Ensoniq Soundscape S-2000

It is a full-length ISA digital audio and sample-based synthesis device, equipped with a 2 MiB Ensoniq-built ROM-based patch set.

It was praised for its then-high quality music synthesis and sound output, high compatibility and good software support.

The on-board coprocessor was a much-advertised feature of the card, marketed to reduce the overhead of music synthesis through the device.

Digital-to-analog audio conversion was handled by an Analog Devices CODEC such as the AD1848, which was capable of sampling at up to 48 kHz.

One advantage compared to competitors was that the card did not require terminate-and-stay-resident programs (TSRs)[1], minimizing its conventional memory footprint.

The Soundscape also has a hardware MPU-401 implementation which, combined with the lack of TSRs, allowed a high degree of compatibility, which was a significant benefit as many DOS games often ran in a custom flavor of protected mode or were particularly demanding of conventional memory space.

FM synthesis hardware support for games at the time required an additional chip, the Yamaha OPL-2 or OPL-3.