GUS Daily Digest            Wed, 19 Oct 94  9:37 PST     Volume 15: Issue  12 

Today's Topics:
				 128k of GUS Newsletter?! Not funny!
						   Announcing 2PAT
						Another .MID question
	  Can I get the Gravis Piano teaching system software only ?
						chirping from gus0043
						   GM; OS/2 driver
						Gravis Keyboard offer
					 Gravis Phoenix Flight system
				  GUS, CD-ROM and Video for Windows
					  GUS Daily Digest V15 #11
						  GUS Faq in Digest?
						   GUS FAQ Updates?
	   Missing ultrinit.sys in installation disk version 3.56?
							   the mail
					  The UltraSound Experience
					Where is UltraSound Experience
					Windows '95 Drivers and app's

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: 18 Oct 94 16:42:16 EDT
From: Jonathan Clark <100410.3324@compuserve.com>
Subject: 128k of GUS Newsletter?! Not funny!
Message-ID: <941018204216_100410.3324_BHA69-1@CompuServe.COM>

OK. Lets just get one thing straight here.

(**FLAME ON**)

Some of us actually have to PAY for INTERNET mail. That means the GUS Newsletter
COSTS me on average $1.2 each day.

Now - tonight I was in a rush, so I just did a mass download of mail without
checking the sizes (or the costs). Extremely bad move.

What did I find? A mail message so big that CIM for OS/2 thought it best to
treat it as a file rather than a mail message. Why? 'cos the damn thing was 128k
long!!!

Now look, guys. If you think we might want the FAQ, then tell us where to find
it - DON'T RAM IT DOWN OUR THROATS!

(**FLAME OFF**)

I won't make that mistake again!

 --------------------------------------
Jonathan Clark - Belfast

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

Date: 19 Oct 94 09:16:00 MET
From: "VISX80::GRECNER" <GRECNER%VISX80.decnet@musx53.zfe.siemens.de>
Subject: Re: Announcing 2PAT

>Just wanted to say this, hope I've not wasted too much bandwidth,

No problem, keep on going. You're doing a great job on 2PAT. I still have
to try it ;-)

				Martin Grecner

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

Date: Tue, 18 Oct 1994 16:54:54 -0700 (PDT)
From: sabe@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Shige Abe)
Subject: Another .MID question

> 
> Date: Mon, 17 Oct 1994 16:05:13 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Phat Hong Tran <ptran@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca>
> Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V15 #10
> 
> is the -x<nn> switch, where <nn> is a number from 14 to 32.  This
> switch sets the number of voices PlayMIDI will use to play a .mid.
> The higher the number of voices used, the lower the overall sampling
> rate, but the greater the polyphony (the number of notes that can
> sound at once).
>

Can you find out how many voices a .MID uses?

To play .s3ms what would you recommend I try out?  Currently, I'm
using Metal in DOS and GMOD in Linux.

While not specifically GUS related, any suggestions for .s3ms,
mods, mids?  Locations too.

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

Date: Tue, 18 Oct 94 16:06:29 EDT
From: "Burns Fisher, VMS Engineering  18-Oct-1994 1558" <fisher@skylab.enet.dec.com>
Subject: Re: Can I get the Gravis Piano teaching system software only ?

Subject: Can I get the Gravis Piano teaching system software only ?

>I got a brochure the other day advertising the Gravis Piano teaching
>package.   It includes a lot of stuff including a GUS card and
>a MIDI keyboard.   I already have a GUS and a MIDI keyboard so I
>was wondering if any of you had heard of a "software only" 
>package for this teaching system.

As far as I know, the software in the Gravis package is Musicware Piano.
You can contact Musicware at 800-99-PIANO (997-4266).  I got a brochure a 
while ago offering it for a special intro price of $99+S&H.  Don't know what 
it might be now.

Burns

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

Date: Tue, 18 Oct 1994 22:31:28 -0500 (CDT)
From: Antonio Guia <guia@cc.UManitoba.CA>
Subject: chirping from gus0043

>Date: Mon, 17 Oct 1994 14:18:19 -0700
>From: jsbernstein@ucdavis.edu (Jeffrey Bernstein)
>Is anyone else having a beep or chirp after certain .wav's are played for
>Windows events?  I've only noticed this since I installed the files in
>gus0043.  Is there a fix or workaround or anything for this?

I get that exact same effect, and it doesn't seem to matter at what volume
i have the mixer set.  I've found that reducing the buffering size to 2048
also reduced the number of files that do that, and made windows run a
little smoother in general.  I still have a couple of files that continue
to do this however.  I'll have to try reducing the buffer sizes further to
see if it fixes it any more.  In short: probably a bug in the drivers.

-tg

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

Date: Tue, 18 Oct 1994 19:23:06 -0400 (EDT)
From: Phat Hong Tran <ptran@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca>
Subject: GM; OS/2 driver

On Tue, 18 Oct -1, GUS Server wrote:

> Date: Mon, 17 Oct 1994 11:47:14 -0600 (MDT)
> From: rkornilo@nyx.cs.du.edu (Ryan Korniloff)
> Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V15 #8
> 
> > Now, Mega-Em isn't truly GM, GS, or MT-32 compliant.  It tries its best to
> > approximate all three.  (Well, it has two different MIDI maps, but since
> > GS and GM are pretty close, one of the maps is used to approximate two 
> > standards.)  Work was done over the summer to optimize the GM approximation
> > for the next release of Mega-Em, though.
> 
> Uhhh, then why does it claim it's compliant? This seems so stupid. What 
> good is music capability if it's not gonna play right? FM sux -- but it 

The GM specification is so vague that essentially every soundcard's
implementation of GM is a its manufacturer's own "best guess" as to
what the instruments in the GM set are supposed to sound like.  Thus,
there is a lot of lee-way in "GM compliance".  A GM piece of music 
that sounds as it should on one "GM" soundcard will always sound different
or worse on another "GM" soundcard.  Most GM music is composed on the 
SCC-1, so only with the SCC-1 can you be absolutely sure that you're 
hearing the music as it was intended to be heard.

Now, Mega-Em's GM MIDI map is an approximation to the GUS' native MIDI
map, but I still regard it to be GM compliant as it does handle most
GM-arranged music well.  If you want to hear a mockery of "GM compliance",
try listening to some Aria-based soundcards.

> plays right! What's the problem with using 3 maps? I don't know about 
> you. But I can spare the extra 6K of disk space for another map.

It's not a matter of a 6kB MIDI map, but how many patches will fit into
1MB of GUS memory (or however much memory you have on your card).  At
best, if you know what patches a game needs, you can create a custom
MIDI map that loads up all those patches (GUS memory permitting) and
nothing else for that particular game.  However, you'll have a tough 
time trying to load all 192 distinct GM patches for a complete, all-
purpose GM MIDI map.

> Doesn anyoine know where I can get an official MIDI map so I can go and 
> edit this thing myself.

A GM MIDI map can be found in the GUS' manual.  A GS MIDI map won't do
you much good as Mega-Em doesn't respond to controllers 32 and 0,
the GS bank-switching controllers.

> Date: Tue, 18 Oct 94 00:10:14 -0400
> From: "Barrie Rody" <brody@fox.nstn.ca>
> Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V15 #8
> 
> >#flame on
> >>Date: Thu, 13 Oct 1994 18:46:50 -0400 (EDT)
> >>From: Phat Hong Tran <ptran@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca>
> >>Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V15 #6
> >>
> >>FWIW, Gravis had not been working on OS/2 until the past summer.  (They
> >>were planning to for a long time, but other projects overrode OS/2 in
> >>priority.)  But over the summer, Forte had a preliminary version of the 
> >>OS/2 driver already working, and Gravis also put one of their own 
> >>programmers on the OS/2 project.  (The programmer Gravis placed on OS/2
> >>is an unabashed OS/2 fanatic, and very competent.)
> >
> 
> Suspicions confirmed!! 
> 
> Since I was an OS/2 user, prior to purchasing my GUS in Jan 94, I called 
> Gravis to ask if OS/2 drivers were available.  I was assured that they were 
> in the final stages of development and would be available sometime in the 
> first half of 94.  In May, I was assured "The core of the drivers are 
> looking good but are not making sound yet." also, now Gravis couldn't give 
> me an expected release date.  I have not received a reply to my more 
> recent queries.  So much for supporting Canadian companies. 

I'm afraid that I was negligent in my depiction of the timeline of the
OS/2 driver development in that above quote.  When I came to work for
Gravis in May, Forte did have a rudimentary OS/2 driver which I believe
was also making sound, but didn't have higher features like patch 
caching.  I don't know how much time was spent getting the driver to
that stage.  Around mid-summer, Gravis sent one of their own programmers
to Forte to prime him for assisting in the OS/2 driver development as 
Forte were busy on higher-priority projects for Gravis and AMD.
Since all this happened over what I characterize as my summer job, I 
erred in collapsing the timeline into "this past summer".  The OS/2
driver was in development before the summer, and before May in fact.

So you received good information about the core of the drivers looking
good in May.  However, whoever said that the OS/2 driver was in the 
final stages of development was being way too optimistic.

Sorry for the confusion.

Phat.

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

Date: Wed, 19 Oct 1994 09:12:39 -0400 (EDT)
From: jasonr@Newbridge.COM (Jason Rusmisel)
Subject: Gravis Keyboard offer

Hi:

  I've seen a few posts talking about the Gravis Keyboard/Piano package
being advertised by mail.  I registered with Gravis when I bought my GUS
and I haven't received any stuff about this in the mail.  Could someone
outline what they are selling or tell me what they think of the keyboard
if they've purchased it?

 I'm interested because I'm pretty tired of playing MIDI notes out of 
a cheap CASIO with no volume (touch sensitive) control.  I'm not a real
keyboard player so a REAL keyboard (KORG blah blah) is out of my price range.
Any opinions or comments would be much appreciated. (Any clever alternatives
people have discovered would be great too!)


Thanks,


Jason

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

Date: Wed, 19 Oct 1994 10:47:36 +1000
From: asee@st.nepean.uws.edu.au (Andrew See)
Subject: Gravis Phoenix Flight system

Can anyone recommend a good cheap place to mail order the Gravis Phoenix 
joystick from? How much are Gravis direct selling it for?

 ------------------------------------\----------------0oO0oo0O 
 _--_|\                               \ \  \  \  \  \O0o0o000O
/      \                               \ \  \  \  \00OooOoo0Oo
\_.--._/<--]This is where I surf.[-->  /\ \  \  \oO0Oo0OoO0ooo
	  v                              __|_\ \  \ oO0o0oOo0@00o0
[----------> Andrew See                   \ \ 0oO0ooo0oo0o0o0o
[----------> asee@st.nepean.uws.edu.au     \oO0Oo0Ooo0%@o0oOo0
[-------------------------------------------O*o%@o0O0o0oO0oO0o

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

Date: Wed, 19 Oct 1994 05:44:37 +0100
From: A.PAUW@ELSEVIER.nl
Subject: GUS, CD-ROM and Video for Windows

For all those who had the same problem. When I played AVI files
(a "Windows movie") on my machine I had jerky or no sound at all
with some movies (setup: UltraSound/CD-ROM, vanilla videoboard
(i.e. Trident)). Once I read somewhere to use only 8 bit DMA on
the GUS Windows driver and small buffer sizes in order to get
the Video for Windows working properly.

Well, you don't need to use 8 bit DMA (DMA 0-3), 16 bit DMA does
work too (DMA 4-7), but a small buffer size definitely makes a
lot of a difference! I first had 8192 bytes buffers (8k) but 512
bytes works just fine. I expect it has something to do with the
AVI standard (Audio Video Interleaved), frames and chunks of
sound are interleaved. Now the movies work just fine.

Now about the new Windows drivers (disks 5.36 or whatever, the
very latest I mean). They still has this chirping sound at the start
and end of .WAV files. Video for Windows has the same problem
playing movies.

Why isn't this fixed? As somebody noticed before, the drivers
from GUS0042.ZIP do work properly in this sense.

Albert Pauw
The Netherlands
a.pauw@elsevier.nl

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

Date: Wed, 19 Oct 1994 09:24:45 +0100
From: Paal Andreassen <paaland3@knoll.kih.no>
Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V15 #11

> Date: Tue, 18 Oct 1994 18:36:15 MET-1
> From: "The Magic Friend" <SZABO@btkstud.jpte.hu>
> Subject: To the attention of the staff at Gravis! Reg. card probs.

>     My problem is about the registration card. I live in Hungary, I 
> bought my GUS in the spring in a local computer store, I sent my 
> registration card to the Logitech SA, to Switzerland in April, but up 
> till now there is no answer at all. :( A big flat dump SILENCE! For 
-----[CUT]-----

Here in Norway we have the same problem. Me and three of my friend bought
a gus about 8 months ago. We sendt in the cards, and waited, and waited -
nothing. If it wasn't for the fact that I had internet access we would
still be using disk set v3.10 :(. This is not good, sharpen up Advanced
Gravis.


Paal Andreassen <paaland3@knoll.kih.no>
Buskerud College, 
Department of Engineering,
Institute of Computer Science

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

Date: Tue, 18 Oct 1994 19:16:01 -0500 (CDT)
From: Michael Jude Coyne <umcoyne0@cc.UManitoba.CA>
Subject: GUS Faq in Digest?

Well, there was certainly a load of irrelevant crap in yesterday's digest.
Please, please don't EVER post the Faq in there again.

Digest Admin, how about a script on your end that dumps any message more
than, say maybe 400 or 800 lines or whatever?  Anyone asking/answering a
reasonable question about the GUS should be able to live with that.  It
would prevent the FAQ being posted in the digest, and ALSO would serve to
weed out single messages which quote the entire previous digest.

Sigh.  Some of don't have time to press space through 1500 lines of GUS
FAQ, at 25 lines/screen... that's 60 presses of the spacebar, through the
FAQ, most of which I've read before.

Comments?


Michael

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

Date: Tue, 18 Oct 1994 13:23:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Christopher M. DiPierro" <cdipierr@wam.umd.edu>
Subject: Re: GUS FAQ Updates?

I noticed that the latest FAQ was dated February of this year.  I also 
tried mailing the person who maintains it, but had the mail returned 
because it is "an unknown user".  So I was wondering if the person who 
originally updated it is still around and doing so.  If not, I would once 
again offer to pick up where it was left off.  I would like a reply from 
some "official" type person before doing so however...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chris DiPierro: cdipierr@wam.umd.edu
University of Maryland at College Park
To quote IBM: "Think"

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

Date: Wed, 19 Oct 1994 15:08:39 +0100 (MET)
From: ralam@cs.vu.nl
Subject: Missing ultrinit.sys in installation disk version 3.56?

Hi, a couple of days ago I ftp-ed the new installation disks and at home I
installed them. But I noticed that there wasn't an ultrinit.sys among
the installed files (only ultrinit.exe). And no, there wasn't a modified
newer ultrinit.sys in my directory since I always let the software install
in another directory and then copy the interesting parts to my original
Ultrasound dir. Now, Was this just me being mistaken or are the
new installation disks really missing ultrinit.sys

Remco Lam

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

Date: Wed, 19 Oct 1994 00:44:59 -0700
From: dross@ultrix5.cs.csubak.edu (dean ross-smith)
Subject: the mail

Gee, its nice to have the mailing list back.
Now please- use the KISA principle- Keep It Short A**hole!
Don't repeat whole messages or worse- the whole digest. 
Don't add long tags to an over verbose message.
Don't mail me your cores over this.
(and like one person says on here in his tag- THINK!)
drs

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

Date: Wed, 12 Oct 94 23:01:42  GMT
From: aswani@sound.demon.co.uk (Robert Aswani)
Subject: The UltraSound Experience

Have you all heard this? It's amazing!

If you haven't, the UltraSound Experience is an interactive demo of the
UltraSound on a CD-ROM. The UltraSound's wavetable audio has been recorded
onto the CD as audio tracks and these are played back with SVGA graphics
displayed on the screen. There is also narration also played back at the
same time from audio tracks on the CD all the way through the presentation.

The presentation starts with this narration accompanied by music and some
flashy graphics: "Looking for a quality sound card? Look no further. You
are listening to UltraSound: the future of sound and music on the PC.
Un-paralleled sound quality in it's class for music, multimedia and games.
All the UltraSound music in this presentation was produced on a Gravis
UltraSound sound card without any additional hardware."

The most effective parts are when MIDI files are played on the Sound
Blaster 16ASP's FM, other wavetable sound cards and the UltraSound. It
perfectly shows anyone how brilliant the UltraSound's WaveTable Synth is.

It really does make the UltraSound look impressive (which of course it is).

Other parts of the presentation include: specifications of the UltraSound
and UltraSound Max, details about how the UltraSound supports old and new
games, an explanation of why RAM based Wavetable synthesisers are more
versatile and better (a MIDI file using custom patches on the UltraSound
was played back from the CD), a MOD file demonstration with an explanation
of why the UltraSound is brilliant at playing and making S3M's, ULT's ...
etc. There is lots more in the presentation. Each part of the UltraSound
Experience makes the UltraSound sound better and better to potential
UltraSound purchasers.

The whole presentation has been made brilliantly and professionally. It was
authored by HSC Interactive. Phat H Tran had a big part in making it.

Gravis should really push this around to make sure it gets on every
magazine's cover CD-ROM. The CD can also be played from a normal audio
CD-player so anyone can hear all the narration and UltraSound's wavetable
synth even if they don't have a CD-ROM reader and a sound card.

I got this presentation on PC-ZONE's November Cover-CD here in the UK. I
don't know how widely this has been distributed elsewhere around the world,
but if Gravis can distribute it on a magazine's Cover-CD in every country
then it will be a brilliant promotional campaign for the GUS.

Anybody who ever doubted the UltraSound's capabilities, and have held
themselves back from buying one, will not doubt it anymore after they have
seen and heard this presentation. They will no longer restrain themselves
from buying an UltraSound.


			   ------------------------------
		 ----- \  Robert Aswani              \ ------
		  ----- \  aswani@sound.demon.co.uk   \ ------    
				 -------------------------------

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

Date: Wed, 19 Oct 1994 15:14:28 +1000 (EST)
From: "Jason L. Williams" <n1459562@student.fit.qut.edu.au>
Subject: Where is UltraSound Experience

Where can I find this UltraSound Experience demo people are talking about?

+---------Jason.L.Williams----------+
|...n1459562@water.fit.qut.edu.au...|
+-----------------------------------+

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

Date: Tue, 18 Oct 94 12:52:13 EDT
From: "Burns Fisher, VMS Engineering  18-Oct-1994 1252" <fisher@skylab.enet.dec.com>
Subject: Re: Windows '95 Drivers and app's

>Hey all, I have a question.  Is Gravis going to write Windows '95 drivers
>and app's to take advantage of the new system?  It would be stupid to be
>using the nasty windows drivers with Win'95.  Granted the OS/2 drivers have
>been a long time in the coming, but you would think that Microsoft would
>have some pull too.  Then again Win '95 may be just as big a flop as 
>windows3.1

Hmmm.  Maybe the rest of us who have been silently wishing the OS/2 folks 
would stop complaining will change places with them in a couple (well 
several) months, huh?

Burns

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

End of GUS Daily Digest V15 #12
*******************************
