Ad Lib, Inc. was a Canadian manufacturer of sound cards founded by Martin Prevel, a former professor of music and vice-dean of the music department at the Université Laval in Quebec City. Ad Lib’s best known product was an eponymously named sound card, the first add-on sound card for the IBM PC and compatibles to achieve widespread acceptance. It became a de facto standard.
Ad Lib History
The Ad Lib sound card used Yamaha’s YM3812 sound chip, also known as the OPL2. The best selling variant plugged into an 8-bit ISA slot. Ad Lib also created a Microchannel version for IBM PS/2 computers, but this is much less common.
The first game to support Ad Lib was Sierra On-Line’s King’s Quest IV, released in 1988. Sierra had also been an early supporter of the IBM PCjr and Tandy 1000’s enhanced sound. King’s Quest IV’s subsequent success helped the Ad Lib card gain mainstream media coverage. Sierra included support in its subsequent games, and as the Ad Lib gained market share, other publishers supported the Ad Lib in their games as well.
The combination of VGA graphics and Ad Lib audio allowed IBM compatibles to overtake the Amiga and Atari ST as home gaming computers.
The Ad Lib’s success soon attracted competition. Some companies cloned the Ad Lib outright. But in 1989, Creative Labs introduced its competing Sound Blaster card. The Sound Blaster extended the Ad Lib rather than just cloning it. The Sound Blaster was fully software compatible with Ad Lib’s hardware, and it also included a PCM audio channel and a game port. The Ad Lib omitted those two features. With additional features and better marketing, the Sound Blaster overtook Ad Lib as the de facto standard in PC gaming audio. Ad Lib’s response, the Ad Lib Gold, was a commercial failure and led to the company’s demise.
The Ad Lib Gold and bankruptcy
There is evidence Creative Labs engaged in anti-competitive behavior to cause the Ad Lib Gold’s failure. Yamaha made parts for both Creative and Ad Lib, with Creative being Yamaha’s biggest customer at the time. The chip that Yamaha created for Ad Lib card continually failed to pass testing, while Creative’s Yamaha chip passed. This enabled Creative to beat Ad Lib to market. Shortly after the Sound Blaster 16 reached the market, Ad Lib’s chip passed testing, but it was too late.
The Ad Lib Gold 1000 cost more than the Sound Blaster 16 and the two cards weren’t fully compatible. Both were backward compatible with the earlier Ad Lib card, but software had to explicitly support both cards’ 16-bit modes. Being earlier to market, the Sound Blaster 16 attracted more software support.
The Ad Lib Gold 1000’s layout has a lot of discrete circuitry and many surface-mount components in a grid array. Creative Labs was able to integrate their sound cards more tightly to reduce cost.
Ad Lib planned a Micro Channel version of the Ad Lib Gold, the Gold MC2000, for the IBM PS/2 series. However, Ad Lib went bankrupt before its release.
On May 1, 1992, Ad Lib filed for bankruptcy. German company Binnenalster GmbH acquired the assets of Ad Lib. Binnenalster renamed Ad Lib to Ad Lib Multimedia and relaunched the Ad Lib Gold sound card and other products. But Ad Lib never returned to its former prominence and Binnenalster sold Ad Lib Multimedia to Softworld Taiwan in 1994.
Replica Ad Lib sound cards
Today, original Ad Lib sound cards are highly collectible, with vintage Ad Lib Gold sound cards being especially prized. Modern reproductions of both cards exist, with reproductions of the original Ad Lib card being more useful to hobbyists. ISA Ad Lib reproductions are widely available on Ebay for $50-$70.
The most reliable way to tell the difference between an original Ad Lib and a modern reproduction is to examine chips on the card. Since all the chips but the YM3812 are still in production, the smaller chips will typically all have 21st century date codes on them. Also examine the YM3812. On originals, the YM3812 often has its markings scratched off, especially on early cards. When the markings are present, the date code will typically be from 1992 or earlier.
The bracket is another place to look. Ad Lib used eyelets to attach the bracket to the PCB. Modern replicas use screws.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.
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