Turtle Beach Rio
The Rio was a wavetable MIDI daughterboard that came with a huge 4 MB ROM onboard for samples. It used the soundfonts from VoiceCrystal (the same as those used by the TB Tropez+, TB Maui and Aztech WaveRider 32).
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Released | 1994 |
| Bus | Wave Blaster | |
| Chipset | ICS WaveFront 2115/2116 | |
| Standards | General MIDI (via wavetable) | |
| Memory | 4 MB Sample ROM, SIPP slot for RAM | |
| FCC ID# | - | |
| Price | At launch: $139 | |
| See Also |
It was often sold with the Turtle Beach Tahiti sound card as a bundle, which they called Monterey.
The Rio DB is physically very similar to the Creative Labs WaveBlaster CT1900, and is electrically compatible.
Rich Heimlich reviewed the Rio, stating that Rio had a: "Much better sound than the Wave Blaster at a better price. RAM Sampling and limited effects are a bonus but the RAM sampling is painfully slow due to the WB interface which is why no other DB's offer this feature. The Rio is used on the Monterey so it can be hard to find.". Music quality was scored at 6.5 out of 10.
The ICS WaveFront™ synthesizer chip, ICS2115, was jointly developed by Turtle Beach Systems and Integrated Circuit Systems (hence the ICS prefix in the name) in 1993. The key benefit of ICS WaveFront is that you can load samples and soundfonts into RAM to replace the onboard ROM samples. This can be done using the SETWF utility. Soundfonts for the ICS WaveFront use a proprietary format with a .WFB file extension. This is synonymous [though not compatible] with Creative's .SF2 soundfont format and Dream's .94B format.
Board Revisions
Two board revisions are known: 2.0 and 3.0.
Competition
In the Media
Setting it Up
I don't have any information on configuring the Rio.
Downloads
Operation Manual Get in touch if you can provide this! |
Original Driver Disk Get in touch if you can provide this! |
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More Pictures
