> Generic motherboard audio by the mid 90’s was for most purposes as good as Creative stuff, but Creative used patents to artificially keep them from being better, while not making amazing stuff themselves.
I assume you made a typo and were thinking about mid 00s, as my memory tells me that motherboard audio was really rare thing in mid 90s.
It started to become common after Intel's AC97 standard. (I'd call that more late 90s... That is late 90s, early 00s possibly by the time it started to spread.
late 90s is a whole different thing than mid 90s.
The 97 in AC'97 is there for a reason.
Would still say that Audigy 2001 front panel was peak consumer audio experience. Good access for headphone out and ASIO support, so for anyone wnating to connect you a midi keyboard for first excursion into digital music creation everything was there for a reasonable price point.
Even firewire for your DV imports.
A digital media entry point like no others existed at the time at that price point.
I agree that mid-90s is a bit early but I would say mid 00's is too late.
I'm pretty sure it's a rapid change almost immediately after AC97. In 1998 it's cool if your new PC has built in CD quality audio. In 2000 that's a basic feature like colour graphics, if your PC doesn't then it sucks.
From my memory, AC97 was rough early on. It seemed to be consistently plagued with crosstalk and other interference issues as well as driver issues. By the time WinXP dropped these issues were mostly sorted out, though.
I don't remember too much interference, but then I've never had excellent hearing. Driver issues were definitely a thing but I think that same period around 2000 is when games are shifting from "(Most games work in DOS but) Some games need Windows" to "Some games still need DOS". AC97 was not great for DOS
Looks like my memory is wrong, all of the DOS games I was thinking of "from this era" are late 90s. Carmageddon for example was 1997. Quake 2 was never officially a DOS game. Nothing I bought new in 2000 was primarily or only a DOS game.
I assume you made a typo and were thinking about mid 00s, as my memory tells me that motherboard audio was really rare thing in mid 90s.
It started to become common after Intel's AC97 standard. (I'd call that more late 90s... That is late 90s, early 00s possibly by the time it started to spread.