an "all-in-one" box for sequencing not only drum sounds, but looping samples, and it quickly became the instrument of choice for hip hop producers. In 1993, E-mu was acquired by Creative Technology (the Singaporean parent company of Creative Labs) and began working on PC soundcard synthesis. Creative Wave Blaster II and Sound Blaster AWE32 used EMU8000 effect processor. Throughout the 1990s, E-mu made many different sound modules along the lines of the Proteus series. E-mu also made unsuccessful attempts at breaking into the digital multitrack recorder with the Darwin hard-disk recording system. In 1998, E-mu was combined with Ensoniq, another synthesizer and sampler manufacturer previously acquired by Creative Technology. In 2001 E-mu's sound modules were repackaged in the form of a line of tabletop units, the XL7 and MP7 Command Stations, each featuring 128-voice polyphony, advanced synthesis features, and a versatile multitrack sequencer. A complementary line of keyboard synthesizers was also released using the same technology. Subsequent products from E-mu were exclusively in software form. In 2004 E-mu released the Emulator X, a PC-based version of its hardware samplers with extended synthesis capabilities. While a PCI card is used for audio input and output, the algorithms no longer run on dedicated hardware but in software on the PC. Proteus X, a software-based sample player, was released in 2005. Non-Creative sound cards During 2003-2007, E-mu designed and published a series of high-fidelity "Digital Audio Systems" (computer sound cards), intended for professional, semi-professional and computer audio enthusiast use. They were released under the name E-MU, however bearing a "Creative Professional" label. The card names are number-coded for the number of physical inputs and outputs: 0404, 1212m, 1616, 1616m, 1820 and 1820m, where 1616 is a CardBus version and the rest for PCI, while "m" denotes extra high-quality analogue outputs and inputs. The 1820m was touted as the series' flagship product until the 1616 and 1616M were released (A PCI version of the 1616/M later followed). All of the cards had drivers for Microsoft Windows 2000 and later versions that were current at time of the respective products' release. (32- and 64-bit). Only a beta version driver was released for Windows 7. Apple Macintosh support appeared to be pending, but may have been affected by Apple's migration towards Intel. While the core DSP chip (EMU10K2) of the cards is the same one designed by E-MU and used in Creative's Sound Blaster Audigy2 cards