Ad Lib, Inc.

AdLib used Yamaha's YM3812 sound chip, which produces sound by FM synthesis. The AdLib card consisted of a YM3812 chip with off-the-shelf external glue logic to plug into a standard PC-compatible ISA 8-bit slot.

PC software-generated multitimbral music and sound effects through the AdLib card, although the acoustic quality was distinctly synthesized. Digital audio (PCM) was not supported; this would become a key missing feature when the competitor Creative Labs implemented it in their Sound Blaster cards. It was still possible, however, to output PCM sound with software by modulating the playback volume at an audio rate, as was done, for example, in the MicroProse game F-15 Strike Eagle II[5] and the multi-channel music editor Sound Club for MS-DOS.[6]

The engineers who developed sound cards and software libraries for AdLib worked at Lyrtech. A notable sound designer who worked for AdLib was Henri Chalifour. Chalifour designed all of the sound demos and was instrumental on showing what AdLib's products could do, including scoring the music for the AdLib advertisement.[7]

There are two separate revisions of the original AdLib sound card. The original design from 1987 provided mono output to a ¼-inch jack aimed for composers and musicians, while the second design from 1990 used a 3.5 mm miniature mono output, which was quickly becoming the new standard in the computer and game industry.

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  Original 1987 AdLib Music Synthesizer Card model
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  AdLib Music Synthesizer Card from 1990

AdLib also released a version of the AdLib sound card for IBM's MicroChannel architecture, the AdLib MCA, which used an MCA P82C611 interface IC.[8] Notable updates for this MCA version was the use of a volume wheel, as the original potentiometer made the card too thick for the MCA standard.

Ad Lib planned a new proprietary standard before releasing the 12-bit stereo sound card called the AdLib Gold. The Gold 1000 used a later-generation Yamaha YMF262 (OPL3) and 12-bit digital PCM capability while retaining backward compatibility with OPL2 through the OPL3 chip. The onboard Yamaha YMZ263-F also performs 2× oversampling, which would affect the OPL3 output slightly.[9] A surround-sound module was developed as an optional attachment that allowed a chorus surround effect to be enabled for OPL3 outputs; however, few programs supported it. One unique aspect is that it could be initialized for certain sounds and did not affect the entire output by default. Other optional attachments such as SCSI support and modem support were in development as well.[10]

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  AdLib Gold 1000
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  AdLib Gold 1000 with surround module
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  AdLib Gold 1000 surround module
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  The YMF and YMZ Yamaha chips
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  The main control chip

There is evidence of anti-competitive behavior by Creative in the failure of this card.[11] Yamaha made parts for both Creative and AdLib, with Creative being Yamaha's biggest customer at the time. The chip that Yamaha created for the AdLib card continually failed to pass testing, while Creative's Yamaha chip passed. This enabled Creative to come to market first, shortly after which AdLib's chip passed testing, but it was too late for it to sustain itself.

Despite AdLib's efforts, the Gold 1000 failed to capture the market, and the company eventually went bankrupt due to cheaper alternatives such as the Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16. AdLib designed the Gold 1000 mainly in-house, as such, the Gold 1000's layout has a lot of discrete circuitry and many surface-mount components in a grid array. Creative Labs was able to integrate their sound cards more tightly to reduce cost.

AdLib had planned a secondary release of the Gold 1000, the Gold MC2000, which would have supported the MicroChannel bus. However, AdLib went bankrupt before the card could be produced.