SuperHack/SuperHack CD.bin/CODING/SOUND/54.ZIP/54

Text File | 1996-04-18 | 22.8 KB | 583 lines

Ultrasound Daily Digest     Mon May 24 00:12     Volume 3: Issue  54

Today's Topics:
                       GUS Pricing in Australia
                          install disk probs
                           Lemmings 2 probs
                            Miles Drivers
                Sorry Everyone for Posting the Digest!
                          subscribe (2 msgs)
                      Tremstr and Chris mids...
                     Ultrasound Daily Digest V...

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: Mon, 24 May 1993 12:21:29 +1000
Subject: GUS Pricing in Australia

I have been scanning the back issues for info on Australian distributors of
the GUS and must say there is very little information. I did some tracking
down and found that the Dealership goes:

[phone] Playcorp P/L in Melbourne
[phone]    Aquarius Sales and Marketing in Sydney
[phone]        Egghead in Sydney

When I called Egghead they said "Yes we have one in stock! They are
normally selling $349.95 AUS(!) but are on sale for $299 AUS(!!!).

Have I missed something here? I note that the street price is as low as
$130 US in the States. Ignoring shipping this would be about $185 AUS. Now
I know shipping and handling can cost a bit, but $165 is a bit much!

I'd like to hear from other users of the GUS in Australia with their
stories as to how they obtained their GUS boards and how much they paid.
Send me mail directly and I will summarise for the digest.

Peace.
--- No .sig means less bandwidth and smaller ego.

INTERNET: [e-mail]

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

Date: Sun, 23 May 93 1:02:03 PDT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: install disk probs
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

Ok for those who are having problems with the install not recognizing the
disks, make sure that the disks haven't been formatted with something like
fdformat.  Use dos' format command.  Fixed it for me anyways.

Godfrey.

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

Date: Sun, 23 May 93 19:57:17 EST
From: [e-mail] (Adriano_Ennio RAIOLA)
Subject: Lemmings 2 probs
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

Help please, I noticed a couple of digests ago some people were posting
about problems (and solutions?) to not getting SBOS to work with Lemmings 2.

Well I didnt get the game till after those posts, so could someone resend
me any of that info, or perhaps help me out with my prob? Using SBOS I rarely
get sound at all, occaionaly, Ill get some adlib music, but no digitised
music, and usually I get nothing at all, in fact with v1.20 SBOS I only
ever got music occaisionaly, with v.2.08 SBOS I get nothing.

To top that off, I completely ripped out my Ultrasound and just installed
my SBlaster v2.0 and it too only plays Adlib music very occaisonaly, and almost
never any Digisted stuff, never at the same time (like once or twice I got
digitsed sound, but no adlib)

This problem is driving me to become a lemming myself and behave as such!
Can someone PLEASE help!


--
| [e-mail] --------| Adrian -aka- Plugger | *  * *  *   *  |  _/_\
| [e-mail] -| What time is love?   | *_*  * *_  *_  | / OZ |
| [e-mail] --| I think its gonna be | * *  *   *   * | \__-_/
| -- I want more accounts! ----| long, long time.     | *  * *  *   *  |     v

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

Date: Sun, 23 May 93 22:46:50 EDT
From: [e-mail] (Jim Veneskey)
Subject: Miles Drivers
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

Here is a letter I wrote to John Miles, programmer of Eye Of The Beholder III
for SSI and the author of the MILES DRIVERS mentioned in a previous post.
I am also including his reply to me.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi!,
I was just reading my latest Ultrasound Daily Digest and I ran across a
blurb that the "MILES DRIVERS" for the Ultrasound are being released soon
and being used by Origin (among others?) in Strike Commander.
Now, what I want to know is, are you that John Miles whose name appears
inside the *.adv files ????  Did you write GUSMIDI.ADV and GUSDAC.ADV???
Can't be that many John Miles running around!!!
So, what is the scoop???  Do these drivers exist?  Did you let someone else
port them to the GUS?  Are they going to be released to the general public?
(Us GUSers that is) Or do we have to buy a game to get 'em???
Are they plug in compatible with the old Sound Blaster drivers in my
Eye Of The Beholder III????
(Us GUSers have been waiting a LONG time for native support!!!  Can you tell?)


Jim Veneskey

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 22 May 93 23:08:54 EDT
To: <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: MILES DRIVERS???

Yep, I'm _the_ internationally famous John Miles, sound man to the
stars.  (Well, maybe not _internationally_ famous...)  Forte has written
their own drivers to conform to the Audio Interface Library (the 'Miles
Driver' spec) standard.  However ...

* They are _not_ used in Strike Commander, nor are they likely to ever
be.  Strike uses full custom instrumentation, not General MIDI -- replacing
Strike's MT-32 driver with the GUS driver would result in some truly awful
noises.  (Actually, it wouldn't work at all; Origin modified their AIL
drivers to access EMS, which is something the 'stock' drivers don't do.)
I'm not familiar with the 'newsletter' you mention, but this would not
be the first time sound board vendors' marketing departments have crossed
the fine line between overzealous hype and bald-faced fiction.

* I have not yet had a chance to personally examine, validate, and
document the drivers, although John Ratcliff (a colleague) has listened
to them and found them to work well in many cases.  I've just received
some new hardware from Gravis, and will soon be testing the drivers
myself prior to making them "officially" available.

You might have better luck applying them to Eye III, actually -- Eye III
isn't as musically ambitious as Strike, and just uses the stock Roland
MT-32 voices.  If you can load an MT-32 patch set into your GUS, you may
be able to copy the GUS MIDI driver over the MT32MPU.ADV driver and make
it work.  However, sound effects support in Eye III takes place via
SBLASTER.COM, one of JhJohn Ratcliff's DIGPAK drivers.  You'd need to find a cop
y of the Gravis
DIGPAK driver (assuming one exists) and experiment with copying it over
the Sound Blaster driver.

Best of luck; you're a true pioneer!  -- john

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

So, What does this mean?

Jim Veneskey



 Command ('i' to return to index): .

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

Date: 23 May 1993   01:39:55 PST
From: chrisw <[e-mail]>
Subject: Sorry Everyone for Posting the Digest!
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

Damn. Shouldn't do your mail at 2 in the morning. Apologies to all.

Chris.

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

Date: Sun, 23 May 93 13:41:09 EETDST
From: Jori H{m{l{inen <[e-mail]>
Subject: subscribe
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>



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

Date: Sun, 23 May 1993 19:05:41 -0300 (EDT)
From: david hemsworth s <[e-mail]>
Subject: subscribe
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

Please add me to the ultrasound mailing list. Thanks.

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

Date: 23 May 1993   01:37:21 PST
From: chrisw <[e-mail]>
Subject: Tremstr and Chris mids...
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

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

From: Tony <[e-mail]>
>>        I played Chris2.mid and Chris5.mid and playmidi returned the "Error
>>on patch info call tremstr"...  I looked at the v2.05 default.cfg and it
>>has tremstr commented out and marcato in its place (45 on cfg file)..
>>I replaced marcato on the new default.cfg and it works fine..

He's absolutely right. Looks like Gravis slipped up. My guess is that we
were going to get a new patch so that tremello strings and string ensemble1
(or is it 2) weren't the same thing, but the patch wasn't released, only
the config file was changed (to protect the innocent?).

So, in order to not get errors if a midfile uses patch number 45
(which chris2 and chris5 do, but possibly many others as well) you'll
have to go into your default.cfg in /ultrasnd/midi and change the name
next to 45 to marcato. The windows .ini file doesn't have this problem so
you'll be fine playing files in windows.

This isn't going to help people who don't read this post, though. So I can
either change across my patch numbers to use the equivalent patch without the
errors, or I can include a new .txt file telling people about the problem.
Don't know. I'll decide in the morning...

Chris.



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

Date: Sat, 22 May 93 23:20:48 +0200
From: [e-mail]
Subject: CUBASE for Windows 1.0
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

[e-mail] writes:
----------------------------
> Has anybody tried out the (excellent) sequencer Cubase for Windows V1.0?
> I tried a friends copy to get it working with my GUS, and althought it
> does have a driver for Windows Multimedia extensions (presumably this
> means midi mapper, does it?) and does give mme and option for output
> to Ultrasound Midi synth, I just get no output from it at all.

Well, I have tried to do just that but haven't got any further than you.
Silence was all I got. I haven't tried to load any patches manually with
Patchmanager, though...

I have had the program crash a few times, and while it's a "1.0-version"
I don't think I will use it even if it can work with GUS...

/Smedis (Niklas Smedberg, [e-mail])

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

Date: Sun, 23 May 93 05:51:36 +0200
From: [e-mail]
Subject: GUS 2.06, and the SDK
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

I just got the new disks and the SDK from epas, and I had some trouble on
the installation. I discovered this:

1. Don't label your disks. The install program won't recognize them if
they have names.

2. When the Windows installation part started I got an error message
saying "Can't find BWCCSVE.DLL" or something. This message has to do with
the file BWCC.DLL that applications that use Borland Custom Controls. I
think that if you setup Windows for another language than English (I
have Swedish) Windows (or Borland code?) will append a "country code"
for the file it is looking for ("SVE" could be the beginning of the
word "SVERIGE", which is the Swedish word for Sweden). Or something...
But the installation went on, and seemed to be ok anyhow. :-)

3. The SDK installation program asks for a file called README.BAT, which
wasn't in the ZIP-file.

/Smedis (Niklas Smedberg, [e-mail])

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

Date: Sat, 22 May 1993 18:28:50 GMT
From: [e-mail] (George Kirikos)
Subject: GUS 3D -- It works!
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

ReprintFrom: comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard

I downloaded the GUS SDK to try out the demonstration of the 3d
technology, and (after shifting my speakers around) I got it to work.
It's a pretty lame demo (just a blast sound -- it also seems to
"click" -- perhaps a bad sample??), but it does show that one can get
the 3d effect out of two speakers. It works much better with
headphones, though.

Now, all we need is someone to write some neat games/demos using the
technology.

+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| George Kirikos                   Internet: [e-mail]      |
| Toronto, Canada                 Telephone: [phone]                 |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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

Date: 23 May 1993 00:36:38 GMT
From: [e-mail] (Curtis W Patrick)
Subject: Re: GUS 3D -- It works!
Message-ID: <1tmgum$[e-mail]>

ReprintFrom: comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard

>I downloaded the GUS SDK to try out the demonstration of the 3d
>technology, and (after shifting my speakers around) I got it to work.
>It's a pretty lame demo (just a blast sound -- it also seems to
>"click" -- perhaps a bad sample??), but it does show that one can get
>the 3d effect out of two speakers. It works much better with
>headphones, though.

A friend told me about this stuff a month or so ago about how somebody had
written code for getting 3d sound.  Of course, I though he was full of sh&t
at first but began to think, "hell, we have two ears, why not a headphone."
Well, I did some research, alittle digging, and came across so cool stuff.

The follows numbers are not accurate, but close.

3d Sound is a capability that can be used by any stereo sound card, you do
not need four channels to accomplish it.

This is how we hear in spatial coordinates:
  Image your head is the center of a spherical coordinate system.
  @ is for the degrees of deviation from the center,
  % is for the degrees of latitude.
  d is distance.

Any sound source can be described as (@,%,d).

Figuring d is kinda rough, without experience you really can't tell if
something is 5 ft.  You basically can just tell if a sound is close (loud)
or far away (quiet).  Simple division of your final sound or even subtraction
of some value of you sound can simulate this.

@ is figured by the difference in time that each ear first hears the sound.
Obviously, if your right ear hears it first, it is to your right.  The amount
of time determines the degree of angle.  ( I don't have the simple formula
here. )

% is determined by echo and sound shadows.  Your pinnia (outter ear) creates
echos of all the sounds you hear.  Stuff infront of you creates a echo that
reaches your ear about the same time that the original sound does (something in
the order of microseconds).  A sound generated from behind has a delay of about
300 milliseconds.

It takes a ton of processing, but all you have to do is mix a single sound: one
for the left ear and one for the right.  After calculating the delays, it is
pretty straight forward stuff.

Now, if you ever get to hear this stuff, close your eyes and you will notice
that the sounds sound like they are inside your head.  Curious.  The reason
for this is because your head and ears create sound shadows.  Sounds from the
side and behind have some frequencies shadowed out.  It all depends on the
distance between YOUR ears, the SIZE of your ears, etc.  This stuff is a bitch
to do, would require capacitors and iductors to create it and then you would
have to have a card specifically designed for your head.

Also, this stuff really shouldn't work with regular speakers, you need head
phones.  With regular speakers, your head may decide that the echos are
actually different sound sources and you may hear multiple sources.

Hope this helps uncover some of this mystery.

Later

[e-mail]
Kurt

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

Date: Sat, 22 May 93 13:48 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: GUS DRAM Expansion
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

Hi all...

    Harking back to the DRAM upgrade subject, I got round the problem of added expence and hassle by butchering my Trident TVGA8900 video card.

    Having only got a straight VGA monitor I can't use the higher-res modes anyway, so I transplanted the top 512k of DRAM chips from the Trident to the GUS. 4...NJ/.4^|MAll that's needed on the Trident is moving the DIL link chip and shifting a couple of links.

    It works surprisingly well - both GUSTEST and GUSDRAM are content with it, and therefore so am I!

TTFN

Jonny Clark ([e-mail])

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

Date: Sat, 22 May 1993 15:43:37 -0300 (ADT)
From: Shadow Of Fear <[e-mail]>
Subject: New 2.06L disks
Message-ID: <Pine.3.02.9305221537.C9790-9100000@clement>

* A copy of this message has been sent to John Smith and Gravis Digest *

Hi,

.I downloaded the new set of disks from epas (2.06L) and unzipped
them on 6 high densities.  When I began the installation, I had no
problems with disk 1, but the installation program just couldn't recognise
disk two.  I re-started the installation 4 times, same problem.
Re-unzipped the files, same problem.  How come?!?

Marc

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

Date: Sat, 22 May 93 16:41:27 EDT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: sdk-request
Message-ID: <9305222041.AA16243@carbonara>

In emacs, I typed   M-x mail   This is what I filled in for the header:

To: [e-mail]
Subject: subscribe

with NO message body.  I sent it off and I got returned mail with a subject
of "Returned mail: unknown mailer error 139".   WHY??

-Tim

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

Date: Sat, 22 May 93 19:08:29 CDT
From: ddebry@itchy (Dave DeBry)
Subject: Sorry for the trouble...
Message-ID: <9305230108.AA19377@itchy>

.For those of you that tried to subscribe to the new digest
(gus-sdk) and had troubles, my apologies.  The problem should now be
fixed.

--
Dave  ddebry@ debry@   \
DeBry dsd.    peruvian. | "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick
      es.     cs.utah.  |  ass, and I'm all out of bubblegum."
      com     edu      /

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

Date: 23 May 93 14:10:28 U
From: "zz Paul Murgatroyd" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Ultrasound Daily Digest V3 #51
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

>From: "Timothy C. Gion" <[e-mail]>
>Subject: SB and GUS coexistence (something weird!)
>Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

>autoexec.bat.  However, Strike Commander still won't recognize my SB.  In
>fact, I tried to just use SBOS and something really weird happened.  I set
>up SC to use the GUS settings, and it started playing the music out of the

Timothy, I also had this problem, and I do not know why it won't recognize the
SB. I found a work around which should also work for you. This only needs to be
done immediately after a cold boot (ie:the first time you turn the power on).
After the computer has booted, change to the ULTRASND directory, and run
SETGUS. When SETGUS shows you the current settings, choose "Accept". SETGUS
will now test the settings in the usual way. They should both pass. Accept the
settings, but when SETGUS asks if you want to modify CONFIG.SYS and
AUTOEXEC.BAT with these settings, choose NO, then exit the program as usual.
Now you will be able to run Strike Commander with no problems.
   The thing that puzzles me this work around is that it doesn't change any of
the setup files at all, so the problem lies somewhere other than CONFIG.SYS and
AUTOEXEC.BAT.

If the above doesn't work, here are my settings:

SB=240H, IRQ=5
GUS=220H, IRQ=11, MIDI/SB IRQ=7, DMA=7

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

Date: Sat, 22 May 1993 16:23:31 +0800
From: [e-mail] (Ralph Lee)
Subject: Re: Ultrasound FTP Sites - New files validated - May 9th, 93
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

ReprintFrom: comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard

Hi,
I was just wondering if you know where's the cheapest place I can buy
the Ultrasound.  I was told that Telemart sold it before for $124 but
they don't seem to advertise anymore.  I you could, could you also tell
me their fax number and how much you bought it for.  I'm trying to buy
one over to Australia.

Thanks for you help
Ralph

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

Date: Sat, 22 May 1993 20:59:41 -0700 (PDT)
From: [e-mail] (Anthony Tang)
Subject: Way to go Gravis!
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

Here's a word of praise for Gravis for getting the SDK out, and making
it PD.  Way to go!  Now we should be getting a lot of neat-o things
coming out.  I'm working on some stuff myself, but finals are coming up,
so I won't have too much time.  The library routines will definitely
simplify everything.

As for the 3D sound routines, they work fairly well, although they're
not the great 3D phenomenon that I've heard so much about.  It takes
a little concentration skill to imagine the sound is really coming from
behind you when it's coming from in front, but it works!  Probably some
visual cues will help a bit.  Also, my speaker placement may not be
ideal.  Headphones didn't prove much better, though.  Of course, with
that one sound, it gets to be boring after a while, although if you use
the UltraChgFreq3d function, you get a neat helicopter sound.  :-)

--
<AANT>                                  This is an AANT:
Anthony Tang                                       ,
[e-mail]                        /\/\/\
.....      \/\/\/
"Aurgh!"                                      " " "

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

End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V3 #53
*************************************

To post to tomorrow's digest:                        <[e-mail]>
To (un)subscribe or get help:                <[e-mail]>
To contact a human (last resort):              <[e-mail]>

FTP sites:                archive.epas.utoronto.ca         pub/pc/ultrasound
...  wuarchive.wustl.edu       systems/msdos/ultrasound
Hints:
      - Get the FAQ from the FTP sites or the request server.
      - Mail to <[e-mail]> for info about other GUS
.related mailing lists (UNIX, OS/2, GUS-MIDI, etc.)

------------ End of Forwarded Message

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

Date: Sun, 23 May 93 12:59:28 EDT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Ultrasound Daily Digest V...
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

Could anyone that has access to the FTP sites send me the new SDK, newest
SBOS, and any other thing that is only a few days old  file-attach to me?

The address would be
interset : [e-mail]
or UUCP:  holonet!cofurm!nick.tucker

Thanks in advance!

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

End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V3 #54
*************************************

To post to tomorrow's digest:                        <[e-mail]>
To (un)subscribe or get help:                <[e-mail]>
To contact a human (last resort):              <[e-mail]>

FTP sites:                archive.epas.utoronto.ca         pub/pc/ultrasound
                          wuarchive.wustl.edu       systems/msdos/ultrasound
Hints:
      - Get the FAQ from the FTP sites or the request server.
      - Mail to <[e-mail]> for info about other GUS
        related mailing lists (UNIX, OS/2, GUS-MIDI, etc.)