LGR Oddware - Disney Sound Source 

Wow! I was working for Disney Software (as it was named by then) when we came out with the Disney Sound Source. For its time, it wasn't that bad. We were actually pretty proud of it. There was a nice "hidden Mickey" change to the Sound Source where the sound vents on top appeared in the shape of Mickey's head and ears. Its neat to see it so many years later. Thank you for the video!

While watching this vid I realized that I finally can understand spoken english without any problems, without need for subtitles or anything.

What I like in this show is the fact that you can watch an episode from a decade ago and the content is still "up to date"!

I found myself laughing when you called the parallel adapter a "Speech thing". Then you followed with a close-up shot revealing the products name "Speech thing". LOL

Micky Mouse empowered hardware to fight the forces of evil in Wolfenstein 3D... what a dream.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that "Covex Speech Thing" is the actual name of the device, and not just a series of brain farts...

When I was a kid, hearing voice recordings coming from a PC was pretty impressive. I probably would have sat there and played every single sound file off that disk out of sheer awe. But then we got an Amiga and it could do that sort of thing out of the box. AMAZEBANG

Hi, this is Harry who built the clone device shown in the Covox Speech Thing video - really enjoyed seeing the Disney Sound Source, I've never actually seen one working before - I must say that the sound quality from it was a bit disappointing though!

Oh my, I remember being around severn years old playing all the DOS games I had, and seeing that "Disney Sound Source" in their setups, and wondering: "what on earth does wolfenstein have to do with little mermaid"? :D I forgot about it until now and the mystery is finally revealed to me. :)

The MOD File played at the end is fantastic. I'd love to hear the whole thing played through the Sound Source. Adds a nice feel to what we heard

you see people like REREZ, with modern "studios" and professional like reviews, and then there's LGR, moquette and feets with not even the socks on... 10/10 relatable

It's weird hearing a Disney device saying "Shake it Baby".

Man this brought me back! I completely forgot about this thing until I watched another of your recent oddware vids. If memory serves I used this thing for years. Being a teenager with no income short of an allowance I have fond memories, if not fading, memories of it. I don't recall using it with windows but again i remember hanging onto it way longer than i should have. I also remember thinking what an awesome value it was for me considering the price of sound cards and what an upgrade it was versus using the PC speaker only for sfx. Great job on your vids. Didn't realize you have been doing these for so long but you def have a new fan! Keep up the great work and glad this stuff is being captured for posterity :)

This brings back some amazing memories. I got this thing bundled with a game called “The Rocketeer” from Software ETC back in 1991. I remember it sounding so amazing when I first installed it but it didn’t work for anything else without crazy hacks 😂

Never thought I'd hear digitized liquid drum n bass but its pretty good :)

Duke Nukem 3D isn't educational?

I just wanted to say that I've been subscribed for... a number of years now, and I think it's fantastic that you've kept the quality of your videos so fantastically consistent, and so consistently fantastic for all this time. Sure, it's kind of obvious that you've adapted a little to the whole "makin money" thing, but that's fine by me. What I'm saying is, you're awesome, your videos are awesome, and I love your style.

Heh, it's a pretty clever little thing. A resistor ladder is basically the simplest DAC you can make - it's literally just a bunch of resistors after all. And that's all it is. Everything else is done in software... a lot like the PC speaker, really. That's probably why Dvorak thought it was the next big thing in sound, it's so dead simple that you legitimately could have seen it being added to every PC. Of course, prices for sound blaster style hardware dropped massively, and that never came to pass, but it certainly wasn't stupid.

I've greatly enjoyed the evolution of Clint's facial hair over the years.

Wasn't expecting to hear drum n bass track playing at the end. Very coo

Nice to be able to finally see one of these after hearing them being mentioned a countless amount of times in other videos. Pretty awesome.

Man, for years I've seen Disney Sound Source listed in old PC games, but I've never actually experienced one in action. Good on you for making this video, my friend.

back then I always had a sound blaster. I remember editing my autoexec.bat and config.sys to free up conventional memory and load drivers high.

So many great shots on this video, you really didn't let any detail go by. Amazing work as always, man.

It's an impressive device in its own right, especially when you consider the price of it back in the day. You do get a lot for such a small amount of money, relatively speaking.

Do you think it's too late to register for the warranty? xD

Out of all your videos, I think I enjoy the Oddware series the most.You balance informative and enteraining quite well, and it's quite interesting to learn about hardware and software that was either a) before my time, or b) only relevant during my toddler years. As always, keep up the amazing work, Clint!

Before Windows 95, setting up sound a video cards on the PC was often a huge pain in the ass. Even adding memory was sometimes a pain. We are so spoiled now with OS drivers and such that take care of that stuff for us. JW3HH

This is what I used growing up. Had a CompuAdd 286 machine. Played the crap out of Wolf3d, Stunts, Battlehawks 1942, Prince of Persia, Test Drive, F19 Stealth Fighter, Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer and others. The Sound Source is all I knew, other than the PC speaker, until Windows 95!

I freaking love your Oddware segment, I've even built my own Covox speech thing after I saw your episode, it works pretty well.. More oddware please.

While I definitely appreciate the history on this kind of stuff I was waiting on the edge of my seat for him to FINALLY plug it in and show off what it can do.

I love watching these while eating

That resistor network you show at 16:34 is actually a crude DAC.

Man, look at that Audacity waveform as Clint's voice makes sweet sensual love to it. Hot.

Correct me if i'm wrong, but I believe the reason it needed an adapter for those tandys was because they had the bare PCB edge for paralel output instead of a DB-25, so you had to get an adapter which most Tandy owners of the time had to have bought at a radioshack to use any non-tandy printers. (I used to be a general mgr for radioshack back in the day)

Great Video!...I like the FM radio style mic.....Wake up with Lazy game reviews in the morning! Cajones in the fast lane!

Aw I wanted to hear some of those odd sound effects from floppy included in the package.

Anyone ever told you that you kind of sound like duke nukem?

Oh the memories. I used to have this. Bought it at a computer show (remember those? 😅). Whats odd, these game companies put a lot of effort into the sounds they produced back in the day. Especially the music. And it was different levels to it depending on what hardware. At the time I was little and didn't understand the tech behind it all, but it was definitely some differences in music played on this device vs SoundBlaster's. I was so excited to get the SB upgrade!

Not related but I love the designs of Blue mics. That Snowball mic and shockmount are cool as eff.

Awesome video as usual. You have a voice made for commercials ^^ I'd love to see vintage video cards reviews and such.

Very nice, my middle school had a couple of computers with Disney Sound Source, but they modded the battery holder to some 9volt power supplies, and had big old school headphones plugged into them.

This is really the only place where you can get all your Disney Sound Source information needs covered. About time!

Bought one back then... My parents bought the family's first PC in 1991 (we had an Apple II previously), but to keep costs down they insisted on sticking with the basics, they would NOT hear any requests for an optional sound card. Actually they bought King's Quest 5 with that computer, it might have been my desire to HEAR that game that motivated me. So, I bought Arachnophobia, which came with a Disney Sound Source (not ENTIRELY sure if I remember that Arachnophobia came with the Sound Source or the Sound Source came with Arachnophobia, but pretty sure it was the former), because back then I didn't know yet about opening computers and modifying computers and building computers, and buying a real sound card would have required my parents' cooperation to have it installed. :) So, I got sound without having to open up the computer. Win-win! Today I learned: The sound card was inside the parallel port thing, I always thought it was inside the speaker, and the phone line cable just passed the appropriate signals to it, LOL! I thought the plug merely passed the wires through to the other side, and a handful out to the phone plug.

Plugging the two sound interfaces together? Mind = Blown

:D - another great review Clint, well done, and thank you for continuing to make these oddware oddities!

3:34 Minnie looks good in a swimming suit.

those voice clips reminds me so much of the office in Grim Fandango :O

the production value from 2013 to 2018 sure has changed !

It might be a big request, but I'd love you to get your hands on a NeXTstation :)

I don't know why anyone would want to buy a Sound Source if they had a Tandy 1000, because at least on that one game you showed us, Disney games supported Tandy DAC audio as well! But anyway... what happens if you try to print something when you have the Sound Source turned on? Do you get random noise from the speaker?

Where did you get that Portal 2 Aperture Science Safety First Sign? I'm searching that for Months

What an interesting piece of oddware. Thanks for the vid dude!

The internal construction of it according to the pictures you have shown indicates that it is a single channel R2R dac buffered through an amplifier. (the circuit diagram shown uses the IEC symbol instead of the US variant.) Technically, it is just a crude dac tucked onto the parallel port. All incompatibilities are down to software. The chip inside the unit is a Quad opamp, that does both amplification and filtering, it is rather simple. Not being able to play music as the same time as sound effects is only down to software. The needed hardware is there.

Haha, great Aladdin quote at the end there.

I paused the beginning and when I resumed the slight sheen to Clint and the casualness of the video made it feel like he was doing this drunk. Which makes the whole thing funnier.

Nice pants man. Can you do an oddware episode on those?

I love your Oddware Vids I have seen everyone of them and can't wait to see more.

Thanks for the sources Clint. Great vid too as always.

Love your content. i so rarely see other people named Clint.

Somehow in Stunt Island I was able to get it to play the pre recorded pcm music (as opposed to OPL2) on a Sound Blaster 16 by telling it I had a Sound Source even though I didn't.

Oldschool LGR are amazing to watch :D

I actually had one of these back in the early '90s. It came with some Mickey Mouse educational software my parents bought for my little brother. The Sound Source was a step up from the PC Speaker, but there wasn't a whole lot of software support for it. We finally got a Sound Blaster a year later.

Do you plan on future Oddware segments? I recently subscribed to your channel specifically for these, they're so interesting.

Had one of these for a short while. Got it from a bargain bin from a "music & entertainment" store. Came bundled with a game i recall & bought it just from curiosity as i had never seen one albeit having visited pc-stores frequently. Perhaps it was only sold as a "toy" in non- "pro" pc stores? Got for like 1-2 bucks but this was also way beyond Soundblaster (and clones) having won absolutely everything. Wasnt particular impressive, but the idea was a good one. Having an external "plug & play"kids friendly sound solution was no double much easier then having to juggle irq & dma when installing a internal soundcard.

I'm wondering what would happen if you plugged in the Speech Thing module into a standard phone jack...

i grew up in a suburb that in the 90s was _full_ of Microsoft employees and other people working for similar tech companies, and my mom worked for a computer maintenance company. So i had access to alot of these "oddwear" sorts of things growing up, even though i didnt own any of them. I remember someone giving me one of these when i was a little kid and never could figure out what it was for (no box, the person who gave it to me picked it up at a garage sale and didnt know what it was for exactly). Until today i always thought it was just a weird speaker or a poorly designed answering machine (because of the shape).

Man thanks for adding me on facebook dude might I say you are very interactive with your audience. Thats a great way to grow your channel

Heh, the more you know. Back when I was a kid trying to setup the sound for these old DOS games I always wondered what the hell this Disney Sound Source thing was and why it was compatible with games like Rise of the Triad.

Walt Disney Computer Software did another video game known as Disney Infinity (which included the USB power base). The USB power base is a piece of computer hardware which is probably a pluggable USB accessory and is compatible with current IBM/Lenovo, Dell, Apple, Gateway, Sony, eMachines and HP computers (as much as PlayStation, Nintendo and XBOX game consoles).

I have this loose, and also an animation/paint program published by Disney that also used it for sound.

I LOLED So hard on the last bit with the speech thing

This was 8 years ago but wow clint looks so much younger without the beard.

"Juicy squish." .... Fantastic.

I once bought a 1.44" floppy with Star Trek audio files at a convention so I understand the desire to include random sound clips

Lol, Dvorak also said that no one would want to use a mouse.

I have one of these in my junk box. Several years ago when I was playing with it I could play MP3's over it. I wish IBM would have made this as a base for it's music capabilities, it would have been amazing what people would have came up with.

I use to have one! o wow. Great channel , and devilish humor!

Got the Sound Source as a pack-in with The Rocketeer game. Was my first computer game ever (for a computer I owned anyway), bought alongside the D&D Forgotten Realms Gold Box collection. Was still using DOS at this point, Windows 3.0 came a little bit later. Mine must have been an older version because pretty sure I only got the 5.25 disk with it.

Are you wearing pajama pants? lol

How is your voice so smooth? :O

god I love this channel.

"I will have to not look into that, because I don't care enough" ... If only sales guys were as honest as you!

I got to LGR for that Oddware. :D

we had one of these on your family computer growing up!

Thanks for supplying a download link for the included wav files. Some of them are quite funny. :D

I'm so glad I was born either during or after all this confusing stuff was figured out more or less.

Ha I loved the awkward cut at the start there. :)

I bought one of these from Kmart back in the early 90s. I had a PS/2, and normal sound cards were prohibitively expensive for me at the time, much less an MCA version. It was only useful for me under Windows which I avoided as much as possible (due to it barely running acceptably on my 386sx/16), so within a day it went back. That said, within Windows, since everything went through the Windows sound system which then output to this, it worked decently well.

That was my first sound device in 1994.

Figures. Yesterday I watch your review on Disney's Coaster game and leave a comment about how I remember a friend having it and using the Disney Sound Source on it. Yeesh, I'm just going to go out on a limb and guess you have already reviewed anything I might know and leave it at that. Unless you haven't ever played "Ultimate Wizard" on C64... ;-).

i used to have this, had some really good games on it like rocketeer.

I wonder what would happen if you plug the Sound Source to a phone using that RJ11. Probably nothing, but still it would be hilarious to listen to your game's sound effects through the earpiece of a telephone :D

WTH?? I love LGR's videos and want to make sure he gets paid but a 19 minute commercial for a 20 minute video? Come on RU-vid, seriously?

Did you just do that review in your pyjamas? Nice :)

I became aware by watching this video. Thanks for making me aware, awaremaker.

Great video, it felt like old school LGR :)

are you wearing jammies while making videos?! awsome :D

have you ever thought of being a narrator

Wait, Disney released a PC game based on the movie Arachnophobia?!