Ad Lib, Inc.

Ad Lib, Inc. was a Canadian manufacturer of sound cards and other computer hardware. The name derived from the Latin ad libitum from ( German: "at will" ). AdLib was also the name of the product line. The AdLib was one of the first popular sound cards for IBM - compatible PCs and thus offered for the first time on PCs sound quality, as you are really used by home computers - PCs without a sound card had to have only very limited system speakers.

The sound card used the YM3812 sound chip from Yamaha. The Adlib was a pure synthesizer card without the direct ability to play samples ( digitized sounds ) - what resourceful programmers but still managed. It is purely a music player card, a recording function does not exist.

The AdLib sound card was relatively rapidly displaced from about 1990, however, by the Sound Blaster sound card from Creative Labs, which was compatible with the AdLib card, but whose skills extended to sampling in both playback and recording.

After the failure of the successor "AdLib Gold " in the early 90s, mainly through lack of compatibility and lack of 16- bit capability in comparison with the Sound Blaster, the company became insolvent and filed for bankruptcy in 1992.

Chronological order