Ultrasound Daily Digest     Thu, 22 Apr 1993     Volume 3 : Issue  22 

Today's Topics:
					Finale and Cakewalk in Windows
					  Gus & Cakewalk for Windoze
						  GUS Dram Problems
						  joysticks and mice
						  Shareware support
	 Why do my patches sound bad? & 2 noises are better than one
						windows mouse problems

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Date: Wed, 21 Apr 93 11:16:16 EDT
From: "Burns Fisher, VMS Engineering  21-Apr-1993 1116" <fisher@skylab.enet.dec.com>
Subject: Re: Finale and Cakewalk in Windows
Message-ID: <9304211516.AA28057@us2rmc.bb.dec.com>

PHTH1@cc.newcastle.edu.au (Tony) says:
 
>For those of you like me who want a good but affordable combination of music
>software and soundcard, Finale version 2.2 now supports Windows multimedia
>extensions. This, of course, means that it will drive the GUS. This means
>you can now obtain sound from Finale without an MPU401 interface.

Also, check out MusicProse by the same company.  It has a bit less functionality 
for a lot less money.  The neat thing is that with MusicProse, you get (at least 
when I bought it) a coupon worth something like $200 ($250??) toward upgrading 
to Finale. But the neat thing is that the coupon is worth more than you will pay 
for MusicProse at a reasonable mail order place like PC Connection.  This is in 
the US of course; I don't know if it is true elsewhere.  But whatever the case, 
most of you won't need the capability of Finale anyway!  MusicProse is more 
limited in the total number of parts (but still a lot).  I can't even remember 
what else.  Nothing I have run into!

and <0096B563.1FE835E0.1162@ualr.edu (Jacuqe Andre' Bussey) says,

>   Has anyone gotten the GUS to work with CakeWalk For windoze?
>If so please post a detailed description of exactly wht you did and what
>settings you used!

Yep.  I did not have to do anything special except manually load the patches I 
need.  When you do the MIDI setup in Cakewalk you get a chance to select the 
MIDI device you want.  In fact, I believe you can select several MIDI devices 
and then choose which track to send to which device.  Make sure you are using 
Ultrasound Synth, and not Ultrasound MIDI Out.  Also note that you can set up 
Cakewalk so that instead of patch numbers, it will tell you the instrument 
names.  You just set up a map (and GM is supplied).  Sorry, I can't remember 
where all of these are exactly, but that is just gilding the lilly.  The real 
things you need to remember are:

1) Preload the patches...CWW does not do patch caching

2) Make sure you use Ultrasound Synth, not MIDI

3) Make sure all the tracks you want to play are set to use the Ultraound Synth.

Oh, BTW, a real PITA is that you have to load the patches BEFORE you start 
Cakewalk.  I thought that the latest Windows drivers were multi-user, but for 
some reason CW takes over the whole thing anyway.

Burns

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

Date: Wed, 21 Apr 93 10:38:32 BST
From: Chris Boucher <C.C.Boucher@southampton.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Gus & Cakewalk for Windoze
Message-ID: <141.9304210938@mail.soton.ac.uk>

Cakewalk (I used the demo version) doesn't currently support patch
caching, so you need to load the patches directly using the patch
manager. Here's what I did...

	1. Run the patch manager.
	2. Turn OFF midi thru in the patch manager - this stops it from
	   stealing the midi in from Cakewalk.
	3. Run Cakewalk.

You should now be able to switch between the patch manager and Cakewalk
without any problems.

Chris.

-- 
Dr Chris Boucher                            Tel: (+44 703) 592300
Signal Processing and Control Group         Fax: (+44 703) 593033
Institute of Sound and Vibration Research   Email: ccb@soton.ac.uk          
University of Southampton, Southampton S09 5NH, England

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

Date: Wed, 21 Apr 93 9:27:57 CDT
From: Joe Cheng <jcheng@post.its.mcw.edu>
Subject: GUS Dram Problems
Message-ID: <9304211427.AA16227@post.its.mcw.edu>

I installed a set of 256x4 70ns drams into my GUS to icrease my memory up to
1 Meg and everything seemed fine until I ftp'ed a dram checker from archive
that showed that I only have 768k of dram with bank 2 being bad.  Problem
is that this error is very erratic, if I boot up my system from cold, and then
run the dram check, it shows that I have 1024k with all banks being good, but
after I run either SBOS 2.04 or windows and then recheck, it shows the error
first described.  Is it that you need to stick with 80ns chips (which the local
stores are currently out of so I got the 70ns), or replace my first bank with
70ns chips also, bad chips, or is my computer (Gateway 2000 486sx-25) frying
the board?  Any help or comments would be appreciated.

Thanks,

-Joe-

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

Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1993 02:16:02 +0700 (MST)
From: Adam Cowen <cowen@ee.ualberta.ca>
Subject: joysticks and mice
Message-ID: <Pine.3.03.9304210106.A14192-b100000@bode.ee.ualberta.ca>

Problem 1: Joystick.
 When playing some games like lemmings2, I get the wierdest things
happening. If I am using SBOS and a joystick there are problems. It seems
that whenever there is a digitized sound the game will move the cursor up
and to the right as if it had been moved(and it wasn't) Music is cool, but
sounds like squished lemms and all that produce the problem. It has only
happened since I started using the gus's game port. And that ticks me off
since I bought a new com card for just that reason. I also use the
ultrajoy program.

Problem 2: Mouse 
 When playing ultrabots or lemmings or whatever, every so often my mouse
driver will get corrupted and it goes all freaky. Again using sbos2.04.
Well the problem may be SBOS, but it is most possibly my cheap Genius
Mouse (it sucks big time). But just wondering if any other netters had any
problems.

FYI my setup is as follows:
386-40, 4M RAM, 1M GUS (latest rev), gus software 2.05, PVGA 512k, dos 6.0
(no dblspace)

Umm about the 2.05 disks, I wouldn't waste my time d/l them, since I think
that the only new thing is that they come with sbos2.04. I am going to do
a comprehensive check on each file and report any differences, but so far
that is all that has changed. I will do a follow-up on that one.

Also if you are having troubles when using memory managers, you should try
increasing the dma buffers. And I think (pretty sure) that if you are
using QEMM you can disable virtual DMA's by using the NOVDMA switch.

Also I had a lot of problems when letting memmaker (c/w dos6) load stuff
high for me. As soon as I went back to doing it myself all problems seemed
to fade. I was having problems like not being able to manually load things
high, hanging when freeing things that were previously lh'd, erratic
functioning of programs, etc. So save yourself a headache and don't use it.

Enough rambling tho, I will stop wasting space. Thanks to all in advance.

ciao,
Adam Cowen
cowen@ee.ualberta.ca

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

Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1993 08:42:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Adam K. Rixey" <nyarl+@cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: Shareware support
Message-ID: <4fpI5HO00WB842nW0s@andrew.cmu.edu>

> BTW:  Anyone heard about any upcoming support from Apogee, 
> Epic, or Id for the GUS?  Maybe if we bug them enough... ^_^

   Epic is going to support the GUS; I know for a fact that
Renaissance's game Cyberstrike to be released by Epic will have full GUS
support (i.e. - 8 or 16 track music, last I heard).
   Jay Wilbur at Id has said that Doom will support the GUS; it might
not in it's initial release, but they would create a patch for it if
that was the case.  He's hinted that it might use the Ultrasound 3D, but
I'm not sure on that point.
   I've yet to see a message about it from Apogee.

	- AkR
	- ar2w@andrew.cmu.edu
___
Hey, kids, now there's a free shoggoth in every box of Sugar Coated Cthooloops!

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

Date: 21 Apr 1993   02:38:46 PST
From: chrisw <chrisw@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Why do my patches sound bad? & 2 noises are better than one
Message-ID: <9304210939.AA20445@leland.Stanford.EDU>

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

Just dusted off the drum kit and microphones to try and record some better
drum patches on the gus (well, not quite ...)

Anyway, the basic problem I seem to have is that files that sound fine as
.wav files sound pretty awful when I convert them to patches using either
Wav2pat or the Ped program. I'm not sure, but the quality of playback just
seems much lower - kind of noisy and lacking in definition: anyone know why?

By the way, I'm using the inbuilt 8-bit recording, but as I said, the .wav
files sound O.K. - you can tell the difference from the originals, but 
they sure sound better than the drum patches that came with the GUS. (That
awful snare drum is really getting to me).


On to another issue. Anyone considered the possibility of creating patches
with 2 oscillators rather than one? I've been fooling around with playing
two sounds at once from my keyboard (sending note messages out on two 
midi channels) and the results seem quite promising. 

For example, get the somewhat boring 'rhodes piano' patch playing on two 
channels. Pan one of the channels to the left (using controller 10 
mesages) and the other to the right. Then make one channel slightly out of 
tune with the other (using a pitch bend message - I set it up from a non-
spring-loaded controller wheel so I can fiddle with it a bit). The result is
a rich, 'chorussy' electric piano sound with good stereo depth. Try
it out with headphones on! The same trick with bass guitars produces a
sort of oily 'flanged bass' sound. 

Other tricks to try include a similar thing with different noises on the two
channels. Try ensemble strings 1 and synth strings 2 in different stereo 
positions (although better to have them at 1/4 and 3/4 rather than all the way).
Gets a much fuller sound than either one seperately. 

Looking forward a bit, once we have a good patch editor running, why not use
a 2 oscillator system as a type of poor man's filter? Get a fairly bright
patch, filter it down and save it as another patch, then play back the two
with the amplitude decaying much faster on the unfiltered patch. A similar
trick could be used for key velocities: have different velocity curves for
the two noises so that harder key presses get more of the brighter noise and
less of the mellower noise. (Can use the same sort of thing with completely
different noises as well eg. a brass and synth combination that gets brassier
as you hit it harder).

Obviously, the main trade off involved is using two oscillators for every
one note, but this is the fun thing about having 32 oscillators. How do you
intend to use them all up otherwise? (and remember, you PAID for all 32!) 

What would be needed to do this is some sort of driver to intercept messages
sent from a sequencer or whatever to the GUS and echo them out on more than
one channel. (Just wondered whether Midi Mapper can actually do this. But I
think it goes the other way: maps lots of channels into one). Also some
sort of user interface would be needed to set things up easily.

Just thought I'd raise the issue, anyway. I know that Gusorgan and Spltmidi
are programs looking in this direction, but it would be much more useful if
these sorts of ideas were in a driver rather than in an application 
program. (Well, at least one person (me!) would like to use a sequencer at the 
same time).

Anyway, once my non-demo version of Cakewalk for Windows arrives (which was 
MEANT to be today) I'll try to demonstrate a few of these tricks in some
midi files. By the way, has anyone actually written something from scratch
on a GUS yet (using the dreaded inbuilt noises) or should I consider myself 
a pioneer?

Chris.
