wrote 3.25.1995 When I saw this garbage wrote in this file I couldn't belive my eyes! So I decided to wrote few corrections here and I hope that nobody really belives this kind of SHIT!! I marked corrections and my opinions with asterixs (****) Okay, here we go with this file.... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The original text starts: WARNING TO ALL PEOPLE WHO THINK THE SOUNDBLASTER AWE 32 IS A GOOD SOUNDCARD!! This documentation is made with the help of people who previously owned an AWE 32, a MIDI conference, and pure, hard demonstrations of the soundcard in local shops. So it isn't just bullshit! 100% of this is REALLY TRUE!! If we take an advert from Creative Labs we see a really big slab of Silicon, covered with all kinds of neat things like chips and hungry SIMM banks. I must admit that at first i really thought that Creative Labs finally found out that their ASP16 technology was completely overlooked and inferior compared to the Gravis Ultrasound. But nooo....this actually is the 'great' answer for the big wave of Wavetable soundcards. We'll take a look at the advert first : - 16 Bit CD-quality stereo recording/playback Record and playback from 5kHz to 44.1kHz stereo Real-time hardware compression/decompression of sound files - Orchestral 32-voice polyphony with Advanced WavEffects Synthesis 16 Channels, 128 instruments, 32-voice polyphony (GM compatible) 6 drum kits (GM compatible) - Programmable AWE32 Effects Engine for Reverb and Chorus or Q-sound - Programmable Advanced Signal Processor - Soundfont support via downloadable sound samples - 4 Mbit RAM onboard, upgradeable to a Maximum of 28 Mbytes - 20 Voice OPL3 FM music Synthesiser - Multi CD-ROM interface using Creative, Sony and Mitsumi drives - Creative VoiceAssist, Speech Recognition system - Creative TextAssist, Text-To-Speech system - Soundblaster 16, General MIDI, MPC2, Windows 3.1 compatible Looks promising? Sure...but here we go : - 16 Bit CD-quality stereo recording/playback My ass! CD qualtiy is 16 bit 44.1kHz Stereo, and the AWE32 may sample sound on this frequency, it most certainly doesn't play it on this range! The out- put showed a fallback around 18kHz and dropped around 20kHz. The card's range was estimated around 21kHz easy. And sorry if I say so, but when they say CD quality, the AWE32 has background noise like a lousy cassette deck, and then I mean the analog type! **************************************************************************** * CD-quality means that when you sample sounds or music you have to use * sampling frequency 44.1 kHz and 16-bit resolution. And when the sample * is played back you must use same frequency and resolution. This is the way * yoy can get out sound with frequencies 20 kHz ( you can't hear frequencies * higher than these). This is called the Nyqvist-theory and if you want to know * about this theory you must go to a library and read more about this.. * According to several tests, AWE's frequency responce drops after * 16 to 17 kHz and that is quite good frequency response with reasonable * priced soundcard ( of course there are better cards ) * I haven't noticed any noise in my AWE32. Perhaps if you have bad power- * source in your computer this may happen. **************************************************************************** - Orchestral 32-voice polyphony with Advanced WavEffects Synthesis In other words : 16 channels. This is another clue to the final conclusion about the internal going-ons of the AWE32. All the Midi crap is standard, just not worth explaining because it's the same like the SB16 Waveblaster without the E-mu sound patches. Advanced Wav Effects Synthesis means support of Chorus and Reverb or Q-sound. Which make up a LOT for the crappy Midi output. Note that this is MIDI only. **************************************************************************** * Wrong. Adwanced Wav Effects is a way that AWE's instruments are created * and it's the same method that E-mu systems use in it's high-end synthe- * sizers. * Chorus and reverb effects are created by effect-processor inside AWE's * synthesizerchip called E-mu Proteus 8011. * All General-midi combatible soundcards has 16 midi channels and 24-32 voice * polyphony (that is, soundcard can play i.e. 32 voices simultaneously) **************************************************************************** Sounds sampled for MIDI output will go directly through the FM Synthesiser before going through the MIDI Chip. This ensures maximum background hum and noise. There's hardly something WaveTable about your own samples. *************************************************************************** * Wrong again. The FM Synthesizer OPL3 has nothing to do with AWE's * MIDI-playback (except when you really want to use it for this purpose) * When E-mu 8011 (AWE's synthesizer) produces sound it reads data directly * from ROM-chip or from RAM-memory loaded with SoundBanks and then digital * sound-data go directly to Digital-Analog converter. You can also use SPDIF- * interface (Sony-Phillips Digital Interface) to guide digital sound to * an external D/A-converter or to a DAT-tapemachine. *************************************************************************** In order to make the AWE32 a better card, you can add the good old WaveBlaster on this SB16 as well, giving it the double of the AWE32's abilities : enabling 64 channels polyphony = 32 channels.....smart, but nothing refreshing, not to mention a price tag. Note that this is MIDI only. *************************************************************************** * You can also add i.e. Roland's or TurtleBeach's daughtercards in AWE and * get extra channels and more polyphony (and of course, Superior sounds) * 64 channel polyphony?????? Boy, this guy really should read his homeworks * better. With AWE32 and daughterboard you can get 32 channel and 64 voice * polyphony (maximum amount of voices, depending on daughterboard) - Programmable AWE32 Effects Engine for Reverb and Chorus or Q-sound That's the Advanced WavEffects Synthesis thing. You get to program it your- self. Wow, Creative Labs lets the consumer have a say in it!! *************************************************************************** * Effect engine produces reverb and chorus (it doesn't mean AdvancedWavEffects) * The Advanced Signal Processor creates QSound. *************************************************************************** It turned out that without the Chorus and Reverb, MIDI sounds more miserable. And Q-sound (180 degrees) can't match the Holographic 3D-Sound from Focal Point (360 degrees immersive) in any way : it only works when you sit tight, the sample must be pre-programmed for Q-sound and still it's a really diss- apointing way to emulate suround. - Programmable Advanced Signal Processor This is the thing that made the SB16 better, and tries to do some good on the AWE32, with no avail. The compression/decompression chip is a very handy thing if you consider the AWE32 takes about 30% CPU time. However, it doesn't do squat to the quality of the card. *************************************************************************** * Of course adding Reverb and Chorus will increase the sound quality. All * good synthesizers have reverb and chorus prosessing. It is part of GS- * standard also. *************************************************************************** - Soundfont support via downloadable sound samples Hey, this is so new! (Well compared to their technoligy from 5 years back : SoundFont is another name for support to insert more Midi samples, this is a very common household item on Gravis Ultrasound Cards : Ultrasound Patch files are openly availible since 1992) *************************************************************************** * Soundfont is a trademark of E-mu Systems Inc. and it is NOT the same thing * as Gravis Ultrasound patches. You can buy SoundFonts (Tm) only from E-mu. * All others patches that you can load into AWE's memory are NOT SoundFonts. *************************************************************************** - 4 Mbit RAM onboard, upgradeable to a Maximum of 28 Mbytes 4Mbit (some salesmen are keen on saying Mbite (he hopes you'll think it's Mbyte that escapes his lips)) is 512Kb.....still a reasonable amount of memory for such a stupid card. On the other hand, Creative Labs made a samrt move and made SIMM banks : easy to get by, and in large amounts too. You can dump two 16Mbyte SIMMS....and leave it to the card to waste 4Mbyte of it as a additional buffer for the compressed 1Mb ROM full of samples! *************************************************************************** * Salesman are salesman, but compared to Ultrasound's 256K or 512K (for Max) * it is reasonable amount of standard memory. * Reason for maximum memory (28MB) is that E-mu 8011 can only address 28MB, * so 4 MB of 32Mb can't be used. 4MB is definetly NOT used as buffer for * standard wavetable memory. *************************************************************************** All the WaveTable sounds are stored in one 1Mb ROM. The compression is no big merit for the sound quality. *************************************************************************** * I agree. But with this prise you can't get all.. *************************************************************************** - 20 Voice OPL3 FM music Synthesiser Can you remember the old days : Adlib tunes, noisy output, too much feedback from other hardware devices? Well....sit back and enjoy yesterday's tech once more!! Creative Labs managed to use the OPL3 again. When will they learn? You get exactly two (yes, just two) digital audio channels for your disposal. Is it a bit dissapointing if you look at a Gravis Ultrasound, a card with just 32 digital audio channels? * Then why is Gravis Ultrasound equipped with SBOS ??? A strange thing in the advert : "OPL3 FM Synthesiser to give backward compatibility!" This is not true : The OPL3 is not just built in for the compatiblity, the whole card's output is spoiled by the ever active OPL3 FM Synthesiser. If you put the volume on a normal level, you can enjoy the hum caused by the card itself, but also your Hard Disk, Processor etc... more evidence about the OPL3 being the heart of the AWE32 shows up in the very beginning : When you've installed the software you get two directories, one of them is SB16, the other WAVEBL (?). In fact, the AWE is nothing but an upgraded Soundblaster ASP 16 / WaveBlaster combination with a RAM Bank. Even if they inserted the OPL3 for compatibility, they could as well used the new OPL4 (it's fully OPL3 compatible) which is a Wavetable Synthesis Chip. Slight hint : the SoundBlasters have a strange urge to be lacking full and real 16bit sampling capacities (This seemed to be OPL3 faulty) the first 8 bits are more or less the real sound, the other 8 are just random and blindly added bits. If you sample something in 8 and in 16 bit, you are likely unable to hear a difference! Backward compatibility? The whole card is backward if what they say is right. *************************************************************************** * This is biggest garbage I have ever heard. The OPL3 is only used to give * you 100% combatibility with older SoundBlasters. So if your game doesn't * have midi-support, you can atleast hear FM-sounds! * The OPL3 chip hasn't nothing to do with sound digitizing. AWE's 16-bit * sampling is 16-bit sampling. Nothing more, nothing less. * If you sample with 8 bits, you can get 256 possible values for sound. * If you sample with 16 bits, you get 65535 possible values. Do you think * that you don't hear any differnce between 8-bit and 16-bit sampling ? * When you install AWE32 you get ONE directory: SB16. *************************************************************************** - Multi CD-ROM interface using Creative, Sony and Mitsumi drives Confused people : Creative is not a CD-ROM standard (they wish!), this is a stripped down version of the Panasonic/Matsushita CD-ROM drives. It used to be CR-562x, but we haven't tested it on being a bunch better. (We might be wrong on the Drive type) *************************************************************************** * Well, what other CD-Rom drive you can use if Creative, Panasonic, Sony * and Mitumi isn't one of them? *************************************************************************** - Creative VoiceAssist, Speech Recognition system BlahBlahBlah...Cute program from the SB16Basic/ASP cards gone professional.. (And it's Windows too....) - Creative TextAssist, Text-To-Speech system BlahBlahBlah...Cute program from the SB16Basic/ASP cards gone professional.. (And it's Windows too....) * All soundcards are equipped with somekind of software. Here are some of * them. Btw, most of people is using Windows. - Soundblaster 16, General MIDI, MPC2, Windows 3.1 compatible No shit?! It's SB16 compatible?!?! IT IS A SB16 YOU FOOLS!! YOU SAID IT IN YOUR OWN F---ING ADVERT, MORONS!! Besides, who wouldn't make it's own card compatible with the older standards?! And all other specs were expected. *************************************************************************** * SoundBlaster AWE32 is SB16 MultiCD with E-mu's AdvancedWavEffects * synthesizer. This is said also in AWE's FAQ. *************************************************************************** OVERALL - The quality of the card is plain miserable. Most MIDI sounds are just horrible, or they are 8 megabyte big. Okay, so you sampled each note, but the output is as horrible as the default MIDI samples. Chorus and Reverb try to filter most of the "hey, it sounds as if it's recorded through a tin can" quality out of it, but then the output just won't make something out of it. Take away the Chorus/Reverb and you'll become so sorry that you bought this card in the first place. HOW IS IT RUNNING? - Some shops already stopped selling the AWE32. When we asked why they said : (quote) "We stopped selling this soundcard because we didn't want to rip our customers off. The card sounded miserable" Some didn't. When we asked why they said : (quote) "The customers buy it. We don't care if it's a bad soundcard, if they buy it, we'll sell it!" This just shows why shops sell them. Most hardcore SB users just won't give up, and keep buying Soundblasters. People with no real knowledge of PCs never heard of another card. We even had to explain that the add-on that gives you digital sound on a PC wasn't called a SoundBlaster, but a Soundcard. We had this conversation : A : "You have a PC? Gee..do you have a Soundblaster too?" B : "No, I have a Gravis Ultrasound." A : "....." B : "It makes music...you understand?" A : "Yeah...just like I said, you have a Soundblaster" B : " No that's a type of soundcard, I have another type!" A : "Aren't those things called soundblasters then?" B : "No, they're called sound cards....(Jeez!)" That's why so many people still buy Soundblaster crap. *************************************************************************** * These are opinions, and if you think so I can't help it. * But what these guys here have told is 90% garbage, so don't create * your opinion based on what they told you. *************************************************************************** - We were forced to watch a demonstration of the AWE32 in progress (the salesmen were convinced we wanted one....why would we?) and we saw a lot of lacks. Sure, the demonstration Midi was impressive but the sound output was extremely sad....Soundblaster background noise made it a lot worse : the digital sound itself just sucked. We were totally back in the SB16 corner : a lot of money for a hand-full-of-crap-quality. Then we had to explain what a GUS was. ("You have a WHAT?") Not soon after they were selling GUS MAX as well. (We think it's just coincidence) - Some friend bought this card, and sold it after five days in favor of a GUS MAX. Complaints : Midi is sluggish and the card doesn't fully do as promised. When they are sliming about the quality, they lie as hell. - Even our close family wasn't safe from the AWE 32 infection : He wanted to make music on his PC, and hopped by at the local store. Those cheap rats didn't want him to buy the ASP16, but the relativly more expensive AWE32. Yes, he was persuaded by the MIDI file you get with the free (misleading) demonstration, compared to a cranky MOD file on an ASP16. (*Back home he noted that both cards do the same thing to such a music file*) Happy as hell he followed the instructions of his handbook, and plugged the CD-ROM audio cable in, while the amplifier was on maximum power. (PC was turned off, in case you wonder) Now a really strange thing happened. This is not a made up story, this REALLY happened : Apparently the AWE 32 couldn't handle things, and blew his internal amplifier to pieces. Is this the super-sound card they yell about in the adverts? Yep. Creative Labs were so kind to promise him a new card. Great. First let a kid blow it's feet off, and then give him a new shotgun. ( Sidestep note : he was completely amazed by the quality of a simple, un-MAXed GUS.....and they sell these for 1/3 of the AWE 32's price!!) We think the AWE32 is for idiots. This card belongs at the office, where idiots make their copy of Windows 3.1 talk, and play games from 1989 or earlier. DON'T BUY THIS CARD, IT IS TOO EXPENSIVE, NEEDS UPGRADING TO MAKE IT SLIGHTLY LESS WORSE, AND SHOULD BE SEEN AS A NEW SCAM FROM CREATIVE LABS TO SELL THEIR OLD SB16 CHIPSETS!!! THEY STILL CAN MAKE MONEY OUT OF THE OLD TECHNOLOGY, SO THEY WON'T COME WITH THE BETTER TECH.!!! LAME!! Sooooo.....still eager to buy a card called AWE32? Remember that these statements are true, we have had enough opportunities to analyse the card, and have seen the card fail the owners' expectations. Don't fall for it..... You can always call us if you are in doubt, you know where to find TKB, don't you? (+31-35-837350 / 28k8 and e-mail : bad_news@dds.nl) *************************************************************************** * I don't mean that AWE32 is the best sound card, which it defenetly is not, * and I don't want to blame any GUS owner too (I had GUS too 1/2 year ago) * I'm just bored to read and hear all kind of shit about AWE32. * If you have any comments for me or more questions you can mail me. * My e-mail address is: kimmo.karhu@kotakk.fi * * Here is part of AWE32 frequently asked questions and answers leached from * Creative Labs ftp-server: *************************************************************************** Section A - SB AWE32 1. What is the SB AWE32? How does it differ from the SB16? The SB AWE32 is a standard SB16 MultiCD with the EMU 8000 Advanced WavEffect music synthesizer chip. The card includes all the standard SB16 features. Additionally, the SB AWE32 includes the Advanced Signal Processor and multiple interfaces supporting Creative, Mitsumi and Sony CD-ROM drives. The EMU8000 is a sub-system offering high quality music synthesis using advanced wave effects technology. It comes with an onboard dedicated effect engine. The effect engine provides high quality effects like reverb and chorus to MIDI playback. The EMU8000 supports up to 32 voices, and the effect amount for each voice can be controlled via MIDI. The EMU8000 comes integrated with 1MB of General MIDI samples and 512kB of DRAM for additional sample downloading. It can address up to 28 MB of external DRAM memory. The SB AWE32 supports General MIDI, Roland GS and Sound Canvas MT- 32 emulation. Note: MT-32 Emulation on the SB AWE32 is similar to that of the Sound Canvas; e.g., MT-32 sysex is not supported. 2. How much memory is shipped with the SB AWE32 card? The card ships with 1 MB of General MIDI ROM samples and 512 KB of DRAM for user sample downloading. 3. Can I upgrade the memory on my SB AWE32 card? The Sound Blaster AWE32 has a pair of SIMM sockets for upgrading the DRAM to as much as 28 megabytes. The SB AWE32 Value Edition card does not allow the memory to be upgraded. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10. What MIDI sequencers will work with SB AWE32? Are special drivers required? The SB AWE32 package ships with a Windows SB AWE32 MIDI driver. Therefore, the SB AWE32 can be used with any Windows based MIDI sequencer software. For DOS, the sequencer software needs to have native SB AWE32 support. 11. Are there any plans for OS/2 and Windows NT SB AWE32 drivers? The SB AWE32 OS/2 driver is currently available with OS/2 Warp 3.0. The Windows NT driver is currently in development. 12. What I/O port addresses are used by the EMU8000? The addresses used by the EMU8000 are relative to the base I/O address of the SB16. EMU8000 Addresses are at 6xxH, AxxH and ExxH. It occupies the first four addresses at each location. For example, if the SB16 base I/O address is 220H, the EMU8000 addresses are 620H-623H, A20H-A23H and E20H- E23H. 13. Why doesn't the EMU8000 have a built in MIDI interpreter? One of the design goal of the SB AWE32 is to offer high quality music at an affordable price. The EMU8000 is just like any other synthesizer chip such as OPL2, OPL3 or OPL4. It does not have the capability to interpret MIDI commands. For it to understand MIDI commands, a MIDI interpreter is required, and this will involve adding an additional processor to process the MIDI commands and other components adding to the cost of the product. After our analysis of price and performance, we decided that our current implementation offers the best in terms of price as well as performance. To support existing games that use MPU-401, we provide a feature known as MIDI feedback using NMI (non-maskable- interrupt) which installs a small TSR program, AWEUTIL. AWEUTIL works by trapping data going out to the MPU-401 port and program the EMU8000 using the data. AWEUTIL provides compatibility with many games that support the MPU-401 interface, but will not always work with protected mode games due to the complicated ways in which DOS extenders handle NMI. Note that you can still continue to play your favorite DOS protected mode game with the on-board OPL3 FM chip. We are working closely with the game developer community to port their MIDI driver to support the SB AWE32. We have a porting laboratory at Creative Labs, Inc., where we invite developers to port their drivers to natively support the SB AWE32. We believe that in the near future the SB AWE32 will be widely supported. Currently, we already have support from several major audio driver developers for the SB AWE32 platform. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 20. What is the benefit of adding a WaveBlaster to the SB AWE32? The WaveBlaster connector was included on the SB AWE32 to provide users an alternative wave-sample synthesis method other than the EMU8000 on the SB AWE32. By incorporating a WaveBlaster onto the SB AWE32, the total polyphony of this combination will be increased to 64, the total number of channels expanded to 32, and you will have access to a secondary palette of sampled sounds. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Section D - SoundFont Bank 1. What are SoundFont Collections? E-mu SoundFont Collections are CD-ROMs that contain SoundFont Banks of varying sizes (0.5 MB to 8 MB). E-mu’s SoundFont Banks include both instruments and sound effects. Many of E-mu's traditional instrument sounds will be included (for example Proteus 1-3) as well as some new sounds. 2. How do SoundFont Banks work? SoundFont Banks can be loaded into RAM on the SB AWE32. They can then be used in conjunction with a MIDI sequencer to create soundtracks or other kinds of audio creations. 3. Where can I purchase SoundFont Banks? SB AWE32 customers will be pleased to know that the first E- mu SoundFont Banks are now available for purchase directly from E-mu Systems. Five SoundFont Banks are available and additional banks will be added each month. Each SoundFont Bank costs US$29.95 and can be ordered by phone, fax or internet. Phone orders should go to (408) 438-1921 x148 Fax orders should be sent to (408) 438-7854 Attention: SoundFont Order Internet orders should be sent to SoundFont@emu.com All orders should include the customer's Name, Address, Phone Number and Credit Card Information (including expiration date) and the part numbers of the SoundFont Banks being ordered. The following SoundFont Banks are available : Bank Description Part Number ================== ============ 1) 9 Foot Grand Piano EMU8120-01FP 2) Haunt Fonts EMU8160-01FP 3) World Sounds EMU8130-01FP 4) Rock Instruments EMU8140-01FP 5) B-3 Organ EMU8120-02FP Questions may be referred to soundfont@emu.com or (408) 439- 0338. ============================================================ Below is a listing of the SoundFont Objects in each bank ============================================================ SoundFont Bank: Haunt Fonts HAUNTFNT.SBK 1MB SoundFont Object 0 Horror Complete 1 Hells Bells 2 Door Screech 3 Druid Drone 4 Banshee Wind 5 Gong Scrape 6 Fear Strings 7 Scary Choir 8 The Creek 9 Reverb Slam 10 Break Glass 11 Pipe Hit 12 Perc Combos 13 Foots 14 Vox&Tremolo 15 Vox&HBells 16 Druid&Vox 17 Fear&HBells 18 Creepy Breath 19 Two Gongs 20 Vox From Hell 21 Door Monster 22 Plethora SoundFont Bank: 9 Foot Grand Piano GRPIANO.SBK 525Kb SoundFont Object 0 9 Foot Grand 1 Mello Piano 2 Rock Piano 3 Bowed Piano 4 Chorused Piano 5 Pitch/LFO Piano 6 Filter Piano 7 Wild Piano1 8 Wild Piano2 SoundFont Bank: World Instruments WORLD.SBK 450Kb SoundFont Object 0 Koto 1 Sitar 2 Siku 3 Bagpipe Drone & Chant 4 Buzz/Likembe 5 Didjeridu 6 Gamelan 7 Latin Drums 8 Koto & Sitar 9 Koto Vibrato 10 Koto Detuned 11 Koto Korus 12 Sitar Satire 13 Wet Drum 14 Timbale Plus 15 Didjeridrone SoundFont Bank: Rock Instruments ROCK1.SBK 503Kb SoundFont Object 0 Rock Guitar 1 Chds/Mute/Lo 2 Rock Guitar Slide 3 Drums 1 4 Drums 2 5 Drums 3 SoundFont Bank: B3 Organ B3ORGAN.SBK 534Kb SoundFont Object 0 Chorus B3 w/ Lo Perc 1 B3 w/Lo Perc 2 Chorus B3 Dist 3 B3 Distortion 4 Wow B3 5 Pitched B3 6 Wild B3 7 HF Feedthru 8 B3 Percussion --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Section E - Introduction to the EMU8000 Chip The EMU8000 has its roots in E-mu's Proteus sample playback modules and their renowned Emulator sampler. The EMU8000 has 32 individual oscillators, each playing back at 44.1 kHz. By incorporating sophisticated sample interpolation algorithms and digital filtering, the EMU8000 is capable of producing high fidelity sample playback. The EMU8000 has an extensive modulation capability using two sine-wave LFOs (Low Frequency Oscillator) and two multi- stage envelope generators. What exactly does modulation mean? Modulation means to dynamically change a parameter of an audio signal, whether it be the volume (amplitude modulation, or tremolo), pitch (frequency modulation, or vibrato) or filter cutoff frequency (filter modulation, or wah-wah). To modulate something we would require a modulation source, and a modulation destination. In the EMU8000, the modulation sources are the LFOs and the envelope generators, and the modulation destinations can be the pitch, the volume or the filter cutoff frequency. The EMU8000's LFOs and envelope generators provide a complex modulation environment. Each sound producing element of the EMU8000 consists of a resonant low-pass filter, two LFOs, in which one modulates the pitch (LFO2), and the other modulates pitch, filter cutoff and volume (LFO1) simultaneously. There are two envelope generators; envelope 1 contours both pitch and filter cutoff simultaneously, and envelope 2 contours volume. The output stage consists of an effects engine that mixes the dry signals with the Reverb/chorus level signals to produce the final mix. This rich modulation capability of the EMU8000 is fully exploited by the SB AWE32 MIDI drivers. The driver also provides you with a means to change these parameters over MIDI in real time. Refer to the section "How do I change an instrument's sound parameter in real time" for more information.