The OPTi 82C941 chip was a wavetable synthesizer, usually found paired with cards that also have the 82C931. The '931 portion delivered Ad Lib, Sound Blaster, and Windows Sound System support, while the 941 handled wavetable effects that were General MIDI-compatible.
Last on the list is the DXP44Q. This chip appears to be a pin-compatible copy of the Yamaha YMF289B, also known as OPL3-L. This was a low-power chip with power management suitable for portables (and found in the IBM ThinkPad 701C for instance). Once again, the OPTi 82C930A does not include an OPL3 core (unlike its successor, the 82C931). Once again, there has to be an OPL3 on the board somewhere, and the DXP44Q is more or less the only candidate. The 82C930A does include a DAC, which explains the lack of a separate DAC chip.
The Analog Devices AD1848 was the chip that brought us the Windows Sound System for the first time, being the core component of the card from Microsoft. This card also had an onboard Yamaha YMF262-M for Ad Lib and Sound Blaster support.
The v1.0a Windows Sound System drivers were released in February 1993. v2.0 drivers followed in October of that same year, which added support for third-party cards from MediaVision, Creative Labs and ESS Technology. These drivers also added an improved DOS driver (WSSXLAT.EXE) that provided Sound Blaster 16 compatibility.
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Cirrus Logic, Inc. produced some of the highest quality audio codecs, mainly used in home theatre receivers. In 1991 they acquired Crystal Semiconductor, a supplier of analog and mixed-signal converter ICs. The Crystal codecs were then marketed as Cirrus Logic's budget line. All these codec chips have the prefix "CS".
CS4215 is an MwaveTM audio codec from Cirrus Logic/Crystal, designed to take multiple analogue audio inputs, convert them into a digital signal, apply filtering and then convert them back into a combined/mixed analogue audio signal. The chip's revision is the letter immediately preceeding the date code.
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