Sound chip

A sound chip is an integrated circuit (i.e. "chip") designed to produce sound (see chiptune). It might be doing this through digital, analog or mixed-mode electronics. Sound chips normally contain things like oscillators, envelope controllers, samplers, filters and amplifiers.

Overview
In the early 1970's, there were no sound chips, so the sound usually consisted of either simple digital bleeps generated from the discrete circuitry or explosion sounds generated through electro-mechanical methods.

In the late 1970's, sound boards and sound chips began to be used, leading to the introduction of chiptune music.

In the 1980's, sound chips capable of FM synthesis and PCM sampling were introduced, along with audio playback from the Laserdisc and CD formats.

During the late 1980's to 1990's, sound chips became more sophisticated, with more advanced FM synthesis, dozens of PCM channels, MIDI support, and playback of compressed audio files.

List of sound chips by audio capabilities
This is a list of sound chips, as well as sound cards/boards (for arcade systems and home computers), which often used multiple sound chips.