GUS Daily Digest Fri, 15 Apr 94 9:37 PST Volume 12: Issue 15 Today's Topics: 2nd try for HELP!!! another gus0041 question A question on SB AWE32 Before somebody even ASKS Doom 32 channels gus0041 questions GUS and Linux problem solved GUS Daily Digest V12 #14 (5 msgs) History and Future of Synthesis joystick Mega-Em Mega-lagg at archive.orst.edu! Patches Raptor sounds... Rebel Assault Some RAM Problems Unix AU player for dos/windows Standard Info: - Meta-info about the GUS can be found at the end of the Digest. - Before you ask a question, please READ THE FAQ. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 22:54:02 -0400 From: Hui Chi-Wai Subject: 2nd try for HELP!!! Ok i've posted for help here and in the c.s.i.p.s group and have come up with nada!!! So here goes my plea for help for the second time here: i recently installed a new quantum 540 drv to my current 245. Now the gus0041 (v3.11) installs doesn't pass the initial setup for any irq/dma setting. Using the diagnostic i have all the test passing but when it comes to the sbos mode and the gus dma i get a "busy (read)" response. i ignore this and just select any setting and continue the install. Everything works fine (ie. windows plays midi files perfectly, inertia player plays all the mod, mtm, s3m, ult files i have) except playmidi doesn't play any midi files (it doesn't load any patches and gives up after awhile and gives me: "error loading patch blah.pat. DMA channel busy (conflict?)). Before the new 540 drive i could get playmidi to play after a few tries at loading the file (ie. it was buggy but eventually still worked), but now i get nothing. The few games i have installed seem to still work ok in sbos and megaem modes, haven't tried a native gus one as of the new drive though except for doom which is really buggy without any consistent sound result. I have a dx2/50, 8megs ram, ati xl wonder (prior to the 24bit), running dos, windows, qemm7.03, norton speedrive. The playmidi from the 2.06x installs works fine without no hitches so i don't know what is going on. I tried the optifix (since i had opti chips on my motherboard) but it didn't do it thing for me. I've used some system diagnostics to see if i had conflicts but came up with none. Does anyone have any solution to my problem? Is it a hardware/software conflict? or is it just buggy install software? Please anyone with any idea email me ... i am desperate to get my GUS in perfect working order again, and YES i love my GUS and can't live without it! Any help would be greatly appreciated and thanx in advance. Happy GUS'ing ... ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Apr 94 11:24:11 EDT From: "NEMO G DE FURIA" Subject: another gus0041 question I forgot to mention that the installation created a directory on my C drive called ADMALTOI with INSTALIT.EXE, and NORCIMO.ATE. What are they for? I get an error 2229 when I run the former. BTW, I have a standard setup, and 256K on my card, just in case that helps. Thanks, Nemo De Furia. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 14:30:08 GMT+1 From: "F. Viktor" Subject: A question on SB AWE32 Hi gussers I got a SB AWE32 yesterday to test in for one day. I was told that I can have it also with 28Megs memory on board. It has (actually "had") already 512KBytes ROM, so I tried to ask for some more. It has(had) a slot for 2 (two) SIMM moduls, which means you have to put (28-.5)/2=13.75 Megs in each slot. The question is: Was I really supposed to use two 13.75MB-SIMM moduls? (Would be hard to get some ;-)) Or two 14MB-s? Or how is it possible? Anyone? Phat? Viktor ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Apr 94 14:24:52 +0300 From: Yossi Oren Subject: Before somebody even ASKS I know this is gonna come up, so - Superunknown, by Five, the demo that won the Gathering 94 (over here, we call it Geekstock), is available at wasp.eng.ufl.edu, pub/msdos/demos/incoming/ TG94_Demos), as a split .ARJ file (1.4MB and 150K). I'm going to get it now, so I can't say more. Yossi. PS To the other religious fanatics, FC had no entry in the competition, that's why they didn't win :) +---+---+---+---------------------------------------------------+---+---+ | = | E |_|/| Signature 1.31 | V | ^ | +---+---+---+---------------------------------------------------+---+---+ |Yossi Oren, Al-Daf Techno-Mercenaries, Rishon Le-Zion, Israel. Help | |TInternet EMail:LIOREN1@WEIZMANN.WEIZMANN.AC.IL TT The people are T| ||Bitnet EMail:LIOREN1@WEIZMANN || with the Golan || ||Drag yer damn objects around. I've got work to do.|| Heights! || +====================================================++================++ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 10:47:23 -0600 From: Tam Ignatius Ying S Subject: Doom 32 channels Hi all, oh well, I haven't bump up to 32 channels, but using 20 channel sfx is really fun. For the person that can't notice the difference, try it in Nightmare level, you will immediately surrounded by a pile of sounds, and the sounds will not clip(that is will not cut off at the middle). BTW, it's kinda sucks to see Origin advertise their U8 to use 4 channel sfx, as if it were a very hi-tech and innovative thingy. Can't resist to laugh at them... Now I know why there is no sfx patch for U8...no matter how it's done, it's sucks. - Ignatius ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Apr 94 11:15:41 EDT From: "NEMO G DE FURIA" Subject: gus0041 questions Hiya, I just installed the gus0041 stuff successfully, and everything seems to be working fine except for: 1) Modus in windows seems to be playing the wrong notes in some mod files, or at least is way out of tune with some files. Is this just an isolated case, or has anyone else experienced this? One particular mod that I like that it butchers is VISION.MOD; maybe someone out there's got it also, it's Queen's One Vision. 2) The equalizer display in PLAYMIDI: The animation seems to be flickering in the bar graphs. This was a problem with the lat PLAYMIDI also. 3) For some reason, at random, I get a massive buzzing sound coming out of one speaker *sometimes* when I use GUSMOD. It nevers happens with ultramod though. 4) I overlayed my old ultrasound stuff with this gus0041 stuff (but I did delete the ultrasnd.ini) and then read the old readme again (my previous setup was from the mailed out update software from last year). It said that there was a demo program called JUNGLY.BAT but I couldn't find it. Was it actually included and I just lost it? Thanks in advance for the clarification, Nemo De Furia. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Apr 94 11:06:44 EDT From: A Warren Pratten Subject: GUS and Linux problem solved I found a solution that may be useful to other GUS and Linux users. I was having problems getting my GUS v3.7 to work with the Linux sound drivers v2.4. There appears to be some subtle incompatibility between the new GUS's and the v2.4 sound drivers which are distributed with the current Linux kernels. You will need to get the v2.5 sound drivers to use your new GUS with Linux. I believe it can be found on all the major Linux ftp sites. - Warren ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Apr 94 12:50:48 +0300 From: Yossi Oren Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V12 #14 >Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 18:07:27 +1000 (EST) >From: s9407312@minyos.xx.rmit.EDU.AU (Simon Charles Murphy) >Subject: CWG > > Can anyone tell me what CWG is and if it is a magazine where I can >get it from, and where it is possible to get past issues from. That's probably a typo for "CGW", which means "Computer Gaming World". This is generally more Amiga-oriented but PC os covered too. They had this really disastrous and error-strewn GUS review, Phat mailed the editor and his mail appeared with a flame from the editors. That's all I know about them. Yossi. +---+---+---+---------------------------------------------------+---+---+ | = | E |_|/| Signature 1.31 | V | ^ | +---+---+---+---------------------------------------------------+---+---+ |Yossi Oren, Al-Daf Techno-Mercenaries, Rishon Le-Zion, Israel. Help | |TInternet EMail:LIOREN1@WEIZMANN.WEIZMANN.AC.IL TT The people are T| ||Bitnet EMail:LIOREN1@WEIZMANN || with the Golan || ||Drag yer damn objects around. I've got work to do.|| Heights! || +====================================================++================++ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Apr 94 12:53:42 +0300 From: Yossi Oren Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V12 #14 >Date: Wed, 13 Apr 94 19:57:23 EST >From: jpoet@einet.com >Subject: Mega-EM > >Does anyone know how I can get in touch with Jayeson Lee-Steere? I have been >off the internet since September and just got back on. I registered Mega-Em >with him last summer, and I would like to know what the current state of this >great software is. Well, you're not alone in your opinion! Advanced Gravis liked Mega-Em so much, they bought Jayeson! That's right, Mega-Em is the ace up the v3.1 install's sleeve, and it's even in the manual! To reach Jayeson, mail him at jayeson@gravis.com :) Yossi. +---+---+---+---------------------------------------------------+---+---+ | = | E |_|/| Signature 1.31 | V | ^ | +---+---+---+---------------------------------------------------+---+---+ |Yossi Oren, Al-Daf Techno-Mercenaries, Rishon Le-Zion, Israel. Help | |TInternet EMail:LIOREN1@WEIZMANN.WEIZMANN.AC.IL TT The people are T| ||Bitnet EMail:LIOREN1@WEIZMANN || with the Golan || ||Drag yer damn objects around. I've got work to do.|| Heights! || +====================================================++================++ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 12:00:12 GMT+1 From: "F. Viktor" Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V12 #14 You wrote: > Date: Wed, 13 Apr 1994 23:34:40 -0700 (PDT) > From: swoo@netcom.com (Sky Woo) > Subject: PQ4 SFX/MUSIC in Windows > > > > because I'm getting nothing from the GUS Windows drivers. If > > anyone > > > knows why it craps out on me when I'm in Windows... Please tell me. > > > Or should I just wait until the Sierra GUS drivers arrive. But who > > > knows > > > when that'll be. > > > > If you like playing slow games run it under Winslows3.1. > > Or just forget about it. (I'd choose the last one.) > > > > Viktor > > > Tell you what... You go out and buy a $40 game and find out > that it doesn't work with the GUS... Than I'll tell you tough. Just > don't play it. Gee, what now... you just wasted $40!!! I'm cleverer than you might think. I check the proggy _BEFORE_ I buy it. Of course not a pirate one. Just get an original version and try it out, how it works. > Well... you can tinker it until it finally works which according > to other people it has worked under Windows. And hoorrah!!! I finally > have it working with all the music and sound effects under Windows. I just > reinstalled it. The game is so much better and realistic with sound effects > and music. Not sure what was wrong before. But it doesn't matter now. The > game is not "slow" under Windows at least on my system. It runs at a > very acceptable frame rate and does not drag. But that's just my system. > What kind of system do I have which allows me such smooth play? 486/66 > VLB 16MB of memory. Only bad thing about it is that it crashes quite > often and completely pisses me off. But oh well... save often! I do As I see you use your machine for playing. I have a bit slower machine but I can trust it at least. Unfortunately I don't have the time to work on games to use them with my GUS. And there's a lot of other games working just fine with GUS. > that all time in Windows anyways. This will keep me held up until Sierra > finally releases the DOS drivers. Hope they will. Bye Viktor ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 14:20:41 GMT+1 From: "F. Viktor" Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V12 #14 > Date: Wed, 13 Apr 1994 19:40:41 -0700 (PDT) > From: Rath > Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V12 #13 > > Sorry if this is a FAQ, but : Where may i find DMAUD.EXE for the monty > python sounds for doom? > I've gotten the sound zip already, now all it says that I need is the DMAUD. > Rath DMAUD is a program to chage the sfx in the doom.wad file. The latest version is in (I think) DMAUD11.ZIP in wuarchive under /pub/MSDOS_UPLOADS/games/doomstuff or on the DOOMONLY FTP-Site: ocf.unt.edu /pub/doom. If you want to contact the author Bill Neisius: bill@solaria.hac.com To subscribe the Doom-List send an e-mail to: listproc@cedar.univie.ac.at. Put subscribe dooml (yourname@address) in the _BODY_ (not in the subject line) of your msg. "If a message is ever rejected, please contact the list's owner: savage@cedar.univie.ac.at For information on this service and how to use it, send the following request in the body of a mail message to listproc@cedar.univie.ac.at: HELP" Viktor > ------------------------------ > > Date: Wed, 13 Apr 1994 23:34:40 -0700 (PDT) > From: swoo@netcom.com (Sky Woo) > Subject: PQ4 SFX/MUSIC in Windows > > > > because I'm getting nothing from the GUS Windows drivers. If > > anyone > > > knows why it craps out on me when I'm in Windows... Please tell me. > > > Or should I just wait until the Sierra GUS drivers arrive. But who > > > knows > > > when that'll be. > > > > If you like playing slow games run it under Winslows3.1. > > Or just forget about it. (I'd choose the last one.) > > > > Viktor > > > Tell you what... You go out and buy a $40 game and find out > that it doesn't work with the GUS... Than I'll tell you tough. Just > don't play it. Gee, what now... you just wasted $40!!! I got this game only to test it. So it didn't cost me anything. I'm not crazy to pay for this s..t. Viktor ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 11:49:00 -0400 (EDT) From: Phat H Tran Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V12 #14 > Date: Wed, 13 Apr 94 19:57:23 EST > From: jpoet@einet.com > Subject: Mega-EM > > Does anyone know how I can get in touch with Jayeson Lee-Steere? I have been > off the internet since September and just got back on. I registered Mega-Em > with him last summer, and I would like to know what the current state of this > great software is. Mega-Em has been bought by Gravis and is now free to all GUS users. It's up to version 2.03 and supports the SB DAC as well as the Roland/GM stuff that it's always had. > Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 11:51:55 -0500 (EST) > From: V_IOURT@PAVO.CONCORDIA.CA > Subject: Mega-Em and QEMM > > Hello, everyone! > > I'm having hard times getting Mega-Em to work. I use QEMM 7.03, and > whenever I try to load Mega-Em, I get > > ERROR: EMM incompatibility problem: Resident code failing to respond. If this problem doesn't go away, make a boot configuration using EMM386 instead of QEMM for Mega-Em. However, I think Mega-Em is supposed to work with all the latest versions of QEMM. Mike Batchelor would be in a better position to help you with QEMM. > Date: Wed, 13 Apr 1994 14:26:17 -0700 > From: dross@ultrix4.cs.csubak.edu (Dean Ross-Smith) > Subject: optifix > > I've only been able to play raptor twice on my 'puter... > Does anyone have optifix for Opti motherboards? Raptor keeps locking on me > before I even get to the title screen. > Could a kind soul please upload it to epas? Optifix is already on the GUS archive mirrors. The file is gus0013.zip and should be located in something like ../gravis/patches. It won't be found on Epas. > Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 17:32:38 +0930 (CST) > From: Gavin Scarman > Subject: Raptor sounds are aweful > > Why does Raptor sound so bad? ie. the quality of the instruments is really poor. There's a problem with your setup. The instruments sound the same as they always have for me. > Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 15:55:40 GMT > From: Mathew Taylor > Subject: Ultima 8 > > Has anyone got any ideas on how to get GUS sound out of this game? There's a patch to get native GUS music from the games, but no digital sound effects (since Origin appears to have used a custom internal driver that Gravis can't get at). The patch is u8gus.zip and can be found in the submit directory on Epas or its mirrors. > Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 15:14:58 +0200 > From: z75@nikhef.nl (Jorritjan Niessink) > Subject: Upgrade 8 bits to 16 bits sampling > > I've read about a kind of plug-in module to upgrade the 8 bits sampling > GUS to 16 bits sampling. > > My local shop has also heard of it, but wonders if it is already available, > as he hasn't seen one yet. The 16-bit DB is currently available. > So this is what I would like to ask: Do this plug-in module exist and if > yes, where to get it. Can you also give a price-indication. The list price is $100. Contact Gravis for more detail. Phat. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 16:00:38 -0700 (MST) From: "Shawn T. Rutledge" Subject: History and Future of Synthesis Wave of the Future The story of the next generation in sound technology By Bob Johnstone In 1963 Max Mathews, then a researcher at the Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, published a paper in which he predicted that the computer would become the ultimate musical instrument. "There are no theoretical limits," Mathews wrote, "to the performance of the computer as a source of musical sounds." Thirty years later, you can find the father of computer music at Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (abbreviated CCRMA, but pronounced - because this is, after all, California - "Karma"). There, in the Knoll, a 1916 Spanish Gothic edifice that was once the president's residence, with a panoramic view over Silicon Valley, a bunch of young graduate students - engineers, programmers, and roboticists, all of them also accomplished musicians - are building the ultimate musical instrument. Fashioned from software, silicon, solenoids and speakers, this virtual masterpiece will be able to replicate not just the sound, but also the feel of every piano, organ, harpsichord, and keyboard instrument that has ever existed (see "The Ultimate Keyboard," page 60). Of interest only to scholars and performers? Maybe so, but Karma's work has a way of resonating far beyond Stanford's Hoover Tower. The center's researchers have already played a key role in the ongoing metamorphosis of the personal computer from dumb terminal into multimedia machine. In particular, they have contributed much to the development of sound boards. Over the past year or so, these plug-in PC accessories - notably Sound Blaster, the board made by Creative Technology of Singapore - have emerged from the hype as multimedia's first real-world market maker. Analysts such as In-Stat's Gerry Kaufhold predict that in 1994 sales of sound boards will top US$1 billion. Almost all (more than 95 percent) of these boards carry FM synthesizer chips made by the Japanese firm Yamaha. The chips derive from a discovery made at Stanford in 1967 by composer John Chowning, now Karma's director. They have created a revenue stream (millions of dollars in patent royalties) that has underwritten the development at the center of a new, much more natural-sounding generation of synthesizer based on mathematical models known as waveguides. This technology is now on its way to market keyboards from Yamaha, and chips from the Fremont, California-based board maker Media Vision. Because of multimedia applications, Joe Koepnick of Stanford's Office of Technology Licensing reckons that "the potential is clearly there for waveguides to eclipse FM synthesis in terms of market impact." ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 19:24:08 +0100 (MET) From: n96525@pbhrzx.uni-paderborn.de (Dietmar Schroeder) Subject: joystick Hello all, I'm planning to buy a joystick. Will FLIGHTSTICK(pro) or THRUSTMASTER work with my GUS (3.4) ? That's all. Bis denn sagt Dietmar ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Apr 94 22:31:00 -0800 From: chris.campbell@mag-net.com (Chris Campbell) Subject: Mega-Em >Does anyone know how I can get in touch with Jayeson Lee-Steere? I have >been off the internet since September and just got back on. I >registered Mega-Em with him last summer, and I would like to know what >the current state of this great software is. Jayeson is now working for Gravis and the program is free! It supports Sound Blaster digital sound, and he is currentally working on a version that will work for protected mode games! ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 18:01:39 -0700 (PDT) From: Eli Bingham Subject: Mega-lagg at archive.orst.edu! Has anyone else noticed that the lagg at archive.orst.edu is VERY bad, even when there are but a few users online? What's going on over there? ========================================================================== Eli Bingham ebingham@tcsgi.mhs.mendocino.k12.ca.us ebingha@ctp.org "Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy." -Orson Welles ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 20:00:13 -0700 (PDT) From: "Peter C. Chien Jr." Subject: Patches Dear Anyone, Does anyone else notice if the brass instruments (such as the trumpets and trombone) make a slight popping sound? This happens under credits.mid in the xwingmid.zip files of songs from X-wing when played by media player and Recording Session. I am playing the songs through Altec Lansing speakers (ACS300). I suspect that the problem is the sampled patches, which hopefully can be resampled and updated (I had v2.06 disks upgraded by the 3.1 install disks). Just wondering in the meantime how I can eliminate the popping sounds. Peter ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 14:03:59 +0200 From: Nils Pedersen Subject: Re: Raptor sounds... > Just wanted to add my name to the list of those who have tried the game and > found it works with all 8 channels. I have a 486/DX50 ISA, with the I/O bus > running at 12.67MHz. > > Frank Pikelner > frank@cs.yorku.ca Since we're creating a list, add my name to it. And thank you Phat for helping me out with X-Wing. Nils Pedersen (nilspe@ifi.uio.no) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 01:53:51 -0700 (PDT) From: "Peter C. Chien Jr." Subject: Rebel Assault I need help trying to get Rebel Assault running. It does have the UltraSound support, but when I run the program, sound comes out funny, like music and/or speech and then buzzing noise that comes out. My ultrasound is set at 220, 1,1, 11, 7 (I tried 220,1,1,7,5), then I downloaded the joystick patch and older DOS4GW.EXE, but still same problem. I have an IBM 486SLC2/50 with 8MB RAM, and am using a Toshiba 3401B 2X drive. I tried increasing the sound buffer to all values, but nothing worked. Help! Peter ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Apr 94 18:31:56 +0200 From: tbaehler@di.epfl.ch (Thomas Baehler) Subject: Some RAM Problems Hi all, I have a problem over here that I cannot resolve... some RAM stuff. 3 weeks ago, i bought a GUS (which is probably the best computer bought i've done for a long time) with 256k RAM to go in my 486DX33. I tried it on Kyrandia II (Hand Of Fate) with the GUS emulation on SCC-1 (Sound Canvas), and the music was just terrific. Then a friend told me to buy the 764k RAM add-up, so i could have sounds even more terrific... So i purchased my RAM and placed it on my Gravis... well, all worked well, the sound was even better, etc., BUT some instruments used in the melodies were not right. For example, when I had my 256k, in Hand Of Fate were the instruments like on the SCC-1, and now some instruments are just different and don't go at all with the type of music being played (for example, in Hand Of Fate, where it is "old" music, there's an electric guitar...) Could any1 tell me what I have to do, and if there's something to do ? Thanks a lot. Eric Vassalli EPFL, Lausanne SWITZERLAND ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 09:19:34 -0400 From: Hui Chi-Wai Subject: Unix AU player for dos/windows Subjects says it all, was wondering if there was a .au file player for dos/windows usable by the GUS. I know of goldwave that can be used to convert .au files to .wav .voc but was hoping there was a plain player. ------------------------------ From: (null) When John Chowning arrived at Stanford in 1962 as a 29-year-old graduate student, he had never even seen a computer before. But as a composer, he was keen to explore the idea of speakers-as-instruments; he had encountered the concept as a student in Paris, where he attended electronic music concerts given by composers like Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen. So when a colleague in the Stanford orchestra passed him a copy of Max Mathews's paper describing how computers could be programmed to play instrumental music, Chowning wasted little time before heading off to Bell Labs in New Jersey to find out how it was done. Mathews worked in the acoustic and behavioral research department of Bell Labs. There, in order to simulate telephones, researchers had figured out how to digitize speech, squirt it into the computer, then turn the bits back into sound waves afterwards. Mathews immediately realized that it would be relatively straightforward to adapt this process to the writing and playback of music. He wrote a program that made the technology accessible to non-scientists, then invited composers to come by the labs to try it out. In retrospect, the rigmarole these computer-music pioneers had to go through in order to hear what they'd written seems agonizingly slow. As Mathews recalls, "we had decks of punch cards on which the computer scores were produced, which we would carry around in boxes." These they would load into a car, drive into Manhattan to the IBM building, on Madison Avenue and 57th Street. There, in the basement, was a mainframe computer on which time could be rented (at the astronomical rate of $600 an hour). "We would queue up," Mathews says, "then, when it was our turn, we would run down the stairs, stick our cards in the deck, and press the button." The result would be a tape full of digital sound samples, which they would take back to Bell Labs and play back through a digital-to-analog converter. Why were composers prepared to put up with such a long drawn-out process? Because the alternative could take much longer. What was a matter of hours - compared with the several years it might take to interest some orchestra in playing their score? ("The reason I keep these expensive gentlemen with me," the late Duke Ellington once said, referring to his orchestra, "is that unlike most composers, I can immediately hear what I've written.") A second attraction of computers was that not only did they play the score exactly as written, they also offered composers the chance to go back and change bits that they didn't like. Now the challenge was how to make electronic sounds interesting, how to brighten up the dull tones to which output devices like oscillators were limited. Chowning returned to California clutching the box of punch cards Mathews had given him. He found a place to play them at Stanford's newly established artificial intelligence laboratory, a heady intellectual environment where engineers, scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, and psychologists gathered to see what they could get computers to do. One night in 1967, while experimenting with wildly exaggerated vibratos - fluctuations in pitch often added to electronic sounds to give them a more realistic quality - fooling around with a couple of oscillators, using the output of one to control the other, half fearing that he'd break the computer if he went too far, Chowning heard something remarkable. At a frequency of around 20Hz, he noticed that instead of an instantaneous change in pitch from one pure tone to another, a recognizable tone color, one that was rich in harmonics, emerged from the machine. It was a discovery that an engineer would have been unlikely to make. What Chowning had stumbled upon, it later turned out, was frequency modulation - the same technique that radio and television broadcasters use to transmit noise-free signals. Of this, the composer was blissfully ignorant: All he wanted to do was make colorful sounds. Chowning began tweaking his algorithm and pretty soon, as he recalls, "using only two oscillators, I was making bell tones and clarinet-like tones and bassoon-like tones, and I thought, you know, this is interesting." But who was interested? Certainly not the Stanford authorities, who, after evaluating Chowning's discovery and two of his subsequent compositions, turned down his application for tenure. Nor were US electronic organ makers - companies like Hammond. To generate its unmistakable sound (remember Booker T & the MGs?), Hammond used an electromechanical system consisting of toothed iron disks that rotated in front of electromagnets; they in turn generated voltages that formed the pitch for each key. The Chicago-based company sent its technical people out to the West Coast to check out the technology, but the engineers couldn't really see how all this digital computer stuff related to what they did. "It was just not a part of their world," comments Chowning. (Hammond went out of business in 1985; today, only the brand name remains, the property of Suzuki, a small Japanese keyboard maker.) One of the few people who did get it, and who encouraged Chowning to continue with his work, was Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh. Himself a sometime composer of orchestral music, Lesh dropped by the lab for a listen one day in early 1972. Another, more significant visitor, was Kazukiyo Ishimura, a young engineer sent to Stanford later the same year by Yamaha, the largest maker of musical instruments in the world. It took Ishimura just 10 minutes to understand the principle of FM synthesis, and its potential. As Ishimura, who today is Yamaha's managing director, recalls, "We believed that this technology might be the future of music." The reason he was so fast on the uptake was that Yamaha had already embarked on the development of digital instruments. Ishimura's boss at the time, Yasunori Mochida, envisioned digital integrated circuits - chips - as tools for making new sounds. At Yamaha's research laboratories in the small Japanese port city of Hamamatsu, half way between Tokyo and Osaka, Mochida and his team of six young engineers had tried all sorts of approaches, but without much success. "We weren't digital specialists," says Mochida, who now teaches a course in multimedia at Tokyo's Kogakuin University, "so we went looking for people who were, to ask their advice on how to make all-digital musical instruments." And, via a contact from the Stanford technology licensing office, found John Chowning, and immediately began negotiations for an exclusive license for rights to the FM patent. "As an engineer, you are very lucky if you encounter a simple and elegant solution to a complex problem," Mochida told Music Trades magazine in 1987. "FM was such a solution and it captured my imagination. The problems of implementing it were immense, but it was such a wonderful idea that I knew in my heart that it would eventually work." Synthesizing musical notes is a tough problem because it has to be done fast, in real time. Yamaha's current single-chip synthesizers are special-purpose digital signal processors that can zip through 20 million instructions a second, faster than most microprocessors. But back in the mid 1970s, when Mochida approached suppliers like NEC and Hitachi about making such chips, "they told us to stop thinking about something so difficult." Against strenuous opposition from the company's board of directors, Mochida proposed to Yamaha's then-president, Gen'ichi Kawakami, that Yamaha would probably have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in order to become a chip maker in its own right. And, in true jaw-jutting corporate samurai style, Kawakami agreed, saying (according to Mochida), "if we can make the best musical instruments in the world, then no matter how difficult it is, no matter how much money it costs - we'll do it." Turning FM synthesis from a software algorithm that ran on mainframes into chips that powered a commercial synthesizer took seven years. But from Yamaha's point of view, it was worth the effort. Launched in 1983, the DX-7, Yamaha's first mass-market implementation of FM technology, was a huge success, eventually selling more than 200,000 units, ten times more than any synthesizer before or since. Professional musicians like Chick Corea loved the DX-7 because it had a distinctive sound, was simple to program, and could produce a variety of effects. Also, priced under $2,000, the DX-7 was affordable, and it quickly became part of every self- respecting keyboard player's set-up. Yamaha leveraged its investment in the technology across its entire product line, sticking FM chips into everything from mini-keyboards to top-of-the-line organs. At the same time, Yamaha was looking into computer applications for FM. That was where the company blundered. Mochida decided to build a multimedia computer with built-in sound and graphics. But in a move typical of early Japanese entrants to the PC business, Yamaha tried to go it alone, developing everything, including the operating system and applications software itself. The result was a complete flop (though the project did have one important by-product: Yamaha's experience with multimedia chips won it the contract to make the sound and graphics processors used in all current Sega game consoles). Mochida was demoted, and, deciding that the chip business was less risky, Yamaha more or less withdrew from the computer market. The company did produce one soundboard - for the IBM PS/2, in 1986 - but without much support, it died a quiet death. Today's soundboard business is largely the creation of a most unlikely pair: Martin Prevel, a French-Canadian professor of music at the University of Quebec, and Sim Wong Hoo, a young Singaporean entrepreneur. Both began by attempting to sell educational music products, but they soon discovered a much bigger market opportunity: PC game developers like Sierra Online needed sound in order to compete effectively against Nintendo. In 1988, Ad Lib (Prevel's company) brought out a board based on Yamaha's FM chip that enabled the PC to make music. But Creative Technology (Sim's company) discovered that music by itself was not enough. "It was like silent movies with a piano player," says Broderbund sound director Tom Rettig. What game developers also needed was a digital sound-output device - like the one in the Mac - to enable them to create sound effects (like creaking doors) and voices for their characters. Sim soon got the message, and the result was the Sound Blaster (see "Loud and Clear," page 62). Voices and sound effects are created using samples, digital snapshots of sound waves that are stored in computer memory. The more sounds you want, the more space you need to store them, the more expensive it becomes. FM synthesis scored over sampling because it could generate a wide range of sounds without any memory. But though relatively rich, the sounds that FM produces are still unmistakably artificial. As memory became cheaper, and data compression techniques improved, sampling came into its own. Today, sampling - also known, confusingly, as PCM, for pulse code modulation - is the technology of choice in the synthesizer business, and many soundboard makers (including belated re-entrant Yamaha) see sample-based solutions as the logical replacement for FM. To musicians and composers, however, the technology has one serious drawback: as you would expect from sounds pasted together from frozen snippets, it lacks expressiveness. How to produce sound as efficient and expressive as FM, but offering the quality of sampling? This question drove Karma's Julius Orion Smith III to develop waveguides, the latest generation of synthesizer technology. Smith's answering machine plays what must be one of the shorter messages around: "This is Julius...." It aptly reflects the way Smith's engineer's mind works: identifying the nature of the problem, reducing it to its essence, coming up with an efficient solution. "I'm always rating the effectiveness of everything I do," he says. As a 9-year-old in his native Memphis, Julius Smith won a math contest. By the age of 16, he knew he wanted to be a musician. But it was not until 1980, when he arrived at Karma, that then 30-ish Smith came across the Violin Problem, a challenge that allowed him to draw on both his talents. "As a musician, I knew there were no good string synthesizers, and I thought, well it must be hard, because a lot of companies had been trying to do it for a long time." So, methodically, working 16 hours a day, Smith dedicated himself to accumulating the arcane knowledge he needed to solve the problem. His approach was straightforward: He set out to create mathematical models of the way a string vibrates when a bow is drawn across it. Easy to say, formidably difficult to do. But in 1985, after years of banging his head against a wall, Smith finally broke through. Drawing on work done on power transmission lines in the 1920s, he recast vibration as a wave traveling in only one direction. Still, solving the resultant equations would have kept a supercomputer crunching numbers for weeks. So Smith used some fancy math to reduce by 100 times the number of calculations required to calculate the wave. Et voila: the virtual violin! It came with an unexpected bonus: since there is no difference mathematically between a violin's vibrating string and a clarinet's column of air, Smith found he could use the same equations to simulate wind instruments like oboes and flutes, too. Colleagues at Karma subsequently exploited waveguides to produce convincing simulations of other sounds. Perry Cook has developed a disembodied singing voice, a virtual diva called Shiela. Graduate student Scott VanDuyne is working on two-dimensional waveguide algorithms to create virtual percussion instruments like gongs and cymbals, traditionally among the most difficult sounds to synthesize. In addition to versatility, another big advantage of waveguides over samples is their ability to simulate natural parameters like breath strength - how hard a reed player is blowing. By slightly varying these parameters, you can make a clarinet squeak, say, or a sax growl. And because of subtle timing issues, it sounds slightly different each time you play it - just like live music, in fact. Waveguides can also simulate howling guitar feedback, a category of sound that no other kind of synthesizer can produce. Many of these features are included in Yamaha's VL-1 synthesizer, the first commercial waveguide instrument, which the company announced at the end of November. The $7,000 instrument drew rave reviews from the technical press: "[It's] pretty exciting," says Mark Vail, technical editor of Keyboard Magazine, "[samplers] have been around for a long time, and there's a staleness in the music industry - people have been waiting for something new to come along." Since signing a contract with Stanford in 1989, Yamaha has reportedly had a hundred engineers working on the development of waveguide instruments, cranking out the algorithmic variations. This gives the Japanese firm a huge head start on rival instrument makers. This time, however, Yamaha does not have a lock on the technology: Its license is non-exclusive. Four US companies have already signed up to develop waveguide technology and at least as many more are interested. Leading the pack is Media Vision, which hopes to have a synthesizer chip ready for computer use in early 1994. "It's a substantial breakthrough," claims Media Vision vice president Satish Gupta, "it has the potential to completely change the rules of the game." "Programmers are going to drool over waveguides," predicts Perry Cook, now chief scientist at the company. "They're going to want to work with this." Broderbund's Tom Rettig agrees. "To me, waveguides offer really thrilling possibilities," he enthuses. "The most exciting part is you'll be able to describe instruments that are as expressive as the most interesting acoustic instruments - and that's where current electronic technology falls down." Max Mathews's 30-year-old prophesy about computers having the potential to generate any sound the human ear could hear may finally be coming to pass. Sidebars The Ultimate Keyboard Under the bench in his Karma workshop, a small, high-ceilinged room that might once have been a pantry, Brent Gillespie keeps a model of the action of a grand-piano key. An intricate mechanism made of ivory, wood, felt and metal that forms a bewilderingly complex sequence of cranks, levers, springs, pivots, rollers, checks, and dampers, it provides a two-way interface between a player's fingers and the piano's strings. The action is vital for musicians: it gives them the expressive control over an instrument required for fine performance. ("Aside from its beautiful tone, the thing that I like best about the Baldwin piano is its fantastically responsive action," reads an endorsement by George Shearing in a magazine ad.) "Synthesizers were a big turnoff for musicians at first encounter because they didn't feel right," says Gillespie, a graduate student in mechanical engineering and an expert in force-feedback systems. "My project is all about putting the feel of a grand piano back into a synthesizer keyboard." To this end, Gillespie has built a prototype "virtual" action. A small clear plastic box from which two keys stick out, its sensor keeps track of the position of a key as it is pressed; a solenoid puts out an opposing force proportional to the key's displacement. It's uncanny: you press the key and you feel the striking of a string that you know is not there. The box can be programmed to replicate the different feel of instruments as similar as pianos and harpsichords, whose strings are plucked rather than struck. Why hook up a waveguide synthesizer that can reproduce all possible keyboard instrument sounds? John Chowning explains: "We have a generalized keyboard that can be particularized to any desired piano or any specific piano. If you want a Yamaha, you can have it. If you want a particular kind of feel on your Yamaha, you can program the resistances. Or if you want a forte piano of, say, the 1780s, you can have it, and the sound that goes with it. "We have this idea of a piano which in all essential respects - auditory, kinesthetic, tactile - is a piano, only it has no strings, no action. But it supports the repertoire for which these instruments exist. It's easy to keep in tune, and you can easily change the tuning system from, say, mean tune, which you might want for the 18th century, to well-tempered, as in Bach, to equal tempering, as used today, just with presses of buttons. You can play it at night because you can turn off the loudspeaker and listen through the head-phones - that's important in Japan. And it's easy to move. It's the ultimate piano. "And we have an historian, George Barth, whose scholarly expertise is in the evolution of keyboard instruments. If you have a replica of, say, a 1780 forte piano built, with an artisan who does it cheaply, it costs $20,000, and with artisan paid at normal rates it would cost $100,000. George Barth has one, but what do his students do? Well, they have to convince their employer, or their university, or if they want to perform, they have to come up with $100,000. "This is the general solution, you see, for the extension of scholarly activity - and it really democratizes the idea of performance. No longer will it be true that only the wealthy kid gets the good Steinway, but every kid gets the good Steinway." Loud and Clear If ever a person was in the right place at the right time, it was Sim Wong Hoo, chairman and CEO of Creative Technology, and one of multimedia's first multimillionaire. The place was San Francisco, the time August 1988. The 32-year-old Sim had arrived in the US from his native Singapore to market his company's pride and joy: the Creative Music System, a synthesizer card whose software enabled users to compose music on the PC. A group of potential customers for the system was Bay Area-based game developers. But as Sim went 'round talking to the companies, he quickly realized what people really wanted not just another music synthesizer, but a board that could handle digitized sound, to enable the PC to produce sound effects and speech. "Sim had a clear vision of the importance of audio, at a time when the industry had just started with it," recalls Tom Rettig, sound director at top educational game maker Broderbund, "he contacted us at just the right time." Sim's vision had deep roots. "I felt that computers should be more human-like," Sim says, "able to react, to talk, sing and play music." In the mid-1980s, Creative designed a series of computers for the Singapore market featuring rudimentary (Chinese) speech capabilities. But as competition in the clone market became fierce, Sim switched focus from PCs to the add-on board business, where profit margins were higher. In 1988, the tiny market for sound boards was dominated by Ad Lib, a Quebec-based company whose Yamaha FM synthesizer-chip-based board was supported by hundreds of game titles. At the time, Ad Lib was the only firm that Yamaha supplied. Then Microsoft stepped in and asked Yamaha to sell the chips on the open market. The Japanese firm agreed. Creative's great good fortune was to be the first to come out with a board that mounted the Yamaha chip - making it compatible with existing games - and that supported the new software. Sound Blaster was launched in November 1989. In addition to music synthesis, the Sound Blaster also offered the digital sound capabilities of the Mac. "That combination really made the whole thing take off," says Rettig. Broderbund developed two of the first products that supported Sound Blaster: Princes of Persia and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Developers appreciated Sim's aggressiveness and his willingness to put his company's technical resources at their disposal. If they needed a software driver, for example, Sim could conjure one up for them overnight, making good use of the 16-hour time difference between Singapore and the West Coast. (Business hours on the island begin just as the US work day ends.) An Asian manufacturing base enabled Creative to drive down board prices, giving it a competitive edge that Ad Lib could not match. From an initial listing of $299, the price of Sound Blaster eventually dropped to below $70, as the market for the board exploded. In Sound Blaster's first year, Creative sold 100,000 boards, a phenomenal amount for the time. Today, the company is on a roll, selling 300,000 boards a month. Now Creative's goal is to branch out from its beachhead in audio to stake out other parts of multimedia, like CD-ROM upgrade kits and video boards. "I'm not stopping here," Sim says. Bob Johnstone is WIRED's contributing editor in Japan. WIRED Online Copyright Notice Copyright 1993,4 Ventures USA Ltd. All rights reserved. This article may be redistributed provided that the article and this notice remain intact. This article may not under any circumstances be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from Wired Ventures, Ltd. If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information about licensing materials from WIRED Online, please contact us via telephone (+1 (415) 904 0660) or email (info@wired.com). WIRED and WIRED Online are trademarks of Wired Ventures, Ltd. ------------------------------ End of GUS Daily Digest V12 #15 *******************************