Ultrasound Daily Digest Sun, 21 Mar 93 Volume 2 : Issue 76 Today's Topics: Deciphering Patinfo DMA channels must be same General MIDI emulator GM driver? / How do I read the digest using Emacs? GUS support and industry Line in Noise new patches problems New Set Of Disks - Problem Report Ok... Some Problem with PLAYMIDI and Media Player Trouble with Playmidi & Media Player. Ultrasound Daily Digest V... Ultrasound Daily Digest V2 #75 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 Mar 1993 01:50:23 -0500 From: aa344@yfn.ysu.edu (Joseph Maruschek) Message-Id: <199303210650.AA17780@yfn.ysu.edu> Subject: Deciphering Patinfo To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Here's an explanation of the output of my Patinfo program. Yes, I designed this program for the old patches, but it works just fine with the new ones. The new patches have a little more data in them, but all the information that was in the old patches is still there in the new ones, and it is in the same places. >File: CALLIOPE.PAT >This file contains 1 sample(s). That means that there is only one sample in this patch file. Some patch files have more, for example the acpiano patch has 7 samples. Each sample has its own infmormation. Patinfo will print out the information for every sample in a patch file. >Sample # 1 >Sample length: 45968 Loop start: 446 Loop end: 45942 Yes, these are in bytes. The first sample starts at offset 335 in the patch file. The loop start and loop end are (I guess) offsets from the start of the sample. I too noticed that the loop end does not correspond to the end of the sample. Only Gravis/Forte knows why this is so. >Sample rate: 22321 Hz >Low freq: 27.499 (A0) High freq: 4186.073 (C8) Base freq: 195.997 (G3) The high and low frequencies are where this sample is to be used. I found that if you play back the sample at the noted sample rate, it should play back at the base frequency, unless the detune field is not zero. >Detune: 0 Octave: 2 Balance: 7 Mode: 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 Normally, the detune field is zero. If it isn't, it affects the playback frequency of the sample in a way that is unknown to me. The octave field is usually 2 meaning that the patch will play back at in same octave it was sampled at. A setting of 1 makes the sample play back an octave lower, and a setting of 3 makes it sound an octave higher. Balance is the default stereo balance; 7 being center, 0 = full left, and 15 = full right. What I call the mode byte doesn't seem to affect the playback of the sample at all, but it has different values for different samples. I have only seen combinations of the highest 4 bits set, the lower 4 bits are always zero. I inlcuded it just for comparison with different patches. >Envelope/tremolo/vibrato data: > 63 8 132 72 131 63 246 246 246 180 8 8 0 0 0 0 200 0 The first 12 bytes define the amplitude envelope for the patch, the next three the tremolo (frequency modulation), and last three the vibrato (amplitude modulation). I included them just to compare them between different patches to see if there is some pattern. I have noticed the following: 1st byte=speed of attack (higher=slower), 2nd byte=length of attack (higher=longer), 4th byte=level of release, 7th byte=? (lower=slower attack), 8th byte=delay of attack (lower=longer delay), 9th byte=level of release, 10th byte=length of release. >Flags: 16-bit looped forward melodic Samples can either be 16-bit or 8-bit. Gravis gave us one 8-bit patch, and that is the blank patch. Samples are either looped or non-looped. Most percussion sounds don't have a loop in the sample; they play straight through. Most melodic sounds have a loop that occurs while the sound is sustained and released. Samples either play forward or in reverse. I discovered this bit from patches made by wav2pat. Samples are either melodic or percussive. This may be used for making sure percussion sounds get played in their entirety no matter how long or short the key on message is. I wrote Patinfo mainly for my own enjoyment of exploring the structure of the patches. Instead of spending all my time in Norton Utilities, Patinfo would give me the same information quickly and easy. I wanted to make some more additions and some documentation before putting this new version on epas. -- aa344 is Joseph Maruschek 3 3 3 3 3 IBM PC SIGop, Youngstown Free-Net D D D D D motto: Strive for the simplest and the best. | | | | | : : : : : ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Mar 93 9:33:09 PST From: dregeczi@sfu.ca Message-Id: <9303201733.AA01933@fraser.sfu.ca> Subject: DMA channels must be same To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Someone in yesterday's digest mentioned something about the DMA channels... well this is just a message to say that the playback and record DMA channels must be the same or the Windows install fails completely. As an aside, this is one part of the install that I think could be improved. If one changes the DMA when not in "advanced" mode... it only changes the playback DMA. He couldn't get the install going for this reason (for the Windows drivers, that is). |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| | David Joseph Regeczi | When a man boasts that he never changes | | Simon Fraser University | his mind, he's taking it on himself | | Vancouver, BC, Canada | always to go along one straight line, | | dregeczi@fraser.sfu.ca | an ass who believes in infallibility. | - Vautrin (Pere Goriot by Balzac) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Mar 1993 11:50:51 -0500 (EST) From: RoyFokker Message-Id: Subject: General MIDI emulator To: Ultrasound Daily Digest On xxx, 20 Mar 1993, TC wrote: > Does anyone know if Gravis/Forte is working on a GM emulator for the GUS? > > If not, perhaps we can write one ourselves. I'm a little sick of SB emulation, > and would prefer genuine midi emulation. > > I was thinking of hooking up the GUS MIDI port (the TX pin) to one of the serial > ports on the PC and writing an ISR to read from this serial port. Anyone > interested in this? > > .tc > -- > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- > Lee Teck Chee Internet: sh7126146@ntuvax.ntu.ac.sg (155.69.1.1) > NTU, Singapore Lee.Teck.Chee@f408.n600.z6.fidonet.org > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- > > ------------------------------ I think it would be great if we could put together some sort of software emulation (its cheeeeper :). If a Gen. Midi Driver si possable, I think that (with dynamix and sierra games alike). You can take their Gen Midi Driver and put it into thier other programs. In example, I have Red Baron, and Front Pages Sports Football. It Looks and I stress LOOKS, like I can just take the Gen. Midi driver from FPSF and put it into Red Baron. That would solve alot of problems for many many many people if we could conjour up a MidiOS driver! -- Greg ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Mar 93 10:37:29 PST From: Anthony K. Tang Message-Id: <199303201837.AA06143@headcrash.berkeley.edu> Subject: GM driver? / How do I read the digest using Emacs? To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Speaking of a General MIDI driver for the Gravis, someone mentioned trying to write one to loop through the serial port into the Gravis midi IN. This gave me an idea, but I don't klnow if it would work. I have a PC-MIDI (MPU-401) card in my computer. Would I be able to take the midi out of that and put it into the MIDI IN on the Gravis, choose GM on any game, and let it fly? The only problem I see here is will the Gravis be able to interpret the MIDI in coming in and play everything correctly (what with all the patch loading, etc.) Interesting proposition? While I have your attention (maybe), how does one read the digestusing Emacs, so I can skip long articles which have extra long uuencoded files? :-) Oh, and BTW, to Dan Nicholson. Great message! One last thing, being the worrier that I am. How much noise do most of you get from your GUS? If I have nothing playing, and I turn the volume on my AMP all the way up (It's only 40Watts), I get a ncie clicking and high frequency buzz to go along with my HD and Screen activity. If I have anything playing, though it's hardly noticable. (basically drowned out) I've got a pretty full system (All 8 expansion slots full and 2 HDs), but the GUS is far waya from HDs, HD controller and Video cards. Is this a "normal" amount of noise? Anthony Tang aktang@sdcc13.ucsd.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Mar 1993 07:15:07 -0800 From: Eric N. Liao Message-Id: <199303201515.AA18747@aerospace.aero.org> Subject: GUS support and industry To: Ultrasound Daily Digest I guess Dan Nicholson is trying to say that software support will be the responsibility of Gravis, not game companies(Sierra, specifically and others.) One thing I don't understand is Sierra's attitude. At least with Creative Labs, they have OS/2 2.x support (MMPM/2), and they ADVERTISE IT ON THE BOX. "Compatible with Windows or OS/2" (course theylist Windows first!) I'm not sure why they made an OS/2 driver, but I think it's because their card is maybe more popular than other stereo FM boards. Anyway, my point is that Sierra is supposed to show some LEADERSHIP in the industry. Their games are consistantly popular (whether we like them or not) and therefore they should be the ones to include GUS support. I hope I'm making sense. What I'm trying to say, is that hardware manufacturers with successful products (Dimaond Stealth, CL Soundblaster, etc.) are supporting their own products. Gravis's GUS hasn't exactly struck gold, yet. However, the same should work in reverse. Software manufacturers (especially Microsoft, ) of popular software titles write the drivers themselves. They don't wait for the OEM to do it. Look at Windows 3.1. It had quite a bit of driver support for SoundBlaster, Adlib, several VGA cards (well I guess today it doesn't look that extensive, but it did when I bought it back in April '92.) Therefore, with this reasoning( if you can call it that) I think Sierra ought to write GUS drivers for their own products, rather than waiting for GUS to develop a GM driver. Whew! All those words for just one request...GUS support in more games! ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Mar 93 15:49:53 +1000 From: cs425463@lux.latrobe.edu.au ( Junacko) Message-Id: <9303210549.AA10998@lux.latrobe.edu.au> Subject: Line in Noise To: Ultrasound Daily Digest "Robinhood -- Marshall Lai" writes: > Why am I getting noise when I record? I've tried all the combinations >of frequency, mono and stereo and still got noise when I record from a CD >connected to line in using PlayFile. I know it is not my cabling's fault >because when I enable the Line IN, the CD plays thru the GUS just fine! No >noticeable noise whatsoever. It is when I RECORD from it and plays back, there >are a lot of noise in the recording! I don't think it is from the play back >mechanism also because I can play back other commercial sound files with little >or no noise at all. Where is the problem? How can I fix it? If you are getting a staticy, intermittent noise added to clean signals recorded from grounded input (ie: pausing a CD player playing a CD) then you have the same problem as I. Various combinations of DMA channels, IRQs, new bootdisks, recording to RAMDISKs, stereo and mono recordings, using different sound sources, repositioning the card and even placing the GUS in a totally different computer have not helped me to improve the signal-to-noise ratio when recording using playfile or uus8. It seems that it is not a software problem. An electronic engineer that I know pointed out that there must be some problem before or at the analog-to-digital converter. Perhaps some of the filters are adding noise or the circuit is not grounded. There is no playback problem so the digital-to-analog conversion is okay. If you are getting noise when a clean signal hits a sound signal then try the SNDFIX program available on the epas ftp site. Hopefully this may cure your problem [but it did not help me at all]. If all this fails then you reach the point that I have - the GUS must be sent back to Gravis. Being in Australia makes this slightly more difficult. But maybe John Smith may help out [I've sent my 4th mail to him - my previous 3 have have no reply]. Try it and see how you go. Steven Junacko -cs425463@lux.latrobe.edu.au ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Mar 93 15:16:43 EST From: apervazo@sas.upenn.edu (Adrian Pervazov) Message-Id: <9303202016.AA11808@mail.sas.upenn.edu> Subject: new patches problems To: Ultrasound Daily Digest I had a trouble yesterday when ,all of a sudden, my GUS stopped working. After a 30 minute call to Advanced Gravis I was told to try to reinstall the software or to remove other cards from my computer which could be possible conflicting devices. Today I opened the computer and noticed that the GUS was not sitting properly in the slot. I pushed it harder and - thank God - now it works again :-). But the new disks from epas have been reinstalled already. And here are my problems. The first time I did the installation the setup program crashed so I had to install the Windows drivers manually. Now everything went smoothly. However, some things are worse than before. I have an MPU401 compatible MIDI interface I am using with an external keyboard. Before the new installation I was able to play the real keyboard (not that on the screen) in Patch Manager and to have the GUS sounds. Now this doesn't work. It works in WinJammer, but not in Finale or PatchManager. What am I doing wrong? The second problem is with the sound quality. Now I am getting clicks and bad loops on a lot of patches - Rhodes piano, bassoon, vibes etc. etc. - tens of patches. There were no clicks before (at least, not to that extent). I am using the High Fidelity option in the sound driver but it doesn't help. This is very disturbing. Could somebody give an advice? I have 256 KB DRAM and am using the 256 version of MIDI Mapper - is this the right thing? -- |===============================================| | Andrian Pervazov | | University of Pennsylvania | | Music Department | | Internet: apervazo@mail.sas.upenn.edu | | Phone: 215-382-0798 | |===============================================| ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Mar 93 19:55:22 +0100 From: chief@lysator.liu.se Message-Id: <9303201855.AA00485@ruben.lysator.liu.se> Subject: New Set Of Disks - Problem Report To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Back again. No, no, I haven't found a solution to the installation problem. I have just tried a lot more and in different ways. But it doesn't work. Here's a complete report: (Please, Anyone at Gravis: I really need help with this). -------------------------------------------------------------------- COMPUTER: PC (clone) 386DX-33 CHIPSET : Chips RAM : 4MB 70ns VIDEO : Tseng Labs ET 4000 SVGA w/1MB ULTRASND: v1.22 w/1MB 70ns OTHER: QEMM 6.02 (stealth mode), STACKER 3.0 (only 30MB of the HD) X00 v1.24 (fossil driver), SPEEDAT 1.0 (keyboard speed-up), ANSI.SYS and SETVER.EXE. NOTES: Everything worked great before these new disks. All versions of SBOS worked without problems, all utilities on the v1.22 disks worked fine. TESTED: (1) 1. Renamed the old ULTRASND dir 2. REM'ed the GUS stuff in Autoexec.bat 3. Ran Install.exe from the new disk 1. 4. Chose the program to change Autoexec/Config. --> Everything worked fine, until it was time for SETUP. The computer locked up. Cold Boot. --> A CHKDSK /F gave me a file that looks like the one people have found in that strange directory the installation program makes. --> SETGUS.EXE, ULTRINIT.EXE, ULTRAMOD.EXE locks up the computer. --> GRAVUTIL.EXE reports a possible conflict (2). **** (2) 1. (same as (1) except I REM'ed STACKER, SPEEDAT, QEMM, X00, ANSI.SYS, and SETVER.EXE too) --> Same effects as (1). No changes. **** (3) 1. Removed the old ULTRASND directory completely from the HD. 2. Removed the GUS stuff in Autoexec.bat 3. REM'ed STACKER, SPEEDAT from my Config.sys 4. Ran the Install program from the new disk 1 5. Chose the program to make EXAMPLE files of Autoexec.bat and Config.sys --> Same effects as (1). No changes. **** (4) 1. Manually edited Autoexec.bat / Config.sys 2. Added the ultrinit.sys driver to config.sys with the ultrasnd as 220,6,6,11,7 3. Added the SET ULTRASND=220,6,6,11,7 SET ULTRADIR=C:\ULTRASND SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T1 to my Autoexec.bat (note: I left out the C:\ULTRASND\ULTRINIT.EXE because that locks the computer up). --> This works partially. I still can't run SETGUS.EXE ULTRINIT.EXE or ULTRAMOD.EXE. The GRAVUTIL.EXE still reports a possible conflict. SBOS 2.02 with ALONE IN THE DARK gives me funny (?) sounds: "...the light of the harddrive" someone says whenever I take a step, or do anything in the game. There's also a lot of 'backward talking' sounds. I can't get any sounds that were there originally. --> Though SBOS 1.22 works great with ALONE IN THE DARK, (the best of all SBOS versions I think), so I use that one instead. Last, I took the OLD (v1.22) ULTRINIT.EXE and SETUP.EXE and replaced the new (2.02) ones with them. That works fine but I still can't run SETGUS.EXE, the 2.02 version of ULTRINIT.EXE or the 2.02 version of ULTRAMOD.EXE. And SBOS 2.02 still gives me those *wrong* sounds in ALONE.. (I haven't tried any other games tho'). ------------------------------------------------------------ *** I actually managed to run the new ULTRINIT.EXE *once* when I was mixing the v1.22 setup with the new 2.02 ones, and after that SETGUS.EXE ran without trouble. But that hasn't happened again. SETGUS reported 'OK' on both Ultrasound and Soundblaster setup btw. ------------------------------------------------------------ So, now I have a completely NON-v1.22 installation of the GUS software (the fifth installation in 2 days), but it still won't work. (and my friend's installation still works fine, from the same set of disks, and he's got a 486DX-33, OPTi chipset (!), 8MB RAM (70ns), GUS v1.22 w/1MB, STACKER 3.0 (the whole HD) though no QEMM. Please.. anyone? I don't want to have to give up on the GUS when it is as good as it is, because if I can't use the New, final, set of disks, that's what I have to do. ANY thoughts, help, suggestions, comments are greatly appreciated. /Erik (another happy v1.22-set-of-disks GUS-owner) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Mar 93 09:44:37 -0600 From: tarjan@iastate.edu Message-Id: <9303201544.AA03896@iastate.edu> Subject: Ok... To: Ultrasound Daily Digest I have a problem with the new drivers.. maybe something didnt get installed... ' but it is doing what used to happen whe you would load the old sbos (any of them) and try to use windows.. as soon as it started playing patches it would just go NUTS.., parts of what you played would play over and over.. and that is happining to me again... I have a 386/40 (not opti.. AMD ) 4 megs of ram.. Trident VGA card It happens wether I run SBOS or not.. Thanks! tarjan@iastate.edu ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Mar 93 15:34:12 MST From: Apollo Shau-Yang Wong Message-Id: <9303202234.AA05420@orca.es.com> Subject: Some Problem with PLAYMIDI and Media Player To: Ultrasound Daily Digest Hi, I just installed the new disk sets and it is time to test out those midi files again. While playing l1002_06.mid in Media Player, I noticed that the leading track was gone (so was some of the percussions.) Playing the same file in PLAYMIDI shows that the track was at channel 16. Did anyone have similar problems? Also, while playing some midi files in the archive midisngs.zip, there is a strange piano sound on channel 10. Playing the same file with Media Player again, the strange piano note goes away. Any suggestion? I have a 1 MB card and my setting in Windows is HiFi (16-bit) with 32 voices. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Apollo WONG S.Y. | Fourth Year Electrical Engineering, | | Internet : Apollo@EE.Ualberta.CA | University of Alberta, Canada. | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Mar 93 10:45:54 MST From: Apollo Shau-Yang Wong Message-Id: <9303201746.AA02603@orca.es.com> Subject: Trouble with Playmidi & Media Player. To: Ultrasound Daily Digest While playing MIDI file l1002_06.mid from the songs archive, I noticed that the leading track was missing. Did anyone have similar problem? Some of the midi file from the archive midisngs.zip also played with a strange piano sound where there supposed to be drum. This happens when I play the midi file with playmidi but when using Window's media player, the problem goes away. Can anyone explain this? -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Apollo WONG S.Y. | Fourth Year Electrical Engineering, | | Internet : Apollo@EE.Ualberta.CA | University of Alberta, Canada. | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Mar 93 18:02:28 EST From: brentwh@aol.com Message-Id: <9303201802.tn48518@aol.com> Subject: Ultrasound Daily Digest V... To: Ultrasound Daily Digest My E-mailed version of the Ultrasound Daily Digest is usually truncated. Anyone know why? Brent ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Mar 93 13:58:36 EST From: Phat H Tran Message-Id: <9303201858.AA13589@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca> Subject: Ultrasound Daily Digest V2 #75 To: Ultrasound Daily Digest > From: KWAN RICHARD SIK YIU > Message-Id: <93Mar20.020416edt.3135@skule.ecf.toronto.edu> > Subject: Loading patches! > To: Ultrasound Daily Digest > > The new version of the GUS drivers in windows work great. But still I > have a question on loading patches. I have downloaded a midi named " A Night > On Bald Mountain ", I need to reset all the patches for that midi using Win- > jammer (ver 2.24), it sounds OK in Winjammer. But when I tried to load this > midi with "Media Player" or "MCS Stereo", I've found that not all the patches > in that midi were loaded, only 8 of them were loaded and it sounds weird. > Each time I played this midi, I've to loaded manually using patch > manager or use winjammer. Could anyone help to solve this problem? > > I do have: 1024 Kb of dram on GUS > set resolution to High Fidelity > set active voices to 20 > default IRQs, PORT, and CHANNEL > set midimapper to cachable or non-cachable > cacheable (gives more patches, still not all) > non-cacheable ( gives only 8 patches) > Go into MIDI mapper and edit the Ultrasound setup so that all 16 channels are active. The installation only enables the first 10 channels, and so anything on channels 11-16 will not play. (In WinJammer, if you set it up to use the MIDI Mapper instead of Ultrasound MIDI synth, you will get "Cannot load patch" messages for the patches on inactive channels.) You should not be using the Ultrasound 256k, 512k or 1024k setups for WinJammer or Media Player. > > Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1993 08:53:54 +0000 (GMT) > From: Lyn Holman > Message-Id: > Subject: Noisy patches?? > To: Ultrasound Daily Digest > > I have found patches 94 and 95 (two of the Pad(xx)) have 'clicks' in them. > This occurs both when in PatchManager and also when playing a midi file > with WinJammer. Under PatchManager, if I hold a note down then the click > repeats, ie is cyclical. > > Anyone else have this problem? > No. I tried those two and found them to have no cyclic clicks, or any clicks. I have the new patches. > Date: Fri, 19 Mar 93 09:00:51 EST > From: "Burns Fisher, VMS Engineering 19-Mar-1993 0901" > Message-Id: <9303191400.AA17320@us2rmc.bb.dec.com> > Subject: SBOS 2.02 totally hosed on KQ5 - Gravis, please read > To: Ultrasound Daily Digest > > Here is a new problem report on SBOS 2.02 (the new one on GUS0017-0021). > SBOS 2.04 is now up on Epas as gus0022.zip in the submit directory. It addresses bugs introduced into SBOS 2.02. > Date: Fri, 19 Mar 93 23:06:03 EST > From: pccmoddan@aol.com > Message-Id: <9303192306.tn42209@aol.com> > Subject: The Great Subversive > To: Ultrasound Daily Digest > > Here's a story, but it has nothing to do with anyone named Brady. > After watching a lot of GUS bashing, Aria praising (and the reverse) etc. on > a soundcard discussion on America Online, I composed the following reply. > People such as the author of the Soundblaster book and others were making > comments along the lines of 'the GUS is a great MOD player, but it's garbage > for anything else' and 'I hooked the card along with my MIDI setup and it was > terribly noisy' You really would have to be here, but I'm happy to make > anyone laugh.... > I ask that all GUS owners sit down and write a polite, but passionate, letter (with pen and paper, or printer and paper) detailing why you've stuck with the Ultrasound and mail it to any game maker you have the address of. Point out things such as sound quality, affordability, and versatility. We have to counter all this ignorant GUS-bashing that is so prevalent on Compuserve, America Online, and also a little PC message echo called ILink. As GUS owners, we can laugh when somebody says that the GUS is noisy or is garbage, but GUS virgins will more likely believe the critics than the proponents. I'm very busy at the moment as my University term is wrapping up, but I intend to start my snail mail campaign as soon as I have the time. Phat. ------------------------------ End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V2 #76 ******************************