Ultrasound Daily Digest Sun Aug 8 00:07 Volume 5: Issue 7 Today's Topics: 2.06 Disks and Midiconnector Box Changing Chord Rhythm Patch in PowCho Gravis Ultrasound support! Improve Your Gus Patches I stand corrected MegaEM Author 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: Sat, 07 Aug 1993 16:22:13 SST From: "FLAT^^TOP AT DISCS, NUS, SINGAPORE" Subject: 2.06 Disks and Midiconnector Box Message-ID: <00970AC7.796B01A6.465@dec7000.iscs.nus.sg> Help people, i've sent in my GUs registration card ages ago (like 2 months back) but i think to the wrong address (my card came with the 1.21 disks) I faxed my registration ans also an order for the MIDI connector box about 3 weeks after i mailed my registration card (this time i got the right fax number) and I got a return fax from Advanced Gravis, stating that my order is being processed and the MIDI connector will only ship abt 3-4 weeks from then....(think his name was Roger Poo) Later on, i mailed them again, informing them to include my 2.06 disks with the ordered MIDI connector box. This time i sent it to the new address in Canada. Well, recently, a friend of mine couldn't locate my name in the list of registered gravis users, and i have yet to get my MIDI box yet. how can i go about rectifying this ? Can i check if they have really got my order and are processing it ? how can i make sure i get registered ? Can anyone help ? Can someone also post the complete Gravis Address, Fax and Tel numbers for reference oor email it to me... i'd appreciated any help or suggestions. regards Jerry Koh /===============================================================\ | Jerry Koh aka FLAT^^TOP Email Address: kohkhang@iscs.nus.sg | | MSWindows User, Games Fanatic, Battletech and SW Fan ! | \===============================================================/ ------------------------------ Date: 07 Aug 93 08:18:09 EDT From: "Eric Bell, Howling Dog Systems" <71333.2166@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Changing Chord Rhythm Patch in PowCho Message-ID: <930807121808_71333.2166_DHQ60-4@CompuServe.COM> > From. Brennan Stephens > Subject. Oh ye gurus hear my plea... > 2. Is there any way to change the rythm patch in Power Chords? Can I > change it in .ini file? ------------------------------ Date: 7 Aug 93 08:31:00 PST From: CVADRSFX@CSUPomona.Edu Subject: Gravis Ultrasound support! Message-ID: <9308071532.AA07165@orca.es.com> I must say that Advanced Gravis' support on their GUS cards is first rate! This is the first company I've ever come acrossed with that truly cared about their customers. I have a bunch of other peripherals that ended up in the trash box because of lack of support or lack of upgrade policy from their respective makers...including Creative Labs. Anyway, I'd like to know whether Gravis will offer a competitive upgrade for their Ultrasound MAX, once it's released, to regular Ultrasound owners. I don't mean a $200 upgrade with the old Ultrasound card in exchange for the MAX, but a REASONABLE upgrade. If that would be the case, I'm better off buying someone else's product and sell my old GUS! I hope Gravis extend their support by offering this sort of upgrade. If anyone else have an opinion on this matter, please voice it out to let Gravis know. Secondly, I received my Gravis MIDI connector box ($40 US), just last week. It works with my Roland MT32, sure enough....under Windows, that is. Anyway, keep up the good work Gravis!!! ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 7 Aug 93 15:57:44 -0700 From: dna@netcom.com (David Altekruse) Subject: Improve Your Gus Patches Message-ID: <9308072257.AA26001@netcom4.netcom.com> IMPROVE YOUR GUS PATCHES 1. INTRODUCTION If you have a GUS board but haven't yet gotten into the world of creating your own patches, perhaps because you don't have access to quality instrument samples or you are waiting for the 16-bit recording daughter board, I am going to attempt to change your mind. You can improve the GUS patches to your musical tastes, if you haven't already done so. 2. PATCH PROBLEMS I played the excellent gm_midi files the other day. Others on here have commented on how good they are. They currently exist in the ultrasound archive sites at ..../submit/gm_midi.zip. However, I almost fell out of my chair laughing when I played "gmfigaro.mid" (Mozart's "Le Nozze Di Figaro"). I've long been bothered by some of the patches with excessive release decay times. But Figaro, with its fast introduction using "String Ensemble 1" (marcato.pat) came out one blur not unlike laying down on a piano keyboard. That is when I decided it was time to attack the problem. Some of the patches have defects which probably can't be solved without starting off with better raw audio samples. For example, a couple of the "Acoustic Grand Piano" (acpiano.pat) samples in the middle of the keyboard are poorly looped causing the attack to be out of tune with the loop. But many of the patches can be significantly improved, made more musical and realistic, by modifying their envelope parameters. Fortunately this is fairly easy to do with GUS and existing software. GUS patches which I feel are primary candidates for envelope modifications are the strings, organs, and pianos. In the case of the strings and organs the decay times are much longer than real instruments. The result, not surprisingly, is that the instruments are not realistic sounding and nearly all music using these patches is very muddy and unmusical. For example, there may not exist an instrument on the face of the earth with faster attack and decay characteristics than a Hammond tone-wheel organ (like the B3). When you press a key the sound starts instantly in mid-waveform (giving it the characteristic key-click that many users have come to like). The release decay time is very short. But the "Hammond Organ" (homeorg.pat) patch has long decay times. Another example is the piano. In the upper range, acpiano.pat has much longer decay times than a real piano. So why do some of these patches have unreal envelope characteristics? My guess is that the designer was attempting to simulate natural acoustic reverberation. But reverb isn't at all the same as additional decay time. Reverb is a complex set of echos which when added in the right amount can add to the warmth and "lushness" of the sound without turning the music into mush. Adding additional decay times to the patches may add some of the effect of reverb but it does it at the cost of nearly always muddying the music and making the instruments sound unnatural. 3. HOW TO IMPROVE GUS PATCHES If you haven't experimented with creating or modifying GUS patches, I'll describe one way to go about it. First of all, if you haven't already done so, get 'patch.exe' from your favorite GUS archive location. For some reason, this essential DOS program is hidden deep in 'gusdk201.zip' located in ..../gravis/util directory. Once you extract and install these files, you'll find patch.exe in the ultra3d directory. While you are connected, also get Francois Dion's 'patchkit.arj' located in the ..../sound/patches/util directory. This contains some documentation and examples using 'patch.exe'. If you are expecting patch.exe to be fully debugged, user friendly, and well documented, you will be very disappointed. Try to think of it as a game like "The Seventh Guest" where trying to find out the rules is part of the fun! With patch.exe, there will be ghosts and monsters out to get you (so always make sure you have recently backed-up patch files). There are hidden features and functions that work differently than they are labeled. Fortunately, as I mentioned above, modifying an existing patches envelope parameters is pretty straight forward. First pick a GUS patch. You can translate the General MIDI name to a GUS file by taking the GM number and looking it up in either ultrasnd/ultrasnd.ini or ultrasnd/midi/ default.cfg. I suggest starting with a patch that contains just one sample, like church.pat, homeorg.pat, or slowstr.pat. Then copy that file into your working directory. In DOS (patch.exe will not run in windows), you can load the patch by either entering the patch name in the command line (patch church.pat) or you can just load patch and then type "l" on the keyboard and you will be prompted for the patch filename. Once in patch you can get some hints to playing this game by by typing F1. In patch, in the lower left quadrant, click the mouse on the box labeled 'RANGE'. You have entered a new room and additional data will appear on the screen. In the top section of the screen you will see sample ranges. The current range is in white, additional samples (if there are more than one in the patch) appear in red. You can change samples by typing '+' or '-' (or their lower case characters, '=' or '='). But beware of the "NO RANGE CHECKING MONSTER"! If you type hit the +/- into a sample that doesn't exist, you will eventually be sorry. If you started out with a one-sample patch, you can go now to the next room type clicking the mouse on the "ENVEL" box. Now the top half of the screen displays a lot of interesting data including an envelope graph with amplitude on the Y axis and time on the X axis. First, listen to the root tone in the current sample by clicking on "TONE" or entering 't'. It will sustain the tone until you click or type 't' again and then it will play the release part of the sample. Before you start changing the envelope parameters, I suggest you write down the original amplitude/time values. There are at least two ways to change the parameters. One way is to just move the graph points around with your mouse. I find it hard to make fine adjustments that way, however. Another way is to select a parameter with the mouse (if there is another way, I haven't found it yet) and then change the amplitude and time parameters by clicking on the red boxes on the lower-left of the graph. Clicking the vertical boxes changes the amplitude and the horizontal boxes the time. Note, however, that the time boxes are backwards (Hitting the '-' box increases time.) It is best to play around with the values and then listen to the change it makes in sound. You can also experiment with the Amplitude Modulation (Tremolo) and Frequency Modulation (Vibrato) parameters by clicking on the AM/FM boxes and then clicking on the new parameter boxes that will appear to the left of the graph. However, so far I haven't had any reason to change these values of the GUS patches. If you have a patch with more than one sample in it, then you can move to the next sample by typing +/- as described above. Again, be careful not to go out of range of your existing samples. Once you have the patch set up the way you want, type "s" and you will be prompted for a file name. For some reason, your original file will be deleted even if you pick another name for the save file, so be sure you've saved your original before going into patch.exe. 4. SUGGESTED PATCH MODIFICATIONS Just as musical taste vary, I suppose no two people will agree on what constitutes the best patch samples characteristics. Obviously the GUS patch designer(s) and I are not in agreement. The great thing about having patches stored in RAM is we can all have them the way we want. In addition, patches that are optimum for a small, well-damped room, may not be when played in a large room or when played through a reverb effects processor. However, I'd like to describe what changes I've made so far. First, I reduced the "String Ensemble 1" (marcato.pat) and "String Ensemble 2" (slowstr.pat) envelope release decay parameters to about half of their original values. I trimmed down the times on "Church Organ" even more and left very little decay on the "Hammond Organ" (homeorg.pat) patches. I attempted to make the "Acoustic Grand Piano" (acpiano.pat) envelope characteristics as close to a Steinway Grand (in this case, a 1926 6' Model 'L') as I could. I measured its decay times and came up with the following values: 6' Steinway Grand Decay Times ----------------------------- NOTE TIME (seconds) ---- ---- C1 15 C2 18 C3 21 C4 15 C5 12 C6 5 C7 2 C8 1 Since I had to work within the existing sample ranges, I changed the values as follows: GUS "Acoustic Grand Piano Changes --------------------------------- RANGE FROM(sec) TO(sec) ----- ---- -- A0-G2 13.3 19.9 G2#-E3 10.0 19.9 F3-C4 8.0 13.3 C4#-A4 8.0 13.3 A4#-G5 8.0 10.0 G5#-G6 6.6 3.6 G6#-C8 4.4 1.3 As you can see, I increased the decay times in the lower and mid ranges and decreased them in the upper range. Also, on a real piano, there are no dampers in the high range. On this Steinway there are no dampers above E6. So I made the decay and release times the same (by clicking on the 'SUST' box in patch.exe). 5. RESULTS I believe that all the above changes are significant improvements to the GUS patches on all the MIDI files I've listen to so far. I'm sure that there is still room for improvement. When I add a reverb effects processor I'll probably reduce some of the decay times further. There are also some other patch files that I suspect can be improved as well. The biggest single improvement was in the "String Ensemble 1" patch, probably because it is used so much. The improvement it makes to the Figaro file I mentioned above is dramatic, in my opinion. It is now much more realistic and listenable. Even much slower music using that patch sounds better to my ears. On the other hand, the modifications to the "Acoustic Grand Piano" patch is normally not very noticeable, probably because most MIDI files release the notes long before the decay times come into play. But there is an improvement in the upper range. I haven't decided if "removing the dampers" in the top range is a really a good idea or not. 6. Conclusion Based on my simple modifications to the GUS patches, I urge any GUS owners who haven't already done so to experiment with improving GUS patches to their own musical tastes. It is easy to do and well worth the time and effort, in my opinion. If you want to try out the patches I've modified as described above, they are available (for a couple weeks) via anonymous ftp at netcom.com in pub/dna/gus/patch.zip (there are no other files there). Be sure to backup your originals first. I'd be very interested in hearing what you think of these patches or any changes and improvements you've made to GUS patches. - David Altekruse, dna@netcom.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 7 Aug 1993 12:12:25 -0500 (CDT) From: David Britton Subject: I stand corrected Message-ID: <9308071712.AA17577@cwis.unomaha.edu> Apologies to all on my previous post about the grand piano patch. obviously, I was clueless; thanks to all who helped straighten me out :) Now for a question; I downloaded Win Mod Pro from wuarchive and tried to set it up for stereo output to no avail. Any suggestions about getting it running in stereo? Once again, sorry; next time I'll keep my :0 shut. ** David L. Britton **I love a good fight with my computer! ** ** University of Nebraska ** I have no opinions to express, only ** ** fishead@cwis.unomaha.edu ** TRUTHS! ** ** I am the Lemon Merchant ** Don't blame me, I voted for Bush ** ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 07 Aug 93 18:07:25 GMT From: mike@batpad.org (Mike Batchelor) Subject: MegaEM Author Message-ID: > Date: Thu, 05 Aug 93 19:06:25 MESZ > From: SGREENWO@mhs.novell.de (Scott Greenwood) > Subject: MT-32 & MEGAEM > > Hi, > I tried the MegaEm MT-32 emulator for the GUS, I found a few > problems with using dr.-DOS, these were generally memory origh an > ICE (in circuit emulator) I found that it > seems to be looking for specific memory managers QEMM, 386MAX etc. so it > can patch them (WHY ???). > I tried E-mailing the author of MegaEm with a report of this but I > got no response, does anyone know how MegaEm works or how to get in > contact with Jayeson Lee-Steere? If so could you e-mail me or post it > here. Yes, Jayson, please contact me. I work for Quarterdeck Office Systems. If you need to do something that prompts you to patch QEMM, I assure you there is a better way to do what you want via the published API, or through one of the specifications QEMM supports. Please contact me and I can arrange some assistance for you. If Scott is mistaken, write me anyway, I'll still get you some help if you need it. -- Mike Batchelor | Windows : DESQview/X :: Solitaire : Network BlaqJaq mike@batpad.org | Mar Vista, California | This space for rent ------------------------------ End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V5 #7 ************************************