GUS Daily Digest Mon, 12 Dec 94 9:37 PST Volume 17: Issue 12 Today's Topics: 1MB gripes, note dropping CDRom recording-Rom recording dune and gus GUS Daily Digest V17 #11 (2 msgs) INDYCAR Patch Magic Carpet, My GUS dead Note Dropping... Patch replacements Windows NT Drivers 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: Mon, 12 Dec 1994 10:15:10 GMT From: Clarke Brunt Subject: Re: 1MB gripes, note dropping >Yes, I too, have my 1 MB limit gripe. I'm not sure if it's actually the >problem, but could the 1 MB limit cause the note dropping in big MIDI >files? I have a midi file called erasure.mid, and I notice some notes >are skipped, but it also turns out that this file has lots of instruments >playing at the same time, so I am wondering if the patch caching is >being stretched to its limit. Also, couldn't Gravis get around this by >using motherboard RAM as patch RAM? >I'm sure they can develop a driver that let's us select the >amount of motherboard RAM for loading additional patches. The only limit imposed by the 1MB is how many instrument patches can be loaded at once. Sure, if an instrument your MID wanted did not fit, then the notes for that instrument would be missing, but random occasional dropped notes seem to have been a feature of most if not all releases of the Windows MIDI drivers. The GUS has 32 independent voices (you can have less than this enabled in the Windows driver setup) - this limits how many notes you can play simultaneously, including the decay of the note after the MIDI Note Off message. The driver must have some scheme of allocating a voice to each new note - presumably a 'least recently used' algorithm - so if you try to play too many notes at once, the oldest notes would be cut off, rather than the new ones missed out. Maybe the 'techies' can advise, but I doubt the practicality of using main RAM for patches. The GUS has to scan the samples (up to 32 of them, as I said) at up to 44kHz. If the samples were 16bit, then this makes about 2.8 megabytes a second of data (half that for 8-bit samples). This sounds like a hell of a lot of traffic for the PC Bus to handle, if it were possible at all. That's why the patches are stored in memory *local* to the GUS. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Dec 94 14:06:30 MET From: (Martijn de Jong) Subject: CDRom recording-Rom recording Hi Gussers, A while ago there was a discussion on the digest about recording data from Audio-Cd's directly through the databus on your harddisk. It made it possible to record stereo 16 bit without having a soundcard. I'm working on a project where We're trying to give a soundcard (we're using a MAX) a digital line-in, but at the moment this is giving us big problems. (damn integrated chips) Now I wanna know how many CD-Rom players have the possibility to record audio directly on a HD using a program like CDGrab Pro. I know the mitsumi drives can't. My own CD-Rom (a philips CM206) is giving big trouble too (general failure on command read long), but how about the Matsushita drives for example or the Panasonics, Sony and Trust. I'd like to hear from people what drive they have and if they're able to record in the way described above. Thanks in advance, Martinus. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Dec 1994 21:02:02 -0700 (MST) From: Yoo-Shin Lee Subject: dune and gus Hello, I've just reinstalled Dune 2 on my hard drive. I've used Dune2ail to change the ail drivers. I loaded ultramid -m100 -c. I then started dune2. The music is great throughout the introduction, but when I try to play a game (choose "play game option" from first menu) The game just freezes, with the music still playing. Any help would be appreciated. Otherwise I have to use sbos -o2 which doesn't give very good results. Thanks. -- Yoo-Shin Lee yoosh@cs.ualberta.ca http://web.cs.ualberta.ca/~yoosh -- Yoo-Shin Lee yoosh@cs.ualberta.ca http://web.cs.ualberta.ca/~yoosh ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Dec 1994 16:17:00 -1320 From: david.wei@uniserve.com (David Wei) Subject: GUS Daily Digest V17 #11 Message-ID: <2ad.989.47@uniserve.com> > > 1. The new chip is designed to be built in to the main PC processor. > The rest of your message sounds pretty accurrate, but I doubt this one. > I think you'll find it's made to be built into motherboards next to a CPU > (perhaps local bus, etc). If they built it into one of their CPUs, it > would instantly rule them out from being used in any Intel-based PCs, > which is the far majority of the market. WHY?? Only the socket will need to be redesigned, the only problem *MIGHT* trouble AMD is the noise problem, since it on the same chip as the CPU which is running at about 100Mhz+ > It would be nice if it were able to share memory with the CPU and access > it directly, but I doubt it will. I also remember hearing that they're > thinking of putting it into notebooks, which means it's probably 3.3 volt. SO? P54C Faultium is USING 3.3V design already! What's the problem with 3.3V? L8r ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- david.wei@uniserve.com (David Wei) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Dec 1994 23:37:29 -0600 (CST) From: ST4SI@Jetson.UH.EDU Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V17 #11 Hey... Well Uness. Roughness uses the crappy hmi.386 sound drivers.. Will the person who got music to work pleazzz repost how.. and has anyone been sucessful with speech? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Dec 1994 11:52:38 +0100 From: Martin Laukkanen Subject: Re: INDYCAR Patch To whoever it was who asked, the FTP site where you can get the GUS fix for Indycar Racing is; ftp.std.com in the dir /customers/vendors/papyrus and the file is: gravis.zip ok. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Dec 94 15:52:25 GMT From: Martin Shaw Subject: Magic Carpet, Hiyup, Probably old news, But I am a new subscriber.. Is there any way to get sound and music with Magic carpet... Also, When I play Ecstatica, whenever I change scenes the GUS makes a funny Buzzing noise.. It also happens in Tie Fighter, but everything else runs ok! any ideas? Cheers Martin ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | Martin Shaw, | "Tonight you sleep in hell." - Kurgan Dept. Computer Science, | Manchester, | "You only have one life! Value it! - Macleod | Email Shawm@cs.man.ac.uk | "There can be only one!" - Macleod | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Dec 1994 17:53:45 -0600 (CST) From: Mark Gabriel Subject: My GUS dead Hi. I didn't know where else to send this, so I decided to send it here. I recently got the GUS MAX - through a friends upgrade offer, but... I set the jumpers and all (no CD-ROM enabled, yet) and placed the card in the computer. I turned on the power and ran the setup program. It detected the GUS and allowed me to test it out, etc... Now, after that was done I installed my CD-ROM drivers and then shut the computer off. I proceeded to connect the CD-ROM to the GUS, and turned the computer back on. Now...the GUS is dead. It doesn't detect (I tried all the settings) even returned to no CD-ROM connected. I got my friend (GUS expert) to help me out and he couldn't get it going. We thought it might be my computer (who knows) and tried the MAX in his (his GUS works in his system) and still no go. Does it sound like my GUS is dead? I want to make sure I didn't miss anything before I send it back to gravis for replacement. Thanx! mark. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Dec 94 9:46:12 EST From: "Brian K. Dowtin" Subject: Re: Note Dropping... Just a "Be sure you check.." I had a small problem with note dropping/cutting out, and it turned out I had the number of VOICES set too few (like 10 or something). (in the drivers section, of control panel, under GUS synth or something) Moving them up to 24 fixed it. I think 24 is when the GUS switches outsampling rates to a lower one ( read: sound degrades a little) But upping that helped me - just a simple thing to check before you start looking deeper. -- `Brian ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Dec 1994 20:05:26 +0100 From: "Jerry van Waardenberg" Subject: Patch replacements Hi, Some time ago I posted a message about patch replacements. Some people asked me which patches should be replaced. Well, I am not an expert on this subject, but I downloaded the Pro Patch archive and replaced some standard patches by custom PP3 ones. I've compared some (not all!) patches. A lot of the PP3 patches sound better than de original ones, but they are usually a *lot* bigger. So I also compared the patch sizes and only replaced patches by others that were not too big. This is my list of replacements: calliope.pat 36527 19-06-83 6:45 cymcrsh1.pat 66185 7-04-83 18:44 cymride1.pat 45137 7-04-83 18:47 doo.pat 181943 14-06-83 7:05 epiano1.pat 68671 14-03-83 21:31 fx-fret.pat 13221 14-06-83 4:12 hihatcl.pat 27189 14-06-83 13:57 homeorg.pat 95217 19-06-83 6:48 hrpschrd.pat 248683 14-06-83 4:08 kick1.pat 24171 15-06-83 22:14 kick2.pat 36849 14-06-83 14:15 marcato.pat 156197 21-03-83 11:57 ringwhsl.pat 70107 16-06-83 0:05 stickrim.pat 22583 14-06-83 13:45 voxlead.pat 75297 8-04-83 16:46 I like these patches better than the original ones AND most of them are not a lot bigger (some of them are even smaller). If you have suggestions for other replacements (e.g. patches that are not in the PP3 archive), please mail them to me. I would appreciate it if you could tell me where I can find the patches (ftp-site, directory and filename), since I don't have direct ftp-access (only ftp-by-mail). I prefer patches <100k. (Gravis, when will there be an Utrasound with at least 4MB RAM...?) Greetz, Jerry -- Merry X-mas! _____________________________________________________________ Jerry van Waardenberg -=- Internet: jerry@waard.iaf.nl Voice: (+31)(0)5476 2041 -=- FidoNet: 2:283/726.9 __________________-= PGP-key available =-____________________ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Dec 1994 14:49:17 +0000 From: marc@tymnet.bt.co.uk (Marc Whiffen) Subject: Windows NT Drivers >Jari Kivela wrote: >>> Once more: there is no Win NT drivers for GUS, and there probably never >>> will be, unless someone is going to make them him/herself. > >About a month ago on Compu$erve, a group of NT developers offered to write NT >drivers for Gravis. I can't remember whether Gravis took them up on their >offer, but I expect they started to discuss via private e-Mail. Perhaps Gravis >could comment on this. I expect they're keeping quiet, as no sooner as they >admit "There will be NT drivers", people will start to hastle them for dates and >they'll get just as - if not more - unpopular than when they said they weren't >going to do any at all. It's all very OS/2, don't you think. > Hang on a mo'. I asked the nice people at gravis tech at AOL about the drivers in an email and they replied that along with new OS/2 drivers, they should be here some time soon. The reason I asked them is that I intended to start writing my own drivers if noone was going to do it. So they *are* giving the information out - but only if you ask for it Marc | Marc Whiffen - Systems Development Specialist | The views represented | BT Managed Network Services | here are my own and do | | not represent those of | -= So much month left at the end of the money =- | the company I work for ------------------------------ End of GUS Daily Digest V17 #12 *******************************