The Wave Blaster was an add-on MIDI-synthesizer for CreativeSound Blaster 16 and Sound Blaster AWE32 family of PC soundcards. It was a sample-based synthesisGeneral MIDI compliant synthesizer. For General MIDIscores, the Wave Blaster's wavetable-engine produced more realistic instrumental music than the SB16's onboard Yamaha-OPL3. The Wave Blaster attached to a SB16 through a 26-pin expansion-header, eliminating the need for extra cabling between the SB16 and the Wave Blaster. The SB16 emulated an MPU-401 UART, giving existing MIDI-software the option to send MIDI-sequences directly to the attached Wave Blaster, instead of driving an external MIDI-device. The Wave Blaster's analog stereo-output fed into a dedicated line-in on the SB16, where the onboard-mixer allowed equalization, mixing, and volume adjustment. The Wave Blaster port was adopted by other sound card manufacturers who produced both daughterboards and soundcards with the expansion-header: Diamond, Ensoniq, Guillemot, Oberheim, Orchid, Roland, TerraTec, Turtle Beach, and Yamaha. The header also appeared on devices such as the Korg NX5R MIDI sound module, the Oberheim MC-1000/MC-2000 keyboards, and the TerraTec Axon AX-100 Guitar-to-MIDI converter. Since 2000, Wave Blaster-capable sound cards for computers are becoming rare. In 2005, Terratec released a new Wave Blaster daughterboard called the Wave XTable with 16mb of on-board sample memory comprising 500 instruments and 10drum kits. In 2014, a new compatible card called Dreamblaster S1 was produced by the Belgian company Serdaco. In 2015 that same company released a high end card named Dreamblaster X1, comparable to Yamaha and Roland cards. In 2016 DreamBlaster X2 was released, a board with both waveblaster interface and USB interface.
WaveBlaster II
Creative released the Waveblaster II shortly after the original Waveblaster. Waveblaster II used a newer E-mu EMU8000 synthesis-engine. Some people believe that, despite using a smaller 2MB instrument ROM, the Waveblaster II delivered better renditions in most MIDI-scored games, likely due to what they feel is better sample refinement and balancing between instruments. While the original Waveblaster greatly improved upon the acoustic quality of the SB16's built-in FM-synthesis, the acoustic quality of its instrument-set was poorly regarded. By the general public. By the time the SB16 reached the height of its popularity, competing MIDI-daughterboards had already pushed aside the Waveblaster. In particular, Roland's Sound Canvas daughterboards, priced higher than Creative's offering, were highly regarded for their unrivalled musical reproduction in MIDI-scored game titles. By comparison, the WaveBlaster's instruments were improperly balanced, with many instruments striking at different volume-levels
Reception
Computer Gaming World in 1993 praised the Wave Blaster's audio quality and stated that the card was the best wave-table synthesis device for those with a compatible sound card.
