Why doesn the EMU8000 have a built in MIDI interpreter?
One of the design goal of the SB AWE32 is to offer high quality music at an affordable price. The EMU8000 is just like any other synthesizer chip such as OPL2, OPL3 or OPL4. It does not have the capability to interpret MIDI commands. For it to understand MIDI commands, a MIDI interpreter is required, and this will involve adding an additional processor to process the MIDI commands and other components adding to the cost of the product. After our analysis of price and performance, we decided that our current implementation offers the best in terms of price as well as performance. To support existing games that use MPU-401, we provide a feature known as MIDI feedback using NMI (non-maskable- interrupt) which installs a small TSR program, AWEUTIL. AWEUTIL works by trapping data going out to the MPU-401 port and program the EMU8000 using the data. AWEUTIL provides compatibility with many games that support the MPU-401 interface, but will not always work with protected mode games due to the
