Evolution of PC Audio – As Told by Secret of Monkey Island
Computer audio has come quite a way since 1981. Here is a short video I made comparing the major steps from the PC speaker to Adlib on up to today’s chips! At least, from the perspective of the Lucasarts classic, The Secret of Monkey Island. Monkey Island was chosen due to its having a wide breadth of versions of the same song, as compared to many other games which didn’t support this many cards. The final version of the song is from the recent “Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition” on PC/360/PS3 – recorded using live instruments, NOT the CD-ROM version from the early nineties. See the menu it was taken from here: www.youtube.com Some clips recorded by me, others from Crossfire Designs, all awesome.
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24 Responses to “Evolution of PC Audio – As Told by Secret of Monkey Island”
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I keep coming back to this! One of the best videos on youtube ^^
listen to adlib directly after listening cd audio, it sounds so flat!
So which PC sound card here best compares to the Amiga? It’s a pity the Amiga sound spec fell behind because Commodore were too lazy to develop a replacement for Paula.
Did you update this video? I remember the game blaster sounding much fuller and dirtier…
my all time favorite youtube video. this video also got me hooked on phreakindee (his videos, not him personally
. it is also a part of my audio equipment testing suite 
22people had PS1
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Watch:
“youtube.com/watch?v=INH-lNUQQZg”
“youtube.com/watch?v=lutJYDxP6ys”
“youtube.com/watch?v=R9ike7PKd8U”
Regards.
The Roland soundcards = WIN! =) Always wanted one but never could afford one, especially back in those days they were close to 4 digits in price. Gravis Ultrasound was decent too but to my ears the Roland cards simply produced more soothing samples.
@eyin90
Yes.
Gameblaster sounded like Gameboy. LOL.
Man, stereo sound, headphones, Game Blaster and this game do NOT mix.
@JUSXTREME96 I’d +1 that.
The Microsoft Wavetable Synth is a modified version of Roland Sound Canvas(I think, I do know it is from a Roland Card).
@ImoenOfTelengard If you’re curious, check out my video on the Covox Speech Thing (the device the Disney Sound Source was based on). I talk about the DSS and what those parallel port devices actually did. They’re pretty impressive for what they are.
I was always curious about the Disney Sound Source. That dongle thing was always an option in my early games, yet I have never known anyone who actually owned one.
Man, I remember how amazed I was when the Roland one from 1988 came out, I said “It can’t get any better then this!” to myself, oh was I wrong.
Ultrasound to conquer all!
General Midi all the way
Amazing. <3
are the Roland cards made by the same Roland company that makes keyboards?
i miss my AWE32, what an impressive card it was
I wanna say that I prefer the Roland cards over even the newest cards. Those sounded freakin awesome!!
I see you included IBM pc junior after the pc speaker, I thinkn the one after adlib is the atari st version (which had a similar sound chip to the pc jr).
Roland mt32 is epic, sc55 almost reminds me of barney.
AdLib was always my favorite.