DOS Days

Mediavision Pro AudioSpectrum 16

The Pro AudioSpectrum 16 was introduced in May 1992, and provided full 16-bit 44.1 kHz recording and playback capability and a SCSI interface.

	Released	May 1992
	Bus	ISA 16-bit
	Chipset	MVD101 with MVA-508B mixer
	FM Synth	Yamaha YMF262 (OPL3 )
	Standards	Ad Lib, Sound Blaster, PAS, PAS16, MPU-401
	Ports	Stereo Line-in, Stereo Line-out and Mic-In 3.5mm jacks DB15 MIDI/game port
	Part #	650-0022, 650-0032, 650-0042, 650-0044, 650-0060, 650-0082, 650-0097 (PAS16) 650-0053-52A (PAS16 Basic)
	FCC ID	IXW-PAS16P, IXW-PAS16, ICW-PAS16NS, IXW-LMSI2 (PAS16) IXW-PAS16LL (PAS16 Basic)
	Price	PAS16: At launch: ? (PAS16) June 1994: $99 (PAS16) PAS16 Basic: At launch: $199 November 1993: $129 (PAS16 Basic) November 1993: $105 (Logitech SoundMan 16) June 1994: $79 (PAS16 Basic)
	See Also	Pro AudioSpectrum / Pro AudioSpectrum Plus

Launched exactly 1 year after the original Pro Audio Spectrum, the Pro Audio Spectrum 16 incorporated a single Yamaha OPL3 FM synthesizer chip, MPU-401-compatible MIDI and Game port interface, SCSI interface, and it also had the ThunderBoard chipset for Sound Blaster 2.0 compatibility. Its best feature was its ability for 16-bit CD-quality recording and playback at 44.1 kHz. The card was almost completely jumperless which was pretty rare at the time - it can configure itself completely via software.

At its launch, it was ahead of Creative, who were yet to release the Sound Blaster 16, which would match the PAS 16's specs.

Because of the built in SCSI CD ROM interface, the card would often be bundled with expensive multi-media packages which included a CD-ROM drive. Media Vision bundled this card in their own Super Deluxe Multimedia Kit in late 1994 which also came with an internal Sanyo CDR H93MV double-speed SCSI CD-ROM drive, 4-watt speakers and a variety of software titles. In March 1995, this multimedia kit sold for £319.

The 16-bit PAS card when sold alone was priced at the same point as Creative's 8 bit Sound Blaster Pro making it a popular choice for non-gamers.

In 1993, the Pro AudioSpectrum 16 Basic was released. This is the only Media Vision card that did NOT have a CD-ROM interface, hence the "Basic" moniker. Aside from that omission, it's the same as the Pro AudioSpectrum 16. It has an MPU-401-compatible MIDI and Game port interface. This card was also sold as the Logitech SoundMan 16.

The card can be noisy in operation, so it is advised to use the mixer utility to swich off any unused inputs or outputs (set volume to 0). It is also advised to change jumper J16 to disable DMA sharing, which does not play well on the ISA bus.

Sadly, it is not backward-compatible with Pro Audio Spectrum, nor is it compatible with Sound Blaster Pro - only straight Sound Blaster (mono).

A version of this card was also produced with a Philips CD-ROM interface. FCC ID was IXW-PAS16P, and it has a DIGBIE LMS chip in the lower left corner which is the "LMSI" interface.

There was also a Pro Audio Spectrum 16SL (Part #:650-0032-04I, FCC ID: IXW-PAS16SL). This came with a Sony CD-ROM interface (the official name of this was SLCD but was rarely used), hence the 'SL' suffix.

There is a lot more information on the Pro Audio Spectrum 16 range in my Retro Review from November 2021.

Board Revisions

If the main MVD101 chip is revision C or earlier, the MPU-401 interface supports only the proprietary Media Vision MIDI interface (not widely supported), whereas revision D and later also supported MPU-401 UART mode. Sadly this does suffer from the hanging note bug.

Competition

Upon its arrival, there really wasn't anything to compete with the Pro AudioSpectrum 16's feature list. Its key stand-out being CD-quality recording capability. From a gaming perspective, however, Creative Labs had their Sound Blaster Pro which provided proper stereo FM output in addition to digital audio - these had been almost universally accepted as the minimum standard for DOS games in 1992. Any games that came with dedicated PAS16 support did sound better, but these were more rare.

In the Media

An advertisement for the Pro AudioSpectrum 16 in June 1992

"We are often visited by game developers who want to demo their game on one of our computers. Getting a computer configured correctly so that it runs fickle pre-release software can be a real bear. While changing crashing sound cards (like a pit mechanic changing tires at the Indy 500) during one demonstration, the Soundman 16 showed off its greatest strength: it can be quickly installed, configured and run with very little hassle.

This card is born to run games. It doesn't clutter itself with extra bundled software, CD-ROM interfaces, or thick manuals to wade through. The drawback is that it uses the Media Vision chipset, so if the reader dislikes these chipsets due to problems encountered with Sound Blaster compatibility, this may not be his of her card of choice. On the other hand, more and more companies are supporting the Media Vision chipset directly. Also, if one already has a CD-ROM host or SCSI drive, this card is easier to install (there are software configurable jumpers and no SCSI or proprietary CD-ROM hosts to conflict with existing hardware).

Though the documentation is a bit sparse, it should get the average user up and running with a minimum of difficulties."Computer Gaming World, October 1993

Setting it Up

All the MediaVision cards were pre-Plug & Play. Despite this, the PAS16 was one of the first cards to be almost completely jumperless. As was noted in Part 1 where I explored the different board revisions, it was clear MediaVision moved the location of certain jumpers and in some cases eliminated them completely (moving their selection into software).

The default settings for the card are 220h, IRQ 5, DMA 1 for the Sound Blaster side of things, and IRQ 7 and DMA 3 for the PAS16 portion.

For older games that needed Ad Lib's SOUND.COM to play Ad Lib sound, MediaVision wrote their own driver, called FM.COM.

Apparently a lot of software does *not* require the MVSOUND.SYS driver to be loaded, as they program the Pro Audio Spectrum directly. Perhaps MVSOUND.SYS is just for Ad Lib and Sound Blaster emulation?

If you're using the driver though, you should end up with something like these two lines in your startup files if you want Sound Blaster compatibility to work:

CONFIG.SYS
DEVICE=C:\PROAUDIO\mvsound.sys d:5 q:7 s:1,220,1,5 m:0 j:1

where:
d:5 = the DMA channel used by the PAS16 portion of the card (valid options are 0 through 7)
q:7 = the IRQ used by the PAS16 portion of the card (valid options are 2-7 and 10-15)
s:1,220,1,5 = the Sound Blaster settings
m:0 = MIDI port enabled/disabled (valid options are 0 for disabled and 1 for enabled)
j:1 = Joystick enabled/disabled (valid options are 0 for disabled and 1 for enabled)
v:75 = Initial volume setting (valid options are 0 through 100)
t:1 = Oscillator to use (valid options are 0 to use the motherboard's oscillator, 1 to use the on-board oscillator)

AUTOEXEC.BAT
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H1 P388 T6