Most third-generation cards come with the Creative Labs CQM chip instead of true OPL3 Yamaha chip, but there are cases where a Yamaha chip is present. The vast majority of these cards are jumper-free and are fully ISA Plug & Play. CT2910 /CT2911 / CT2919 With its timeless design and clean lines, the CD Jumper exudes elegance and versatility. It can be easily dressed up or down, making it suitable for various occasions and outfit combinations. Fun fact... user Imperious on the Vogons forum says he successfully ran a CT2770 on an 8088 XT (8-bit ISA slots only). The 16-bit part of the card is used for the CD-ROM interface only! Imperious said it's great for running the PC speaker audio through the sound card and out of the speakers, though there's only a tiny amount of games that can use the card's abilities on a system that slow. The CT2810 is another strange card in that it shares its FCC ID with the CT2290 range, but has the ViBRA-16 chip the same as the CT2260. But unlike the CT2260, the CT2810 gets an IDE CD-ROM interface. The MPU-401 interface on the 15-pin game/MIDI port continued to be non-standard (the pinouts differ from the Roland standard).

In June 1992, the Sound Blaster 16 was introduced as the successor to the Sound Blaster Pro, though the Pro was sold for a number of years alongside the SB16. The first '16' model was CT1740. For the first time you could get a Sound Blaster card with CD-quality (44 kHz) digital audio sampling.

Buying tips and help

Following the success of the CT2260 and its first ViBRA-16 card, the CT2800 or Sound Blaster Vibra 16S, uses an updated chip - the ViBRA 16S (CT2504). You can also compare this card's audio output side-by-side to numerous other cards in my Sound Blaster CT2770 Retro Review! This card has been reported to have the hanging note bug, but the only cards I have seen have DSP v4.16 which does not suffer this. More Images

Called the Sound Blaster 16 MCD (Multi CD), the CT1750 was a CT1740 but with better support for CD-ROM drives - it got Cards with DSP version 4.11, 4.12, or 4.13 suffer from hanging notes when digital sounds and MIDI are played at the same time. It does not matter what MIDI device you use (an external device attached to the game/MIDI port or on the Wave Blaster header) - you will get this bug. The best workaround for this is to use a separate card for MIDI. Any card with the Creative CT1747 chip does not suffer from this bug, nor do those with DSP version 4.04, 4.05 or 4.16. The CT2260 was an OEM version of the CT2230, though with some major differences. The CT2330's integrated CT1747 (FM synth chip) was replaced with Creative's new ViBRA-16 chip - CT2501. This was Creative's answer for the OEM market for Sound Blaster 16 - a cheap and cheerful solution that integrated the bus controller interface, DSP, mixer and codec into a single chip. This same chip would go on to be used on the Sound Blaster 32 range and many more budget ("Value edition") cards. The CT1770, actual name Sound Blaster 16 SCSI-2, was the first Sound Blaster 16 card from Creative Labs to come with a SCSI-2 CD-ROM interface instead of IDE or other proprietary interfaces from Panasonic, Mitsumi and Sony. To support this SCSI interface, the card has an Adaptec AIC-6360L controller chip - you need to install an ASPI driver for this chipset from your CONFIG.SYS file followed by the usual MSCDEX in your AUTOEXEC.BAT.

Verify connections

The Sound Blaster 16 ASP comes with a powerful mix of applications, including two programs for sampling in Windows. WaveStudio is limited to sampling and editing what will fit in system memory (about a minute of 44 kHz sampling). If that's enough, you'll enjoy its intuitive interface and strong editing capabilities. Soundo'LE is the appropriate application for creating longer samples and embedding them into OLE-aware applications. The Sound Blaster 16 mixer, which you can access from Soundo'LE's menus, is very powerful and easy to use."InfoWorld, 11 Jan 1993 The CT1745A mixer chip from 1992 got an upgrade during this 2nd generation to CT1745-S (1993) and later to CT1745A-S (1994), though the first CT2230 cards still came with the original CT1745A.