Ultrasound Daily Digest     Tue, 21 Sep 93  0:47 MDT     Volume 6: Issue  20  

Today's Topics:
						 16 bit daughter card
					 Computer Shopper GUS review 
							 Dma probs..
							Gravis Orders
						  Gus in Australia!
							 Mitsumi/GUS
							PLAYMIDI -BUG-
							Sierra Drivers
						 Ultramid -c vs. neat
					  ULTRASOUND DAILY DIGEST V
				   Yet another SB/GUS flame-tiff...
						~Prince of Persia ONE

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: Mon, 20 Sep 1993 13:41:04 -0400
From: "Mark C. Ng" <mcng@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>
Subject: 16 bit daughter card
Message-ID: <93Sep20.140233edt.43503-3@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>

OK I've waited long enough....  Is the 16 bit daughtercard out yet?!?!     



Mark. 

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Sep 93 11:59:55 -0400
From: "Momentary language, sexual situations" <dantonio@magick.tay2.dec.com>
Subject: Re: Computer Shopper GUS review 
Message-ID: <9309201559.AA08842@magick.tay2.dec.com>

> Out of curiousity, who wrote this soundcard review? Most of these journalists
> have many political ties with certain companies, which shows up in these
> reviews. I've found it's always helpful to remember when reading anything a

The latest PC/Computing has a couple examples of this. For one, they didn't
even TEST the GUS for their "soundcard MultiMedia" review. The PAS won over
the SB16ASP and the Turtle Beach. In the CD-ROM category, the Tosh 3401
lost to the Chinon 525 (!)...

And MS Access 1.1 was given a 10.0 in the database category, over Paradox
for Windows. Gee, Ziff/Davis is certainly unbiased...:-)

DDA

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Sep 93 02:54:37 PDT
From: brian@ccnext.ucsf.edu (Brian Huddleston)
Subject: Dma probs..
Message-ID: <9309200954.AA13695@ccnext.ucsf.edu>

Greetings all,

Can someone out there tell me the PROS and/or CONS of having a 16bit DMA channel
because I just found out that the 15 crashes (mostly due to parity errors) 
of my BRAND new 386-40 MotherBoard were not due to bad memory chips or IRQ 
conficts,etc.  I had my GUS DMA set to 5 ( a 16 bit channel that worked with my
old MotherBoard), now it's working fine with a 8bit channel (#3).  But 
I want to know if I am giving up any thing important?,  will I notice changes, 
am I now not able to run certain progs?, will quality drop?  Can someone let me
know?  Thanks...

						brian@ccnext.ucsf.edu

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1993 10:57:21 -0500
From: Don Eller <don.eller@inst.medtronic.com>
Subject: Gravis Orders
Message-ID: <199309201557.AA10823@rwanda.inst.medtronic.COM>

Since no one responded to my request for a 1-800 number for Gravis, I'll ask again.  I'd be happy to use email to Gravis, but I can't get responses from any of the mail I've sent so far:
 To: POSTMASTER@Gravis.com brought back the response from POSTMASTER@gravis.com that user John@Gravis.com not registered at this site.

To: SALES@Gravis.com didn't seem to get any response

To: gus-beta@gravis.com brought back the response from POSTMASTER@gravis.com that some user (I think it was John) was not registerd at this site.

I hate to communicate by written mail, as from postings here, it doesn't appear I would fare any better, and it costs me more time and money for each try.

The phone is the best, bet to know someone actually understands the request, but I'm just curious if Gravis has discontinued their 1-800 number.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1993 00:07:54 +1000 (EST)
From: s904858@minyos.xx.rmit.OZ.AU (Stuart Gough)
Subject: Gus in Australia!
Message-ID: <9309201407.9148@minyos.xx.rmit.OZ.AU>

For those people in Australia who have ben reading htis digest and considering 
getting one - Ozzie's Discount software is selling them for $269 and they 
deliver free any where in Australia - perfect for those people who can't find 
them in their own state!

Address - 247 Bourke St Melb!  Ph (03) 650 2255
							   Fax (03) 650 4773

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1993 13:33:57 -0500
From: Don Eller <don.eller@inst.medtronic.com>
Subject: Re: Mitsumi/GUS
Message-ID: <199309201833.AA10886@rwanda.inst.medtronic.COM>

> From skylab.enet.dec.com!fisher@uunet.uu.net Fri Sep 17 09:22:07 1993
> Date: Fri, 17 Sep 93 13:22:07 EDT
> From: "Burns Fisher, VMS Engineering  17-Sep-1993 1323" <fisher@skylab.enet.dec.com>
> To: don.eller@inst.medtronic.com
> Subject: Re: Mitsumi/GUS
> Content-Length: 346
> 
> Very interesting...I've also notice the pauses in my Mitsumi drive.  Especially 
> doing video with the S/W Toolworks Encyclopaedia.
> 
> BTW, I've run my Mitsumi interface in both DMA and interrupt mode.  In both 
> cases, I get the pauses.  However, in DMA mode, Sherlock Holms Consulting 
> Detective hangs after a few seconds of music.  FWIW...
> 
> Burns
> 
After calling 1-800-555-1212 and not finding a 1-800 listing for Gravis, I decided to call 1-604-431-1807 which is Gravis Tech Support.
I told him about my frustration with Email and he suggested that I should use john.smith@gravis.com and not POSTMASTER@gravis.com to contact Gravis via internet mail.  From this information I can piece together that originally John Smith setup the internet mail gateway, and assigned john@gravis.com as the POSTMASTER alias.  Since then they appear to have changed their naming conventions to include last names, and no one has bothered to update the alias for POSTMASTER (probably because no one has complained loudly enough)

** Flame-on
Gravis, if anyone reads the digest, please wake up and realize that anyone familiar with internet mail uses POSTMASTER to ask email address information when reply's bounce back.  It's very import to maintain this alias, especially when you change your email addressing scheme!
** Flame-off
Even more interesting was the information I received from Sales about the Matsumi daughtercard.

It seems that at the time I called to order one, they had just started shipping the card, and they didn't realize that they needed to include a redbook audio cable.  And they must have received feedback from someone that the redbook cable that came with the Matsumi drive would not work, so they decided to hold any further shipments until they have a redbook cable to include.

Unfortunately they didn't think it was necessary to notify any of the customers who had ordered the daughtercard to let them know about the delay, and nothing has been posted to the digest, so I'm doing that now.

Upon further questioning I discovered that there are no drivers being shipped with the card, with the assumption that the drivers that came with the Matsumi drive should be used.  This implies that the hardware on the GUS card must be quite similar to that found on the Matsumi interface card, and the daughtercard probably just does a cable pin-swapping function.  So you may be right in assuming that there is little value to this card other than saving one expansion slot and perhaps getting a redbook audio cable that works without swapping the wires in the connector, as I did with the Masumi cable.

There is still a remote possibility that the problem with the Matsumi drive pauses is a hardware design problem with 16 bit DMA, that might possibly be corrected if Gravis used a different design, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that the problem is in the software driver and will remain even with the GUS daughtercard.

You'd think that if Gravis had done much testing with their daughtercard for the Matsumi drive, they might have stumbled onto these delays that occur with many applications.  They might then have used their resources to resolve this by providing a better driver, since they should have access to Matsumi tech support as a developer, where I do not.

I`ve been through all the Matsumi documentation and have not found any way to receive technical support to resolve this issue.  Does anyone out there know how to get technical support for this drive, either email or phone?

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Sep 93 22:38:55 EDT
From: Meshreki@ee.udel.edu
Subject: PLAYMIDI -BUG-
Message-ID: <9309210238.aa20271@zip.ee.udel.edu>

PLAYMIDI version 4.07 has a bug!

It alters the DOS clock when playing MIDI files through the MIDI port 
(playmidi -m).

The same MIDI file, start and stop DOS clock times:

playmidi    10:52   10:56   =  4 min    (good, it's a 4 minute tune)
playmidi -m 11:01   11:31   = 30 min    (not so good)

I couldn't figure out why for the past couple of weeks my DOS clock
was several _days_ ahead of the actual time... now I know :-)

Which brings me to my next complaint... 
I WANT LINEAR VOLUME DRIVERS FOR WINDOWS AND PLAYMIDI!  RELEASE THEM!
I WANT LINEAR VOLUME DRIVERS FOR WINDOWS AND PLAYMIDI!  RELEASE THEM!
I WANT LINEAR VOLUME DRIVERS FOR WINDOWS AND PLAYMIDI!  RELEASE THEM!

<ahem>.

Yes, coming up this November, I will be celebrating a first year
anniversary with my GUS which still doesn't have the linear volume
response I noticed missing way back when I bought it.  I consider
it a must for composing, which is my primary interest in the GUS.

I've experienced firsthand patch-caching remorse (and the release of 
PatchManager), windows drivers without MIDI IN (and new drivers with), 
infinitely delayed Gravis MIDI Box (and the PAS MIDIMate), exponential 
volume MIDI playback (and Phat's VMAP), superflous game support (and the 
mystical AIL drivers), General MIDI gaming (and Jayeson's MEGA-EM), lack 
of readily available tunes (and Josh's GUSMOD), the escalating war of SBOS 
options (and SBOS 2.XX), mysteries of patch making and GUS inner workings 
(and PATCH.EXE inside the tomes of the SDK family), alternative operating 
system wars (and Hannu's Linux drivers), where's Gravis? (and the Gravis BBS/
internet combo), lame SB-only demos :-) (and Future Crew, Renaissance, and 
Twilight Zone goodies), DMP without GUS support on epas (and DMP 2.6X), 
the game companies' ultra-negative reps and tech support staff (and the 
promise of GUS support in DOOM from Id), user-unfriendly installation (and 
the 2.0X install disks), a serious lack of patches in quality and number 
(and install disks 2.0X), what happened to my line-in? (and ultrinit -l -o),
simultaneous record and playback des (and GUSDELAY), reverb + echo +
delay + chorus (and Chris' infamous MIDI tricks), when's the GUS ever gonna
be released (and the Electronic Arts $99 GUS), what's wrong with my GUS?
(and the GUS 2.0X setup diagnostics), flaky motherboards and OPTI chipsets
(and 8-bit DMA), Gravis advertising (and the first magazine ad), GMOS,
GUS 3-D, SCSI, 16-bit Recording, OS/2 drivers, MPU401 compatibility,
more on-board RAM, the GF2 speculation, Chuck Yeager's AC, uneven 8-bit
sampling, UltraClicks, 60 second limit in USS8, ARIA + wave-table competition,
PowerChords + Recording Session, 32-channel composers, Star Control 2
and DRAM pointers, Francois' TR series patches, ...

... am I missing anything?

Sam
"world-renowned GUStorian who's come a long way with his typing skills"

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Sep 93 02:31:00 -0500
From: dan.roscigno@timeslice.gnv.fl.us (Dan Roscigno)
Subject: Sierra Drivers
Message-ID: <977.95.uupcb@timeslice.gnv.fl.us>

I read in a FIDO conf that Sierra has released Roland drivers for their
old games.  This is not the GUS support that is expected, but is better
than nothing.  If anyone can call the Sierra BBS local and upload these
drivers to epas that would be peachy.
														 
----
ACCUG BBS ---------------------------------------------- Gainesville, FL -
-  Specializing in IBM and Compatibles User Support from the Computer    -
-  Novice to Power User.  Carrying Rime, Fidonet, USENET, and Internet   -
Alachua County Computer Users Group --------- 904-335-7289 14.4k/V.32bis -

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Sep 93 20:37:37 PDT
From: mikebat@netcom.com (Mike Batchelor)
Subject: Ultramid -c vs. neat
Message-ID: <9309210337.AA06573@netcom2.netcom.com>

Not the Ultrasound Server once wrote...
$  
$  ------------------------------
$  
$  Date: Sun, 19 Sep 1993 17:03:11 -0400 (EDT)
$  From: Phat H Tran <ptran@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca>
$  Subject: Re: Ultrasound Daily Digest V6 #18
$  
$  With the exception of the gunshot patch (#127), don't replace the
$  instruments in ultrasnd.ini or ultramid.ini with ones that don't sound
$  similar if you want the music and sound effects in games to sound as 
$  they should.  Also, don't replace smaller patches with larger patches
$  for Mega-Em or if you use ultramid with the -c option. 
[...]

What's the diff between -c and not using that switch?  -c loads a GM patch
set right?  Does this imply that not using the switch will let the game
load its own patch set?


-- 
Mike Batchelor      |
mikebat@netcom.com  |                  This space for rent
mikebat@qdeck.com   |

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Sep 93 13:04:48 
From: john.smith@gravis.com
Subject: ULTRASOUND DAILY DIGEST V
Message-ID: <9309201304.A2848wk@gravis.com>

>A week?  Most of us have been waiting for 10 months. :)  Hold your
>horses. The Sierra rep on CIS would not commit to any dates for the
>release of the GUS driver or when it would show up in Sierra games.  He
>did say that it won't be backward-compatible with older Sierra games,
>though.

Well for all you curious souls, I have the drivers (MIDI and Digital)
from Sierra. BUT, they still have a problem with digital cutting out.
They were trying to fix it last Friday and hopefully its fixed by now
I'll find out latter. But, I haven't made any announcements about any of
this yet and wasn't planning too until I could give you guys a final ZIP
file and say just unzip it into your sierra directory and away you go.
So once I have this ZIP file, then I'll release the press release and
the file. As for how much more there is to be done, assuming the digital
thing is fixed I still want to see the install they wrote up for it and
then I'll post it. I was actually hoping to do this last week but hey,
it's almost done <grin>

John

---
 ~ QMPro 1.50 05-8925 ~ Your E-Mail has been returned due to insufficient
voltage

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Sep 93 07:11:26 PDT
From: deraud@power.amasd.anatcp.rockwell.com (Robert Lee DeRaud)
Subject: Yet another SB/GUS flame-tiff...
Message-ID: <9309201411.AA28450@power.amasd.anatcp.rockwell.com>

>From: bentlema@cda.mrs.umn.edu (Mark A. Bentley )
>Subject: WTL v.s. FM Synth

>I'm going to buy a sound card soon, and am curious to what people think
>gives better quality sound: Wave Table Lookup or FM synthesis?

Sniff, sniff...does anybody else smell smoke?

>From: Gavin <SCARMAN@hfrd.dsto.gov.au>
>Subject: Re: Ultrasound Daily Digest V6 #11

>>I'm going to buy a sound card soon, and am curious to what people think
>>gives better quality sound: Wave Table Lookup or FM synthesis?

>This is very funny! You ask this question in a GUS ie. wavetable card list, and 
>expect an unbiased answer? Anyway it's not an opinion, it's a fact wavetable 
>_duplicates_ a sound, FM emulates it, what do you reckon would be best ;-)

>Not only that but you can emulate many other music devices with wavetable 
>synthesis, eg GUS can emulate _any_ MIDI synth, eg. Roland SCC1 or MT32 and 
>sound as good depending on how you sampled them, and it can emulate FM synths 
>eg. SoundBlaster, try that with FM synthesis :-)

>Sorry if this comes over heavy, but the GUS is so versatile I can't understand 
>why anyone would consider putting up with SB's shitty FM music.

>Gavin.

All right, don't beat it to death...Would everybody PLEEEZE stop acting 
as if "SoundBlaster" == "FM Synth"? IT'S NOT THE SAME THING!!! The 
little piece-of-shit FM chip the SB uses has the same relationship to a 
'real' FM synth as a toddler's tricycle does to a Corvette. The 
depressing thing is that the SB FM chip is made by Yamaha, who damn sure 
can do better!)

And another thing, I love the GUS as much as anybody, but it CANNOT 
fully duplicate the sound of ANY pro-quality synthesizer (except under 
VERY limited conditions) due to its lack of back-end programmable 
filtering. (I have discussed this at length in the past and do not 
intend to repeat the whole thing here: check your back issues or email 
me.)

>From: james@maths.exeter.ac.uk
>Subject: Re: Ultrasound Daily Digest V6 #11

>> I'm going to buy a sound card soon, and am curious to what people think
>> gives better quality sound: Wave Table Lookup or FM synthesis?

>In the arena of soundcards, the wave table ones seem to give better results.
>If you got a pro music synth module that used FM though, it would probably
>sound better than a wave table soundcard.

Thank God...a voice of reason.

>People on the gravis ultrasound email list arent really the right people to 
>ask this question though.  We mostly have a wavetable-only card which does a
>very poor FM emulation as well.

...and with few exceptions (james, phat, francois etc) know very little 
about real synthesizers...

>From: Gavin <SCARMAN@hfrd.dsto.gov.au>
>Subject: Re: WTL v.s. FM Synth

>>We mostly have a wavetable-only card which does a very poor FM emulation as 
>>well.

>Actually, I have a friend with a SBPRO and comparing the GUS (with SBOS2b10) 
>with the same game (ie. wolf3D) there is only a slight difference in the SBPRO's 
>favour. ie they both sound rather poor. So IMHO the FM emulation is quite good, 
>the problem lies in that FM as used by the SB is quite poor.The results may vary 
>with games but no-one really believes a SB sounds good, do they ;-)

Lemme see if I got this right: SB sounds like shit, GUS SB emulation 
sounds like shit, so GUS does good SB emulation? Yeah, I GUESS that 
makes sense :-)

>>If you got a pro music synth module that used FM though, it would probably
>>sound better than a wave table soundcard.

>If you sampled that FM synth at 16 bits/44kHz then you would find they'd sound 
>identical, that's the advantage of wavetable synthesis.

[Repetitive thud from hitting head against wall] Identical at the note 
sampled, at the volume sampled, played for the same duration...change 
any of the above (assuming a non-trivial FM patch) and the wavetable 
emulation of the FM synth will NOT sound the same: wavetable synthesis 
(as seen in the GUS) cannot faithfully re-create the complex real-time
dynamics of a good FM synth (or a good analog synth or a good LA synth 
or a good acoustic whatever...). Damn good for $150, but NOT the same 
thing.

***********************************************************************
Lee DeRaud                             Will program Windows for food.
Rockwell Int. AESD                   (Hey, I'm easy but I'm not cheap!)
   DoD #985 - Fast and ugly beats slow and cute any day of the week.
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
	  My own opinions only, not those of Rockwell International.
   (Yeah, right: like anyone around here cares what *I* say...NOT!)
***********************************************************************

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Sep 93 05:18:58 EDT
From: ddr@math.ufl.edu
Subject: ~Prince of Persia ONE
Message-ID: <9309200918.AA07880@gomek.math.ufl.edu>

Does anyone know how to get POP ONE running with the GUS?  I used to play it with my ThunderBoard, and pulled it out to try with GUS..  It locks up very quickly now.

------------------------------

End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V6 #20
*************************************
