SAA1099
More info
- Creator
- Philips
- Type
- Sound generator (PSG)
- Channels
- 6
- Stereo
- Yes
Philips' six-channel stereo sound chip from the mid-1980s — the heart of the Game Blaster card and of the SAM Coupé home computer.
The SAA1099 was a PSG — a programmable sound generator — with six square-wave channels, two noise generators and, unusually for its day, built-in stereo panning. Philips sold it cheaply, and in 1987 Creative Labs put two of them on the Game Blaster (Creative Music System), the company's first sound card before Sound Blaster took over.
The chip found a second life in Britain's SAM Coupé (1989), where a single part gave six voices in stereo — noticeably more than the AY-3-8910 that powered its rivals. For chiptune composers the stereo field was the real luxury: voices could be spread out instead of crowding the centre.