Ultrasound Daily Digest     Thu Aug 12 00:46     Volume 5: Issue  11  

Today's Topics:
						  A .mid request...
						 Beta testers needed
						  choosing keyboards
						Diamond's Sonic series
						  don't get spooked
					  Doom will get GUS support
						  Gus and Syndicate
							 OS/2 driver
					   Patch Editing Questions
						SBOS loading slowly...
					   SBOS takes long to load
						  The DEATH of SBOS
							 Ultrasnd.ini
					Ultrasound Daily Digest V5 #10
					   Westwood support for GUS

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: Wed, 11 Aug 1993 21:43:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: dionf@ERE.UMontreal.CA (Francois Dion)
Subject: A .mid request...
Message-ID: <9308120143.AA14105@brise.ERE.UMontreal.CA>

Anybody has the good, the bad and the ugly theme in .mid? And also same thing
for once upon a time in america. (both written by morricone, and ouatia is the
first film music to feature a synthesiser...).

I am also looking for any .mid of Enio Morricone or Maurice Jarre (NO, not
Jean-Michel Jarre) from any of their compositions. They are both very famous
film music composers and so the probability is high that there are a few. In
particular i am looking for the music of "Le grand blond a la chaussure noire"
with Pierre Richards (there was a US remake with Gene Wilder but the sound-
track is not the same). The film is from 72.

Ciao,
-- 
Francois Dion
	'  _   _   _ 
 CISM (_) (_)  _) FM       Montreal , Canada       Email: CISM@ERE.UMontreal.CA
	  (_)  / . _)             10000 Watts          Telephone no: (514) 343-7511
_______________________________________________________________________________
Audio-C-DJ-Fractals-Future-Label-Multimedia-Music-Radio-Rave-Video-VR-Volvo-...

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

Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1993 20:27:12 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Alan S. Estenson" <este0005@student.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: Beta testers needed
Message-ID: <Pine.3.05.9308112012.B13882-b100000@student.tc.umn.edu>

I'm in the last stages of completing a "freeware" midi "jukebox" type program
for Windows 3.1 and am looking for approximately 10-15 beta testers.

Beta-testers must have:
-MS Windows 3.1
-vbrun300.dll (visual basic 3.0 run-time library)
-ability to receive the uuencoded program by e-mail
-willingness to fiddle with the program, fill out and return a short
 form to me

I can't offer the beta-testers anything other than an e-mailed version of
the final program, and credit in the documentation file.

The program, "Mycroft's Midi Surfer", supports Windows Patch Caching
and is fully compatible with the Gravis UltraSound!

Interested persons should contact me at: este0005@student.tc.umn.edu
Please include the type of soundcard that you'll be using to test the
program. The beta version will be e-mailed on August 15th.

Thanks much! 

--
Alan S. Estenson     aka "Mycroft"    aka este0005@student.tc.umn.edu
Aerospace Engineering     / University of Minnesota / Minneapolis, MN
Rosemount Aerospace, Inc. / Burnsville, MN   #std. disclaimers apply#

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

Date: Wed, 11 Aug 93 17:53:11 EDT
From: snowdog@binkley.cs.mcgill.ca (Rodney CHANG)
Subject: Re: choosing keyboards
Message-ID: <9308112153.AA10235@binkley.cs.mcgill.ca>

Buenos Nochos Moin Froinds,

To add my two cents to the "which keyboard should I buy" thread,
if you don't know how to play piano/keyboard, don't get a velocity 
sensitive keyboard.  I am the ultimate piano klutz, and I tried 
recording using a Korg once, and it sounded like trash because of the 
varying volumes.  Don't try it at home kids if you ain't got the skills 
to play with a velocity sensitive keyboard.  I wonder, are there 
keyboards that allow you to turn off the velocity sensitive feature?

-- 
Rodney Chang - 1i.p06  "`"c"a"V"T"O"\!]"b"[!^
"S"f"^"]"a!@!.!@"\"]"`"R"W"_"c"S"a!@"U"]!@"U"]!@"U"]!D!D!D

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

Date: Wed, 11 Aug 93 16:22:28 EDT
From: pccmoddan@aol.com
Subject: Diamond's Sonic series
Message-ID: <9308111622.tn63672@aol.com>

thomasvk@blackhl.hacktic.nl (Thomas van Kuipers) wrote yesterday:

>Hi gusers,
 
Early i mentioned the sound card.
 
I have searched after it and the name is SONIC SOUND.
 
It appears that this is a far better card than gus with gus 
comp. sb comp. sb16 comp. waveblaster comp. 8 mb ram and 4 mb 
rom. scsi-2 and more. Just see a few days ealier.
 
Bye,
 
Thomas<

Folks, don't believe it for a moment. The Diamond Sonic Series sound cards
are just like all the other *Aria* boards, and don't have *any* RAM, only
have 1mb of ROM, etc. 

It amazes how many people failed to see that the posts about the "ultimate"
sound card a few weeks ago on comp.ibm.pc.soundcards were a joke.

- Dan Nicholson
________________________________________________
| Dan Nicholson | email: pccmoddan@aol.com     |
|  aka          | uuencoded: moddan@bowker.com |
| Maelcum [KLF] | America Online: PCC ModDan   |
|  and          | VirtualNet: 2 @ 9082         |
| [PCC] ModDan  | Voice Phone: (908)687-3479   |
|_______________|______________________________|
|                                              |
|           Levisionet Technologies            |
|           553 Thoreau Terrace                |
|           Union, NJ 07083   U.S.A.           |
|          (Formerly PCkS Associates)          |
|______________________________________________|

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

Date: Wed, 11 Aug 93 9:29:47 CDT
From: Michael J Stumpf <mjs7529@tamsun.tamu.edu>
Subject: don't get spooked
Message-ID: <9308111429.AA22166@tamsun.tamu.edu>

Guys. 

With regard to this new sound card that has 8 megs o memory, gus/sb/pas/gm/etc
compatibility, and enough bells and whistles to make anyone blush.

Keep in mind that compatibility doesn't mean perfect.. I know enough people
with "sb compat" cards like thunderboards that don't work worth anything.
Remember, our gus was "sb compat".. I am not knocking the gus, but just pointing
out that claims can be misleading.  

The gravis has evolved as a standard and is gaining clout in the industry.
I don't know about you, but I suffered through one card's development, and
I'm not sure I want to jump on another card that will have nothing available.
It seems to me that it is a better card than the gus, but whether it will
be accepted or not is still up in the air.  Will it be as easy to code for
as the gus?  How well will it work?  You guys forget how well the gus is 
engineered, and that this card may be a piece of junk..

Nobody has seen this card yet, so it's foolish to make rash judgments when we
already have an awesome card in our computers.  

To tell you the truth, this card holds little advantage for me to gain from.
I have a scsi adaptor much more powerful than that one, I have a gus, I have
a sound blaster, I have a roland emulator, etc, etc.. about all it can do
for me is built in and higher quality general midi.. 

I might invest in a gus max if it comes out, or I might invest in this card 
and sell off some of my other stuff if it works well, but I think this 
speculation is foolish and only kills morale for the newly established
standard we have now.  If you doubt that statement, check out the ASM-93
demos.  From what I've been told/seen, over 90% support gus, and a lot of
those support gus exclusively.

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

Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1993 10:12:23 +0930 (CST)
From: Gavin <SCARMAN@hfrd.dsto.gov.au>
Subject: Doom will get GUS support
Message-ID: <930812101223.1da62@hfrd.dsto.gov.au>

|> Will you be supporting the Gravis Ultrasound in it's native mode?

If support for the GUS is not included in the initial release, it will be 
included in an update.
---
-Shawn Green (shawn@idsoftware.com)
Id Software

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

Date: Thu, 12 Aug 93 16:28:52 EST
From: David Mitchell <davidm@hparc1.aus.hp.com>
Subject: Re: Gus and Syndicate
Message-ID: <9308120630.AA20705@hp.com>

Thanks to everyone who replied - I was the one getting strange sounds from my
GUS when playing Syndicate.

Sure enough, disabling EMM386 gives me great music, but no digitized sounds
(I'm told there's gunshots, screams, etc.).  This may be due to my only having
256k in the GUS (it's REAL tough to find DRAMs in Melbourne for some reason),
but it might be something else.

Let the suggestion floodgates be opened...please!

Dave Mitchell

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

Date: Wed, 11 Aug 93 08:55:12 EDT
From: eths1306@ele.etsmtl.ca
Subject: OS/2 driver
Message-ID: <9308111255.AA04538@ele.etsmtl.ca>

Hi,
	I just want to say that I am waiting for the release of a complete
driver for the ultrasound that would run under OS/2.

	OS/2 is a real improvement over the pitty Windows, wich is only
DOS under a colorfull disguise. I don't get it, if there is no sound card
supported for the OS/2 THIS IS THE TIME TO BE THE FIRST! You will be the 
first to support OS/2 and music software that will come out for OS/2 will
all support GUS and it may become a standard...

	A GUS driver for OS/2 and there will be no more Windows on my
hard-disk.

	Do you know what is the difference between Windows and a Virus?

	-There is no difference, both eat you memory, both lock up your
	 system, both crash your hard disk...

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

Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1993 15:58:18 -0400
From: jericho!gord (Gord Wait S-MOS Systems Vancouver Design Center)
Subject: Patch Editing Questions
Message-ID: <9308111958.AA07833@smos.bc.ca>

I loaded up cymcrsh1.pat and successfully changed the sustain flag so now
I have choked cymbals that I wanted. (To get unchoked I just make the midi
note last longer..)

I'll try out your TR808 patches Francois..

A question: I was messing with the patch editor (I went Ahhhhh into a
mike under uss8) and having fun, but I'm not sure I understand whats
happening with the loop start/end points in patch.exe (gravis one). I
set the start and endpoints to an obvious start and end of a complete
ahhhh waveform, got a noise somewhat like I expected.  I then moved the
endpoint to the end of the Next waveform, expecting to get the same
noise but one octave lower. Instead I got the same noise!! Is this a
bug, or is patch.exe being tricky and maintaining the same final output
pitch no matter what I set the start/end loop points to? Another
experiment shows the same end results:  Use the mouse to slowly drag
the endpoint along the sample data while continuously playing back the
sound, and you get a kind of weird FM effect that starts at the
original pitch, warbles down in frequency, but then the low stuff fades
out, and the original pitch comes back as you get to the end of a
second waveform.

I don't understand this behavior.. anyone explain this to me??

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

Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1993 18:55:30 -0300 (ADT)
From: Gravis Ultrasound Lover <markus@Info.UMoncton.ca>
Subject: SBOS loading slowly...
Message-ID: <Pine.3.02.9308111830.A22208-a100000@clement>

[ To the guy in yesterday's digest who said that SBOS took 35 secs to load...]

	Did you check your HD fragmentation rate?  I had the same problem
in the past and PLAYMIDI was taking _a lot_ of time to load the patches
for a MIDI file.  I ran "defrag" from MSDOS6 and it fixes the problem.

							Marc Y. Paulin
	 /-----------------------------------------------------------------\
	 |  Fidonet: 1:255/200   Internet: markus@info.umoncton.ca         |
	 |           <to come>       Talk: markus@clement.info.umoncton.ca |
	 \--------------+------------------------------+-------------------/
					| Gravis Ultrasound forever!!! |
					+------------------------------+

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

Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1993 09:10:36 -0500
From: ken@austin.ibm.com (Ken Goach IBM)
Subject: SBOS takes long to load
Message-ID: <9308111410.AA16967@quarlvis.austin.ibm.com>

David Legg writes :
> When I run the SBOS command (V2.08) there is a very long delay
> before the "S.B.O.S Installed" message occurs.  I'm curious
> to know if anyone else is seeing the same effect.  Should it
> take up to a minute?  With V2.01 the hard disk timed out
> reading drive C: with Abort, Retry or Fail.

I was having this problem once I upgraded to the newer
disks. Turns out it was my PC's configuration. I went into
the setup program (Ctrl-Alt-S) where you set your system's
configuration (video, memory, etc) and fiddled with the
memory settings. I turned shadow ROM bios on and shadow
video bios off and sbos loads in about 4 seconds now.
Before it took up to 2 minutes.


Rene den Hertog <denhertog@coh.fgg.eur.nl>
>Same problem on my pc,
>All versions of sbos, up to 2.10, take 35 seconds to load, except
>version 1.20, which loads in about 4 seconds.
>When loading, the HDU led is almost constantly on.


Hmm. With the HD constantly reading, eh? I think mine was
doing this as well. Perhaps your HD is fragmented, or
maybe you need to do a chkdsk on it.


Ken

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

Date: Thu, 12 Aug 93 09:55:44 EST
From: adrianr@mullian.ee.mu.OZ.AU (adriano ennio raiola)
Subject: The DEATH of SBOS
Message-ID: <9308112355.14485@mullian.ee.mu.OZ.AU>

Err, Im sure there is a nice logical explanation for all this, but WHY
in gods name are people still stuffing around so much with SBOS? Now
that the latest version of megem (13b) is out there should be no more
need for the much maligned SBOS.

Heres why:
 
- The latest version delivers FAR superior sound to SBOS, very comparable
  to the Miles Drivers, and it still isnt working perfectly yet (no pitch
  bend, still some incorrect playback)

- Of all the games Ive tried, ALL work perfectly with megem emulting either
  Roland MT32 or SC or General Midi with NO slowdown (havent tried X-wing yet ;)

- Though it doesnt (YET) support digitised sound, Ive had NO trouble using my
  co-existing SBlaster to get digitised noise with Megem, and megem is supposed
  to support it soon itself. 

On the whole a magnificent product, so much so Ill probably play games like
new Sierra games, flashback, Prince of Persia 2, with megem instead of my
real SBlaster card, because it simply sounds better.

Heres a few tests I ran:

- Ran some AIL/Miles Driver software with Megem13 in Roland/SC mode then with
  AIL. Its VERY comparable, the main problem is the lack of variety on megem
  with the 1 meg subset of patches, instead of caching. Quality is also better
  with AIL (16 bit patches vs. 8 bit), and playback slightly better, but 
  hopefully Jayeson will improve that.

- Ran Sierra's Freddy Pharkas with Megem in SC mode, then in windows under
  Midi Mapper with the 1 meg subset of patches. ALMOST identical! The 
  instruments are all correct now in megem, the only big difference I noticed
  was the volume response of megem wasnt as good. Like in the opening scene,
  the music gets louder once you enter the bar, in windows, in megem its stays
  the same, any thoughts Jayeson? 

As I said, great job, ditch SBOS, keep up the good work Jayeson and make it 
a program that will sell many more GUS'! 

Adrian

P.S. How about patch caching? Is that possible? 

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

Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1993 01:38:24 -0500 (CDT)
From: Jerilyn Daniello <jerilyn@tenet.edu>
Subject: Ultrasnd.ini
Message-ID: <Pine.3.03.9308110121.A1815-a100000@abernathy.tenet.edu>

Just a little interesting tidbit, you can add percussion instruments
in the percussion division of ultrasnd.ini in the ranges of 21-26
and over 88.  I managed to fit all the tr808 sounds above the
rest without deleting any drum sounds from my ultrasnd.ini.

Still, are you sure the 808ho.pat is fixed, Francois?  I had to fix the
frequency scaling to 0.0 and change the sustain to the C option to get
that one to work.  Playmidi didn't like it when I started patch names with
a number, too... so I ended up renaming a lot of those patches. 
Otherwise, they're really cool samples.

Also, no one has mentioned yet how many midi ins and outs the Gravis
midibox has...

Christopher Daniello
jerilyn@tenet.edu

(Hey, I got my Gravis disks today!  Only eight months after sending in the
registration card.  Yipeee...)

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

Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1993 10:22:42 +0930 (CST)
From: Gavin <SCARMAN@hfrd.dsto.gov.au>
Subject: Re: Ultrasound Daily Digest V5 #10
Message-ID: <930812102242.1bf60@hfrd.dsto.gov.au>

Subject: Re: Is SBOS really slow
Rene den Hertog writes....
>Same problem on my pc,
>All versions of sbos, up to 2.10, take 35 seconds to load, except
>version 1.20, which loads in about 4 seconds.

All previous versions I have run (most of them) took less than 2 secs to run. My 
system is a 386-40,Headland chipset,Western Digital IDE 250MB HDD.EMM386 makes 
no difference to me.

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

Date: Wed, 11 Aug 93 22:23:08 EDT
From: pccmoddan@aol.com
Subject: Westwood support for GUS
Message-ID: <9308112223.tn69673@aol.com>

The following is a reply to my latest query to Westwood Associates (Dune,
Dune II, Lands Of Lore, Legend Of Kyrandia, etc) regarding GUS support. The
drivers the message refers to are the GUS AIL 1.0 drivers. Sounds like great
news to me! :)


Subj:  Dan & Gravis
Date:  93-08-10 21:22:31 EDT
From:  Westwood S
Posted on: America Online

Hi Dan,

Thanks again for the drivers.  We are certainly working on providing sound
for Gravis, which is one of 
the best cards to come out in a long while.

*end message*

- Dan Nicholson
________________________________________________
| Dan Nicholson | email: pccmoddan@aol.com     |
|  aka          | uuencoded: moddan@bowker.com |
| Maelcum [KLF] | America Online: PCC ModDan   |
|  and          | VirtualNet: 2 @ 9082         |
| [PCC] ModDan  | Voice Phone: (908)687-3479   |
|_______________|______________________________|
|                                              |
|           Levisionet Technologies            |
|           553 Thoreau Terrace                |
|           Union, NJ 07083   U.S.A.           |
|          (Formerly PCkS Associates)          |
|______________________________________________|

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

End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V5 #11
*************************************
