The Turtle Beach wave table synthesizer you’re thinking of could be the Monterey, which was a combo of the Tahiti sound card and the Rio MIDI daughterboard, released around 1994. The Tahiti was a high-end card with 18-bit digital audio converters and a Motorola 56001 DSP, but it didn’t have onboard synthesis. Instead, it used a WaveBlaster-compatible header to connect the Rio, a wave table MIDI synthesizer powered by the ICS 2115 chip, offering 24-voice polyphony at 44.1kHz or 32 voices at 32kHz. The Rio stored samples in ROM and could use up to 12 megabytes of additional RAM for custom .WAV samples. This setup let you play back General MIDI sounds or manipulate samples via Windows software, though DOS support needed TSR drivers and wasn’t always game-friendly due to non-standard MIDI ports. Compared to the Korg wavestate SE, it’s simpler—more like basic sample playback with less control over sequencing or real-time morphing, closer to early wave table concepts than the wavestate’s complex Wave Sequencing 2.0. Want me to focus on how the Turtle Beach workflow compares to the wavestate SE or dive into something specific about the Monterey’s setup?
- grok
Ebbanoxious Guitar Lessons 