Creative Wave Blaster
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The Wave Blaster port is an internal connector / header on some sound cards from the 1990s that allowed sample-based synthesis MIDI playback capability to be added to sound cards. The standard was first used for Creative Wave Blaster daughterboard upgrades for Creative Sound Blaster 16 sound cards. It was also used on several cards already equipped with MIDI capabilities, such as the Creative Sound Blaster AWE32, where it enhanced MIDI capabilities. The 26-pin Wave Blaster port is an internal MIDI interface that carries the same MIDI signals to the daughterboard that would otherwise be carried over a MIDI cable, in addition to two analog audio lines carrying stereo left and right channels from the daughterboard.
The Wave Blaster port was also adopted by other sound card manufacturers who produced both sound cards with the connector and daughterboards for use on them, such as Yamaha, Ensoniq, Orchid, Oberheim, Guillemot, Diamond, TerraTec, Roland, and Turtle Beach. It has also appeared on devices such as the Korg NS5R MIDI sound module, the Oberheim MC-1000/MC-2000 keyboards, and the TerraTec Axon AX-100 Guitar-to-MIDI converter.
Although new Wave Blaster-capable sound cards for computers haven't been produced for years, Terratec still produces their Axon AX-100 Guitar-to-MIDI converter that uses a Wave Blaster port to add sound generation capability. In 2005, they released a new Wave Blaster daughterboard called the Wave XTable with 16mb of on-board sample memory comprising 500 instruments and 10 drum kits.
