AdLib

This page is about the (now defunct) sound card company named AdLib - not to be mistaken with the software company Adlib Software (www.adlibsoftware.com). See ad lib for information on the Latin phrase.

AdLib, Inc. was a manufacturer of sound cards and other computer equipment based out of Quebec City, Canada; AdLib was also the name of its main and best-known product, the AdLib Sound Card. Through wide developer acceptance and sound quality, the AdLib became the first de facto standard for add-on sound cards on IBM PCs and compatibles.

History

AdLib was founded by Martin Prevel, formerly a professor of music at the University of Quebec. Martin spent more than a year trying to convince the IBM PC development community to support his new product but, lacking experience in the industry, he found it difficult to reach the right people. He went to several computer shows handing out development kits that included the AdLib card, several utilities meant to enjoy the card, development tools, and technical information for the card.

The problem was that these materials were being given out to attendees of the various computer shows. The attendees generally consisted of marketing, sales and press personnel. Instead of taking the developer kits back to their companies, most of these contacts simply took them home to use as personal entertainment or discarded them outright.

The start of an industry

Martin later found a small company in southern New Jersey that provided quality assurance services to a wide array of game developers by the name of Top Star Computer Services, Inc., (also known as TSCS). Martin spoke with Top Star's President, Rich Heimlich, about his product and the difficulties he was encountering in getting the product into the hands of the right people. Martin believed that if Top Star saw merit in the product, Rich could make the key introductions to the right people within the industry needed to garner the necessary support.

In the winter of 1987/1988 Rich flew up to Quebec to get a demonstration of the product and shared Martin's enthusiasm. Upon returning home, Rich contacted his top customers to convey his belief in the viability of this new product, and that helped start the ball rolling. Within weeks, a few of these developers started coding support for the card.

The AdLib used the Yamaha YM3812 sound chip from Yamaha Corporation, which produces sound via FM synthesis. The AdLib card was essentially a YM3812 chip with off-the-shelf external glue logic to plug into a standard PC-compatible ISA 8-bit slot. With the AdLib card, PC software could generate multitimbral music and sound effects, although the acoustic quality was distinctly synthesized.

The rise of Sound Blaster

Since the AdLib soundcard contained purely off-the shelf IC components, it was easily copied by competitors. The most notable competitor, and ultimate heir to the PC soundcard industry, was Creative Labs. The Sound Blaster v1.0 extended the AdLib soundcard with the addition of a single voice digital effects (PCM) channel and a game port which could connect to either a joystick or MIDI controller box. The addition of the PCM channel was instrumental in the Sound Blaster's rise to dominance. Not only did it allow games to play digitized samples (for more realistic sound effects), the hardware behind it (a proprietary "DSP" chip) hampered competitor efforts to clone it 100% accurately.

AdLib was slow to respond. Instead of copying the updated 8-bit Sound Blaster specification or releasing an equivalent 8-bit refresh part, they chose to spend time and money developing a wholly new proprietary 12-bit stereo soundcard called the AdLib Gold. The Gold card introduced a later generation Yamaha YMF262 (OPL3) and 12/bit digital PCM capability while retaining backward compatibility with the original AdLib.

As the established brand name in the sound card business, AdLib management was confident they could afford to do this. The effort, however, was doomed from the start. AdLib was not a technology company and lacked the in-house skills required to design the Gold card. The design task was turned over to AdLib's component supplier, Yamaha. It's important to note that by the time of this deal Yamaha's biggest customer for music-based technology was not AdLib but Creative Labs. This conflict of interest played a significant part in the countless delays and problems that surfaced during the Gold's development process.

Even with its new Gold card, AdLib remained in the position of being unable to compete effectively. While a handful of PC games supported the Gold, sales of the AdLib's new card were flat. Not only was the original Sound Blaster card significantly cheaper, it was already the de-facto standard of sound cards in the PC gaming industry. The market was simply not ready for a stereo sound card in the Gold's price range. In 1992, AdLib filed for bankruptcy. The Creative Labs Sound Blaster family went on to dominate the PC gaming industry for the remainder of the 1990s.

AdLib Timeline

1987 - AdLib Card - First high volume soundcard for computers released using FM synthesis (chip by Yamaha YM3812)
1988 - First game released with AdLib support.
1992 - AdLib Gold released.
1992 - AdLib filed for bankruptcy on May 1st.

References

Bob Johnstone (Mar. 1994). Wave of the Future. Wired.

External links

Defunct companies of Canada | Defunct computer companies of the United States | IBM PC compatibles | Sound cards