Ultrasound Daily Digest     Wed Aug 18 00:45     Volume 5: Issue  17  

Today's Topics:
							  &th Guest
						  3d text corrected
			   Does anybody listen to this from Gravis?
			 easiest, reasonablly cheap solution to sbos
						midimon - the original
					   No sound with GoldPlay!
					Power Chords Pro - 16 melodies
						   SBOS under OS/2?
				  ULTRASOUND DAILY DIGEST V (2 msgs)
			   Ultrasound Daily Digest V5 #16 (3 msgs)
					Wanted To BETA Test NT Drivers
					  Win Mod Pro -- no stereo?

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, 17 Aug 1993 21:50:28 +1000 (EST)
From: Andrew See <asee@st.nepean.uws.edu.au>
Subject: &th Guest
Message-ID: <199308171150.AA18914@arthur.st.nepean.uws.edu.au>

 I am trying to get the 7th Guest to run wiwth miles drivers.
 I have a coexisting SB card in the machine.
 What do I do?

 I am just loading ultramid -c, and I configured T7G to use an
 MT32 for midi, and SB for sound.
  
  It's not working guys...

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

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1993 19:51:16 -0400 (EDT)
From: dionf@ERE.UMontreal.CA (Francois Dion)
Subject: 3d text corrected
Message-ID: <9308172351.AA00608@brise.ERE.UMontreal.CA>

[ This text is a revision (August 17th 1993) of the article i posted:
 Date: Mon, 25 Jan 93 1:03:24 EST
 From: dionf@ERE.UMontreal.CA (Francois Dion)
 Message-Id: <9301250603.AA26790@brise.ERE.UMontreal.CA>
 Subject: Franky in 3D
 To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

 I changed it to reflect the new informations i got. Archer did send me this
 time a nice informational package.
]

Well, i think it's time i put my grain of salt on the 3d mania.

First of all, even if it is a bit long, i suggest to read it all. And if you
dont want to wait for a 3D driver for the GUS, dont forget to read one of my
other post in this digest with the subject: Franky in surround. Also found
under the filename surround.txt.

Now, on with the show:
There are several systems that are in use to get 3D sounds on recordings and
some have been around since the 50s. Now i wont go into the "how it works"
of the more recent ones, but i think this will clear up some confusion. The
first part is a "hands-on" experiment, the second is informations, including
the address and phone of the owner of the technology that is used with the
Gravis Ultrasound.

Let's get back to the early days of stereo. One record company (i cant seem
to remember) was pushing it, while another (again, blank. anyone?) competed.
Interestingly enough, technological development was put on stereo, and not on
the first 3D system which was called "binaural recording" and it simply
consisted of two microphones placed like the ears. You can try it this way:

Go to a hat store and buy an extruded foam mannequin head. You'll then need
two microphones. Condenser will do, but you will need to power them if you
want to use them with the GUS, since it take a dynamic microphone because
it does not supply phantom power like some mixer with XLR plugs. I will post
a circuit later for Radio-shack condenser mike unit (a small element that
cost about 2$) if there is some interest. (this circuit can be found in the
file micro.arj on archive.epas.utoronto.ca. If you dont want to mess with
that, go with a cardiod dynamic element. Note that sensitive enough cardiod
will cost you a lot, so think about that. You cut holes in the ears of the
head, to insert the microphone units (dont forget to make the wires of the
elements go inside the head and out the rear (or wherever). Use glue to fill
the crack around the mic. Also, the more the ears look like real ears, the
better it will work. If you trim the foam, dont forget to use an hairdryer
to soften it (it will be more uniform). That's it. Try recording sounds, and
you'll be surprised. I was! I did the experiment with a polystyrene head
on which i incrusted two PZM microphones.

Now that you understand how 3D recording is nothing like stereo recording,
we'll see what is accesible presently.

First, the gadget we just built in the previous section exist commercially,
and is called "Mikey" and is made by Spherical Sound. It's the only system
commercialised where the microphones are placed in a head.

Another system is made by Virtual Audio and claims to enhance stereo depth,
but is not labeled 3D audio. I dont have much more info on it, but from the
description it looks like the same thing as the "mikey".

Two other systems use less restraining microphones situation and can also be
used on any signal because a DSP simulate a 3D signal from parameters
entered on the machine.  QSound (no hyphen) was developped in Alberta, and
the inventor sold the concept to another company (Archer Communications). It
will not work at all with headphones, or if you are not positionned correctly
while listening to it thru speakers and you are not in the soft spot. As for
spacial representation, it cannot recreate a sound behind the listener, but
can enhance the virtual representation between the listener and the speakers.

And for trivia: Madonna, Sting, Wilson Phillips, Julian Lennon and Paula
Abdul to name a few have used the QSound on their latest recordings.
You cant buy a Qsound system presently but you can rent one and it is now
midi controllable. The Qsound system has been licensed to Creative Labs for
inclusion on their SB16asp cards and has also been licensed to Capcom and
Analog Devices. Strangeley enough, CDROM titles for Sega home entertainment
platform will be released with Qsound, while on this same system you will be
able to get a VR helmet *with headphones* (remember, Qsound doesn't support
that...).

The other variant with a DSP is Roland RSS (Roland Sound Space). It is
better (depending on how it is used) than QSound with headphones, but suffers
the same faith as QSound when you are listening with speakers. Just move a bit
from the soft spot, and suddenly what was in front left is now back left. RSS
was used on Suzanne Cianni _Hotel Luna_ album. RSS cost around 40K$ and is
midi controllable. I have not seen much things done with it yet, so Qsound
and Focal Point seems to be more viable solutions (considering cost!).

Another system on which i have zero information is called Audio Cybernetics.

I also found out that a company called Sixgraph, from Montreal, QC will
release a soundcard for PCs at Comdex in october 93 and from what i was told,
they use their own technology for reproducing 3D audio.

The last technology is called Focal Point 3D Audio. It was developped by Bo
Gehring and first used on the Macintosh computers with a modified
Audiomedia (Digidesign). It cost around 1400$ in this configuration.
Gravis saw that (Focal Point is from Seattle) and it is the system that is
now available on the GUS. At a much better price.

The system produce the sounds with these parameters: direction, elevation
and distance. RSS and Qsound cant accurately represent virtual sound behind
the listener, but FP can, which makes it a better choice for virtual reality.
However, in the midi implementation Gravis will have to develop a SYSEX
command set. We already need it badly, but with 3D, i will shoot myself if i
cant control it thru sysex. A more complete description of focal point ca
be found in the Gravis Ultrasound FAQ. Apparently DOOM will be the first
game to support 3D sound on the Gravis (and probably on PCs).

Focal Point(tm) 3D audio
1402 Pine av., #127
Niagara Falls, NY 14301
Voice/fax: 1-416-963-9188

I have found most other addresses and once i have a bunch more info, i will
post a totally new article, and hopefully i will have tried all the 3D
systems other than Focal point on computers and Qsound and RSS on CDs (plus
of course binaural recording). In particular, i am curious about the
sixgraph card...

Ciao,
Francois Dion
cism@ere.umontreal.ca
dionf@ere.umontreal.ca
dionf@nyongwa.cam.org
Fido: Francois Dion 1:167/228

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

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 93 08:34:33 EDT
From: High-IQ male seeks multiplicative inverse <salzmann@scoman.enet.dec.com>
Subject: Does anybody listen to this from Gravis?
Message-ID: <9308171229.AA09751@easynet.crl.dec.com>

	It seems that there are so many people asking about SBOS and
OS/2....

1) Why doesn't it work?

2) Why can't it be made to work? Since the really well-written DOS apps
   have no trouble running in OS/2, doesn't this point a finger at SBOS?
   Is there any way to get a driver written so we can at least get digital
   audio and let a different driver handle the music?

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

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 93 8:52:53 CDT
From: Michael J Stumpf <mjs7529@tamsun.tamu.edu>
Subject: easiest, reasonablly cheap solution to sbos
Message-ID: <9308171352.AA22231@tamsun.tamu.edu>

Thought you guys should know that I went out and bought a sound blaster 1.5
for $40.  It was the best thing I could have done.  Coexisting with my GUS,
demos work flawlessly and no neeed for sbos the memory hog.  Roland or SCC &
sb sounds AWESOME.  Particularly, xwing.  It sounds on general midi like it
should.  You've already put a good amount into buying a gravis.. I'm just
telling you it is worth your while to save all those headaches and get a
sb from some clown that's upgrading to a sb16 or something equally ridiculous.
They go for $40 fairly reliably.. I just posted a message in one of the
comp.forsale groups, and got 4 notes.

My $0.02.

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

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 93 07:19:07 -0700
From: peter@netcom.com (Peter Davies)
Subject: midimon - the original
Message-ID: <9308171419.AA15982@netcom4.netcom.com>

My enquiry regarding the non-functionality of midimon as provided at the
archive site produced one (1) response so I took the hint from the accompanying
doc file and took a look at the original code as provided with MSoft's SDK 3.1
It doesn't work either - well not as published. If anyone is interested in
getting the SDK version of midimon to work put in the following fixes:

1) file callback.def
	CODE FIXED
	DATA FIXED SINGLE

2) file callback.h and callback.c
	add "__export" to the declarations of PutEvent and inputHandler

My original query still stands?

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

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1993 09:31:29 -0600 (PDT)
From: Abdu Bukres <abdu@agora.rain.com>
Subject: No sound with GoldPlay!
Message-ID: <Pine.3.05.9308170929.A6535-8100000@agora.rain.com>

The demos that use GoldPlay do not produce output with I choose Sound
Blaster from the output menu. However, the speaker does. Anyone knows
what could be the problem?

Abdu Bukres
abdu@agora.rain.com

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

Date: 17 Aug 93 08:20:34 EDT
From: "Eric Bell, Howling Dog Systems" <71333.2166@CompuServe.COM>
Subject: Power Chords Pro - 16 melodies
Message-ID: <930817122033_71333.2166_DHQ33-2@CompuServe.COM>

Date: Mon, 16 Aug 93 12:56:42 +0100
From: zccaj19@ucl.ac.uk (Mr Stefan Magdalinski)
Subject: making better mids with Pchords and Rsession
Message-ID: <9308161156.AA96355@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk>

> A friend and I sat up all night on saturday, getting drunk and
> using PowerChords and Recording Session to make some

>> Howling Dog Systems does not recommend drinking and sequencing.
>> Please rock responsibly. Sequences performed on a closed test track by
>> professionals.

> mids. We recorded bass parts, melodies, chord rhythms, etc,
> etc and then found we wanted to put more than one melody line
> on top of each other.

>> The new Pro version of Power Chords allows up to 16 melodies at a time. 

> Save. Use Recording Session for the mixing.

>> That's why we have MIDI file export. But eventually mixing will be added to
>> Pro - it'll be one-stop sequence shopping.

>> Glad you are having a good time with the program. How bout sending some 
>> .POW files for our forum on CIS, and our song disk?

>> Eric Bell, Howling Dog Systems

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

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 93 8:17:26 CDT
From: wiegand@void.rtsg.mot.com (Robert Wiegand)
Subject: Re: SBOS under OS/2?
Message-ID: <9308171317@midnight1>

> Hi all...
> 
>   Has anyone ANY idea how I could get SBOS to work under OS/2? I know it's a
> bit optimistic, but I would like to run the odd game or 3 with sound.
> 

Sorry but SBOS just doesn't work under OS/2.

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

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 93 19:55:24 
From: jason.lin@support.com
Subject: ULTRASOUND DAILY DIGEST V
Message-ID: <9308171955.A8417wk@support.com>

Richard Ryckoff posted yesterday that he thinks there're still a few
out-of-tune patches included in the version 2.06.  However, I don't
think that is true.  First of all, I have listened to every single
patch and they all sounded correct.  Secondly, both Mega-EM and SBOS
produce out-of-tune music in a few games such as Fire Hawk(Thexder II).
Therefore, I assume out of tune music is simply caused by the glitch in
Mega-EM.  Hopefully the next version(non-beta) will correct this
problem.

---
 Jason Lin         | Internet: jason.lin@support.com    | Fidonet: 1:102/837
 <aKa>             |           jlin@batpad.org          |
 Captain Goodnight |           izzyvu9@mvs.oac.ucla.edu |

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

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 93 19:55:25 
From: jason.lin@support.com
Subject: ULTRASOUND DAILY DIGEST V
Message-ID: <9308171955.A8418wk@support.com>

AS>Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1993 16:54:03 +1000 (EST)
  >From: Andrew See <asee@st.nepean.uws.edu.au>
  >Subject: MSC Stereo & GUS
  >Message-ID: <199308160654.AA22319@arthur.st.nepean.uws.edu.au>

  >I have been using the MCS Stereo program in Windows to play
  >Wav's, Mids, and CD Audio. Everything works fine, except
  >that the MCS Mixer program will not run.
  >Does anyone know if there is some incompatibility with the
  >GUS win31 driver?

I have had the same problem before and got rid of it by reinstall
Windows 3.1 and Ultrasound software.. :)

---
 Jason Lin         | Internet: jason.lin@support.com    | Fidonet: 1:102/837
 <aKa>             |           jlin@batpad.org          |
 Captain Goodnight |           izzyvu9@mvs.oac.ucla.edu |

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

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 93 9:25:17 BST
From: James Andrews <james@vortex1.exeter.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Ultrasound Daily Digest V5 #16
Message-ID: <1827.9308170825@euclid.vortex1.exeter.ac.uk>

>        Here's somethig that's really been irking me for a long time:
>I think that one of the coolest things about the GUS patches is that
>one can set the AM and FM rate, level, and delay in the patches. But
>it seems silly not to have a utility to change this info without
>having to edit the patch. After all, it's only a few bytes, right? Same with
>the root note, and all the other parameters.

I think you're getting a little excited and confused here.  Are we talking
here about midi patches or gus patches?
Get Linux I think the controllers under its gus midi package are being picked
off one by one- Im waiting for portamento to get done by someone else before
I install linux.
Hmm.  There isnt an vibrato/tremelo on my out of data midi controller list.

>        Once again, my not being a decent programmer ruins my day.

Ah yes but if you could program then you wouldnt have enough time to do
all the neat stuff.


-- 
James Andrews, Computer Development Officer, Exeter University Maths Dept

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

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1993 22:03:37 +1000 (EST)
From: Michael Daniel <mdani@wilbur.mbark.swin.oz.au>
Subject: Re: Ultrasound Daily Digest V5 #16
Message-ID: <Pine.3.07.9308172236.A6224-a100000@wilbur.mbark.swin.oz.au>

I got my disks!!!  All the way down here in Australia,  unfortunately I
have not been able to use my GUS for about 3 weeks since my hard disk had
a rather severe head crash :-(  (I pulled it apart and one of the heads
fell into my lap....)  So as soon as I get my new HD I'll be able to use
the new software properly.  I had a quick look at Powerchords and
Recording Session on my notebook  (no sound obviously) and Recording
session looks really good, especially since I don't have a MIDI keyboard
and I can enter tunes myself now, and get rid of that stupid ringing at
the start of AD.MID (Another Day in paradise/Phil Collins).

		Thanks Gravis!!   See ya later

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------
|Michael Daniel| mdani@wilbur.mbark.swin.oz.au |Maths and Computer Science|
|  Swinburne University,  Eastern Campus,  Lilydale, Victoria, Australia. |
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1993 16:29:27 -0300 (ADT)
From: Gravis Ultrasound Lover <markus@Info.UMoncton.ca>
Subject: Re: Ultrasound Daily Digest V5 #16
Message-ID: <Pine.3.02.9308171626.B29936-b100000@clement>

> I just bought a microphone at Radio Shack.  I made sure
> it was the stereo one ( it's actualy got two mic heads
> on it).  I used the sound recorder in WINDOWS to record
> my daughter, to find out only the left side of the mic
> was working.  At first I thought I had a defective mic
> and then a deffective GUS.  I tried using the DOS based
> 'playfile' that came with 2.06 disks, and it worked fine.
> 

	I almost have the same problem here.  I'm driving the output of my
CD-ROM into the stereo line-in of my GUS.  The music comes out of the
Gravis fine, but it's in mono.  Am I doing something wrong? 

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

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

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 93 07:54:17 -0400
From: jap@mbunix.mitre.org (Joseph A. Paulin)
Subject: Wanted To BETA Test NT Drivers
Message-ID: <9308171154.AA18914@mbunix.mitre.org>

Months back, I saw a message from John Smith that said some people had notified Gravis that they would be working on NT drivers for the Ultrasound.  I am interested in being a beta tester for anyone working on an NT driver
set for the Ultrasound.  I made a serious mistake in not ordering the 
beta of the Device Driver Kit from Microsoft last year.  So all I can do
is offer to beta test.  The Ultrasound and my page scanner are the only
things that don't have NT drivers right out of the package and the 
scanner manufacturer is "working on the drivers" right now.  

By the way, I don't need any flames about OS 2 needing drivers first.  It 
seems that there has been plenty of time and energy already devoted there.
I have waited patiently until NT shipped.  Now that I have my official 
release copy, I am more than ready for NT to handle my CD audio, .mod
and .mid playing needs.

J. A. Paulin         | Genetics explains why you look like your father,
MITRE Corp.          | and if you don't, why you should.
jap@mbunix.mitre.org |                                   ANON

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

Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1993 00:01:26 -0600 (CDT)
From: ddebry@grue.dsd.ES.COM (Dave DeBry)
Subject: Win Mod Pro -- no stereo?
Message-ID: <9308180601.AA29359@grue>

	Ok, I'll bite.  What am I doing wrong that makes WinMod Pro
not work in stereo mode with a GUS?  When I turn Stereo on, I get
absolutely no sound from the UltraSound.  Any hints?

-- 
Dave  ddebry@ debry@   \ "How can I possibly understand you?  I have a
DeBry dsd.    peruvian. | better chance of knowing which phone company
	  es.     cs.utah.  | has lower rates."
	  com     edu      /

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

End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V5 #17
*************************************
