Ultrasound Daily Digest Mon, 22 Feb 93 Volume 2 : Issue 50 Today's Topics: 16-bit Daughterboard Boy, Gravis sure does care... Doppler effect GUS and Adaptec Controllers GUS and SBPro GUS is great, but GUS is *damn* confusing! Gusmod 2.10 MIDI IN Registration Reply on registration cards Sox, tran and epas Unix Drivers for Ultrasound Information about the UltraSound Daily Digest (such as mail addresses, request servers, ftp sites, etc., etc.) can be found at the end of the Digest. *** HEY!!! *** Before you ask a question, *** READ THE FAQ ***. It's available on the request server and the ftp sites, or check the newsgroup archives. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 21 Feb 93 03:11:02 PST From: "Johnny Y. Ow" Message-Id: <930221.111102z.832326.owjohn@edison.seas.ucla.edu> Subject: 16-bit Daughterboard To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Here's some info I grabbed off of Advanced Gravis's BBS: The 16 bit daughter card can record and playback in stereo or mono. - 16 bit CD quality sound 5.5kHz-48kHz sample and playback rates - Conveniently attaches to existing Ultrasound Card - Provides greater flexibility - No additional slots occupied - On board Filtering for High Fidelity Audio - Companding hardware compression - supports 8 bit U-Law or A-Law - Supports and mixes 4 Stereo Inputs Lines-Line In, Mic, Synthesizer, Aux - UltraSound Studio 16 a program for recording and playing 16 bit sampled sound Price is $150 retail. ------------------------------ Date: 21 Feb 1993 23:45:10 -0400 (EDT) From: DEATH BEFORE DISCO Message-Id: <01GV02E5LYJ68Y76M4@ritvax.isc.rit.edu> Subject: Boy, Gravis sure does care... To: Ultrasound Daily Digest I'll try and keep this one down to a dull roar, but consider.... 1) The software support for the card is crap. Where is the OS/2 driver that everybody says 'Oh, it's on the way...". I asked the people who write the drivers wheter or not a driver is on it's way. I was told sometime after January. Yeah, January. What?? 1997?? 2) This #$%%^&*% about the memory is a joke. The designer of the card (yep, the real designer) recommended the 1MB extra AS SOON AS I BOUGHT THE CARD. I don't suppose Gravis hasn't let this become common knowledge until everybody found out, have they...?? 3) Evidently, the 3D stuff is a higher priority than the real software we need. You know, the MIDI patches, etc. 4) More than likely, the audio support for games is because Gravis is oh so open about programming the card. Anybody got any info on programming it?? 5) The fact that people on this newsletter want to write code for the card should be telling Gravis something. One last comment. Beta was better than VHS. OS/2 is better than windows. Ultrasound is better than most everything. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1993 11:10:58 -0600 (CST) From: Pawlo P Prawdiuk Message-Id: Subject: Doppler effect To: Ultrasound Daily Digest About the 3d sound in the GUS support I believe no one yet has mentioned the doppler effect which explanes many of the situations which the GUS would be reprodusing these are very simple formulas for the doppler effect and if the GUS using the Qsound technology can use then to reproduce the quadrophonic sounds . So say we have a sound at a point source in a position relative to the the listener say the listener is at 0,0 and the point source is at 1,2 cartesian coordinates take for example if this sound is stationary two microphones in the same position as the listener will be using straight stereo recording would be just fine but as soon as this point source moves any little bit say for example to 2,2 you will be able to follow the movement because of the change in the velocity of the object will cause a doppler effect causing you to here Qsound Simple enough in the formula These three should do it .. Frequency head with an observer in motion f'=f(1(+-)Vo/V) Frequency heard with source in motion f'=f(1/(1(+-)Vs/V)) Frequency heard with observer and source in motion f'=f((V(+-)Vo)/V(-+)Vs)) (-+) shows add or subtract depending on the condition.. So with this if you have a point source all you have to do is be able to control the recording volume and frequency which will allow the reproduction of the Qsound in the relative position to the listener, as far as that goes, you could make the listener feal as they had sat in a car and started to drive away. Yes/No? - Paul-> prawdiuk@mermaid.micro.umn.edu -| - Ans Machine @ (612) 222-2083 -| A signature in cyberspace - -| what is that? - There is an art in living life, But -| _O_ - as of yet I have not found it. -Who- -| ( | ) - -Me maybe?- -| / \ paul?! ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1993 09:01:41 -0500 From: Scott D Palmer Message-Id: <199302211401.AA28987@chopin.udel.edu> Subject: GUS and Adaptec Controllers To: Ultrasound Daily Digest I'm a proud new owner of a GUS v2.2 and I'm having problems getting it to work with my Adaptec 1542B and an IDE drive. If I take the 1542B out of the system the card works (and nicely). I have seen a message from someone else with a 1522 having problems. I have checked everything and can find no conflicts. Has anyone else gotten this combination to work ? Help ! ------------------------------ Date: 20 Feb 93 10:48:18 GMT From: s106275@ee.tut.fi (Anssi Saari) Message-Id: Subject: GUS and SBPro To: Ultrasound Daily Digest In jnelson@plains.NoDak.edu (Jim Nelson) writes: >What I want to know is how do I get the GUS and the SBPro to cohabiate >in the same machine. So far I have left the SBPro at it's defualts. If you want to keep the SBPro at its defaults, the simplest way is to only change the GUS base address and DMA channel, assuming, of course, that you have IRQs 5 and 11 free. There's a small problem with this, however: some games don't detect the SBPro unless you install and remove SBOS first. I'd really like to see program that does this, as it takes so long to install SBOS and I'd like my disk back... Anssi -- Anssi Saari s106275@ee.tut.fi Tampere University of Technology Finland, Europe ------------------------------ Date: 21 Feb 93 04:15:09 GMT From: ptran@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca (Phat H Tran) Message-Id: Subject: GUS is great, but GUS is *damn* confusing! To: Ultrasound Daily Digest In article <1993Feb20.023536.4148@news.columbia.edu> jrl8@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (James R Lendino) writes: >[...] > > SBOS is freaky. As of right now, I haven't gotten a single program >to sound anything resembling normal with it. Ultima Underworld I sounds >grating. The voices are very clear, but the music is... *wierd*. >No crash cymbals, the low beating drums are pretty much lost. And >the sounds used to play the melody lines sound almost exactly like >the Creative Music System chips on my Soundblaster v1.0, which is to >say very Nintendo like. > I've tried UW1 with SBOS 1.20 (and am now playing UW2 [w/ SBOS 1.20]), and thought the emulated FM music sounded quite good. What speakers do you have the GUS hooked up to? The sound from the GUS is very bright--you get very crisp high frequencies. Unless your speakers have sensitive bass response, the card will sound shrill (thus, your comment that the "low beating drums" are gone). I have my GUS temporarily hooked up to a stereo amp and Bose Optimus speakers, and I get both the high trebles and low bass in UW's music. > Stunts is AWFUL. No other word for it. Everything is ruined. > I've only heard a short bit of Stunts through SBOS, but I also thought it sounded fine. The game did run somewhat slower than without SBOS, however. > I've been fighting with the Unreal demo. I still have some more >stuff to try. > Unreal has never worked for me, even with my REAL SB1.5. >[...] > I called Tech support about this. They said that 1.23 is not an >official version, and it was never meant to be released. There >supposedly are things wrong with it. The guy said, "be careful, there >might be viruses." Give me a break. Everyone else is using it. >"ooooo, mommy, I'm scared. There mite be wiruses." > I only use 1.20 nowadays, as the later versions of SBOS do not work as well for me. But between 1.22 and 1.23, 1.23 was the much better version (for me, anyhow). > Anyway, the PLAYMIDI program works great, and GUSMOD 2.04 is >also incredible (*GREAT* job, Josh, don't let me EVER hear you >say "terrible job" again. Got that? :-) Actually, I seem to recall >hearing mods in *true* stereo on my friends PAS16, whereas the MODS >played by GUSMOD just have a fixed pan for each channel. Was I >hearing things when I heard the PAS16, or is there really a difference? > MODs don't have true panning. In fact, GUSMOD 2.0x is the only MOD player that has user-variable panning for each channel (all others have 1 and 4 panned 100% left, and 2 and 3 100% right). What you probably heard was "fake" panning, in which a sound on channel 1 (left) is faded out as the same sound is faded in on channel 2 (right). I know that Beyond Music does this. > Enough rambling. This is basically it: > > 1) What version of SBOS should I be using? Just stick with 1.20 and wait for 1.36, which Gravis say works with almost everything, and should be released any day now. Actually, you should use the *.SBS patches from SBOS 1.23, and the .exe's from SBOS 1.20. (The *.SBS patches are used to mimick FM instruments and sounds, and the ones that come with SBOS 1.23 are better than the ones that come on the 1.21 distribution disk.) > 2) I guess I have the defective OPTi chipset afterall. No > luck in 16-bit DMA. Yet, everything plays either WAY too > slowly or not at all, so I'm not sure what's going on. We're > talking screeching, wavering pitch/tempo changes in the > Unreal demo here. Unreal plays MODs by directly feeding the DAC, I believe. SBOS does not work well with programs that do this. > 3) Is SBOS really that unaccurate? No, not from my experience with it. It never has sounded like the real SB for me, but sometimes it can get quite close. I don't find the FM emulated music to be worse than the real FM in most games. Perhaps I've just grown accustomed to it. Phat. ------------------------------ Date: 21 Feb 93 00:15:01 GMT From: sl859@cc.usu.edu Message-Id: <1993Feb20.181501.64318@cc.usu.edu> Subject: Gusmod 2.10 To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Just a couple of questions in case my original message to Lars Hamre didn't make it. Gravis is including Gusmod in their software release. I want to add a few more goodies and clear up, I believe, the last Protracker effect that doesn't really work right. 1) How do Protracker extended tempos work? 2) How does one build a period-based spectrum analyzer? Code snippets, explanations, etc, will all be welcome. Give a hand in making a product released by Gravis the best! New features for 2.10 (at least planned...I just got off the phone with them): * File selection * Environment variable only includes location of files: SET GUSMOD=C:\GUSMOD * Setup program * Period-based spectrum analyzer * Sample player (pseudo-keyboard for playing samples inside mods). * Making those dumb extended tempos work. * 15 instrument mods. I'm NOT getting any form of compensation for this version for Gravis. It will, of course, be publicly released on epas before Gravis does. BTW, 2.10 should also not lock up on exit to DOS. I left an interrupt active that I wedged into and fixed that. Josh ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Feb 93 01:48:50 -0500 From: ylee@tesla.uwaterloo.ca Message-Id: <9302220648.AA10159@tesla.uwaterloo.ca> Subject: MIDI IN To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Yes, I also built MIDI connector box for GUS and was waiting for new patchman with MIDI IN support. Since there seem to be others who want this kind of program, I made some additional modifications to my modified KBMIDI and got it to work with my MIDI keyboard. Try it out, although not pretty, it's functional. It's on klingon.epas. utoronto.ca submit directory. - Yuri ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Feb 93 10:32:22 PST From: gabrielj@sfu.ca Message-Id: <9302211832.AA11295@fraser.sfu.ca> Subject: Registration To: Ultrasound Daily Digest > Oh yes it does! By sending it in, you will recieve the 192 General > MIDI patches and (probably) MidiSoft Recording Session and > PowerChords for free! These pieces of software are almost finnished > now, and it shouldn't take to long time before you get them! > Besides, > how is Gravis supposed to be able to give you product upgrade info > if they don't know your address? Ah hah! You got me on the daughter board pricing Bjorn but I've got you here. Unless, Gravis has changed their plans, the MidiSoft Recording Session and PowerChords costs an extra $10 US or $15 Canadian. It was $14 but that was a mistake. You must be a registered user to get it for this price. However I imagine that when the new UltraSound packages start shipping with the complete stuff those will be included. Da Lazer (of Da Ghetto Buwdaz) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1993 13:18:54 -0500 (EST) From: treason@gnu.ai.mit.edu Message-Id: <9302211819.AA03370@spiff.gnu.ai.mit.edu> Subject: Reply on registration cards To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Well, Id like to say, I bought my card in early september of 1992, and received it in the beginning of October. My card came with version 1.1 of the Gravis disks and has almost nothing mentioned on epas or otherwise(I got all this myself). I turned my registration card in the minute I received the card and have yet to hear word 1 on wether they received it, if I am going to get any upgrade information or equipment, what they need from me for information, orif they even care. This kind of aggrevates me, because every other company I have ever sent a registration card to has at LEAST replied to me in a form latter, and some of the larger companies have even replied personally. I would really appreciate them sending me the upgrade in software and and product information. Like a said before, my card came with almost nothing, and I paid good money for it. Someone needs to get on the aftermarket on the Gravis team, to prevent everyone from being pissed off. I am a reseller and sugest noone to buy the card until the new releases come out, or at least until I get my updates. Is this a common story or what? treason@gnu ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Feb 93 1:20:23 EST From: dionf@ERE.UMontreal.CA (Francois Dion) Message-Id: <9302220620.AA05064@brise.ERE.UMontreal.CA> Subject: Sox, tran and epas To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Sox 7 for dos + source is now on epas. Sox is a sound converter between formats (wav, snd, voc, raw etc...). I think the author is on this list, if my memory serves me well. Transpose 0.9 is also on epas. It takes a .wav file and extract the notes. It works best with solos and simple instruments sans bender, and requires mono 8 bit .wav files. 11025 Hz sampling works best and is faster. I have tried it with several files and it gives acceptable results but you have to tweak it. For example, it found CCCA#A#FGG... for Move this by technotronic but it should have been CCCAAFGG...To its discharge, lets just say that the signal on the song is far from a sinus! Another interesting utility on epas is a newer midi monitor with a control panel to change patches (it doesn't do patch caching, but with patch manager, it's not too critical. Someone with a compuserve address should send mail to the guy who did it.). It is based on the midimon source that comes with the Windows SDK (also available on epas). Last thing (i didn't upload this one) is vocpak. This program compress 8 bit audio files to 50% and up! Much better than any other algorythm i have seen, it is lossless. (compress .wav, .snd, raw etc... anything). It is not for 16 bit samples. (it wont compress much). Check it out! Ciao, -- Francois Dion ' _ _ _ CISM (_) (_) _) FM Montreal , Canada Email: CISM@ERE.UMontreal.CA (_) / . _) 10000 Watts Telephone no: (514) 343-7511 _______________________________________________________________________________ Audio-C-DJ-Fractals-Future-Label-Multimedia-Music-Radio-Rave-Video-VR-Volvo-... ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Feb 93 20:38:13 -0500 From: "It's your hand, Buckaroo" Message-Id: <9302220138.AA13464@magick.tay2.dec.com> Subject: Unix Drivers for Ultrasound To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Two things... First off, Chris Metz went through this nightmare early on in the life of the Gravis. He ended up recommending a PAS 16, since they have a free SDK and the tech support people were quite helpful. Second, don't call Tech Support, call Brad Craig at Gravis and ask him (or one of his assitants, I think the extension is 117 for Brad, 118 for assistant). Brad's assitant seemed like a very reasonable person and they do have an SDK (for DOS) for around $40, although last I heard they were rewriting it to be more useful. Third (ok, so I lied about the 2 things), really let them know that the home Unix market ain't a "niche" AND about the surly tech support weenie. It seems IMO to take Gravis some time to "get the message" whenever they are presented with something that doesn't fit their version of reality. But eventually they do seem to get it...(I hope) DDA ------------------------------ End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V2 #50 ******************************