Sonic Blaster

Sonic Blaster
Manufacturer	Applied Engineering, Inc.
Year	1988
Type	Stereo Sound Card
Original Price	$129
Compatibility	IIGS

Sonic Blaster cables. The top cable has two mini stereo phone jacks on the plate that attaches to the IIGS backplane for plugging in a set of speakers and a microphone. The bottom cable connects the Sonic Blaster to the Ensoniq sound connector on the IIGS motherboard.

Although the IIGS came standard with an Ensoniq sound chip that was capable of producing 15 voices simultaneously, the machine had no provision for using it to output stereo sound, or to record sounds. Applied Engineering supplied a means to access the potential of Ensoniq chip with the Sonic Blaster. This card allowed you to hook up a set of external speakers for stereo sound and to digitize sounds. Many IIGS games and music applications take advantage of the Sonic Blaster's stereo sound and music capabilities. Games that use the card include Tomahawk, 4th and Inches, Winter Games, Silent Service, Skate or Die. The Music Studio, Instant Music, and The Music Construction Set also utilize the Sonic Blaster's capabilities.

Stereo sounds can be recorded from a microphone, stereo, CD player, TV, or other source and edited using the included software.

This card can be installed in slots 1, 2, or 6 and provide stereo output without losing the slot's built-in function. To record sounds, however, the slot has to be set to "My Card" in the IIGS Control Panel, which means that the slot's built-in function in not available.

Sonic Blaster Software

Sonic Blaster Screen Shot

The Sonic Blaster software runs under GS/OS and is hard drive installable. It is a menu-driven program that supports many sound formats and allows you to record, play, and edit sounds. Several editing functions are available, including cut/copy/paste, amplify, silence, reverse, fade in/out, and echo. The playback and editing functions are available without having the Sonic Blaster card installed. The program disk is bootable and includes a program to play a sound during GS/OS startup. Applied Engineering also provided a disk of "Audio Art" which contains several digitized sounds.

Resources

The Sonic Blaster manual covers both the hardware installation and the software installation and use.

Sonic Blaster Program Disk - This bootable 3.5" disk contains the Sonic Blaster program (Version 1.0) and a few sample sounds. This is a ShrinkIt disk archive (.sdk) of a bootable 3.5" GS/OS diskette.

Sonic Blaster Audio Art Disk - This disk contains several digitized sounds for use with the Sonic Blaster program. This is a ShrinkIt disk archive (.sdk) of a 3.5" ProDOS disk.

Sonic Blaster catalog page from the Applied Engineering Fall/Winter 1990 catalog.