Ultrasound Daily Digest     Wed Aug 11 00:07     Volume 5: Issue  10  

Today's Topics:
							 Bert's Conga
						  GUS and Syndicate
						GUS prices (Best Buy)
					Help please with MIDI drivers
			How to handle these nice patches coming out?!?
						 Is SBOS really slow
					MIDI Mapper and Patch loading
						  new sound card (s)
			  OS/2 Drivers - What's the Point? (2 msgs)
						   OS/2 Drivers...
						   SBOS and Windows
					  ULTRASOUND DAILY DIGEST V
						  Updated Ultrasound
				  various answers to various people

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: Tue, 10 Aug 93 06:00:13 PDT
From: deraud@power.amasd.anatcp.rockwell.com (Robert Lee DeRaud)
Subject: Bert's Conga
Message-ID: <9308101300.AA21646@power.amasd.anatcp.rockwell.com>

Just uploaded to EPAS (.../submit, where else?) a GUS version of the
conga-2.mid file from Roberto Sierra's EXCELLENT (but not GUS-ready)
collection. From conga.txt:
As promised, this is the first of the "Bert's Best" MIDI files redone 
for GUS...more to follow.  For what it's worth, it took about 3 hours to 
get this to where I liked it - Recording Session is NOT particularly 
well-suited to this kind of global twiddling. Anybody want to give me a 
copy of the latest WinCake? :-)

************************************************************************
Lee DeRaud                             Will program Windows for food.
Rockwell Int. AESD                    (Hey, I'm easy but I'm not cheap!)
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
	  My own opinions only, not those of Rockwell International.
   (Yeah, right: like anyone around here cares what *I* say...NOT!)
************************************************************************

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

Date: Wed, 11 Aug 93 09:02:15 EST
From: David Mitchell <davidm@hparc1.aus.hp.com>
Subject: GUS and Syndicate
Message-ID: <9308102303.AA15242@hp.com>

G'day all,

I'm having troubles getting my GUS and Syndicate working together.  First I
tried doing it WITHOUT the GUS-SYND patch...

Now I've got the patch happening, I get very strange sounds for a short time.
At the start of Synd I get some pretty strained sounding "music", probably
SBOS trying it's heart out ... I'll believe it if somebody tells me that is
normal.

Once the game proper begins, I get sounds like, umm, somebody tapping a finger
on a desk is probably the best approximation.  I haven't yet heard any music
in the game ONCE I START PLAYING (as opposed to during the intro) - just these
strange tapping noises.

Is this normal?  I've never had trouble with the GUS and my Vectra that wasn't
due to MY mistakes, so I honestly believe I've done something wrong - but
what?  BTW, GUS is at default settings, I'm running
  SBOS -v24 (to keep the noise down)
  GUS-SYND 
in that order, I'm using HIMEM and EMM386 (suppose I could try disabling
EMM386...), but I haven't had problems with this setup in the past.

Any ideas?

Dave Mitchell

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

Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1993 09:56:50 -0500
From: ken@austin.ibm.com (Ken Goach IBM)
Subject: Re: GUS prices (Best Buy)
Message-ID: <9308101456.AA20382@quarlvis.austin.ibm.com>

>GUS listed in the Best Buy flyer.  It is $126US.  So if you have bee
>holding off because of price you might want to run on down and pick one up.


Yup - I saw this too. And this at a store that said, "Why would we even
carry the GUS?" a year ago. Those bozos know nothing about PC's. Now
they even have a high-end system set up with a GUS card demo-ing MODs,
animation, MID files, etc. *Lots* of people stop and gawk! ;-)

On a related note, not long ago Best Buy had another waveform card
(was it the Maestro? something) listed in there at a similarly
low price - and in big letters "INVENTORY CLOSEOUT!" above it.
Seems like this other card was more of a liability so they aren't
carrying it any more. The GUS, thank heaven, had no such notice
above it. :-)

Ken

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

Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1993 09:06:14 +0100 (BST)
From: Lyn Holman <E.M.Holman@reading.ac.uk>
Subject: Help please with MIDI drivers
Message-ID: <Pine.3.07.9308100912.A3868-a100000@suma1>

Can someone please tell me if the GUS windows drivers are correctly
installed.  When I go into Drivers in Control panel I have the following
drivers listed:
	Ultra Wave and Midi Synth Driver
	Ultrasound Audio Driver
	Ultrasound Midi Port Driver

However if I click on the Ultra Wave & Midi Synth driver I get a message
telling me "Cannot load the Drivers - the driver file may be missing etc."

The other 2 drivers can be edited.

The reason I ask all this is because using an earlier version I used to be
able to both play to and record from my keyboard into Winjammer or the
Cakewalk demo but now I can only play to but not record from the keyboard.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Lyn Holman              phone: +44-(0)734-318438
Computer Services Centre        fax:   +44-(0)734-753094
University of Reading, Whiteknights
Reading RG6 2AF

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

Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1993 10:27:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Mr. Cheese Grater Head" <ericm@titan.ucs.umass.edu>
Subject: How to handle these nice patches coming out?!?
Message-ID: <9308101427.AA17369@titan.ucs.umass.edu>

	[this is my first post to the digest, hope it comes out right]

	It's great to see Francois Dion doing all this great stuff. This
is the stuff I bought my GUS for. BUT...

	I'm really getting concerned about what to do with my now shredded
ultrasnd.ini file. GENERAL MIDI JUST DOESN'T CUT IT, if you're creative
and want to make music other than corporate pop musak, or wimpijazz crud.
We've all got to figure out a way to easily organize patch banks. I'm
no programmer, but I know a bunch of ideas I've been having.

	idea #1) have files INST0.PAT .. INST127.PAT, and just copy any 
custom patches onto these files via batch file. kind of cumbersome/ space
hog.

	idea #2) get a programmer to write a file snipper/editor that will 
insert custom blocks into the ultrasnd.ini file on demand. That way, it could
insert your custom patch names, saved in a little file, for each song. 
This requires restarting Windoze between changes, though. Yuck.


	idea #3) Depend on Gravis to deliver a better interface with the
patch files. Unfortunately they do not seem to realize the awesome
possibilities for their card, or they would already have custom patch sets
for sale in GUS format. (I wish!)
	I think this is a bad idea, because Gravis software is like B&M
baked beans, tastes good when they're done... but SLOOOOW COOKIN'!

				Ericm - finally becoming interactive

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

Date: 10 Aug 93 10:45:09 MET-1METDST
From: Rene den Hertog <denhertog@coh.fgg.eur.nl>
Subject: Re: Is SBOS really slow
Message-ID: <MAILQUEUE-101.930810104509.320@hb1.fgg.eur.nl>

Hello all,

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.

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. When loaded,
there were no problems with nearly all demo's I've found, but
while playing Space Quest IV or Wing Commander II the game
crashes after 'a while'. Mostly during screen refreshes or
'scene changes'.
In the FAQ is a short notice on this problem, but without a clear
solution.
My configuration :
No-name 80386/33 DX motherboard 128 K cache, AMI BIOS xx-xx-'91,
SIS chipset including an UMC 82C206L, 8 Mb RAM, Quantum 105 Mb
IDE HDU, no-name multi-I/O HDU/FDU ide controller,
512 Kb Prisma SVGA, GUS 256 Kb standard settings, DOS 5.00.

First, I suspected the 82C206 chip, but I've no problems playing
digital sounds with a 16 bit DMA channel. Changing the I/O's,
IRQ's, base addresses etc made no change. Re-installing the
software dito, booting with several configurations/from floppy
also no solution. Consequently and time-consuming changing of
the BIOS settings didn't do the trick either.

Given time and opportunity I'm going to swap the multi I/O card
with a separate HDU/FDU controller and I/O-card. This combi-card
contains 2 big chips, which performs most of the functions. It
isn't possible to disable some of the functions with jumpers or
software. Hopes this helpes.

See you, happy gussing, I am.
Rene den Hertog
denhertog@coh.fgg.eur.nl

					  Erasmus University Rotterdam
Internet : denhertog@coh.fgg.eur.nl          Erasmus Reken Centrum
Name : Rene den Hertog                                 PO Box 1738
Tel. : (31)-10 4087416                           3000 DR Rotterdam
Fax. : (31)-10 4362719                             The Netherlands

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

Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1993 11:17:08 +0000
From: Clarke Brunt <CLARKE@lsl.co.uk>
Subject: Re: MIDI Mapper and Patch loading
Message-ID: <00970CF8.5A5748E1.19199@lsl.co.uk>

>Does anyone know what MIDI Mapper is?  What I mean is, is it
>written as a driver, a normal application, or is it something
>with intimate knowledge of undocumented interfaces, i.e. part of
>the Windows kernel?  The reason I ask is that I think a very
>good thing to have would be a version of the MIDI mapper or a
>similar thing which WOULD do patch loading for patches that pass
>through it.

I have little or no knowledge of the internals of Windows, but MIDI
mapper behaves as a driver as far as application programs are
concerned. It provides a MIDI output device, with device number -1
(the real devices e.g. Ultrasound MIDI Synth and Ultrasound MIDI Output
Port are numbered from 0 upwards).

For someone with knowledge of driver writing, I imagine that it
would be possible to write their own MIDI Mapper. It would presumably
appear as a positive numbered device (rather than replacing the -1).
I don't suppose there is difficulty in one driver calling another (?),
because one wouldn't particularly want to re-write the code which
actually commands the GUS.

Anything trying to cache patches incrementally would have to have
an algorithm for throwing out patches no longer required, perhaps
the least recently used. At the Windows API level, there is no
way of adding a patch to the currently loaded set - you always
have to specify the whole set which you now want - whether this
results in the whole lot being loaded again, or just the extra
ones, I don't know.

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

Date: Tue, 10 Aug 93 14:04:35 GMT
From: thomasvk@blackhl.hacktic.nl (Thomas van Kuipers)
Subject: new sound card (s)
Message-ID: <ci1H9B1w165w@blackhl.hacktic.nl>

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
		  

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

Date: 10 Aug 93  8:41 -0700
From: Thomas Wong <twong@civil.ubc.ca>
Subject: Re: OS/2 Drivers - What's the point?
Message-ID: <4097*twong@civil.ubc.ca>

I want OS/2 drivers so that we can make use of OS/2's sound capabilities
that we already have in Windows. Everything from being able to hear
event sounds, OS/2 startup and shutdown, dragging of windows, playing
audio and video clips (came with OS/2's MMPM/2, the players that is),
there are MOD and other sound players already available so we can have
music playing in the background (check the OS/2 ftp sites)....
lots of multimedia programs available for OS/2 already. Check out the
ftp sites.... Oh, and of course it can run all of the Windows multimedia
apps too so.... need a sound driver! :)


Thomas.

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

Date: Tue, 10 Aug 93 12:15:54 CDT
From: wiegand@sand.rtsg.mot.com (Robert Wiegand)
Subject: Re: OS/2 Drivers - What's the Point?
Message-ID: <9308101715@aloe11>

>         Don't get me wrong for the subject header - it's just that I don't
> understand why there is so much demand for the os/2 drivers.  I know of no
> software (sequencing, editing, scripting, etc.) that has been written for
> os/2, so why would the GUS be useful on that platform?  (Unless, of course,
> I'm COMPLETELY wrong about existing software)

It isn't just OS/2 multimedia support that's needed for OS/2. An OS/2
version of SBOS is needed to use Soundblaster DOS programs under OS/2.
On OS/2 usable version of the Windows Multimedia driver is also needed.

I'm not sure if any OS/2 specific music composition programs exist,
but I do know there are music players available.

Bob Wiegand

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

Date: Tue, 10 Aug 93 18:16 GMT
From: EXT0012@VAX2.QUEENS-BELFAST.AC.UK
Subject: Re: OS/2 Drivers...
Message-ID: <9308101717.AA08931@orca.es.com>

What's that I hear?
Someone who doesn't want OS/2 drivers???!!!!

Please don't start that - if OS/2 did support such a powerful piece of
hardware, then people might start writing stuff for it.

It really is a very powerful platform, so why not use it to the full? It does
have multimedia extensions after all! ("Just like Windows...")

I'll just add my voice to the chorus...

		  COME ON GRAVIS, YOU CAN DO IT!!! WE REALLY DO WANT OS/2 DRIVERS!

-------------
Jonathan Clark.
"Yes, but Deep Space Nine is far better!"

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

Date: Tue, 10 Aug 93 07:50:40 -0700
From: osaki@viper.arc.nasa.gov (Robert Osaki)
Subject: SBOS and Windows
Message-ID: <9308101450.AA05591@viper.arc.nasa.gov>

This subject has been covered many times, and every time it is there are
two consistent themes:
  1) SBOS does not work with Windows
  2) Why would you want to load SBOS before Windows?

Well I must be the exception to the rule, because unless I'm missing something,
I need to load SBOS before Windows, and it works for me ;-).

I have a golf game for Windows from EA (that I bought last year to qualify
for the $89 price on the GUS).  The game only provides digitized sound effects
if you have a SoundBlaster.  So to get the sounds of balls being struck, 
birds singing, and crowd noises, I have to load SBOS before I run Windows.

If I'm missing something, please let me know, because SBOS works in Windows
for me (at least for this one game).

P.S. I love my GUS! ... well, I like it alot, anyway...

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

Date: Tue, 10 Aug 93 10:46:39 
From: john.smith@gravis.com
Subject: ULTRASOUND DAILY DIGEST V
Message-ID: <9308101046.A9411wk@gravis.com>

>GUS Programming
>===============
   [snip, snip]
>They would like to see more example source code for various UltraSound
>sound engines. We currently only have two, GUS MOD V2.11 source code and
>GUS Play. Sometimes all it takes to fix a programming problem is to
>see how someone else approached the problem. I'll be trying to hunt down
>more programming examples from other sources and post them.

Where were these? I think I misplaced/never saw them...

You can find them on our BBS. Could someone please put them on EPAS? The
files are GUSMPSRC.ZIP (ASM source for MOD Player), GTEK19.TXT
(coding information on windows patch cacheing), GUSUNIT.ZIP (Pascal
TPU), GMSRC211.ZIP (GUSMOD V2.11 Source Code). Also could someone send
me the ULTRADOX V1 and V2? I'd like to post them here. Thanx.

John

---
 ~ QMPro 1.50 05-8925 ~ What we have here is a failure to communicate...

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

Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1993 07:39:55 -0600
From: craigman@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Craig Anderson)
Subject: Updated Ultrasound
Message-ID: <9308101240.AA26407@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>

		What is the expected release date of the new gus version and what
is/are the extended features?  Just the 1M on-board ram? Other features?  I
just got the green light to get the little bugger, and here I am already
worried about the new version...Any word on Date or pricing would be
appredciated.

			 ######################## 
			 ##     Craig           
			 ##   A Man of Mission  
			 ##       Anderson        
			 ########################

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

Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1993 23:08:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: dionf@ERE.UMontreal.CA (Francois Dion)
Subject: various answers to various people
Message-ID: <9308110308.AA01456@brise.ERE.UMontreal.CA>

> From: Yasuhiko Inoue <yasu-i@sm.sony.co.jp>
> Subject: about arj file
> 
> Iget some archive file from ftp site, but there is many "*.ARJ" file.
> Could some-one tell me, how to melt these file or play directly.

arj is on wuarchive and most other dos ftp sites. It is the same thing as zip
but compress a little more. well, until pkzip 2.04g which seems to be about
the equivalent, so from now on i will use 2.04g. To add to this, i was forwar-
ded the info that infozip now unzip 2.04g (for unix, dos, amiga, mac etc...),
so it makes better sense to use zip...

> From: ALAN ROBB <"GVHS::AROBB"@LOKI.GVHS.GOV.BC.CA>
> Subject: beginner
> 
> if you are not using Windows, what is the max.
> amount of time you can record using the gravis supplied softward. It seems to
> be a matter of seconds rather than minutes.

With playfile you can record for as long as you have space on the hard disk.

> Secondly, is there a basic keyboard which, by using the midi connector, would
> allow some recording, if necessary using windows.

Well, the cheapest 4 octave, velocity sensitive, with pitch and mod wheel that
has *NORMAL SIZED* keys is the Roland PC-200. It is a reliable beginner
keyboard. The small kawai and casio sold at Compucentres and Sears (or wherever)
have smaller keys than normal (the spacing is not the same as a piano) but
they may (depending on the model) be cheaper. Most dont have MOD wheel, but
can double as a synth, while the PC-200 is only a MIDI controller keyboard.
(The older PC-100 is not velocity sensitive and has no mod wheel or pitch
wheel, nor any way to issue a program change). If you prefer saxophone, you
can get a casio MIDI sax for about 80$, a lot less than any keyboard...

> From: Jayeson Lee-Steere <leesteer@tartarus.uwa.edu.au>
> Subject: Mega-Em 1.00B013 on EPAS

I finally found the problem why megaem would instantly reboot my computer:
it is because of stacker 2.x... if i boot without it (after having transferred
all the patches from the stacked drive to the unstacked), it seems to work.
Well, i haven't tried it a lot, but it's the problemo. BTW, it runs the same
with my bus at 8 or 16 MHz.

> From: James Andrews <james@vortex1.exeter.ac.uk>
> Subject: midi system exclusive common sample dump format wanted
> 
> Tried asking about this in comp.music, got no response, so thought I'd
> try on here:
> 
> I would like to see the midi sample dump message format, so I can write some
> thing that can get samples from samplers and put them on a pc.

A sysex dump should be approx the same in that:

it should start by F0h, the Midi ID (02h in the case of the GUS. device
dependant), then it's a byte or two to indicate it is a pcm dump, then the
wave size, then the data itself, then F7h for EOX. The thing i'm not sure is
after the MIDI id and before the wave size, what is there exactly... I dont
have the EPS 16+ anymore, and never had the books, so i cant check. However,
a few EPS owners and Roland samplers owners are on this list and should be
able to give their sampler specific info. (I am sure other samplers owners are
on the list too).

> Also are there any sites that hold *files* of samples in this midi sample dump
> format?

Never seen one. However, a few months back i was in conversation with a few
netters about this, and someone wanted to set up a site and exchange samples
with an universal converter... Dont know what happened with that...

> From: deraud@power.amasd.anatcp.rockwell.com (Robert Lee DeRaud)
> Subject: Miscellaneous rantings
> 
> It's even worse than that: there are multiple samples along the velocity
> (amplitude) axis as well. Real pianos change timbre significantly as the
> keys are hit harder: just changing the volume doesn't cut it.

It should be feasible too on the GUS... maybe we should write a list of what
we want to see in the windows driver, or maybe add a driver on top for
"customizing"... I presently do it using 2 patch, one for soft, one for hard.
An example is the steel drum (under beta by a few people) that should come out
in a few days...

> >From: Brennan Stephens <stephens@cs.unc.edu>
> >Subject: Oh ye gurus hear my plea...
> 
> >patches sound pretty good so I don't really need anything fancy.  Does
> >anyone know of a basic (meaning inexpensive) keyboard with a midi
> >interface that doesn't come with a lot of samples and mixing tools that I
> >don't need?  Basically, just a keyboard?
> 
> What you're talking about is a MIDI keyboard controller. Unfortunately,
> all the ones I've seen are intended for pro usage and are NOT cheap.

The Roland PC-200 is a good piece of equipment that should last for as long as
the computer it will run on... About 250$ CDN. Surely less than 200$ in the US.
It is velocity sensitive, mod and pitch wheel too.

> (I asked this question (in a somewhat roundabout way) in the SDK digest and
>  got totally ignored, so I'll try again here...)  Do any of the GUS gurus or
> patch experts know how to convert sample files from pro samplers (EMU, Roland,
> whatever) to GUS format?  I know there are some limitations/incompatabilities

Well, it is a case by case thing... unless you go with the raw waveform in a
sysex dump... In the case of the EPS, all the tools to extract the waveforms
from the disk images are on ftp.reed.edu along with the images. For the
Yamaha TX16W, Sox supports it, so simply transfer to .aif or .wav or .snd.
The Roland are in a strange format, so sysex dump is preferable. If you know
of other synth libraries on Internet, i'll check and see what can be done.

[oops... lost the header of Chris...]
> And a quick note for Francois while I'm here: I'm not really in a 
> position to do much checking out of patches at the moment since my modem
> is misbehaving and at 2400 baud it takes all day to download half a meg.
> Still, I will get around to checking out those 808 drum patches sometime
> and I'm sure they'll be much appreciated!

I hope! :)

> From: jericho!gord (Gord Wait S-MOS Systems Vancouver Design Center)
> Subject: Note offs..
> 
>I'll try loading up the crash cymbal in the patch editor and see what I can do. I need
>the choked cymbal effect for my next powerchords project...

Check the TR808 (and TR727 and 909 when they come out), as they all have the
possibility of cutting before the end with note off.

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-...

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

End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V5 #10
*************************************
