GUS Daily Digest            Fri, 15 Apr 94  9:37 PST     Volume 12: Issue  15 

Today's Topics:
						 2nd try for HELP!!!
					   another gus0041 question
						A question on SB AWE32
					  Before somebody even ASKS
						   Doom 32 channels
						  gus0041 questions
					 GUS and Linux problem solved
				  GUS Daily Digest V12 #14 (5 msgs)
				   History and Future of Synthesis
							   joystick
							   Mega-Em
					Mega-lagg at archive.orst.edu!
							   Patches
						   Raptor sounds...
							Rebel Assault
						  Some RAM Problems
					Unix AU player for dos/windows

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: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 22:54:02 -0400
From: Hui Chi-Wai <a258huic@cdf.toronto.edu>
Subject: 2nd try for HELP!!!

	Ok i've posted for help here and in the c.s.i.p.s group and have come
up with nada!!!  So here goes my plea for help for the second time here:


	i recently installed a new quantum 540 drv to my current 245.  Now
the gus0041 (v3.11) installs doesn't pass the initial setup for any irq/dma
setting.  Using the diagnostic i have all the test passing but when it 
comes to the sbos mode and the gus dma i get a "busy (read)" response.
i ignore this and just select any setting and continue the install.  Everything
works fine (ie. windows plays midi files perfectly, inertia player plays
all the mod, mtm, s3m, ult files i have) except playmidi doesn't play any
midi files (it doesn't load any patches and gives up after awhile and gives me:
"error loading patch blah.pat.  DMA channel busy (conflict?)).  Before the new 
540 drive i could get playmidi to play after a few tries at loading the file 
(ie. it was buggy but eventually still worked), but now i get nothing.  The few games i have installed seem to still work ok in sbos and megaem modes, haven't
tried a native gus one as of the new drive though except for doom which is 
really buggy without any consistent sound result.

	I have a dx2/50, 8megs ram, ati xl wonder (prior to the 24bit),
running dos, windows, qemm7.03, norton speedrive.  The playmidi from
the 2.06x installs works fine without no hitches so i don't know what
is going on.  I tried the optifix (since i had opti chips on my motherboard)
but it didn't do it thing for me.  I've used some system diagnostics to see
if i had conflicts but came up with none.

	Does anyone have any solution to my problem?  Is it a hardware/software
conflict? or is it just buggy install software?  Please anyone with any
idea email me ... i am desperate to get my GUS in perfect working order again,
and YES i love my GUS and can't live without it!  Any help would be greatly
appreciated and thanx in advance.  Happy GUS'ing ... 

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

Date: Fri, 15 Apr 94 11:24:11 EDT
From: "NEMO G DE FURIA" <cs911084@red.ariel.cs.yorku.ca>
Subject: another gus0041 question

I forgot to mention that the installation created a directory on my C drive
called ADMALTOI with INSTALIT.EXE, and NORCIMO.ATE.  What are they for?  I
get an error 2229 when I run the former.  

BTW, I have a standard setup, and 256K on my card, just in case that helps.

Thanks,
Nemo De Furia.

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

Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 14:30:08 GMT+1
From: "F. Viktor" <VIKTOR@evt.bme.hu>
Subject: A question on SB AWE32

Hi gussers

I got a SB AWE32 yesterday to test in for one day. I was told that
I can have it also with 28Megs memory on board. It has (actually 
"had") already 512KBytes ROM, so I tried to ask for some more.
It has(had) a slot for 2 (two) SIMM moduls, which means you
have to put (28-.5)/2=13.75 Megs in each slot. 
The question is: Was I really supposed to use two 13.75MB-SIMM 
				 moduls? (Would be hard to get some ;-))           
				 Or two 14MB-s? Or how is it possible?
Anyone? Phat?
							Viktor
							

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

Date: Fri, 15 Apr 94 14:24:52 +0300
From: Yossi Oren <LIOREN1@WEIZMANN.weizmann.ac.il>
Subject: Before somebody even ASKS

I know this is gonna come up, so -
Superunknown, by Five, the demo that won the Gathering 94 (over here, we call
it Geekstock), is available at wasp.eng.ufl.edu, pub/msdos/demos/incoming/
TG94_Demos), as a split .ARJ file (1.4MB and 150K).
I'm going to get it now, so I can't say more.
Yossi.
PS To the other religious fanatics, FC had no entry in the competition, that's
   why they didn't win :)

+---+---+---+---------------------------------------------------+---+---+
| = | E |_|/|               Signature 1.31                      | V | ^ |
+---+---+---+---------------------------------------------------+---+---+
|Yossi Oren, Al-Daf Techno-Mercenaries, Rishon Le-Zion, Israel. Help    |
|TInternet EMail:LIOREN1@WEIZMANN.WEIZMANN.AC.IL     TT The people are T|
||Bitnet EMail:LIOREN1@WEIZMANN                      || with the Golan ||
||Drag yer damn objects around.  I've got work to do.|| Heights!       ||
+====================================================++================++

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

Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 10:47:23 -0600
From: Tam Ignatius Ying S <tam@amisk.cs.ualberta.ca>
Subject: Doom 32 channels

Hi all,

oh well, I haven't bump up to 32 channels, but using 20 channel
sfx is really fun.  For the person that can't notice the difference,
try it in Nightmare level, you will immediately surrounded by a
pile of sounds, and the sounds will not clip(that is will not
cut off at the middle).

BTW, it's kinda sucks to see Origin advertise their U8 to use
4 channel sfx, as if it were a very hi-tech and innovative thingy.
Can't resist to laugh at them...

Now I know why there is no sfx patch for U8...no matter how it's
done, it's sucks.

- Ignatius

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

Date: Fri, 15 Apr 94 11:15:41 EDT
From: "NEMO G DE FURIA" <cs911084@red.ariel.cs.yorku.ca>
Subject: gus0041 questions

Hiya,
 
I just installed the gus0041 stuff successfully, and everything seems to
be working fine except for:
 
1)  Modus in windows seems to be playing the wrong notes in some mod files,
	or at least is way out of tune with some files.  Is this just an
	isolated case, or has anyone else experienced this?  One particular
	mod that I like that it butchers is VISION.MOD; maybe someone out there's
	got it also, it's Queen's One Vision.
 
2)  The equalizer display in PLAYMIDI:  The animation seems to be flickering in
	the bar graphs.  This was a problem with the lat PLAYMIDI also.
 
3)  For some reason, at random, I get a massive buzzing sound coming out of
	one speaker *sometimes* when I use GUSMOD.  It nevers happens with
	ultramod though.
 
4)  I overlayed my old ultrasound stuff with this gus0041 stuff (but I did
	delete the ultrasnd.ini) and then read the old readme again (my previous
	setup was from the mailed out update software from last year).  It said
	that there was a demo program called JUNGLY.BAT but I couldn't find it.
	Was it actually included and I just lost it?
 
Thanks in advance for the clarification,
Nemo De Furia.
 
 

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

Date: Fri, 15 Apr 94 11:06:44 EDT
From: A Warren Pratten <warren@csd.uwo.ca>
Subject: GUS and Linux problem solved

I found a solution that may be useful to other GUS and Linux users.  

I was having problems getting my GUS v3.7 to work with the Linux sound drivers
v2.4.  There appears to be some subtle incompatibility between the new GUS's
and the v2.4 sound drivers which are distributed with the current Linux
kernels.  You will need to get the v2.5 sound drivers to use your new GUS with
Linux.  I believe it can be found on all the major Linux ftp sites.

- Warren

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

Date: Fri, 15 Apr 94 12:50:48 +0300
From: Yossi Oren <LIOREN1@WEIZMANN.weizmann.ac.il>
Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V12 #14

>Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 18:07:27 +1000 (EST)
>From: s9407312@minyos.xx.rmit.EDU.AU (Simon Charles Murphy)
>Subject: CWG
>
>        Can anyone tell me what CWG is and if it is a magazine where I can
>get it from, and where it is possible to get past issues from.
That's probably a typo for "CGW", which means "Computer Gaming World".  This is
generally more Amiga-oriented but PC os covered too.  They had this really
disastrous and error-strewn GUS review, Phat mailed the editor and his mail
appeared with a flame from the editors.  That's all I know about them.
Yossi.

+---+---+---+---------------------------------------------------+---+---+
| = | E |_|/|               Signature 1.31                      | V | ^ |
+---+---+---+---------------------------------------------------+---+---+
|Yossi Oren, Al-Daf Techno-Mercenaries, Rishon Le-Zion, Israel. Help    |
|TInternet EMail:LIOREN1@WEIZMANN.WEIZMANN.AC.IL     TT The people are T|
||Bitnet EMail:LIOREN1@WEIZMANN                      || with the Golan ||
||Drag yer damn objects around.  I've got work to do.|| Heights!       ||
+====================================================++================++

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

Date: Fri, 15 Apr 94 12:53:42 +0300
From: Yossi Oren <LIOREN1@WEIZMANN.weizmann.ac.il>
Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V12 #14

>Date: Wed, 13 Apr 94 19:57:23 EST
>From: jpoet@einet.com
>Subject: Mega-EM
>
>Does anyone know how I can get in touch with Jayeson Lee-Steere? I have been
>off the internet since September and just got back on.  I registered Mega-Em
>with him last summer, and I would like to know what the current state of this
>great software is.

Well, you're not alone in your opinion!  Advanced Gravis liked Mega-Em so much,
they bought Jayeson!  That's right, Mega-Em is the ace up the v3.1 install's
sleeve, and it's even in the manual!
To reach Jayeson, mail him at jayeson@gravis.com :)
Yossi.

+---+---+---+---------------------------------------------------+---+---+
| = | E |_|/|               Signature 1.31                      | V | ^ |
+---+---+---+---------------------------------------------------+---+---+
|Yossi Oren, Al-Daf Techno-Mercenaries, Rishon Le-Zion, Israel. Help    |
|TInternet EMail:LIOREN1@WEIZMANN.WEIZMANN.AC.IL     TT The people are T|
||Bitnet EMail:LIOREN1@WEIZMANN                      || with the Golan ||
||Drag yer damn objects around.  I've got work to do.|| Heights!       ||
+====================================================++================++

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

Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 12:00:12 GMT+1
From: "F. Viktor" <VIKTOR@evt.bme.hu>
Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V12 #14

You wrote:
> Date: Wed, 13 Apr 1994 23:34:40 -0700 (PDT)
> From: swoo@netcom.com (Sky Woo)
> Subject: PQ4 SFX/MUSIC in Windows
> 
> > > because I'm getting nothing from the GUS Windows drivers.  If 
> > anyone 
> > > knows why it craps out on me when I'm in Windows...  Please tell me.
> > > Or should I just wait until the Sierra GUS drivers arrive.  But who 
> > > knows
> > > when that'll be.
> > 
> > If you like playing slow games run it under Winslows3.1.
> > Or just forget about it. (I'd choose the last one.)
> >
> >               Viktor
> >
>     Tell you what...  You go out and buy a $40 game and find out
> that it doesn't work with the GUS...  Than I'll tell you tough.  Just
> don't play it.  Gee, what now...  you just wasted $40!!! 

I'm cleverer than you might think. I check the proggy _BEFORE_ I buy 
it. Of course not a pirate one. Just get an original version and try
it out, how it works.

>     Well...  you can tinker it until it finally works which according
> to other people it has worked under Windows.  And hoorrah!!! I finally
> have it working with all the music and sound effects under Windows.  I just
> reinstalled it.  The game is so much better and realistic with sound effects
> and music.  Not sure what was wrong before.  But it doesn't matter now.  The
> game is not "slow" under Windows at least on my system.  It runs at a
> very acceptable frame rate and does not drag.  But that's just my system.
> What kind of system do I have which allows me such smooth play?  486/66
> VLB 16MB of memory.  Only bad thing about it is that it crashes quite
> often and completely pisses me off.  But oh well... save often!  I do

As I see you use your machine for playing. I have a bit slower machine
but I can trust it at least. 
Unfortunately I don't have the time to work on games to use them with 
my GUS. And there's a lot of other games working just fine with GUS. 

> that all time in Windows anyways.  This will keep me held up until Sierra
> finally releases the DOS drivers.
Hope they will. Bye

			Viktor
			 
 

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

Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 14:20:41 GMT+1
From: "F. Viktor" <VIKTOR@evt.bme.hu>
Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V12 #14

> Date: Wed, 13 Apr 1994 19:40:41 -0700 (PDT) 
> From: Rath <cllym@ucdavis.edu> 
> Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V12 #13 
> 
> Sorry if this is a FAQ, but :  Where may i find DMAUD.EXE for the 
monty 
> python sounds for doom?
> I've gotten the sound zip already, now all it says that I need is 
the DMAUD.
> Rath

DMAUD is a program to chage the sfx in the doom.wad file. The latest
version is in (I think) DMAUD11.ZIP in wuarchive under 
/pub/MSDOS_UPLOADS/games/doomstuff or on the DOOMONLY FTP-Site:
ocf.unt.edu /pub/doom.
If you want to contact the author Bill Neisius: 
bill@solaria.hac.com

To subscribe the Doom-List send an e-mail to:
listproc@cedar.univie.ac.at.
Put  subscribe dooml (yourname@address) in the _BODY_ (not in the 
subject line) of your msg.

"If a message is ever rejected, please contact the list's owner: 
savage@cedar.univie.ac.at
For information on this service and how to use it, send the following
request in the body of a mail message to listproc@cedar.univie.ac.at:
			HELP"
							Viktor
							
> ------------------------------
> 
> Date: Wed, 13 Apr 1994 23:34:40 -0700 (PDT)
> From: swoo@netcom.com (Sky Woo)
> Subject: PQ4 SFX/MUSIC in Windows
> 
> > > because I'm getting nothing from the GUS Windows drivers.  If 
> > anyone 
> > > knows why it craps out on me when I'm in Windows...  Please tell me.
> > > Or should I just wait until the Sierra GUS drivers arrive.  But who 
> > > knows
> > > when that'll be.
> > 
> > If you like playing slow games run it under Winslows3.1.
> > Or just forget about it. (I'd choose the last one.)
> >
> >               Viktor
> >
>     Tell you what...  You go out and buy a $40 game and find out
> that it doesn't work with the GUS...  Than I'll tell you tough.  Just
> don't play it.  Gee, what now...  you just wasted $40!!! 

I got this game only to test it. So it didn't cost me anything.
I'm not crazy to pay for this s..t.

							Viktor                            

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

Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 11:49:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: Phat H Tran <ptran@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca>
Subject: Re: GUS Daily Digest V12 #14

> Date: Wed, 13 Apr 94 19:57:23 EST
> From: jpoet@einet.com
> Subject: Mega-EM
> 
> Does anyone know how I can get in touch with Jayeson Lee-Steere? I have been 
> off the internet since September and just got back on.  I registered Mega-Em 
> with him last summer, and I would like to know what the current state of this 
> great software is.

Mega-Em has been bought by Gravis and is now free to all GUS users.  It's
up to version 2.03 and supports the SB DAC as well as the Roland/GM stuff
that it's always had.

> Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 11:51:55 -0500 (EST)
> From: V_IOURT@PAVO.CONCORDIA.CA
> Subject: Mega-Em and QEMM
> 
> Hello, everyone!
> 
> I'm having hard times getting Mega-Em to work.  I use QEMM 7.03, and
> whenever I try to load Mega-Em, I get
>  
>   ERROR: EMM incompatibility problem: Resident code failing to respond.

If this problem doesn't go away, make a boot configuration using
EMM386 instead of QEMM for Mega-Em.  However, I think Mega-Em is
supposed to work with all the latest versions of QEMM.  Mike Batchelor
would be in a better position to help you with QEMM.

> Date: Wed, 13 Apr 1994 14:26:17 -0700
> From: dross@ultrix4.cs.csubak.edu (Dean Ross-Smith)
> Subject: optifix
> 
> I've only been able to play raptor twice on my 'puter...
> Does anyone have optifix for Opti motherboards? Raptor keeps locking on me
> before I even get to the title screen.
> Could a kind soul please upload it to epas?

Optifix is already on the GUS archive mirrors.  The file is gus0013.zip
and should be located in something like ../gravis/patches.  It won't be
found on Epas.

> Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 17:32:38 +0930 (CST)
> From: Gavin Scarman <SCARMAN@hfrd.dsto.gov.au>
> Subject: Raptor sounds are aweful
> 
> Why does Raptor sound so bad? ie. the quality of the instruments is really poor. 

There's a problem with your setup.  The instruments sound the same as
they always have for me.

> Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 15:55:40 GMT
> From: Mathew Taylor <MSJT@adpu1.bham.ac.uk>
> Subject: Ultima 8
> 
> Has anyone got any ideas on how to get GUS sound out of this game?

There's a patch to get native GUS music from the games, but no digital
sound effects (since Origin appears to have used a custom internal
driver that Gravis can't get at).  The patch is u8gus.zip and can be
found in the submit directory on Epas or its mirrors.

> Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 15:14:58 +0200
> From: z75@nikhef.nl (Jorritjan Niessink)
> Subject: Upgrade 8 bits to 16 bits sampling
> 
> I've read about a kind of plug-in module to upgrade the 8 bits sampling
> GUS to 16 bits sampling.
> 
> My local shop has also heard of it, but wonders if it is already available,
> as he hasn't seen one yet.

The 16-bit DB is currently available.

> So this is what I would like to ask: Do this plug-in module exist and if
> yes, where to get it. Can you also give a price-indication.

The list price is $100.  Contact Gravis for more detail.

Phat.

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

Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 16:00:38 -0700 (MST)
From: "Shawn T. Rutledge" <rutledge@enuxsa.eas.asu.edu>
Subject: History and Future of Synthesis

Wave of the Future

The story of the next generation in sound technology 

By Bob Johnstone 


In 1963 Max Mathews, then a researcher at the Bell Laboratories in New
Jersey, published a paper in which he predicted that the computer
would become the ultimate musical instrument. "There are no
theoretical limits," Mathews wrote, "to the performance of the
computer as a source of musical sounds." Thirty years later, you can
find the father of computer music at Stanford University's Center for
Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (abbreviated CCRMA, but
pronounced - because this is, after all, California - "Karma").

There, in the Knoll, a 1916 Spanish Gothic edifice that was once the
president's residence, with a panoramic view over Silicon Valley, a
bunch of young graduate students - engineers, programmers, and
roboticists, all of them also accomplished musicians - are building
the ultimate musical instrument. Fashioned from software, silicon,
solenoids and speakers, this virtual masterpiece will be able to
replicate not just the sound, but also the feel of every piano, organ,
harpsichord, and keyboard instrument that has ever existed (see "The
Ultimate Keyboard," page 60). Of interest only to scholars and
performers? Maybe so, but Karma's work has a way of resonating far
beyond Stanford's Hoover Tower. The center's researchers have already
played a key role in the ongoing metamorphosis of the personal
computer from dumb terminal into multimedia machine.

In particular, they have contributed much to the development of sound
boards. Over the past year or so, these plug-in PC accessories -
notably Sound Blaster, the board made by Creative Technology of
Singapore - have emerged from the hype as multimedia's first
real-world market maker. Analysts such as In-Stat's Gerry Kaufhold
predict that in 1994 sales of sound boards will top US$1 billion.
Almost all (more than 95 percent) of these boards carry FM synthesizer
chips made by the Japanese firm Yamaha. The chips derive from a
discovery made at Stanford in 1967 by composer John Chowning, now
Karma's director. They have created a revenue stream (millions of
dollars in patent royalties) that has underwritten the development at
the center of a new, much more natural-sounding generation of
synthesizer based on mathematical models known as waveguides. This
technology is now on its way to market keyboards from Yamaha, and
chips from the Fremont, California-based board maker Media Vision.
Because of multimedia applications, Joe Koepnick of Stanford's Office
of Technology Licensing reckons that "the potential is clearly there
for waveguides to eclipse FM synthesis in terms of market impact."

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

Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 19:24:08 +0100 (MET)
From: n96525@pbhrzx.uni-paderborn.de (Dietmar Schroeder)
Subject: joystick

Hello all,
I'm planning to buy a joystick.
Will FLIGHTSTICK(pro) or THRUSTMASTER work with my GUS (3.4) ?
That's all.

Bis denn sagt
				 Dietmar

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

Date: Thu, 14 Apr 94 22:31:00 -0800
From: chris.campbell@mag-net.com (Chris Campbell)
Subject: Mega-Em

>Does anyone know how I can get in touch with Jayeson Lee-Steere? I have
>been off the internet since September and just got back on.  I
>registered Mega-Em with him last summer, and I would like to know what
>the current state of this great software is.

Jayeson is now working for Gravis and the program is free!  It supports
Sound Blaster digital sound, and he is currentally working on a version
that will work for protected mode games!

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

Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 18:01:39 -0700 (PDT)
From: Eli Bingham <ebingham@tcsgi.mhs.mendocino.k12.ca.us>
Subject: Mega-lagg at archive.orst.edu!

Has anyone else noticed that the lagg at archive.orst.edu is VERY bad, 
even when there are but a few users online? What's going on over there? 

==========================================================================
Eli Bingham     ebingham@tcsgi.mhs.mendocino.k12.ca.us     ebingha@ctp.org

 "Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy."  -Orson Welles

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

Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 20:00:13 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Peter C. Chien Jr." <pchienjr@ocf.Berkeley.EDU>
Subject: Patches

Dear Anyone,
	 Does anyone else notice if the brass instruments (such as the 
trumpets and trombone) make a slight popping sound?  This happens under 
credits.mid in the xwingmid.zip files of songs from X-wing when played 
by media player and Recording Session.   I am playing the songs through 
Altec Lansing speakers (ACS300).  I suspect that the problem is the 
sampled patches, which hopefully can be resampled and updated (I had 
v2.06 disks upgraded by the 3.1 install disks).
	 Just wondering in the meantime how I can eliminate the popping sounds.

Peter

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

Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 14:03:59 +0200
From: Nils Pedersen <nilspe@ifi.uio.no>
Subject: Re: Raptor sounds...

> Just wanted to add my name to the list of those who have tried the game and
> found it works with all 8 channels. I have a 486/DX50 ISA, with the I/O bus
> running at 12.67MHz.
> 
> Frank Pikelner
> frank@cs.yorku.ca


Since we're creating a list, add my name to it.

And thank you Phat for helping me out with X-Wing.

	Nils Pedersen (nilspe@ifi.uio.no)

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

Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 01:53:51 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Peter C. Chien Jr." <pchienjr@ocf.Berkeley.EDU>
Subject: Rebel Assault

I need help trying to get Rebel Assault running.  It does have the 
UltraSound support, but when I run the program, sound comes out funny, 
like music and/or speech and then buzzing noise that comes out.  
My ultrasound is set at 220, 1,1, 11, 7 (I tried 220,1,1,7,5), then I 
downloaded the joystick patch and older DOS4GW.EXE, but still same 
problem.  I have an IBM 486SLC2/50 with 8MB RAM, and am using a Toshiba 
3401B 2X drive.  I tried increasing the sound buffer to all values, but 
nothing worked.  Help!

Peter

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

Date: Fri, 15 Apr 94 18:31:56 +0200
From: tbaehler@di.epfl.ch (Thomas Baehler)
Subject: Some RAM Problems

Hi all,

I have a problem over here that I cannot resolve... some RAM stuff.

3 weeks ago, i bought a GUS (which is probably the best computer bought i've
done for a long time) with 256k RAM to go in my 486DX33. I tried it on
Kyrandia II (Hand Of Fate) with the GUS emulation on SCC-1 (Sound Canvas),
and the music was just terrific.
Then a friend told me to buy the 764k RAM add-up, so i could have sounds
even more terrific... 
So i purchased my RAM and placed it on my Gravis... well, all worked well,
the sound was even better, etc., BUT some instruments used in the melodies
were not right. For example, when I had my 256k, in Hand Of Fate were the
instruments like on the SCC-1, and now some instruments are just different
and don't go at all with the type of music being played (for example, in
Hand Of Fate, where it is "old" music, there's an electric guitar...)

Could any1 tell me what I have to do, and if there's something to do ?
Thanks a lot.

Eric Vassalli
EPFL, Lausanne
SWITZERLAND

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

Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 09:19:34 -0400
From: Hui Chi-Wai <a258huic@cdf.toronto.edu>
Subject: Unix AU player for dos/windows

	Subjects says it all, was wondering if there was a .au file player
for dos/windows usable by the GUS.  I know of goldwave that can be used to
convert .au files to .wav .voc but was hoping there was a plain player.

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

From: (null)

When John Chowning arrived at Stanford in 1962 as a 29-year-old
graduate student, he had never even seen a computer before. But as a
composer, he was keen to explore the idea of speakers-as-instruments;
he had encountered the concept as a student in Paris, where he
attended electronic music concerts given by composers like Pierre
Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen. So when a colleague in the Stanford
orchestra passed him a copy of Max Mathews's paper describing how
computers could be programmed to play instrumental music, Chowning
wasted little time before heading off to Bell Labs in New Jersey to
find out how it was done.

Mathews worked in the acoustic and behavioral research department of
Bell Labs.  There, in order to simulate telephones, researchers had
figured out how to digitize speech, squirt it into the computer, then
turn the bits back into sound waves afterwards.  Mathews immediately
realized that it would be relatively straightforward to adapt this
process to the writing and playback of music. He wrote a program that
made the technology accessible to non-scientists, then invited
composers to come by the labs to try it out.

In retrospect, the rigmarole these computer-music pioneers had to go
through in order to hear what they'd written seems agonizingly slow.
As Mathews recalls, "we had decks of punch cards on which the computer
scores were produced, which we would carry around in boxes." These
they would load into a car, drive into Manhattan to the IBM building,
on Madison Avenue and 57th Street. There, in the basement, was a
mainframe computer on which time could be rented (at the astronomical
rate of $600 an hour). "We would queue up," Mathews says, "then, when
it was our turn, we would run down the stairs, stick our cards in the
deck, and press the button." The result would be a tape full of
digital sound samples, which they would take back to Bell Labs and
play back through a digital-to-analog converter.

Why were composers prepared to put up with such a long drawn-out
process? Because the alternative could take much longer. What was a
matter of hours - compared with the several years it might take to
interest some orchestra in playing their score? ("The reason I keep
these expensive gentlemen with me," the late Duke Ellington once said,
referring to his orchestra, "is that unlike most composers, I can
immediately hear what I've written.") A second attraction of computers
was that not only did they play the score exactly as written, they
also offered composers the chance to go back and change bits that they
didn't like. Now the challenge was how to make electronic sounds
interesting, how to brighten up the dull tones to which output devices
like oscillators were limited.

Chowning returned to California clutching the box of punch cards
Mathews had given him. He found a place to play them at Stanford's
newly established artificial intelligence laboratory, a heady
intellectual environment where engineers, scientists, mathematicians,
philosophers, and psychologists gathered to see what they could get
computers to do. One night in 1967, while experimenting with wildly
exaggerated vibratos - fluctuations in pitch often added to electronic
sounds to give them a more realistic quality - fooling around with a
couple of oscillators, using the output of one to control the other,
half fearing that he'd break the computer if he went too far, Chowning
heard something remarkable. At a frequency of around 20Hz, he noticed
that instead of an instantaneous change in pitch from one pure tone to
another, a recognizable tone color, one that was rich in harmonics,
emerged from the machine. It was a discovery that an engineer would
have been unlikely to make. What Chowning had stumbled upon, it later
turned out, was frequency modulation - the same technique that radio
and television broadcasters use to transmit noise-free signals. Of
this, the composer was blissfully ignorant: All he wanted to do was
make colorful sounds. Chowning began tweaking his algorithm and pretty
soon, as he recalls, "using only two oscillators, I was making bell
tones and clarinet-like tones and bassoon-like tones, and I thought,
you know, this is interesting."

But who was interested? Certainly not the Stanford authorities, who,
after evaluating Chowning's discovery and two of his subsequent
compositions, turned down his application for tenure. Nor were US
electronic organ makers - companies like Hammond. To generate its
unmistakable sound (remember Booker T & the MGs?), Hammond used an
electromechanical system consisting of toothed iron disks that rotated
in front of electromagnets; they in turn generated voltages that
formed the pitch for each key. The Chicago-based company sent its
technical people out to the West Coast to check out the technology,
but the engineers couldn't really see how all this digital computer
stuff related to what they did. "It was just not a part of their
world," comments Chowning. (Hammond went out of business in 1985;
today, only the brand name remains, the property of Suzuki, a small
Japanese keyboard maker.)

One of the few people who did get it, and who encouraged Chowning to
continue with his work, was Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh. Himself a
sometime composer of orchestral music, Lesh dropped by the lab for a
listen one day in early 1972. Another, more significant visitor, was
Kazukiyo Ishimura, a young engineer sent to Stanford later the same
year by Yamaha, the largest maker of musical instruments in the world.
It took Ishimura just 10 minutes to understand the principle of FM
synthesis, and its potential. As Ishimura, who today is Yamaha's
managing director, recalls, "We believed that this technology might be
the future of music."

The reason he was so fast on the uptake was that Yamaha had already
embarked on the development of digital instruments. Ishimura's boss at
the time, Yasunori Mochida, envisioned digital integrated circuits -
chips - as tools for making new sounds. At Yamaha's research
laboratories in the small Japanese port city of Hamamatsu, half way
between Tokyo and Osaka, Mochida and his team of six young engineers
had tried all sorts of approaches, but without much success. "We
weren't digital specialists," says Mochida, who now teaches a course
in multimedia at Tokyo's Kogakuin University, "so we went looking for
people who were, to ask their advice on how to make all-digital
musical instruments." And, via a contact from the Stanford technology
licensing office, found John Chowning, and immediately began
negotiations for an exclusive license for rights to the FM patent.

"As an engineer, you are very lucky if you encounter a simple and
elegant solution to a complex problem," Mochida told Music Trades
magazine in 1987. "FM was such a solution and it captured my
imagination. The problems of implementing it were immense, but it was
such a wonderful idea that I knew in my heart that it would eventually
work."

Synthesizing musical notes is a tough problem because it has to be
done fast, in real time.  Yamaha's current single-chip synthesizers
are special-purpose digital signal processors that can zip through 20
million instructions a second, faster than most microprocessors. But
back in the mid 1970s, when Mochida approached suppliers like NEC and
Hitachi about making such chips, "they told us to stop thinking about
something so difficult." Against strenuous opposition from the
company's board of directors, Mochida proposed to Yamaha's
then-president, Gen'ichi Kawakami, that Yamaha would probably have to
spend hundreds of millions of dollars in order to become a chip maker
in its own right. And, in true jaw-jutting corporate samurai style,
Kawakami agreed, saying (according to Mochida), "if we can make the
best musical instruments in the world, then no matter how difficult it
is, no matter how much money it costs - we'll do it."

Turning FM synthesis from a software algorithm that ran on mainframes
into chips that powered a commercial synthesizer took seven years. But
from Yamaha's point of view, it was worth the effort. Launched in
1983, the DX-7, Yamaha's first mass-market implementation of FM
technology, was a huge success, eventually selling more than 200,000
units, ten times more than any synthesizer before or since.

Professional musicians like Chick Corea loved the DX-7 because it had
a distinctive sound, was simple to program, and could produce a
variety of effects. Also, priced under $2,000, the DX-7 was
affordable, and it quickly became part of every self- respecting
keyboard player's set-up. Yamaha leveraged its investment in the
technology across its entire product line, sticking FM chips into
everything from mini-keyboards to top-of-the-line organs.

At the same time, Yamaha was looking into computer applications for
FM. That was where the company blundered. Mochida decided to build a
multimedia computer with built-in sound and graphics. But in a move
typical of early Japanese entrants to the PC business, Yamaha tried to
go it alone, developing everything, including the operating system and
applications software itself. The result was a complete flop (though
the project did have one important by-product: Yamaha's experience
with multimedia chips won it the contract to make the sound and
graphics processors used in all current Sega game consoles). Mochida
was demoted, and, deciding that the chip business was less risky,
Yamaha more or less withdrew from the computer market. The company did
produce one soundboard - for the IBM PS/2, in 1986 - but without much
support, it died a quiet death.

Today's soundboard business is largely the creation of a most unlikely
pair: Martin Prevel, a French-Canadian professor of music at the
University of Quebec, and Sim Wong Hoo, a young Singaporean
entrepreneur. Both began by attempting to sell educational music
products, but they soon discovered a much bigger market opportunity:
PC game developers like Sierra Online needed sound in order to compete
effectively against Nintendo. In 1988, Ad Lib (Prevel's company)
brought out a board based on Yamaha's FM chip that enabled the PC to
make music. But Creative Technology (Sim's company) discovered that
music by itself was not enough. "It was like silent movies with a
piano player," says Broderbund sound director Tom Rettig. What game
developers also needed was a digital sound-output device - like the
one in the Mac - to enable them to create sound effects (like creaking
doors) and voices for their characters. Sim soon got the message, and
the result was the Sound Blaster (see "Loud and Clear," page 62).

Voices and sound effects are created using samples, digital snapshots
of sound waves that are stored in computer memory. The more sounds you
want, the more space you need to store them, the more expensive it
becomes. FM synthesis scored over sampling because it could generate a
wide range of sounds without any memory. But though relatively rich,
the sounds that FM produces are still unmistakably artificial. As
memory became cheaper, and data compression techniques improved,
sampling came into its own. Today, sampling - also known, confusingly,
as PCM, for pulse code modulation - is the technology of choice in the
synthesizer business, and many soundboard makers (including belated
re-entrant Yamaha) see sample-based solutions as the logical
replacement for FM. To musicians and composers, however, the
technology has one serious drawback: as you would expect from sounds
pasted together from frozen snippets, it lacks expressiveness. How to
produce sound as efficient and expressive as FM, but offering the
quality of sampling? This question drove Karma's Julius Orion Smith
III to develop waveguides, the latest generation of synthesizer
technology.

Smith's answering machine plays what must be one of the shorter
messages around: "This is Julius...." It aptly reflects the way
Smith's engineer's mind works: identifying the nature of the problem,
reducing it to its essence, coming up with an efficient solution. "I'm
always rating the effectiveness of everything I do," he says.

As a 9-year-old in his native Memphis, Julius Smith won a math
contest. By the age of 16, he knew he wanted to be a musician. But it
was not until 1980, when he arrived at Karma, that then 30-ish Smith
came across the Violin Problem, a challenge that allowed him to draw
on both his talents. "As a musician, I knew there were no good string
synthesizers, and I thought, well it must be hard, because a lot of
companies had been trying to do it for a long time." So, methodically,
working 16 hours a day, Smith dedicated himself to accumulating the
arcane knowledge he needed to solve the problem.

His approach was straightforward: He set out to create mathematical
models of the way a string vibrates when a bow is drawn across it.
Easy to say, formidably difficult to do. But in 1985, after years of
banging his head against a wall, Smith finally broke through.  Drawing
on work done on power transmission lines in the 1920s, he recast
vibration as a wave traveling in only one direction. Still, solving
the resultant equations would have kept a supercomputer crunching
numbers for weeks. So Smith used some fancy math to reduce by 100
times the number of calculations required to calculate the wave. Et
voila: the virtual violin! It came with an unexpected bonus: since
there is no difference mathematically between a violin's vibrating
string and a clarinet's column of air, Smith found he could use the
same equations to simulate wind instruments like oboes and flutes,
too. Colleagues at Karma subsequently exploited waveguides to produce
convincing simulations of other sounds. Perry Cook has developed a
disembodied singing voice, a virtual diva called Shiela. Graduate
student Scott VanDuyne is working on two-dimensional waveguide
algorithms to create virtual percussion instruments like gongs and
cymbals, traditionally among the most difficult sounds to synthesize.

In addition to versatility, another big advantage of waveguides over
samples is their ability to simulate natural parameters like breath
strength - how hard a reed player is blowing. By slightly varying
these parameters, you can make a clarinet squeak, say, or a sax growl.
And because of subtle timing issues, it sounds slightly different each
time you play it - just like live music, in fact. Waveguides can also
simulate howling guitar feedback, a category of sound that no other
kind of synthesizer can produce.

Many of these features are included in Yamaha's VL-1 synthesizer, the
first commercial waveguide instrument, which the company announced at
the end of November. The $7,000 instrument drew rave reviews from the
technical press: "[It's] pretty exciting," says Mark Vail, technical
editor of Keyboard Magazine, "[samplers] have been around for a long
time, and there's a staleness in the music industry - people have been
waiting for something new to come along."

Since signing a contract with Stanford in 1989, Yamaha has reportedly
had a hundred engineers working on the development of waveguide
instruments, cranking out the algorithmic variations. This gives the
Japanese firm a huge head start on rival instrument makers. This time,
however, Yamaha does not have a lock on the technology: Its license is
non-exclusive. Four US companies have already signed up to develop
waveguide technology and at least as many more are interested. Leading
the pack is Media Vision, which hopes to have a synthesizer chip ready
for computer use in early 1994. "It's a substantial breakthrough,"
claims Media Vision vice president Satish Gupta, "it has the potential
to completely change the rules of the game."

"Programmers are going to drool over waveguides," predicts Perry Cook,
now chief scientist at the company. "They're going to want to work
with this." Broderbund's Tom Rettig agrees. "To me, waveguides offer
really thrilling possibilities," he enthuses. "The most exciting part
is you'll be able to describe instruments that are as expressive as
the most interesting acoustic instruments - and that's where current
electronic technology falls down."

Max Mathews's 30-year-old prophesy about computers having the
potential to generate any sound the human ear could hear may finally
be coming to pass.


Sidebars

The Ultimate Keyboard

Under the bench in his Karma workshop, a small, high-ceilinged room
that might once have been a pantry, Brent Gillespie keeps a model of
the action of a grand-piano key. An intricate mechanism made of ivory,
wood, felt and metal that forms a bewilderingly complex sequence of
cranks, levers, springs, pivots, rollers, checks, and dampers, it
provides a two-way interface between a player's fingers and the
piano's strings.

The action is vital for musicians: it gives them the expressive
control over an instrument required for fine performance. ("Aside from
its beautiful tone, the thing that I like best about the Baldwin piano
is its fantastically responsive action," reads an endorsement by
George Shearing in a magazine ad.) "Synthesizers were a big turnoff
for musicians at first encounter because they didn't feel right," says
Gillespie, a graduate student in mechanical engineering and an expert
in force-feedback systems. "My project is all about putting the feel
of a grand piano back into a synthesizer keyboard."

To this end, Gillespie has built a prototype "virtual" action. A small
clear plastic box from which two keys stick out, its sensor keeps
track of the position of a key as it is pressed; a solenoid puts out
an opposing force proportional to the key's displacement. It's
uncanny: you press the key and you feel the striking of a string that
you know is not there. The box can be programmed to replicate the
different feel of instruments as similar as pianos and harpsichords,
whose strings are plucked rather than struck.

Why hook up a waveguide synthesizer that can reproduce all possible
keyboard instrument sounds? John Chowning explains: "We have a
generalized keyboard that can be particularized to any desired piano
or any specific piano. If you want a Yamaha, you can have it. If you
want a particular kind of feel on your Yamaha, you can program the
resistances. Or if you want a forte piano of, say, the 1780s, you can
have it, and the sound that goes with it.

"We have this idea of a piano which in all essential respects -
auditory, kinesthetic, tactile - is a piano, only it has no strings,
no action. But it supports the repertoire for which these instruments
exist. It's easy to keep in tune, and you can easily change the tuning
system from, say, mean tune, which you might want for the 18th
century, to well-tempered, as in Bach, to equal tempering, as used
today, just with presses of buttons. You can play it at night because
you can turn off the loudspeaker and listen through the head-phones -
that's important in Japan. And it's easy to move. It's the ultimate
piano.

"And we have an historian, George Barth, whose scholarly expertise is
in the evolution of keyboard instruments. If you have a replica of,
say, a 1780 forte piano built, with an artisan who does it cheaply, it
costs $20,000, and with artisan paid at normal rates it would cost
$100,000. George Barth has one, but what do his students do? Well,
they have to convince their employer, or their university, or if they
want to perform, they have to come up with $100,000.

"This is the general solution, you see, for the extension of scholarly
activity - and it really democratizes the idea of performance. No
longer will it be true that only the wealthy kid gets the good
Steinway, but every kid gets the good Steinway."


Loud and Clear

If ever a person was in the right place at the right time, it was Sim
Wong Hoo, chairman and CEO of Creative Technology, and one of
multimedia's first multimillionaire. The place was San Francisco, the
time August 1988. The 32-year-old Sim had arrived in the US from his
native Singapore to market his company's pride and joy: the Creative
Music System, a synthesizer card whose software enabled users to
compose music on the PC.  A group of potential customers for the
system was Bay Area-based game developers.  But as Sim went 'round
talking to the companies, he quickly realized what people really
wanted not just another music synthesizer, but a board that could
handle digitized sound, to enable the PC to produce sound effects and
speech. "Sim had a clear vision of the importance of audio, at a time
when the industry had just started with it," recalls Tom Rettig, sound
director at top educational game maker Broderbund, "he contacted us at
just the right time."

Sim's vision had deep roots. "I felt that computers should be more
human-like," Sim says, "able to react, to talk, sing and play music."
In the mid-1980s, Creative designed a series of computers for the
Singapore market featuring rudimentary (Chinese) speech capabilities.
But as competition in the clone market became fierce, Sim switched
focus from PCs to the add-on board business, where profit margins were
higher.

In 1988, the tiny market for sound boards was dominated by Ad Lib, a
Quebec-based company whose Yamaha FM synthesizer-chip-based board was
supported by hundreds of game titles. At the time, Ad Lib was the only
firm that Yamaha supplied.  Then Microsoft stepped in and asked Yamaha
to sell the chips on the open market. The Japanese firm agreed.
Creative's great good fortune was to be the first to come out with a
board that mounted the Yamaha chip - making it compatible with
existing games - and that supported the new software. Sound Blaster
was launched in November 1989. In addition to music synthesis, the
Sound Blaster also offered the digital sound capabilities of the Mac.
"That combination really made the whole thing take off," says Rettig.
Broderbund developed two of the first products that supported Sound
Blaster: Princes of Persia and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?
Developers appreciated Sim's aggressiveness and his willingness to put
his company's technical resources at their disposal. If they needed a
software driver, for example, Sim could conjure one up for them
overnight, making good use of the 16-hour time difference between
Singapore and the West Coast. (Business hours on the island begin just
as the US work day ends.) An Asian manufacturing base enabled Creative
to drive down board prices, giving it a competitive edge that Ad Lib
could not match. From an initial listing of $299, the price of Sound
Blaster eventually dropped to below $70, as the market for the board
exploded. In Sound Blaster's first year, Creative sold 100,000 boards,
a phenomenal amount for the time. Today, the company is on a roll,
selling 300,000 boards a month.

Now Creative's goal is to branch out from its beachhead in audio to
stake out other parts of multimedia, like CD-ROM upgrade kits and
video boards. "I'm not stopping here," Sim says.


Bob Johnstone is WIRED's contributing editor in Japan. 


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