Ultrasound Daily Digest Sat, 14 Nov 92 Volume 1 : Issue 19 Today's Topics: ftp site for demos GSBOS settings --HELP! GUS and Windows on a 80286?! GUS review for GAME BYTES kbmidi & mididrum Making GUS coexist with SB. More on MIDI/Windows and GUS My vote on mail vs. news New drivers Response on GUS for music use SCDEMOS.ZIP software and problems Ultrasound Daily Digest V1 #18 Digest Address: ultrasound@dsd.es.com To post to tomorrow's digest. Request Server Address: ultrasound-request@dsd.es.com To subscribe, unsubscribe, and request files. Owner Address: ultrasound-owner@dsd.es.com To contact a human if the server has troubles. FTP Site #1: ftp epas.utoronto.ca (/pub/pc/ultrasound) Digest back issues, mirror of request server People responsible: David DeBry, Adam Iles, Thomas Wong, Chris Yuzik, and many others who should be thanked often. :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 11:48:01 GMT From: M.D.Hennessy@cen.exeter.ac.uk Message-Id: <9610.9211131148@olib> Subject: ftp site for demos To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Apologies if this is a FAQ, but I have heard mentioned several times that there is a ftp site with ultrasound demos ( better than the ones supplied with the card ). Can anyone tell me the site address ? Thanks in advance, Mark.H. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Nov 92 01:29:44 EST From: elewis@eve.wright.edu (Edward Lewis IV) Message-Id: <9211140629.AA26478@eve.wright.edu.> Subject: GSBOS settings --HELP! To: Ultrasound Daily Digest To Experienced Gravis Ultrasound Users ---- HELP! ( if there is such a person yet?) Well, after the long wait I have received my Ultrasound. The installation was very simple and straightforward, although it would've been nice if I had received DISK 4 and not 2 DISK 5's. Just missing a few patches...Very annoying when going into windows due to all the error messages. I am very pleased with it so far. I have had some trouble getting SBOS to work with a few games and was wondering if anyone else has had any luck with them either. The list is below. Links386 Pro -- Can't get Soundblaster to work. Adlib really really bad then locks. Wayne Gretzky Hockey3 -- I only get music at some parts. No speech or sound during the game. Adlib won't work at all. SBOS -o2 gives just music. Nothing else seems to work. Earl Weaver Baseball2 -- No sound for either adlib or soundblaster and then it locks up. CakeWalk Pro /windows -- I did get it to play once but now I get (demo version) nothing. I know -NOTHING- about MIDI so this could be my problem. How do you set it up to work correctly. SoundTool V2.6 -- Are there any drivers for the Ultrasound or soundblaster or adlib. I don't have any and I read someones post about how the like using Soundtool with the Ultrasound. Other than these minor inconveniences, the card sounds great. It definetly has outstanding POTENTIAL. Any information or pointing me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for any and all info. Please E-mail or post to the Mailing-list --- (I'm sure others want to know too). Edward Lewis IV elewis@eve.wright.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 14:44:15 -0500 (EST) From: impster@ais.org (Charles Budensiek) Message-Id: Subject: GUS and Windows on a 80286?! To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Time for me to brag... I GOT MY GUS FROM EA TODAY!! YAY!! Time for me to whine... I CAN'T USE THE GUS IN WINDOWS 3.1 ON A 286!?!?!?! AAARRGGHHH!!! Is there ANY way for me to play *.wav files in windows through my GUS on a 16MHz 80286? Thanks -- ============================================================================= | "Anyone have a coat hanger? My brain itches." | impster@umcc.ais.org | "If I was a turnip, would I be revered and | Charles Budensiek | "worshipped like I would deserve to be?" | ph #: Ask if you want it. ============================================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 13:54:06 EST From: Angelo Catovic Message-Id: <199211131852.AA01195@von-neumann.info.polymtl.ca> Subject: GUS review for GAME BYTES To: Ultrasound Daily Digest This is a post I found in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games. So if someone wants to write a review please do it. Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games From: ross@kaos.b11.ingr.com (Ross Erickson) Subject: GAME BYTES REVIEWS WANTED!! UPDATED. Keywords: game bytes magazine Reply-To: ross@kaos.b11.ingr.com Below you will find an extensive list of game reviews we are looking for to publish in upcoming issues of Game Bytes magazine. If you've played any of these games and have adequate experience with the title to write a review, PLEASE EMAIL ME right away and we'll get you started with this great magazine. Thanks for all your support. Without volunteer reviewers, there would be no Game Bytes. I hope to hear from many of you soon. PRIORITY REVIEWS NEEDED FOR: [Stuff deleted] Ultrasound - Advanced Gravis [Stuff deleted] Angelo Catovic jello@info.polymtl.ca ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 17:00:42 -0500 From: ylee@norton.uwaterloo.ca Message-Id: <9211132200.AA28459@norton.uwaterloo.ca> Subject: kbmidi & mididrum To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Hi all, I'd like to apologize to those who downloaded kbmidi from epas. I accidentally put a wrong .exe....:( Anyway, I've uploaded a correct one ( kbmidi_new_exe.zip so try it out and see if that one works. I've also uploaded mididrum ( by Charles Petzold - also modified for Ultrasound ) , a drum machine sequencer to epas.utoronto.ca so try that one out too. Both of them WORKED on my PC but I can't guarantee that they will work on any PCs although it should work on any PC with Windows 3.1. Please ignore my previous message regarding a problem with new windows driver and my kbmidi. It worked...I was running a wrong .exe too.... Later, Yuri ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Nov 92 2:49:21 EST From: Phat H Tran Message-Id: <9211140749.AA14709@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca> Subject: Making GUS coexist with SB. To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Despite what I posted earlier, I found out that Falcon won't work perfectly with SBOS unless I set both Radio Messages and Music to Adlib instead of Soundblaster. But even then, the sounds tend to be a little cartoony, and the digitized speech almost incomprehensible. So, I'm working on making my GUS coexist with my SB. I managed to get every feature of both cards to function together except the SB's Adlib compatibility. Games that drive the SB as an SB work fine with my GUS/SB setup, but those that use the SB as an Adlib card do not detect Adlib compatibility. It seems that the GUS is hogging port addresses 388h and 389h which the SB uses for Adlib emulation. Is there any way to force the GUS to let go of these two addresses? Seeing as how there are many undocumented jumpers on the card, there must be a way of doing so. If not, then is there a utility which will let me map addresses 388h and 389h to 228h and 229h? My two cards' base addresses, IRQ's and other vital stats are as follows: GUS SB Base Address 230h 220h DMA channel 3 1 IRQs (GF1) 11 5 (MIDI) 12 Phat. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 12:26:01 CST From: ken@batman.austin.ibm.com (Ken Goach) Message-Id: <9211131826.AA09927@batman.austin.ibm.com> Subject: More on MIDI/Windows and GUS To: Ultrasound Daily Digest I promised more on using the GUS with MIDI in Windows, and here it is! I got the Cakewalk Professional demo running last night. In doing so, I discovered a few things. 1. The playmidi program is not very sophisticated. When I played back the GUS sequences (like latindnc, for example) in Cakewalk I had all kinds of strange volume level things happening. I didn't have these problems with the Cakewalk demo sequences or other ones I had. At first, I though it was a GUS problem. I eventually went in the Windows pull-down menu in Cakewalk and selected the last item, which displays numeric values for the notes being played (one track at a time). I isolated a track that had these volume oddities and watched the values. I noticed that there was a lot of variance in the levels, so I editied the values and everything sounded normal again. What it leads me to believe is that (a) whoever recorded these demos in used a velocity-sensitive synth and palyed unevenly and (b) the GUS will handle velocity sensitivity in sequences. The playmidi doesn't care - it does a constant values throughout (that you can set in each file's .CFG file). 2. I discovered (with a little help from the tech support line) that to get patches to load in Cakewalk Professional, you have to load the MIDI sequence in the Media Player first or you get nothing. In fact, I had to load the sequence into Media Player and play part of it, stop it, and then open Cakewalk Professional to get it to work. Then the patches load fine. However, if you change a patch in one track, the track quits playing - even if you switch back to the original sound! That's bad. And if you load a new MIDI sequence with different sounds, I sometimes had to exit Cakewalk, run the Media Player step again, and then reopen Cakewalk. YUCK! That's totally unacceptable. Wonder if I can get a MIDI file that would load *all* the GUS patches at once so I could pick and choose! ;-) (not enough memory!!!) Anyway, that's the good news/bad news for today. I am off to call GUS and find out why things are this way and what can be done about them. Ken ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 11:38 EST From: "Matthew E. Bernold" Message-Id: <9211131638.AA14643@orca.es.com> Subject: My vote on mail vs. news To: Ultrasound Daily Digest I think that with the 512+ subscribers we have on this list, we can EASILY pass a new group. If we create the group comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.gus, and mirror everything posted there to the list, then EVERYONE can see what's going on, and we won't have as large a chance of missing the newbies. Just my $0.018125 (after taxes) Matthew E. Bernold MEB117@PSUVM.PSU.EDU <> meb@haydn.psu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 13:10:32 -0500 From: ylee@norton.uwaterloo.ca Message-Id: <9211131810.AA27336@norton.uwaterloo.ca> Subject: New drivers To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Hi all. I just downloaded new set of ultrasound disks from epas and installed windows drivers, midiplay program and new patches. Well...New windows driver does not solve the patch loading problem and on top of that, my modified KBMIDI doesn't work anymore either. The patch set if not yet complete but complete set of percussion patches are very NICE! New windows driver includes MIDI port driver but wave mapper stays the same. Both synth and wave driver still has version no. 1 as before but synth driver also adds pitch bending capability ( although it sounds weird most of time ) Can someone confirm all these. I'd like to know if I'm missing something. - yuri ylee@sunee.uwaterloo.ca ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 12:14:57 CST From: ken@batman.austin.ibm.com (Ken Goach) Message-Id: <9211131814.AA09923@batman.austin.ibm.com> Subject: Response on GUS for music use To: Ultrasound Daily Digest chrisw wrote: >1) Can I plug a keyboard into this thing and `play' the sampler ? Not yet - the MIDI in function is disabled. Gravis said that there was a problem with it, but that they are working to get a fix out for this before Christmas. >2) Assuming I can plug in a keyboard, how do I set up sounds, midi channels Do this in Windows 3.1. The MIDI patch table, all that can be done in Windows. I had Cakewalk working last night with the GUS. >3) How much real-time processing of the samples does the card do? A minimum, > I presume, is looping until note off messages. Also, it must have some > sort of response to the velocity information in midi note press messages? I don't know what you mean by "real-time processing," but the sounds do loop until note off, and the GUS seems to respond to touch-sensitivity in sequences. One sequence I played also had a fade-out, and the GUS handled it perfectly - the volume decreased smoothly to nothing. >Has it got any forms of modulation of the sounds (pitch, filter, envelope)? Dunno. If I had a sequence with some continuous controller stuff in it, I could try it. >By the way, can the thing cope with multi-samples (i.e. a series > of samples of the one instrument at different pitches) ? Do you mean can it do polyphony? Yes, it will. I assume *all* the patches are comprised of a series of samples at different pitches, or it would sound weird. It doesn't - it sounds fine. >4) Is it currently possible (or will it ever be possible ?) > to use the card with either Cakewalk or Cakewalk for Windows? (In fact, > with any sequencer software?) See above - I ran it with Cakewalk Professional in Windows last night. >Keyboard magazine in October suggested that Win 3.1 was useless for >playing back samples along with sequences because >the timing was appalling (3/4 of a second slop each way). What keyboard was talking about was triggering .WAV files from MIDI sequences, which has lousy performance. I didn't notice any problems playing MIDI sequences with Cakewalk Professional in Windows. The big problem is that with the current version of the software, you have to load a sequence in the Media Player first, then in Windows to get the patches to load correctly. But more on that in another note. Again, Gravis told me that they want this fixed before Christmas. They will also be doing more testing with various sequencer programs. In addition to the MIDI stuff, a newer, better SBOS is supposed to go out too. Ken ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 17:33:42 -0500 From: ylee@norton.uwaterloo.ca Message-Id: <9211132233.AA28562@norton.uwaterloo.ca> Subject: SCDEMOS.ZIP To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Hi everyone, I've uploaded SCDEMOS.ZIP to epas.utoronto.ca. SCDEMOS are 13 MIDI demo songs for Roland SCC series synthesizers. I believe these cards ( SCC series ) conform to general MIDI and all songs play fine on GUS. They sound even better with new set of percussion patches and new version of playmidi so try them out, most of them are stereo songs too. - Yuri ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 10:30:45 PST From: mtichy@sfu.ca Message-Id: <9211131830.AA26695@fraser.sfu.ca> Subject: software and problems To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Well, the author of Blaster Master, Gary Maddox is getting his latest version Ultra Master tested by Gravis. This will probably be the first shareware release for the GUS to appear. I've had some strange things I noticed with the UltraSound. I installed the software on my Quantum 240S which is drive D running from an Adaptec 1542B and the setup program does not work on that drive. I moved it to drive C, an MFM drive and then the setup program for GUS works. Really strange. > This is because the drums are on channel 10, with no patch > associated. The > driver should have the possibility to assign a drum kit to channel > 10. How do I do this? > Why would you want to run sbos before windows? You can deinstall > sbos with the -f option. So when I multi-task small dos games, I can get soundblaster emulation. Incidentally, I heard a claim on the Adlib Echo, that SB PRO emulation was demonstrated by a dealer to this person. I'm currently trying to find out the correct switch. I thought the Gravis BBS was supposed to up by now. Where is it? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 11:00:34 CST From: eason@ncp1d.StPaul.NCR.COM (Dale Eason) Message-Id: <9211131700.AA06267@ncp1d.StPaul.NCR.COM> Subject: Ultrasound Daily Digest V1 #18 To: Ultrasound Daily Digest >If all the discussion on the mailing list is posted to the news, what is the >point of having a list at all? Just kill the list and start reading news >instead. >Here's my suggestion: periodically (once a week) post info about the list, >including how to get on it, how to get files from the server etc. >Maybe that would reduce the entirely too frequent add-to-list requests on the >mailing list, too. I agree. It is much easier for me to use news than mail. But of course then we don't get a history of the messages saved into digests that we can eventually look back at. Once a FAQ is created then maybe we won't need a history. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 12:22:25 EST From: lin@eecom.gatech.edu (Brian Lin) Message-Id: <9211131722.AA20872@eecom.gatech.edu> Subject: unsubscribe To: Ultrasound Daily Digest ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 11:34:36 -0500 From: tai@eclipse.sheridanc.on.ca (Francis Tai) Message-Id: <9211131634.AA00265@eclipse.sheridanc.on.ca> To: Ultrasound Daily Digest ================================================================ [With sorries to all the people which I've deleted some parts of their messages..] ================================================================ >Date: 13 Nov 1992 00:24:39 +1000 >From: Steven Junacko >Subject: CARD-REVIEW >Could I get the review of the card please. If you have ftp access, You can get the reviews, back issues of the digests, midi files, etc.. Off epas.utoronto.ca ftp site. or you can use the mail server by sending mail to ultrasound-request@dsd.es.com with a subject of help and it will give you the list of commands which you will need.. ================================= Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 14:02:08 EET From: s106275@ee.tut.fi (Anssi Saari) Subject: Getting the word out >If all the discussion on the mailing list is posted to the news, what is the >point of having a list at all? Just kill the list and start reading news >instead. The point of having the list is that all the issues within the list is all about GUS. I know that I wouldn't like to browse though the message conference with all other messages within it. It justs takes too much time.. this method is far much more easier for me.. ===================================== Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 10:01:05 -0500 From: adam@epas.utoronto.ca (Adam Iles) Subject: Getting the word out >I am not sure how many subscribers you have for the mailing list, but >if it's a significant number we could always look at trying to start a >new news group (say comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.gus) that would be >gatewayed to the mailing list. This would also ensure that people who >reply to the digest via news will have their response included in the >next digest. Hmm... If this happens, other people would start asking for their own newsgroup [ie: comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.pas, etc] and as a result, the messages on comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard will trickle down.. not that I'm against it.. I'm all for it.. =================================== Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 21:32:09 -0500 From: ylee@norton.uwaterloo.ca Subject: Patches Hi, >I just figured out that percs.pat ( drum set patch ) has only 13 sounds out >of 46 sounds defined in general MIDI spec. It's already 150kB in size and >if they put all sounds in one file, it will grow over at least more than 256Kb. >Possibly more than 500kB... Is it possible for you to post your file containing the drum instrument listing??? ================================= Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 18:25:32 MST From: ddebry@itchy (Dave DeBry) Subject: The Administrator's Suggestion > Disadvantages: > o More work for me. (I have to stay late on Thursday nights >anyway, but this is still going to take time.) I wouldn't even >volunteer to do this, except I got a letter from Chris Yuzik saying >how much Gravis appreciates the Digest. Thanks, Chris! I'm sure that the rest of the GUS owners on the net really appreciates your work with the digest.. It's pretty well done.. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 09:56:50 PST From: biggles@berlioz.nsc.com (Winston Worrell) Subject: The Infamous Midi Cable >3: A list of games (present and future) that have direct support for the GUS. I second that... It's very time consuming to figure out which settings work with the games... >4: Will Gravis ever release a document that describes the GUS and how to > program it that does not contain proprietary information. I would really > like to write code for it (at first for my own use). Anybody have > any pointers as to how to start? >ps Is the sample file format proprietary or is there a document that describes > it floating around. I think this is where the developers package comes in... Anyone cares to add to this?? ======================================== Francis --------------------------------------------------------------- | Francis Tai | uucp: tai@eclipse.sheridanc.on.ca | | 3rD Year Systems Analyst | or: francis.tai@canrem.com | | Sheridan College | | | Brampton, Ontario, Canada | | --------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V1 #19 ******************************