Mediavision Pro AudioStudio 16 / XL
The Pro AudioStudio 16 (also called Pro Audio Studio 16) was introduced in late 1993. Based on the Pro AudioSpectrum 16, it also came bundled with a microphone and voice recognition software.
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Released | Late 1993 |
| 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 |
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| Part # | 650-0060-02, 650-0060-03, 650-0060-52, 650-0060-53, 650-0060-60 | |
| FCC ID | IXW-PAR | |
| Price | At launch:$349 September 1993: £265 June 1994: $119 March 1995: £122 |
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| See Also | Pro AudioSpectrum / Pro AudioSpectrum Plus |
The Pro Audio Studio 16 has all the functionality of the earlier Pro AudioSpectrum 16, but was pitched at the business audio market.
Also in late 1993, the Pro Audio Studio 16XL was released. This was a package solution from Media Vision, comprising the Pro Audio Studio 16 card and bundled software, and their wavetable daughterboard, Pro Wave (Part #600-0120-01). The Pro Wave had a high-quality synth from Korg.
Dusko Marincic got in touch to let me know that his Pro Audio Studio 16 has the reverse stereo issue that is common in a number of ISA sound cards. On this card, it is evident both from the Line Out and Speaker Out (amplified) sockets. He also has a PAS16 card, and it does *not* suffer from the reverse stereo issue.
He tested the Pro Audio Studio 16 with both the PAS16 audio option in Descent's setup utility as well as the Yamaha OPL3 audio option - both exhibited reverse stereo on this card.
Board Revisions
I have no information on the various board revisions of the Pro Audio Studio 16.
Competition
In the Media
In common with many sound cards, the midi port doubles as a joystick port, and the card also carries a scsi cd rom interface. Software supplied includes a quick start installation program and multimedia guided tour, ExecuVoice voice recognition software, Monologue for Windows, a text-to-speech package,MIDIsoft Recording Session, a Windows based midi sequencer, and Sound Impressions, a professional digital audio editing package" PC Zone, September 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
Downloads
User Manual Get in touch if you can provide this missing item! |
PAS16 Driver/Utility Disks A copy of the original floppy disks shipped with the PAS16 by Mediavision. |
PAS16 Windows 3.x Drivers Windows 3.x drivers for the PAS16 by Mediavision.
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PAS Utilities A collection of Pro AudioSpectrum series utilities and drivers |
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More Pictures
Dusko Marincic's Pro Audio Studio 16