Ultrasound Daily Digest     Sat, 20 Feb 93       Volume 2 : Issue  48 

Today's Topics:
							 Game support
		  GUS 3D release date requested and other questions
						GUS support for games!
							   Midisoft
								Stuff
			   Ultrasound Daily Digest V2 #47 (3 msgs)

	Information about the UltraSound Daily Digest (such as
mail addresses, request servers, ftp sites, etc., etc.) can be found
at the end of the Digest.

	*** HEY!!! *** 

	Before you ask a question, *** READ THE FAQ ***.  It's
available on the request server and the ftp sites, or check the
newsgroup archives.

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Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1993 07:46:11 -0500 (EST)
From: "Adam K. Rixey" <nyarl+@cmu.edu>
Message-Id: <EfVBOHO00WB7BPAkx=@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Game support
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

   In regards to companies supporting the GUS in their games - I think
it is still a bit too early to tell for many of the big companies. 
However, shareware-wise, I know the GUS is starting to gain support
(Epic MegaGames and Renaissance [distributed by EM] are working on
making GUS games, for instance).  A lot of the big software companies [I
know Sierra and Origin do] watch the shareware market to see what's
going on, and if they see the GUS gaining support there, they'll
probably take notice.  I'm also working on something and I'd like to add
sound support, but since I don't have enough free time during the
semester to work on programming it, don't look for anything from me soon.

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

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Date: 19 Feb 93 10:17:08 EST
From: "Joseph R. Granto"  <GLOCK@chip.cba.ufl.edu>
Message-Id: <MAILQUEUE-101.930219101708.448@chip.cba.ufl.edu>
Subject: GUS 3D release date requested and other questions
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

	About a month or so ago the GUS 3D was announced.  I was about to
buy a standard GUS, but decided to wait for the 3D.  How much longer
will I have to wait?  Has GUS given an official release date?  I had
heard "sometime in February/March."

	One of the things I want to do with my GUS is to hook up a
keyboard.  I have heard that CakeWalk is a good program.  Can anyone
recommend a decent, _not_ outrageously expensive keyboard?  I have
been told that the GUS has a built in synthesizer, so I do not
necessarily need a synthesizer.  What I am looking for is a keyboard
that I can do some nice MIDI stuff with but won't cost me over
$300...







----------------------------------------------------------------------
Joe Granto                                      GLOCK@chip.cba.ufl.edu

"When the going gets tough, the tough get a GLOCK!"
	--Guns & Ammo
"Don't clock'em, GLOCK'em!"
	--Miami Dade police officer
----------------------------------------------------------------------

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Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1993 09:35:50 -0600
From: ken@austin.ibm.com (Ken Goach)
Message-Id: <9302191535.AA24273@daedalus.austin.ibm.com>
Subject: GUS support for games!
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

Darran Edmundson (dedmunds@sfu.ca) wrote:

>Let's get out there and lobby!!!!!!  Let's start a list of email 
>addresses for developers and game production companies, and flood
>them with email!!!!!


>I just heard from Microprose.  They have been working on an
>upgrade to World Circuit that will provide modem capabilities
>and fix some existing joystick problems.  They have NO plans
>of supporting the GUS.

>Are we starting to sweat yet?


I agree - time to lobby. We need a list so we can harass
people! Does anyone have any idea of the number of GUS
cards sold? That might be a good thing to point out -
"XXX people have bought GUS cards, and they want support
for these cards. That's a sizable market, and since they
will be more willing to buy a game that has direct GUS support
instead of using the SB emulator, you're pratcically guaranteed
a high percentage of sales to these folks."

We can always threaten a boycott!

Ken

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Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 16:27:09 -0500
From: cs012043@cs.brown.edu (Brendan Miller)
Message-Id: <9302192127.AA28027@cslab0a.cs.brown.edu>
Subject: Midisoft
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

I am looking for good composition and sequencing software that will ru n on    
my Ultrasound without jurry-rigging. I have heard something about a Midisoft
offer, but I don't have the details. Can someone help me out?

Also, there seems to be a problem with my configuration and Wav2Pat. I converted
a wav to a pat and then tried to use it in place of another pat in a MID file
I have and I got a #6 patch loading error. Does anyone know what the problem is?

And finally, if I want to change the patches that are available to be in Windows
how is that done? Thanks.

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Date: 19 Feb 1993 02:43:30 -0500 (EST)
From: STU_JABIRCHE@VAX1.ACS.JMU.EDU
Message-Id: <01GUW1V01XQQ91X2MB@VAX1.ACS.JMU.EDU>
Subject: Stuff
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

I keep forgetting to send in my registration for the Gus. From the sound of it,
it doesn;t much matter, does it?

I some general questions: Is there a reason that 90% of the Mods I get are
techno and 90% of the 669s I have gotten are non-techno? I found that very
strange. Also, is there a plce (besides epas) that I can get some more 669s?
I really like 'em.

Also, I have yet to get Wolfenstein 3-d to work with digital sounds. All flags
and a clean system were tried. The voices just repeat. Same with every sierra
game. Annoying, but I bought my GUS for composition, so it's not that bad.
Of course, I have yet to find a decent composer, but that's not the fault of
Gravis.

-=Marc=-

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Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1993 06:44:44 -0500
From: "Anthony Green" <roboco!green>
Message-Id: <2b8481de.roboco@roboco.UUCP>
Subject: Ultrasound Daily Digest V2 #47
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

> Is your port from the latest beta? in 32 bit?
Yes. 

> > Csound generates a single wavetable suitable for playing on 
> > your GUS with playfile.
> 
> But most importantly you can use that for patches. 

I've been trying to go the other way. i.e. create AIFF files from the
patches. Is there a more complete reference than patinfo.bas? 

Is anybody reading this using Csound? I had no idea there was another port.
-- 
Anthony T. Green                343D St. Clair Ave W, Toronto, Ontario M5P 1N3

Home   (416) 968-0817           Internet: green@roboco.uucp
Office (416) 340-0887           UUCP    : ...!uunet!utai!roboco!green

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Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 09:56:46 EST
From: sbm@pt.com (Steve McGowan)
Message-Id: <9302191456.AA09103@pt.com>
Subject: Ultrasound Daily Digest V2 #47
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

Whoaaaa!

>d91-sme@nada.kth.se writes:

>I have been thinking a lot about the 3D sound driver Gravis is about to
>release. I have been working on a theory of how the driver actually manages
>to produce such a sound. So, do you think the following sounds reasonable?

I can't believe the confusion that I have seen on the net about 3D sound.

Gravis's 3D sound is binaural sound (definition = relating to, or involving
both ears), which has been around as long as I can remember. 20 years ago
you could buy these goofy headphones that also had microphones built into
each side. They were molded to give a (very) rough approximation of the
the cartilage that forms the human ear. If you recorded something with them
on (using the built in microphones) and then played it back through the
headphones it was amazing. I once heard a recording by someone sitting
in front of a large frog pond and next to a highway. With your eyes closed
you could point to the croaking frogs and tell which direction the cars were
passing behind you. At one point I heard a plane fly at a diagonal overhead.

All this is due to the fact that binaural recordings preserve the volume,
phase and frequency information that you hear. When a sound occurs on
your right, it hits your right ear first, wraps around your head then
gets picked up by the left ear. The delay or phase shift that is induced
due to the longer path to your left ear is subtle, but is one of the
queues that your brain uses to determine the direction of a sound.
The volume is also attenuated slightly in the left ear. Your brain also
uses frequency queues. High frequency sounds are very directional while
low frequency are omni-directional. Your right ear hears the full spectrum
of the incomming sound while your left ear only hears the the low
frequency components. Your head acts as a filter, blocking and absorbing
the high frequencies.

So I suppose you could work out some FFT algorithim to give you this effect
but all you really need is careful control of the volume and be able to 
delay the sound slightly in one channel. You could probably forgo the low-pass
filter on the far ear. This explains why 3D is a software upgrade to the
GUS anything more complicated (like real-time FFTs) would require new hardware.

All this is lost when you use speakers, you must use headphones for
playing back binaural sound. And you must have somthing roughly the size
of a human head with the microphones position where the ears are to
record it. I have found that a mannequins head and with two regular old
microphones mounted in the ears works great (also it is quite the
conversation piece).

When you listen to a binaural recording of a party, where many conversations
are taking place at once you can use the position queues to listen to
one convesation one time and another the next. This is almost impossible
with stereo recording.

Stereo sound can only approximate the effect. But with good binaural (3D)
sound you could probably play Wolfenstein with your eyes closed.

Steve.

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Date: Fri, 19 Feb 93 15:06:44 EST
From: Phat H Tran <ptran@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca>
Message-Id: <9302192006.AA24776@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca>
Subject: Ultrasound Daily Digest V2 #47
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

> Date: Thu, 18 Feb 93 23:25:36 +0100
> From: d91-sme@nada.kth.se
> Message-Id: <9302182225.AA02356@dront.nada.kth.se>
> Subject: 3D sound - the theory?
> To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>
> 
>[...] 
> So, the first problem should be how to make that fourier transformation in
> real time. But the GUS has 32 voices. What if you made, say, 16 samples of
> one single sample. Each of the 16 samples containing their part of the
> frequencies in the original sound. For instance, you could have sample #1 to
> contain all frequencies between 0 and 100, the next one could hold frequencies
> between 100 and 200 and so on.
> 
> If you played all those 16 samples together it should produce the original
> sound. Now "all" you have to do is play them all, and change their volumes
> individually in real-time, according to a special table. Just like an
> equalizer.
>

Another problem is how to get the right ear to hear only the right channel
and the left ear to hear only the left channel when using speakers.  I
would imagine anti-phase cancellation to be quite tricky to implement.
 
> Date: Thu, 18 Feb 93 0:07:17 PST
> From: dedmunds@sfu.ca
> Message-Id: <9302180807.AA02146@selkirk.sfu.ca>
> Subject: Game developers supporting GUS?
> To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>
>
>[...] 
> Are we GUS owners doing all we can to garner support (how many people
> are on the mailing list David?)?
> 
> Let's get out there and lobby!!!!!!  Let's start a list of email 
> addresses for developers and game production companies, and flood
> them with email!!!!!  (Here I volunteer.  Email me the addresses
> (both snail mail and email) of every game developer/production
> company/publisher you can get your grubby paws on.  I'll sort it
> out and put it at epas and also the Digest.)  Let's get vocal!!!
>

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

Date: (null)
From: (null)
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>

I've done my share of lobbying for the Ultrasound, but to be effective,
the effort needs the muscle from new voices, not just the same broken
record.  I hope new GUS owners will take the time to write to their
favourite developers asking for GUS support.  Old-fashioned pen-and-paper
would be the most effective medium, but email is better than nothing.

Hear are the email addresses of a few companies:

	 Origin:          origin_cs@aol.com
					  76004.2612@compuserve.com
	 Sierra:          76004.2143@compuserve.com
	 Microprose:      76004.2223@compuserve.com
	 LucasArts:       75300.454@compuserve.com

> Date: Thu, 18 Feb 93 18:37:17 -0500
> From: "It's your hand, Buckaroo" <dantonio@magick.tay2.dec.com>
> Message-Id: <9302182337.AA07298@magick.tay2.dec.com>
> Subject: Ultramod
> To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>
> 
> Has anyone had any success with the Ultramod program (proported to be a MOD
> player written by Advanced Gravis)? All it does on my system is clear the
> screen, write out Ultramod by Advanced Gravis in double-height letters and
> exit. I wasn't very impressed to say the least...
>

Here's a shot in the dark:  If you're using EMM386, try adding /d=128 to
the line that invokes the memory manager.
 
> Date: Thu, 18 Feb 93 17:05:19 EST
> From: jeff@endeavor.ColumbiaSC.NCR.COM
> Message-Id: <9302182202.AA22953@orca.es.com>
> Subject: Unix Drivers for Ultrasound
> To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <ultrasound@dsd.es.com>
> 
> I am currently scoping the effort for development of a Unix driver
> for the GUS, but the lack of technical information is slowing my
> efforts.  As more technical specifications are posted to this list I
> may decide to undertake this task.
> 
> Anyone out there want to collaborate on this?
>

You might want to email Josh Jensen (cstrike@gompers.gompers.edu).  He's
done quite a bit of hacking on the GUS, and has figured out much of what
its registers do.  You might also want to get the GUS programming docs
that Josh has released (udox*.* on epas, in submit).

Phat. 

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End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V2 #48
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