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features
Inside the Sound Blaster Live!
Written by Clarence Song

EMU10K1 - The Heart of the Sound Blaster Live!

The EMU10K1 is an audio processor, that works very much like the CPU in your PC. The only difference is that the EMU10K1 was designed to work and process audio, instead of acting like a generic CPU that can run all sorts of software. It is estimated to run at 1000 MIPS (million instructions per second).

The EMU10K1 is the chip on the Sound Blaster Live! that does nearly every task in the sound card, including the following:

  • Wave playback
  • 3D positioning
  • Real-time digital effects (like reverb, chorus, pitch-shifter, wah-wah, flanger, distortion, etc.)
  • DACs for digital to analog conversion
  • MIDI playback
  • SoundFont sample playback
  • Sample memory management and access through the PCI bus

As you can see, the chip is pretty complex as it can handle so many things. If the kind of power in the EMU10K1 was available a few years ago, it would cost thousands of dollars!

Older sound cards, especially those that use the ISA bus, were constructed by combining the capabilities of several chips. Cramming all the features of a sound card into a single chip also reduces manufacturing costs. This will push down retail prices which folks like us will ultimately benefit from!


Programmability

The biggest selling point of the SBLive! is the programmability of the EMU10K1. Instead of hard-coding the audio algorithms needed to perform the above tasks, the engineers at EMU built in a certain amount of flexibility in the EMU10K1 to allow software updates to change the way things are done in the chip.

Through the Live!Ware program, the sound engine can be easily updated to provide better sound and more features. For example, in Live!Ware 2, Creative introduced the up/down axis, which is gives the SBLive! the ability to position sounds above or below the listener. This was missing in Live!Ware 1.


Open Source?

No programming information has been available from Creative, as they cannot reveal the architecture of the EMU10K1. Once the architecture is revealed, competitors will be able to copy the design and develop competing products - a thing Creative definitely doesn't want to see happening.

As a result, this impeded the development of Linux drivers, although recently, Creative has taken strides to bring the full suite of features of the SBLive! to the Linux operating system.


Press Releases

 

The EMU10K1 is internally locked at 48kHz. See the wave audio section for more details.

 
 
contents

Overview

EMU10K1
tasks performed, upgradability through Live!Ware, open source?

Wave Audio
multi-channel, full-duplex, digital processing & mixing, locking at 48kHz.

3D Audio
positioning, up/down axis, 3D streams, A3D.

Environmental Audio
EAX 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, I3DL2, occlusion, obstructions, EAX in other sound cards.

Music & MIDI
FM & wavetable synthesis, voices, MIDI devices, MIDI channels, MIDI in/out, effects.

SoundFonts
General MIDI, GS, DLS2, DirectMusic, MPEG-4.

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