The AdLib Gold Experience: Is it really worth $3000? 

For those asking for a video of all the Juke Box songs, well, that's already a thing: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ATb8zhdINpg.html Video quality is a bit warbly but you're not missing much. It's all about the sound and the sound is superb 👍

You can't fool me, Clint. This is really a Tech Tales episode, isn't it? Well played, sir. Well played.

After watching this video, I'd say that Creative Technology deserves what Realtek did to them.

Truly a story of "what goes around comes around". Creative got their footing by being Adlib compatible, then got replaced by everyone else because all sound cards ending up being Sound Blaster compatible.

This seems to have been a theme with Creative Labs. See also: Aureal Semiconductor, a very early leader in binaural audio, breaking ground on the technology in _the mid 90's,_ and not really expanded on until very recently. The tl;dr is it allowed for simulating how audio would react in a defined 3d space, giving significantly more realistic qualities in echo, attenuation, etc. The company was frivolously sued by Creative Labs, and despite winning the suit, Aureal had taken on too much in legal fees and had to file for bankruptcy, resulting in sale of all their assets and patents to Creative, who proceeded to not use any of them, putting the development of binaural audio in general back some 20 or so years. Creative Labs can suck it indeed.

Well, people seem to forget that Creative was only "creative" in ways of theft, deceit, monopoly, anti-consumer, and corruption practices. Maybe a video on how Creative bankrupt Aureal with expensive lawsuits that they actually lost.

"Ahh, smells like a pallet of electronics filled with broken dreams."

"Don't meet your heroes- -especially without the surround module installed." LGR, 2021

I love that your eBay user tag is literally "LGR (yes, really)"

There are later models of the Adlib card, I have a gold edition from 1995 (bought it in 96) and I'm still using it in a W95 PC. Back then I had trouble installing the card and I called Adlib since I live in Quebec City. One of the engineers, his name was Mike, told me to bring the computer over at Adlib and he would look at it... 3 days later he called me, he found a tiny ball of solder shorting 2 pins of the CPU of a Miro video capture card I had in there. I was so glad he was the only person who was able to fix my 10K$ PC. That card had a Crystal chip, the sound samples are really good and thats why I'm still using it for playing MIDI files today. Great video!

man these tecnology companies were so shady since the early 90's up until to this day, I wonder how many good products we never saw launch because a bigger company didn't have a better product to compete with it.

Quebec's greatest contributions to humanity: 1- Adlib 2- Matrox 3- Poutine

Every second of this was beautiful. Imagine being sent back to the early 90ies and sitting up all night long playing these games on that setup, what a dream experience.

Worked with Yamaha to delay chips to Adlib, then sidestepped Yamaha with their own CQM synthesis just a year later. They were aggressive.

I'm originally from Québec, and take pride in how the province is a hub for aerospace and software companies. It breaks my heart to hear that a local start-up specializing in computer hardware was basically destroyed by someone holding back the certification of a chip. Ad-lib could have been a true household name.

This is one of the most valuable expansion cards around . . . just behind a scalped GPU.

"35 year old PC hardware prices are hyper-inflated" You hurt me right in the 0-1 year old PC hardware.

Imagine buying one for $19 and selling it for $3000 now. That's quite insane 😄

I like the "LGR (yes, really)" on that $4000AUS bid history...

In 1995-1997ish, I worked for eTek Labs (spun out of Forte Technologies who developed the original Ultrasound) on the then-new AMD Interwave/Gravis Ultrasound PNP cards... We had a ton of dos games for our regression testing, and bug squashing, as well as some sound cards. I remember seeing the original AdLib card but I've never seen the Gold. A lot of the "Creative being the behemoth" story rings true from our side of the story too. It was always frustrating knowing that the Ultrasound/Ultrasound Max and the increased capabilities and performance of the Ultrasound PNP didn't mean much when Creative held so much more of a market share over us... People didn't really care about wavetable support, or how technically impressive SBOS was... That's probably also the reason why the rev C Interwave chips were never finished (with full filtering and effects on each of the 32 channels... oh well...

Wow, I never knew Creative was such an dirty company. I've lusted after so many of their products over the years but I don't think I ever bought one; glad I didn't.

can you please record the full list of adlib gold songs and upload them to a playlist? I need that in my life right now

What a great Tech Tales! 😉 So, I'm dying to know: why was there a BOOT SECTOR VIRUS on the 4th disk? 😅

The clean board design, the sparkling gold, this card is beautiful!

This is an Oddware and a Tech Tales episode together with a fantastic showcase all in one! Awesome video, Clint!

The mention of a daughterboard reminds me of AVGN Jaguar episode " You have a game console not many people own and you create an addon that requires owning the game console. *What were they thinking?* "

If you weren’t around at the time this was new, its hard to imagine just how much of a difference a sound card could make to a PC. It went from beeps to full music synthesis and sometimes voice.

I remember that background noise from the soundblaster being affected by moving the mouse pointer LOL

Oh dear. I killed the Gold as it was not viable to build. I became technical director for Adlib Multimedia Inc. after Ad Lib went into liquidation. The 1000 was never put back into production as it had been stock piled along with a substantial parts holding.. The main problem was the Gold ISA control chip, we ended up scrapping the whole stock of it (some 100k parts) for not many dollars. Other parts were included in the new products we designed in house which were coded ASB for Advanced Sound Boards ASB16 32 and 64. The stock of gold SCSI board components held was used on the ASB to provide a universal port on the card along with the high quality audio grade components.... All the design and software development was done in house in Québec Canada. The card you have there was a late card, the address on grand allee shows it.. for a year Adlib multimedia operated out of the technology park in ste-foy... With v1 manuals, there were many nights spent rewriting them for V2...

The subtitle is hilarious. 4:05 "stressful yet exiting slicing."

That moment the card was taken out of it's anti static sealbag.... history was written.

So glad to see the masterpiece Dune from Cryo! The music from Stephane Picq are for me one of the best memories from my childhood, I will never be bored to hear them ! I always love to play Dune on my original 486 Packard Bell! Cheers from France !

Hey, I'm the guy who brought Trixter his first AdLib Gold almost 20 years ago (not this one), and right now you might hate me, but Trixter's card ran me around 5 Euros incl. shipping, my own that I still posess, was around 11 Euros. Prices are around 2002... times change... You made quite a nice video on it! I want to add some stuff and correct some other. The SB Pro was mentioned to be 22 KHz Mono. In fact, it's either 44.1 KHz Mono or 22.5 KHz Stereo. (Why? They used a Mono DAC and flipped between L/R in Stereo mode for each byte.) One thing to mention about the SB 16 is that most cards had a flawed ADC, and this meant they would also only record with 12 bits resolution! Given the noise the SB 16 produces (which you captured quite well), you probably wouldn't even have heard those 4 missing bits, as they have been lost in noise... so it's tragic that this card was even named to be inferior just by looking at the bits. You prove that AdLib made in fact the better audio circuit, while most Sound Blasters below the AWE 64 (and some 32 and some even fewer SB 16) had not-so-well-made implementations... By the way, you picked an SB 16 with an original OPL3, but some viewers might not known: Creative invented something called "CQM" that was supposed to emulate OPL3 with later cards, namely most (but not all) Vibra cards and even some cards w/o Vibra label. It sounded even harsher and quite thin... Here's a link on my take on the card, as well as most other sound cards of that era: crossfire-designs.de/link/soundcards

That's rough about Creative freezing them out of those chips. I never knew about that. Jack Tramiel was right, business really is war.

"Owning the Adlibs" -Creative

Clint calling a 200KB driver "bloated" is hilarious thinking of the bloat we have to download now LOL

Bless the fine folks who loan you all this awesome stuff to document its condition and use. Seriously very cool and generous.

That "Multimedia PC" logo just oozes early 90s: * Rainbow gradient with heavy dithering * Black and white clip-art-y CD icon (Plus, I feel like it was on every box of software back then)

Not sad about Creative's fate after they did this to adlib.

I just watched with the closed captions enabled and your descriptions of the casual sounds just made a great video, better. So, now that we've all learned about this amazing and rare piece of history, who here cant wait for that 2nd stimulus check!

Amazing video

The noise difference between the two is one of my memories of early 90s PCs. I was always told to turn off the speakers AND the pc when I was done

"A golden unicorn that poops diamonds"? That almost sounds like Butt Stallion.

Your channel is such a gem. Not only do you do your homework but the presentation is fantastic. Thank you for all you do!

Woo! My card made the video (with the Surround Module!) @5:43 Excellent review Clint! Such a nostalgic piece of retro tech!

Damn, that stunts soundtrack. This was the first PC game I ever played and the soundtrack has been stuck somewhere in my head even after all these years.

Ad Lib was Quebec-based?! I had no idea, and that's where I'm from!

Dear LGR, Loved your video, even watched it two times! When I saw the intro to Masters of Orion, that was a lot of memories! I create video's about soundcards myself over here on RU-vid , but I've always steered away from the old ISA cards. Altough I own a Soundblaster Pro (sorry AdLib!) and a 486DX2! It was always such a hassle to get it working! Hope to see more on soundcards in the future!

I was going on a binge of your videos from several years ago about the Sims 3 rewatching them all, made me super nostalgic. Love your channel dude

I feel like there was a missed opportunity to play Descent with the AdLib Gold card but I loved this video. I had no idea Creative was so underhanded.

Imagine if AdLib had survived into the new millenium? Maybe we would have built in AdLib chips on our motherboards?

Your videos Sir are amazing, informative entertaining and just generally high quality. Thank you for all your work.

Man, the quality of your videos and your narration is insane. Thanks for them!

The older I get the more I love FM Synth. One thing I noticed is how many solid state capacitors the Gold 1000 card had compared to the SoundBlasters. Creative used a lot of electrolytic caps, but the AdLib had very few electrolytic caps. Part of me wonders if your collection of cards would sound better with brand new electrolytic capacitors. I imagine more than a few of them have aged to the point where they're partially out of spec. I just recapped my original non-TMSS "Hi-Def Graphics" Genesis and it sounds quite a bit warmer and fuller now.

*A sound card for $3000?* *NVIDIA in 2021: "Hold my beer."*

this is the first time in my life i've even heard of this thing, and i'm *excited* about him hopening it. this is the sign of a great and passionate content creator right there!

Thank you for these videos, the nostalgia and memories they bring back are great.

I swear Clint your videos keep getting more and more interesting, truly one of the most wholesome and entertaining channels on yt

According to my RU-vid ads, yes we should invest in gold. Stocking up on these now.

OK, whoever wrote your closed captions made me chuckle at the description of the Dune music. Thanks, I needed a chuckle right now.

Great video. Thanks for putting it together. I have a couple different cards that also have that same special Yamaha chip on them and supposedly they are Adlib Gold compatible but I have way too many projects going on to test them yet.

Physically, its a really pretty card too

Oh man, Tyrian. I still get that music playing through my head 20 years later.

I have to say I really appreciate the extra effort to have decent subtitles on your videos. Great as always, thanks Clint.

I appreciate the work that went into directly recording all the audio outputs instead of using the camera mic! :D

(cuts open the bag) Me: He's definitely going to sniff it. (Clint sniffs it)

I live 5 minutes away (by car) from where the Ad Lib offices were on Grande Allée East. The rent prices on Grande Allée are, and always have been among the most expensive in the province if we exclude Montreal. The area is full of luxury hotels (including the Château Frontenac), the Quebec Parliament and touristic places. Maybe around 80% of the buildings in this area are historic and are at least 250 years old. Why didn't they put their offices in the industrial park or in a more "urban" area of the city, I don't know! Now they are gone, that's shameful.

Hi, Clint! Great video as always! Just a quick note about the date code on those chips. The first two digits are the year (as you got it right). However, the last two are the week of the year, not the month. So in the case of the main chip which reads "9209", that is the ninth week of 1992 (which in turn would be around the last days of February and the first days of March 1992). Keep up with the excellent work! Greetings from Argentina!

Out of all the channels I'm subscribed to I can honestly say I appreciate your attention to detail when I comes to sound.

“A pallet of electronics filled with broken dreams” - love it!

I'm mainly here for the retro games but I still always watch these videos. Even though the subject isn't that fascinating to me, the production quality and Clints presentation is top notch.

Love your content LGR. Perfect watching material while waiting for WIndows 98SE to install on a virtual drive

Awesome video doc. Loved it, this should be on tv. But i really loved the wooden desk. THank you

Up to $4,000 for one of these, how much was this still sealed. I love old-new stock, brings you back to the past of someone who would have bought top line components in the 90's and seeing it first hand, all new and shiny not used and dusty. Amazing.

Excellent coverage on the Adlib Gold! Thanks for this.

I like the lighting you did in this where you had it matched the game you were playing. Nice touch.

The AdLib Gold does have amazing stereo separation, and it is surprising to notice that through RU-vid.

Why the heck is there a Boot Sector Virus on (what I assume to be) the official included installation disks?

Another fascinating video. Thank you, LGR!

I find it a bit amazing when you look at video cards and sound cards of the era (ie. early to mid 90's) compared to today, how large some of these cards had to be, whereas today (some 25-30 years later) they can fit the same type of stuff into one or two chips that are the size of a dime and put that into a smartphone that you can carry in your pocket.

Can't say I've been THIS early to an LGR video before, but after seeing the $3000 pricetag in the title, I HAD to check it out right damn now.

Cue a pallet of the things being unearthed at Computer Reset.

I've always loved these types of multi waveform FM synth sounds. I have a DX-5 and SY-77. The SY-77 I got just for the multi waveform FM synthesis.

Brings me back. I remember well the "Soundblaster / AdLib" conflict. And seeing those home-town addresses on the docs... *sigh* Where did all the time go?? Even your Altec Lansing speakers neatly tucked in next to the monitor makes me want to cry... seems like just yesterday, in a house full of roommates, in our mid-20s or early 30s, all working in the Valley... all the old names, ghosts of companies long gone.

As others have requested as well, I would LOVE to have a nice recording of those songs from the Juke Box Gold! Huge fan of a good fm synth track, and those short samples you played at 19:21 are pretty epic sounding!

Oh man, I remember this Dune audio so well. I played that game to death. A must play if you like strategy games and Wing Commander 2 style graphic story progression and character interaction.

amazing!!! i can't believe you got to open this.

Do you have any clue of the quality of video this is? It's so comprehensive. Well done. The filmmaking is also top-notch ... please don't stop making videos.

This is that supreme LGR content.

Wow, so soundbaster screwed over AdLib, I know that’s business but dam does that make me hate sound-baster just a little

My man is an absolute bro for letting you unbox this. Hats off to you, sir...and great video as always, Clint. This is like sharing your significant other. Really.

thanks for introducing me to yet another channel to check out for all my old pc related needs

OMG, DUNE on LGR, finally !

This video should produce the opposite of the "Techmoan effect" on the price of this card.

Awesome! I remember seeing the option in Dune, trying it and getting rejected. Had to stick to boring old AdLib on my Media Vision Pro AudioSpectrum 16. I've now managed to collect all the parts necessary to play it again, except a working 386 motherboard (and obviously the original case). I do have a couple of 486 boards that would probably work though. I could even listen to the music with my Roland MT-32, which should work with the MPU-401 on the PAS16. But what I don't have is the spare time to spend a day tidying up the workbench and building the machine. I never knew the history of the card and the company that made it. I always just assumed it launched too late to compete and the SB16 just outsold it through brand power. Anys ways, great to hear what the AdLib Gold sounded like. Very awesome for the few games that were specifically written for it!

It's a shame Yamaha and Creative Labs conspired to basically bankrupt AdLib. Makes me glad I haven't purchased a single Creative Labs product in roughly 20 years. I am glad you made this video! I had always wondered about the AdLib Gold cards and I do remember seeing stuff about them in computer magazines back in the day!

Perfect video to enjoy with my lunch great timing Clint.

This story proves to me *again* that every huge company does terrible things to the little guy.

liked and subscribed, thanks LGR for the video!

Great Video!!!! i love chip's challenge back in the day