Ultrasound Daily Digest Fri Jun 18 00:38 Volume 4: Issue 18 Today's Topics: DISK IN ITALY!!! some questions... General Stuph.. Got 2.06/How to install quickly Gusmod vs. Ultramod GUS Rev 2.4 MOD files in Windoze.. Modus (Windows Mod player for the Gus) MotherBoard Canada Post Noise while sampling Patch format and Patch editors Populous II... Request for a file... The Power Chords Blues Ultrasound Daily Digest V4 #15 Ultrasound w/ xwing and others X-Wing (not again!) Yes X-wing does work 99% of the time! 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, 17 Jun 93 10:52:42 METDST From: matteo ugolini Subject: DISK IN ITALY!!! some questions... Message-ID: <9306170852.AA03960@pippo.sm.dsi.unimi.it> Hi to all to you! Diskes have been arrived in Italy!!! I've installed them the same morning they come in (Mon 14). I'ven't had any problems with installation (all worked good) and i was surprise of the nice GUI of the Midisoft Recording session, but (yes! there is a BUT - and is not alone), but when i load the MIDI song STYX.MID (very nice song), the CHOIR PAD don't work (no sound come from it). The only way I've found to make it correct is to load the patches with the Patch Manager, or play it first with the Media Player and then with RS. I've tryed to make some edit starting from a blank sheet (new option used) but (YES! it is here too), but the editing is not quite intuitive (if i put a 1/4 note, I'll be very happy to have a 1/4 note, not a 1/8, and so on). Perhaps I mustuse some options i've not seen (is quite difficult understanding the meaning of all menu voices, becouse I don't know a good English - as you can see). Nothing else tryed, so nothing else to report about this program. AND NOW it's POWER CHORD turn. I like it (I've composed some very strange rythms and i liked them: it's funny), but I'm not able to have a sound from the bass part, the melody part and the guitar board when I test them (neither in the songs, except for the bass part). I think that it should be nice to have a working prewiev (mean a prehear). A little note about the icon that are inverted: the tutorial icon is the demo program and viceversa. The new patches are nice (some are very GOOD - I like FX goblin and FX Rain and others sound effects), but not all the classical intruments are good: flute: bad clarinet: GOOD piano: GOOD sax: so & so timpani: GOOD trumpet: so & so oboe: bad / so & so Church organ: not bad but it is not good yet other organs: bad / so&so synthstring: quite good (perhaps the former version were better) stringensamble: read up hapsicord: so&so panflute: ORRIBLE!!!! ... ... ... P.S. guitars: very interesting - read: GOOD Of course, this is a MY opinion (so is not an absolute thing), but (<- see it again) perhaps GRAVIS is preparing some new patches. I've read the little booklet with the GRAVIS offers for the registred GUS users. I' dont understand what mean "2 256k for 15$". 1st impression: 2 chips of 128kb each (total 256kb) for a total of 15$ (no shipping included). 2nd impression: 2 chips of 256Kb each (total 512kb) for a total of 15$ (idem). But the sockets carry 128kb chips (my 256kb board has only 2 chips), so... Can anybody tell my how much should I pay for upgrade my GUS from 256kb to 1Mb? (shipping not included). The general impression, however, of the new disks is quite good. I've not made an extensive check of the new sbos with my games, but with Civilization it works fine with -o2 options (but when i exit to dos, the computer is out: I must make an HW reset). Greetings to all to you and have a good day. Un speciale saluto a tutti quanti parlano italiano. (translate: a special greeting to all people how is able to speak Italian). CIAO CIAO CIAO CIAO CIAO CIAO CIAO CIAO ...... ============================================================================ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Matteo Ugolini, CS student in MILANO >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Internet adrress: ugolim@ghost.dsi.unimi.it >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> {{{{ NOTE: fell free to e-mail me for greetings and so on }}}} |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ============================================================================ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Jun 93 10:52:50 -0400 From: Subject: General Stuph.. Message-ID: <9306171452.AA21727@iris.Ariel.YorkU.CA> 1.. I'm another Canuck who hasn't got his disks.. oh well, we're always being forgotten anyways... (Canadian Syndrome) Hmm plus in combo with our friendly post master.. I may see the disks when I buy the Pentium.. (which may be never) . I guess if we ever need to lose toxic waste.. just send it thru Canada Post.. they'll lose it some how.. 2.. Can't get Digi stuff from X-wing for the GUS.. no matter.. can't figure out how to play the damn thing anyways.. 3.. During the music and animation scenes in Flashback, it the sound seems to crackle.. Slightly anoying.. but since I just finished the darn thing I guess I got thru it alright. Any fixes? 4.. Anyone know of a good MIDI editor? Something like a whackertracker? Using just a computer keyboard? 4(a) Is there a GUS Mod editor? I've been using the patch for Whacker Tracker 1 1.00.. but the quality is not the utmost desirable.. so I'm picky! -Tony replies to wc8550@writer.yorku.ca ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Jun 93 09:05:07 EDT From: rjw@genrad.com (Rod J. Wittmier) Subject: Got 2.06/How to install quickly Message-ID: <9306171305.AA12369@animal.genrad.com> I live in Central Massachusetts and got my update on Monday (6/14). I'm very pleased with the support from Gravis and would like to give them a big ATTABOY. The free software is very nice. Problems I had: Even though I put ProgMan back as my MS Window shell the Install program refused to setup windows for me. It didn't even start windows. Some message flew by the screen and it was right back to install suggesting I install it again. From Windows the \ultrasnd\winsetup utility starts but gives me an error about not being able to change directories (doesn't say what directory) and exits. Somehow the SYSTEM.INI file got updated though. Not knowing it had, I tried running winsetup again and it added more to my SYSTEM.INI. Windows then failed to start because of the duplicate driver loads. Once I cleaned up my SYSTEM.INI I then added the appropriate ProgMan Items for the GUS and free software and everything runs fine. How To Install 2.06 disk quickly Many people are not taking advantage of disk caching software on their floppy drives. I highly recommend before you install any software package with more then one floppy that you enable your cache on that floppy before starting the installation program. Doing so will greatly decrease the time it takes to get the software installed. Clearly you can see that reading from RAM (the cache) will be much faster then reading from a slow floppy drive for any reads past the first read. 2.06 took only 10 minutes running SmartDrv. Since most have SMARTDRV.EXE buried in their DOS or WINDOWS directories why not give it a try. For those running some other cache find its command line switch to enable read cache for floppies. If your running DOS 5 or Windows 3.1 then SMARTDRV goes in your autoexec.bat or can be run manually. Older versions of DOS wanted smartdrv in your config.sys. The switches below still apply to the older versions as well. Let's say you haven't got smartdrv installed or you just want to add a floppy to its list of drives cached. We'll also assmume you want to start it from the DOS prompt just for the installation of the 2.06 disks. We'll also say that you have SMARTDRV.EXE in C:\DOS and your 3.5 inch floppy drive is drive B: C:\DOS\SMARTDRV B+ <- turn on smartdrv or add drive B: B:INSTALL <- run your typical install program C:\DOS\SMARTDRV B- <- shut off cache on drive B: if you like C:\DOS\SMARTDRV /? <- see what other switches it offers You should be very pleased with the improvement in time waiting to read files from the floppy. Rod Wittmier ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1993 16:55:23 +0930 (CST) From: SCARMAN@hfrd.dsto.gov.au (Gavin) Subject: Gusmod vs. Ultramod Message-ID: <930617165523.4c70@hfrd.dsto.gov.au> I finally got Gusmod to work as someone in USD#16(?) also worked out, although mine must have created the cfg file after trying a number of times (but I still don't know what I did to fix it). Comparing the sounds from each player ie. gusmod and ultramod, (listening to Spa.mod that comes with 2.06L) and there is definately a difference in the way the instruments sound. Anyone know why? ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1993 01:56:53 GMT From: mccarty@netcom.com (Michael K McCarty) Subject: GUS Rev 2.4 Message-ID: ReprintFrom: comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard I just got the 2.4 revision of the GUS card and just wanted to pass on that it works witht the Opti Chipset, where as my 2.2 rev did not. Mike -- <=-----------------------------------------------------------------------=> Michael K McCarty Internet: mccarty@netcom.com Strategic Visions, Inc. AOL: svision@aol.com Compuserve:72123,2107 -=> GO KINGS! <=- "...close the hatch. Careful not to lock it on the way out." -Buzz Aldrin :: Apollo XI ------------------------------ Date: 18 Jun 93 13:40:10 U From: "zz Paul Murgatroyd" Subject: MOD files in Windoze.. Message-ID: <9306180331.AA00929@kirk.Bond.edu.au> >Date: Wed, 16 Jun 93 0:54:21 PDT >From: Aaron Ryan >Subject: Wow!! >When I use Winmod in MS-Windows, it sounds just like the old card (sound >blaster) in mono and digitized (yuk)....will there ever be a mod >player that can play Music to the full Ultrasound capacity >(as demonstarted in the demos) underwindows..or is >that prohibited by the way windows uses sound cards? There already is...WinMod Pro. It is a bit flakey with some mods, but this is not a problem with the GUS, it is a problem with the implementation of the ProTracker bit.Sometimes a MOD will cause the program to have an application error. It won't happen very often, but when it does, the MOD is probably the cause of the problem. Make sure you choose "Stereo" from the menu, otherwise it will sound like a normal SoundBLaster. Love my GUS..... Aaron "Lone Star" Ryan aaronr@skat.usc.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Jun 93 06:26:54 -0700 From: freejack@shell.portal.com (Michael J Sutter) Subject: Modus (Windows Mod player for the Gus) Message-ID: <9306171326.AA04697@jobe.shell.portal.com> For every one looking for a Mod player for window, check out modus.zip on Epas. It should be there ny the time you read this. Modus is still in the beta stage, but it does show alot of promise. Included in the modus archive is a Turbo Pascal for Window DLL with docs. Hope you enjoy it. BTW I'll be uploading english docs to Ultra-Tracker over the next few days to epas. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Jun 93 08:28:42 EDT From: eths1306@ele.etsmtl.ca Subject: MotherBoard Canada Post Message-ID: <9306171228.AA04257@ele.etsmtl.ca> Hi, To the one who said he had a poor motherboard. Me too I have an ultrasound board that look awful. Alot of solders are not shiny (so I'm happy not to have problem with bad contact until now) and some solder would need more tin since you can see the the hole in the board. And on the mother board, I have a capacitor wich seems to be broken, but as I said every thing seem working properly until now. But it doesn't give a beautiful image to gravis, a lot of friend told me that they were worried about the board life? As for the disk, I didn't got mine either? And I live in Quebec. If you talk to a worker of Canada Post, they will tell you that they are the best of the world! The proof isn't there with GUS disk! Someone said; "The proof of the pudding is in the eating" ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Jun 93 11:52:01 CDT From: eason@ncrnd3.StPaul.NCR.COM (Dale Eason) Subject: Re: Noise while sampling Message-ID: <9306171652.AA11756@ncrnd3.StPaul.NCR.COM> Here a two possible causes of fizzling noises that people are hearing when sampling. Quantization noise is caused by the 8 bit resolution of the DAC. It sound like a soft air rushing noise. Something like when you put a sea shell to your hear. It is constant in volume and pitch. It will be most noticable during the soft passages. This noize has a parallel in the video domain. It is similar to when a diagonal line is displayed on a low resolution monitor or printer. You see jaggies instead of a smooth line. As the resolution of the display increase the jaggies dissapear. A 16 bit sampler will help with this noise. If the noise is bursty then it is caused by another source. Most likely caused by something being picked up from the computer. The most likely causes are disk accesses and video screen updates. You usually can hear these even when the card is not playing any sound. Turn up your amplifier. Make sure our GUS line out or audio out is turned on. Then run various programs on our machine. You will hear many interesing noises that the GUS may pick up. If these noises are like what you hear when recording then the noise you are hearing during recording are not caused by the 8 resolution and will not be helped by the 16 bit dac when it is available. I don't know of any spec for mother boards that will help you determine if they will improve the noise problem. I think most of this noise is induced by the hard disk and video adapters. Sometimes it helps to move the GUS to another slot away from the offending card. Someone could write a program to send data to/from the GUS without playing anything. If this caused noise then we would know it was caused by the DMA transfer. Someone with the SDK want to try it? Dale ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1993 10:28:51 +0000 From: Clarke Brunt Subject: Patch format and Patch editors Message-ID: <0096E282.A8F2D14B.10486@lsl.co.uk> I just downloaded the software developers kit (GKSDK201), not particularly intending to program (I don't have a compiler for DOS anyway, only Windows, and I can program for that using the standard interface to the driver), but hoping to be able to 'mess about' with patches. All there is in the kit is the C header file describing the patch format, but very little explanation. There is also the patch editor PATCH.EXE. I can understand most of the fields, but what are baffling me are the six envelope 'rate' fields. Of the three programs I have for editing and examining patches, PATINFO indeed just gives the numbers from the file, while PED2 (Windows) and PATCH (with GUSSDK) interpret them somehow (but differently). So what exactly are they? Also, is there any better documentation of PATCH.EXE (it is very easy to destroy the patch with random mouse clicks while trying to experiment!!!). I think I'll try downloading ULTRADOX and UDOX-20, but I'm not too optimistic of them helping me. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Jun 93 0:11:47 CDT From: ddebry@itchy (Dave DeBry) Subject: Populous II... Message-ID: <9306180611.AA06585@itchy> Every possible combination of sbos2.0b9 with emm386 and my packard bell's memory layout has now been tried, and none of them worked with Populous II. I'll try sbos1.20 and let you all know what happens. In the meantime, does anyone else have this game? Have you gotten it to work? -- Dave ddebry@ debry@ \ DeBry dsd. peruvian. | "Try a banana in your shoe and you'll know es. cs.utah. | what a day is." com edu / ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1993 00:42:56 -0300 (ADT) From: Shadow Of Fear Subject: Request for a file... Message-ID: Hello, The only Gravis node for Nova-Scotia died recently. The Max Mega-byte is dead and I want to take over and bring a Gravis node in New-Brunswick. But I need the GRAV-APP.ZIP file. Can anyone upload it on epas? I can't have it from The Max anymore and I don't want to call in Vancouver (a terrible long distance call). Please, someone, put GRAV-APP.ZIP on epas. The file is small. Thanks in advance. Marc Y. Paulin /-----------------------------------------------------------------\ | Fidonet: 1:255/32.0 Internet: markus@info.umoncton.ca | | 1:255/33.0 Talk: markus@clemen.info.umoncton.ca | \--------------+------------------------------+-------------------/ | Gravis Ultrasound forever!!! | +------------------------------+ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Jun 93 18:23:15 EDT From: David Ball Subject: Re: The Power Chords Blues Message-ID: <9306172223.AA01942@orca.es.com> > Date: Tue, 15 Jun 93 18:36:50 EDT > From: jeffreytm@aol.com > Subject: The Power Chords Blues > Message-ID: <9306151836.tn42897@aol.com> > > .... > I took the skimpy manual to work and gave it good looking over. > Then I went home and started to compose. Decompose actually. It > took some time but I finally realized that Power Chord allows you > only 1 melody, 1 bass, 1 Chord Rhythm, and a drum track for each > measure. If you count the drums as one instrument, you soon discover you can > have only 4 instruments going on at one time. > That is what I always wanted. A 16-bit Mod Composer! > I gave Howling Dog the benefit of the doubt. What do you expect > for free anyway? I called Howling Dog to place that $20 dollar order > for the real Power Chords 1.1. Being a curious customer I asked, > "How many melodies can I have in one bar?". "Just one" was the > reply. I then informed that Power Chords 1.1 allows me to make > my own custom instrument with up to 12 strings and 24 frets. I always wanted > to play a martian simitar doesn't everybody. The Pro > version for $75 that allows 16 melodies (real midi) is not ready yet! > Does this sound familiar to anyone with a GUS. > Does anybody know what you can do with the little guitar you > can play with your mouse? I can strum it, pick it, and bend notes > with it. Is it just a chord tester or can you actually use it in the > wonderful 4 instrument songs you make with Power Chords. > -Jeff Meyer- > (just one man, one computer and a shidi sequencer) Well, maybe there's a workaround here. If you set up the bass, chords, and drums, and then add a melody track, and then save the file, and then change the melody and save to a different file, couldn't you then merge these together (in rec. session for example), get rid of the extra tracks and have 5 instruments. And more could be added. It does seem like a pain, and I haven't tried it myself, but it seems like it could work. -- Dave ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Jun 93 06:42:01 GMT From: mike@batpad.org (Mike Batchelor) Subject: Ultrasound Daily Digest V4 #15 Message-ID: > From: Clarke Brunt > Subject: nasty Harpsichord patch > > Does anyone else think that the Harpsichord patch is horrible? The > sound is accompanied by a metallic buzzing or something. Rea; harpsichords buzz like that too! It's a feature! > I think > that it was better in the very early releases. Can someone come up > with a better one, more suitable for use as a solo instrument? > The harpsichord was never suitable for a solo intrument, and neither was the bagpipe. /////////////////////////////// //// Mike Batchelor /////////// //// mike@batpad.org ////////// //// Mar Vista, California //// /////////////////////////////// ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Jun 93 13:51:14 EDT From: "Christopher Kellmeyer" Subject: Ultrasound w/ xwing and others Message-ID: <9306171751.AA28421@cutter.cis.ufl.edu> In reply to many concerns about X-Wing, I was running X-wing fine with an older version of sbos (cannot remember the exact version--whatever came w/ disks 2.05), then I got the version in the gus0032 file from epas. It now runs reaaly good, the music is okay and there are noticably more digital speech. I have not seen X-wing run on systems with SB, so I can't say mine is 100%. Yet, the speed is greatly decreased with every sound option you choose. **** BUT!!!! ***** After I installed the new sbos version, Jordan in Flight stopped working. It really never worked 100% in the first place (echoed voices and sound effects), but now all sound effects stop working when the game starts. Is there any sbos options I should be setting? Has any played J. in F. with the ultrasound? Just thought I would put my 2 cents in... Chris Kellmeyer cfk@beach.cis.ufl.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Jun 93 8:58:31 MDT From: Stuart Yoshida Subject: X-Wing (not again!) Message-ID: <9306171458.AA17895@elektra.fc.hp.com> Yes, fellow GUS'ers, I am another gameplayer who is being perplexed by X-Wing. Here's my problem in a nutshell: * X-Wing only works in Adlib mode (that sucks!). * I'd like to get X-Wing working in Soundblaster mode to get the music *AND* digitized sounds. * Here are my settings: MIDI IRQ 7 GF1 IRQ 11 DMA In 1 DMA Out 1 * Here's a partial list of TSR's I have running: - QEMM 6.01 - Stacker 3.0 - Hyperdisk 4.32 - Ultrainit - SBOS 2.09B * I'm running a 386SX-16 with 8MB RAM Does anyone have suggestions as to how I can get X-Wing to work in Soundblaster mode? I've tried various versions of SBOS, but to no avail. adTHANXvance, -- Stuart Yoshida Internet: yoshida@elektra.fc.hp.com Voice: (303) 229-2324 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1993 13:15:03 +0501 (EDT) From: Gunnar Swanson Subject: Yes X-wing does work 99% of the time! Message-ID: Dear pilots of the Rebel Allaince, I have been using the GUS with SBOS 2.04 for some time now and it works fine. I have QEMM 6.02 with SBOS loaded high and SB selected as the sound board. I have had no real problems with this setup all the other stuff is default GUS set ups. The only time I have trouble is when there is a Film sequence sometimes I can't hear Darth breath at me or Akbar order the X-Wings to attack. The only other thing I need is a faster mother board and I would be very happy. The game does work and I have had no real problems. So the ansewer to your question is an emphatic YES! Happy GUSing my fellow Rebels and may the Force be with you. Gunnar Swanson gunnar@gibbs.oit.unc.edu end. ------------------------------ End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V4 #18 *************************************