AdLib
More info
- Creator
- Ad Lib, Inc.
- Released
- 1987
- Type
- Sound card
- Chip
- Yamaha YM3812 (OPL2)
- Successor
- Sound Blaster
Canadian sound card from 1987 that brought FM synthesis to the PC — before the Sound Blaster ate its lunch.
AdLib was built on Yamaha's YM3812 (OPL2), an FM synthesis chip related to the synthesizers of the day. In place of the PC speaker's grating square-wave beep, games got nine channels of ringing instruments. Made by Ad Lib, Inc. of Québec, it became in 1987 the first sound standard worth the name on the DOS PC.
The reign was brief. Creative Labs' Sound Blaster was AdLib-compatible but added sampled digital audio, and once games demanded both, AdLib fell away. What remained was the OPL sound — a whole generation's memory of what DOS games sounded like.