Ultrasound Daily Digest Sun, 26 Sep 93 0:07 MDT Volume 6: Issue 25 Today's Topics: Computer Shopper straight dope. Native GUS Support & Origin. Need Suggestions on cd-rom drive purchase New Sierra Driver with PQ3 Plea for help Recording from CD(Rom) using CD-input Sierra Drivers Star Control II Win 3.1 problems - Midisoft + Outside In 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: Fri, 24 Sep 1993 23:08:22 -0700 (PDT) From: Don Munsil Subject: Computer Shopper straight dope. Message-ID: Since there's a lot of misinformation being passed around about what CompShopper did or didn't say about the Ultrasound, I thought I'd set the record straight. I did, in fact, read the article. The rundown on the Ultrasound was about what you'd expect: "This card has a lot of power, but is slightly flaky in its emulation modes, blah, blah, blah...recording quality was not good since it only records 8-bit samples...could be a good card for playback only." The ultrasound was rated a HIGH SECOND, behind the Turtle Beach, for MIDI music. This was not surprising, considering most of the other cards surveyed were FM cards. The Ultrasound was rated DEAD LAST for digital record/playback quality. The difficulty here is that the GUS samples 8-bit only, and is no match for the 16-bit boards at recording. They did not break out separately recording and playback, which really stacked the deck against the GUS, IMHO. The emphasis in the article was on recording and sampling, and they freely admitted that this put the GUS at a disadvantage. The GUS did fine on the other tests, but again, they measured the data using the board's own samples. I really don't think the folks at CompShopper have it in for the GUS. They came up with a set of criteria, and it just happened to make the GUS look not so great. It made me a little sad, but keep in mind that the most effective exposure is word of mouth. If you like your GUS, tell the world! Especially tell the folks at computer stores, who often prefer to recommend the big established brands, and may not know the GUS well. Best, Don ******************************************************** * Don Munsil * If you open your mind too far, * * dmunsil@netcom.com * people will throw trash in it. * ******************************************************** ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Sep 1993 23:36:10 -1000 (GMT-10:00) From: Paul Murgatroyd Subject: Native GUS Support & Origin. Message-ID: Well, I have sent them my thoughts on their lack of GUS Native support. Perhaps when they realise that people such as myself won't cough up the cash for a game that has no support for our soundboard, they will start including native support. As I wrote in my message to them, SBOS is not meant to be used a cop out for not writing in native support. Sometimes I wonder if Creative Labs has paid software companies to keep stalling support of sound boards like the GUS, so that their own SB16 with WaveBlaster can get support...... ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Sep 93 1:38:09 PDT From: jtang@argon.chem.ucla.edu (James Tang) Subject: Need Suggestions on cd-rom drive purchase Message-ID: <9309250838.AA18984@argon.chem.ucla.edu> Hello folks! I am looking to buy a cd-rom drive for my GUS. I don't know much about cd-rom drive except that they are really cool. Can anyone give me any suggestion about what specification I should look for (ie. access time, and etc)? Any suggestion on which cd-rom drive to buy? Also, what are people trying to achieve by connecting the cd-rom drive to their sound card? I know that allows you to play your music CD through the GUS. Is there any other motivation? I appreciate any help you can give me. Thanks. james ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Sep 93 11:23:26 EDT From: lcheung@mosaic.uncc.edu (Leung Cheung) Subject: New Sierra Driver with PQ3 Message-ID: <9309251523.AA19589@mosaic.uncc.edu> I think the new driver is supporting the Police Quest 3. I installed it. When I load up the game, it saids "4.pat not found", then quit the game. Anyone have some Idea about that? ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Sep 1993 16:01:47 -0700 (PDT) From: Christopher Jon Wilkins Subject: Plea for help Message-ID: <199309252301.QAA04598@elaine31.Stanford.EDU> Hi all, Not really a GUS question, but I was wondering if anyone would care to hazard a guess as to what it means if an MPU-401 interface no longer seems to respond to midi in messages at all. I don't know if I killed it when I put it back in the computer and I didn't have it sitting properly in the slot (and the computer wouldn't start up at all). But now it works fine for outgoing midi, but does nothing for incoming midi. Any technical types have any ideas? IS it possible that I've blown up the opto-isolator? There's not really much on the card: an 8008 or something microprocessor, a Rom chip, a Uart chip, and an opto-isolator (subject to my technological ignorance). I'd like to get it back to life rather than switch to using the GUS because I have a dos editor librarian program which probably won't work with the GUS. BTW, did my email on Cakewalk 2.0 come through? I can't remember seeing it. If not, I was just saying that there's a demo version on ftp.uwp.edu in /pub/incoming/programs. Chris. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 26 Sep 1993 02:51:39 +0300 (EET DST) From: pate@clinet.fi (Pasi Haatanen) Subject: Re: Recording from CD(Rom) using CD-input Message-ID: <9309252351.AA03477@clinet.fi> *>Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1993 08:40:21 -0400 (EDT) *>From: Phat H Tran *>Subject: Re: Ultrasound Daily Digest V6 #23 *>Message-ID: *>>Final sample has MORE NOISE (static/click/pop/what-so-ever) THAN SOUND *>There will always be more noise in the 8-bit recording than in the *>16-bit original. Part of that is due to the reduced bit resolution, *>and the rest is due to the ADC jitter and data dropout. There's not *>much you can do about the noise. Ofcourse there will be more noise in the 8-bit recording and I agree, there's nothing I can do to that (except to buy the 16-bit daughter board, when available), but the problem is that there's hardly ANY sound left on the digitized sample! I get just awful noise all over my samples. Even 22khz,8bit would be fine for my needs - but ... I'll explain: When I sample from external Technics CD player (which is connected to GUS line input) I get excellent quality to my samples - but when I try to do exactly same sample from Mitsumi CD(ROM) (connected to GUS cd-input pins, as stated previously) I get only lots of noise and hardly nothing, what can be recognized to be the original source sample (which, as stated previously, sounds *FINE* when recorded from Technics/line input). This leads me to believe, there's something strange either with my GUS cd- input pins, or output/input levels between mitsumi <-> gus or what-so-ever. I can't see any reason, why to connect Cd-Rom audio to soundcard, if you cannot sample anything from that source .. as I really don't use cd-rom to play my audio cds. Hope, you'll now get the point of my view . Cheers, -- Pasi Haatanen email or netmail to: ---------------------------------- Emannankuja 4D15 ** pate@clinet.fi ** Data (24H, V.32B): +358-0-547-1935 SF-01670 VANTAA 2:220/610@fidonet.org ---------------------------------- FINLAND, EUROPE! 14:1500/610@sbcnt.org PREFER EMAIL. THAT'S ALL FOLKS 8-Q ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Sep 93 08:31:38 EDT From: ddr@math.ufl.edu Subject: Sierra Drivers Message-ID: <9309251231.AA03815@bebop.math.ufl.edu> The Sierra drivers work great with Space Quest V, the midi music is just as good as it was with MegaEm, and the digital effects are way better htan that BS (or is it SB) card I used to have. To you people that are putting off buying a GUS because the SB emulation is a pain in the butt: Don't worry between MegaEm and new drivers that are coming out from Gravis/ Manufacturers you don't have to wait anymore. I took the SBOS crap out of my setup. Someone was implying that the gen midi drivers off of the Sierra BBS could be installed in old Sierra games and then the new GUS drivers added. I am still unable to find these drivers on the Sierra BBS, and of course their tech support people are not answering email. If you have these gen midi drivers please u/l them to epas or at least email me and tell me what I am missing :) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Sep 93 11:47:01 EDT From: ddr@math.ufl.edu Subject: Star Control II Message-ID: <9309251547.AA22494@gomek.math.ufl.edu> I am looking to sell Star Control II with the hint book for $25. Thanks. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Sep 93 21:38:02 GMT From: Richard Clark Subject: Win 3.1 problems - Midisoft + Outside In Message-ID: <34@elysium.demon.co.uk> Despite loving the sound quality, I have a couple of major problems with the GUS under Windows 3.1. i) Playing a large midi file (Midisoft demo of Beethovens's 5th) under Midisoft Studio has got worse as I have moved from V3.02 to 3.04 to 3.1. It plays perfectly under Midisoft Session, but increasing functionality in Studio presumably has resulted in large gaps in the playback. The bar counter stops, music ceases, and the disk thrashes for up to 4 or 5 bars in V3.1. V3.02 almost made it without pauses. Small files play back OK, but so what? ii) I also rely on Outside In as a generic viewer (terrific product incidentally). Outside In just doesn't work when the ultrasound driver is installed - the DLL seems to trash file information, as the file name displayed is garbaged, and although the program comes up, its DLL refuses to display anything. Renaming Ultrasnd.drv to disable it cures the problem. This is a problem on at least 2 different PCs and Gravis boards. What I don't understand is why a viewer program is being sabotaged by a sound driver. Anyone got any ideas? My setup is 1M GUS, PANA 562 CDROM, 486DX50 with 8 Mbytes, DOS6 + dblspaced (and no, I have not had any problems with it in a pretty harsh environment!), and QEMM7. PC switches between Novell and Lantastic according to where I have carried it. Richard Clark | richard@elysium.demon.co.uk | Just because you're paranoid Elysium Ltd | elysium@cix.compulink.co.uk | it doesn't mean they're not Crowborough UK | | out to get you :-<) ------------------------------ End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V6 #25 *************************************