Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!apple!agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!ncoast!davewt
From: davewt@NCoast.ORG (David Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: 486 clone vs. Amiga 3000
Summary: PC Sound sucks
Message-ID: <1991May13.020611.5440@NCoast.ORG>
Date: 13 May 91 02:06:11 GMT
References: <48814@ut-emx.uucp> <24739@well.sf.ca.us> <1991May12.211848.7252@athena.mit.edu>
Organization: North Coast Public Access Un*x (ncoast)
Lines: 21

In article <1991May12.211848.7252@athena.mit.edu> reynaldo@athena.mit.edu (Rey Villarreal) writes:
>driving prices down
>Sound                             add $175 board 11 voices   good 4 voices 


	You have to consider that those 11 voices are entirely CPU
driven (in the sense that the CPU has to push the data for them to play
onto the board across the already slow ISA bus, and on some boards are
not stereo. In any case, in this day and age the "number of voices" is
really moot. Hardly any games these days actually generate the sounds
themselves, but rather use sampled effects and music, which allows you to
in effect have as many voices as you want. But the main thing is still that
PC sound is CPU driven, and requires that the CPU push the sound/voice/
effects/etc. from memory on the motherboard to the sound chips on the card,
and I have YET to see a sound card that contained it's own CPU and could play
COMPLETE MUSIC independant of the main CPU. In fact, I don't even think such
a thing is POSSIBLE on ISA bus machines, since the cards don't have
simultaneous access to motherboard RAM without CPU intervention.


			Dave