Gravis Ultrasound

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravis_UltraSound

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The Gravis Ultrasound soundcard series was the first one to offer hardware wavetable synthesis for PCs with for consumer prices. The original Ultrasound series was based on Advanced Gravis' own GF1 pipeline processor, which was capable of producing 32 voice polyphony and apply frequency shifting (with interpolation), amplitude modulation and panning independently to each voice. When this card was originally introduced in 1992, it could beat all other cards in the market hands down. Unfortunately, Creative Labs's Sound Blaster series had become a de facto standard and most people didn't feel like taking the risk of buying an Ultrasound. Because of this, the Ultrasound was mostly supported by people who knew that the card was technically superior and weren't concerned of scarce software support. The PC demoscene consists of such people, and an Ultrasound became an essential piece of hardware for any serious demoscener as many demos had support for the Ultrasound.

Being somewhat involved in the PC demoscene, I bought a Gravis Ultrasound MAX in 1994 to replace my old SB Pro and fell instantly in love with the card. The sounds it produced were crystal clear and played in perfect polyphony while using nearly zero CPU time. I bought an Ultrasound Extreme in early 1997 to replace my MAX, mainly to get better software support in DOS and Win95. After Gravis announced their withdrawal from the sound card market, I decided to supplement my collection of GF1 Ultrasounds with a GUS Classic and a GUS Ace since people were selling them at ridiculously low prices.

Gravis Ultrasound
1992
The Gravis Ultrasound (which was later referred to as 'Ultrasound Classic') was the first ever consumer soundcard to offer wavetable synthesis with full 32-voice polyphony. The earlier board revisions (pre-3.7) didn't have mixing abilities, so global volume had to be adjusted by scaling the GF1 voice volumes independently. Board revisions 3.7 and above included the ICS2101 mixer chip, which is small SOIC package near the GF1 PLCC socket. The GF1 also lacked the ability to sample audio with 16-bit resolution, so Gravis sold a separate 16-bit sampling daughtercard which connected to the long row of pins right above the ISA connector edge. The daughtercards were rather rare and their installation was troublesome due to to several jumpers that had to be altered to route all audio inputs and outputs to the Crystal CS4231 codec on the daughtercard.

Gravis Ultrasound MAX
1994
Maybe because of the trouble with the 16-bit sampling daughtercard with the Classic or just to cut production costs, Advanced Gravis decided to combine the GF1 and the CS4231 codec from the daughtercard onto a single soundcard, the Ultrasound MAX. This card became very popular among amateur musicians because of it's combination of clean wavetable synthesis and high quality audio codec for sampling and software playback. Since the GF1 and CS4231 had separate IRQs, it was possible to use both chips simultaneously, thus allowing the PC to be used, for example, as a real-time effect processor for an electric guitar. Still, after five years, the Ultrasound MAX is used a lot by people who care about sound quality.

Gravis Ultrasound Ace
1995
The Ultrasound Ace was directed at customers who didn't want to abandon their old soundcard (usually a Sound Blaster) but weren't quite satisfied with the pathetic FM synthesis their old card offered. Ultrasound Ace didn't have an built-in amplifier, nor did it have the timer registers on ports 388/389 which overlapped with the OPL-2/3 FM synthesizers. This allowed people to plug an Ultrasound Ace next to their old sound card and route the output of the Ace to the old card with an external "pass-through" cable that was supplied with the card.

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