DOS Days

Sound Blaster Pro 2

Just as they had done with the original Sound Blaster, Creative released a second version of the Sound Blaster Pro. Launched in late 1991, the Sound Blaster Pro II replaced the dual-OPL2 arrangement for a single OPL3 chip. The new Yamaha YMF262 was essentially two YM3812s on a single die, though due to the way in which they were accessed there was some compatibility broken.

	Released	Late 1991
	Bus	ISA 8-bit
	FM Synth	Yamaha YMF262
	Audio Codec	None
	Standards	Ad Lib, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro
	Ports	Speaker-Out, Mic-In, Line-In Game port
	CD-ROM	Panasonic/Matsushita
	Wavetable	None
	Plug & Play	No
	FCC ID(s)	IBACT-SPB2PS
	See Also	Sound Blaster Pro 1.0 (CT1330), Sound Blaster 2.0 (CT1350)

The Sound Blaster Pro II got an upgrade from the Yamaha YM3812 (OPL2) chips to a single new Yamaha YMF262 (OPL3), which was backward-compatible with OPL2 and played stereo with 20 voices across 4 FM operators. Also, the Pro II's MIDI UART chip was upgraded to full-duplex and offered time-stamping features. At this point, it was still not Roland MPU-401 compatible which was a common standard used by a lot of professional MIDI equipment at the time. As before, the CT1600 was fully Sound Blaster-compatible and Ad Lib compatible.

The Sound Blaster Pro II had lower interference than Sound Blaster Pro 1.0 due to the new analogue low pass filter. Output quality was quite good, with a low noise level, no audible distortion and packed a lot of power in the bass section (though perhaps a little too bass'y compared to higher quality sound cards).

In the mixer settings the low pass filter is on by default but this can be deactivated with the SBP-SET utilities included in the drivers. This filter is supposedly only applied to digital audio, not FM.

The CT1680 differed from the CT1600 in that it came with a Philips LMSI CD-ROM interface instead of the Panasonic-Matsushita.
The CT1690 differed in that it came with a Sony CD-ROM interface instead of the Panasonic-Matsushita.

In 1992, the CT2600 was released which got a Mitsumi CD-ROM interface.

In 1992, a version of the Pro was released for the IBM PS/2 Model 50 which had Micro Channel Architecture. Released as the Sound Blaster Pro 2 MCV it had a model number of CT5330.

Board Revisions

For CT1600 cards, known board revisions include 49219, 59234, 69237, and 89414.
For CT1680 cards, known board revisions include 39212 and 39313.
For CT1690 cards, known board revisions include 29304 and 69237.
For CT2600 cards, known board revisions include 19310 and 29323.
For CT5330 cards, known board revisions include 39212 and 49229.

All versions of the Sound Blaster Pro II came with the same mixer chip (CT1345) and DSP chip (CT1341) as that used on the Sound Blaster Pro 1, but the DSP version was updated from 3.01 to 3.02 (note: some CT1680s and CT1690s came with the earlier DSP 3.01).
Board revisions 49219 and 59234 came with the same bus interface chip (CT1336) as the SBP1, and revisions 69237 and 89414 got the slightly revised CT1336A.

For the CT1680, board revision 39212 came with the CT1336 bus interface chip while 39313 got the CT1336A.
For the CT1690, board revision 29304 came with the same mixer chip as all the others (CT1345), but the 69237 got the new CT1345-S.
For the CT2600, board revision 19310 came with old CT1345 mixer chip, but the 29323 got the new CT1345-S.
For the CT5330 these all came with an additional CT5335 bus interface chip. For board revision 39212 the DSP version was 3.01 and for 49229 it was 3.02.

Competition

In 1991, there was still very little in the way of competition for Creative Labs. If your budget didn't stretch to a Sound Blaster Pro, you may have bought the cheaper Sound Blaster, whose retail price dropped upon the release of the Sound Blaster Pro II, to just $169.95. Alternatively, you could pick up the Ad Lib music synthesizer card for even less.

Sound cards in PCs were very much considered an optional add-on - Brand new PCs tended to not come with any sound card bundled in, though for the first time Creative released a number of OEM-specific variants of the Sound Blaster Pro II, which were the CT1680 and CT1690.