Retro Review: MultiWave AudioWave 16 AISP (SCSI) - Part 1

28th November 2023

Here's an interesting sound card I picked up in April this year - the rare AudioWave 16 AISP (SCSI) from MultiWave Innovations. Looking around on the internet, there is pretty much nothing on this card, so I'm having to dig around with this one. MultiWave weren't a prominent player, at least in sound cards. They had a larger presence in the communication devices and professional video market.

MultiWave AudioWave 16 AISP (SCSI)
Bought in April 2023 for £59

The AudioWave 16 AISP (SCSI) is a 16-bit ISA sound card that supports Ad Lib, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro and Windows Sound System. There was a 'Pro' version of this same card, but I'm really not sure what it added.

The Flypast

It's another excellent example of an early 90s busy card with lots to see. Here are the highlights:

• A Crystal CS4231KL audio codec
• Two Media Vision 'Thunder' chips (MVD121 and MVD201)
• A Yamaha YMF262-M audio chip
• A Yamaha YAC-512M digital-to-analogue converter
• A Zilog Z0538010 SCSI controller chip
• A 4-pin CD Audio input header
• A lot of jumpers
• A Game/MIDI port and four 3.5mm jacks on the backplate

The card has an FCC ID of KLZ1005I, is a version 1.0 card and is dated 1993 on the silkscreen. The newest soldered-in component with a date stamp is the Crystal chip which is week 33 of 1993, putting its manufacture sometime during 16th-22nd August that year.

It has been identified by Vogons' contributor bristlehog that a version of the AudioWave 16 AISP exists which is labelled AudioWave 16 AISP (SONY), which is version 1.3 and has a Sony CD-ROM header instead of a SCSI one.

Crystal CS4231KL

The heart of this sound card is the Crystal CS4231KL - a 16-bit audio codec whose role is to handle the analogue audio to digital signal compression/decompression, audio filtering and mixing. It had a number of enhancements over its predecessor, the CS4248 (aka AD1848), including up to five analogue inputs over CS4248's three, mixer attenuation control on line input, MPC Level 2-compliant mixing, ADPCM and Big Endian audio format support, full duplex DMA, and independent selection of capture and playback audio data formats.

Like its forebear, the CS4231KL came with MWave^TM technology, which was a DSP invention developed by IBM and Texas Instruments that combined audio telephony (modems) with 16-bit CD quality sound card capability.

Audio Chipsets

This sound card's audio standards come from three seperate sources on the board:

1) The two Media Vision Thunder Board chips - MVD121 and MVD201.
2) The Yamaha YMF262-M chip.
3) The aforementioned Crystal CS4231.

I'm not 100% sure what the 100-pin MVD121 chip is - according to Vogons member Ozzuneoj, the chip is "apparently a later version of the chip used on the PAS16... possibly more closely related to the Jazz16. Either way, this chip is likely the source of the MIDI functionality, and is the reason that the card has MIDI jumpers and is advertised has having MIDI support on the box.". Or is it just a separate codec for the MVD201? The jumpers for MIDI port address and MIDI Enable do go into the MVD121 chip.

The 44-pin MVD201 chip (also seen badged as 547-0002, and as 547-0001 on the original Thunder Board) was the DSP (Digital Signal Processor) that provided the card with its Thunder Board, Ad Lib, and Sound Blaster 2.01 compatibility.

In February 1992, Media Vision entered into an agreement with Cirrus Logic to have their new chips fabricated. The MVD101 Multimedia Audio Controller, the MVD201 which was an audio processor compatible with Ad Lib and Sound Blaster boards and was designed to be tightly coupled with the MVD101, MVA416 with their ADC/DAC and MVA611 which was their AGC (automatic gain control mic and power amplifier). It's not beyond comprehension that Cirrus Logic (later Crystal Semiconductor) might have also got the rights to reproduce one of these under the Crystal branding as part of this agreement.

In August 1992, MediaVision was involved in a lawsuit with Creative Labs and as part of the settlement they had to licence Creative Labs' DSP v2.01 code. Because this card's chips both have the "THUNDER" logo, it is likely they were manufactured before this lawsuit settlement. Chips etched with 547-XXXX came after the lawsuit. Several clones of the MediaVision Thunder Board were produced and these all had this identical pair of chips. Some examples of such cards include the Protac Thunderboard (FCC ID: I4UAV205P4) and Compro LaserWave Supra 16.

Also present on the card is an original Yamaha YMF262-M (OPL3), which provides the card with stereo Sound Blaster Pro support, and a Yamaha YAC512 which is the audio DAC for the YMF262. It makes you wonder why they felt the need to also include the Thunder chips since the OPL3 chip fully supports Ad Lib and Sound Blaster 2.0 as well. If you know or have a theory on this, let me know.

Finally, the CS4231KL provides the card with its Windows Sound System support. So all in, the card supports five distinct sound standards.

SCSI Controller

The card's SCSI CD-ROM interface is implemented using a Zilog Z0538010 chip, which is a clone of the NCR 5380. This is the same identical set up as found on the MediaVision PAS16.

The chip is designed for CD-ROM drives, but it can be made to work with other SCSI devices in Windows 95/98 such as SCSI hard drives, removable/erasable optical drives and removable cartridge drives.

The Backplate

Probably the first sound card I've seen that doesn't have any indications on the backplate to tell you which jack does what. Not to worry... when the card is vertical in an expansion slot, starting from the TOP they are:

• Speaker Out
• Line Out
• Line In
• Mic In

The game/MIDI port is fully MPU-401 compatible, which is provided by the MVD121 chip (the earlier MVD101 chip used on some of the original Media Vision cards like the ProAudio Spectrum used a proprietary interface that was not MPU-401 compatible). This compatibility is important, as it's required if you wish to connect an external MIDI unit to this game/MIDI port, such as a Roland SC-55, Yamaha MU80, or others that adhere to the Roland MPU-401 interface standard. Bear in mind that this MPU-401 compatibility only extends to UART mode, not Intelligent/Normal mode. For more information on these modes, visit my MIDI page.

Configuring the Card

As I mentioned earlier, the card has lots of jumpers - it's *not* a Plug & Play card. Here's a breakdown of what each of them does (the ones in bold indicate the card's default setting):

In the upper-left corner of the card are the following 9 jumpers:

JP1 and JP3 are next to the Zilog SCSI controller chip. This is where you configure the board's SCSI and MIDI IRQs. JP1 is used to set the MIDI IRQ (only used for the SCSI interface), and JP3 are your choices for the SCSI controller :

Just below these two are two more jumpers marked SEL0 and SEL1, which are used to set the Windows Sound System (Wavetable) I/O port address:

And below that is one marked 'CD-ROM':

Drivers & Utilities

Despite being a card from 1993, MultiWave Innovation did produce Windows 95 drivers for the card. The original sound card came with DOS, Windows 3.1/3.11 and OS/2 drivers only.

In Part 2, I will install the drivers and check out what this sound card can do.