1992 was a whirlwind year for PC audio. Ad Lib went up in smoke, Creative conquered the world with the Sound Blaster 16, and the name of the game was being "Sound Blaster compatible" or dying trying. However, Microsoft decided to participate in a very peculiar way: Its Windows Sound System was born at the end of '92 as a specification, but hit the market with a package consisting of a sound card, a microphone, headphones, and several programs.
In relaxed terms, MS-DOS had no audio support at all, and to get any sound from the speakers, the program or game in question had to "talk" to the hardware directly. In fact, even the concept of a "driver" was very strange, and in many cases, the requirement went no further than a SET BLASTER parameter.
And there was the key: "Sound Blaster compatibility". Many manufacturers went to great lengths to achieve it, but Microsoft chose to bet on its own support, its own specification. So we arrive at Windows Sound System, officially released at the end of 1992 for Windows 3.1. The most interesting thing is that WSS wasn't limited "on paper", and it also received a hardware pack consisting of a sound card, a microphone, headphones, and software. The YouTube channel DOS Storm recently explored one of those packs:
Windows Sound System: Microsoft’s Take on Sound in 1992
With an official price of $289, Windows Sound System sat at the same level as the Sound Blaster Pro, but its general specifications (16-bit digital sampling at 48 kHz) allowed it to surpass it and compete with its big sister, the Sound Blaster 16. In one of its tests, DOS Storm shows that the WSS build is more solid and generates less noise than the early generations of SB16. As if that weren't enough, Microsoft's card offered an RCA stereo output, something not so common at the time.
Naturally, the card also had its limitations. Wavetable, CD-ROM interface, and MIDI/joystick port were conspicuously absent, but there wasn't even an internal path to redirect audio from a CD-ROM. The first attempt at Ad Lib and Sound Blaster emulation came with the WSS 1.0a drivers, released in February 1993, though their performance left much to be desired. The ideal condition for this card under MS-DOS was that the game already offered WSS support by default, as was the case with Descent. The compatibility list barely exceeds 200 titles, against more than 2,600 under Sound Blaster.
Now, Microsoft couldn't go against its own nature, and tried to present Windows Sound System as a tool for the business environment, with the possibility of (and I'm not making this up) "talking" to an Excel spreadsheet to add notes, and listening to a narration of its data. The tiny dictionary took care of reducing that second function to a simple curiosity.
In summary, Windows Sound System wasn't terrible, but at that time we only cared about Sound Blaster support, and other clones soon filled that space, at a lower cost.
Sources: DOS Storm on YouTube, MobyGames
