Experimental BBS Explossion 3/Experimental BBS Explossion III.iso/gus/digestv2.zip/V2N78.TXT

Text File | 1993-03-23 | 41KB | 1,062 lines

Ultrasound Daily Digest     Tue, 23 Mar 93       Volume 2 : Issue  78

Today's Topics:
                    [GUS] IN3DEMO = ohhh! ahhh! :)
            Are there anyone who has the new pacthformat?
                       DIGEST ADMIN -- GUS FAQ
               FAQ: Gravis Ultrasound ("GUS") FAQ v1.10
                 FAQ for GUS; 16-bit, 44.1 kHz sound
                         General MIDI driver
                        GM (Hamilton??) Driver
                     GM (Make that Miles) Driver
                 GM - Loading patches for GM to work
                           GUS .PAT format
                             GUS and Jill
                           gus memory speed
                  GUS midi connector: error in faq??
                        GusMod 2.11 Problems
                        gusmod 2.11 suggestion
                             Hidden file
                 keyboard problem with new GUS disks
         M2M_V12.ZIP - Converts Amiga MOD files to MIDI files
                      New GUS software-problems!
                    nicemids.zip uploaded to epas
                         Recording with USS8?
                            SBOS & X-Wing
                      SBOS 2.04 - thanks Gravis!
                       Ultrasound Daily Digest
                    Ultrasound Daily Digest V2 #77
             Ultrasound FTP Site - Validations completed
                   What is General MIDI emulation??
                     Win Problems w/ New Diskset
                           X-wing settings
                               Zone 66

    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.

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

Date: 22 Mar 1993 07:19:31 GMT
From: [e-mail] (Charles Budensiek)
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: [GUS] IN3DEMO = ohhh! ahhh! :)
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>



>
>I just downloaded the file IN3DEMO.ZIP (In-cubed demo), a voice recognition
>package for windows 3.1, and it works beautifully with the GUS. Maybe
>someone can upload it to EPAS? I'm far too lazy to do it myself.
>

Oops, I must be getting senile. I forgot to say I downloaded the uuencoded
file (1-4) from the newsgroup comp.binaries.ms-windows

After playing with it, I spode I'll give it a kinda review:

Requirements:
    386 or better
    approx. 1 meg of disk space
    Windows 3.1 and compatable soundcard with microphone. (duh) :)

This demo version of the program only includes a few commands that will
work. Those being microphone on-off, calculator, card file, clock, command
sheel, file manager, icon(ize), program manager and solitaire.

To get it up and running all I had to do was unzip the files, and set them
up in program manager.

The recognition setup involves loading in the demo template and going
through the commands, saying each one twice. It went flawlessly for me <with
my GUS and el-cheapo $10 Radio-Shark mic>.

The only problem <kinda> that I did encounter is if I set down my mic, the
program thinks I said 'clock' and brings up the clock program. I guess
static sound like the word to it <shrug>. I fixed this by simply changing
the voice command for 'clock' to 'time'.

I'll shut up now.

--
=============================================================================
| "Anyone have a coat hanger? My brain itches." | [e-mail]
| "If I was a turnip, would I be revered and    | Charles Budensiek
| "worshipped like I would deserve to be?"      | ph #: Ask if you want it.

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

Date: 22 Mar 93 15:23:25 MET+1
From: "Proconia"  <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: Are there anyone who has the new pacthformat?
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

Hi. Are there anyone who can give me the description of the new patch
format and what new functions that are added?

/Lars Ljungberg



[e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 22 Mar 93 17:00:45 MST
From: ddebry@itchy (Dave DeBry)
Message-Id: <9303230000.AA10160@itchy>
Subject: DIGEST ADMIN -- GUS FAQ
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

    1] The FAQ is now at revision 1.22, so if you want to be up to
date on it, get it from the request server.  It now includes the
current correct (yeah, yeah) way to build the MIDI interface.  Big
thanks to Paul Cunnell.

    2] I'm still working on the system that will update the FAQ on
the FTP sites when I update it here.  Be patient.

    3] The FAQ is now at 60k (1369 lines, 23 questions).  At some
point it's going to have to be split up.  I'm open to suggestions
concerning the best way to do this, ie: topical split: which topics?

    4] I've been getting a lot of email asking how to build MIDI
patches for the GUS.  If someone would like to write up the answer to
this question, I'd really appreciate it.  I'll put it in the FAQ, and
you'll get your name there so you can get the credit.

    Thanks!

--
Dave  ddebry@ debry@   \ "I want to take you on a Caribbean cruise, where
DeBry dsd.    peruvian. | we can hold hands and watch that old Jamaican
      es.     cs.utah.  | moon.  Why that old Jamaican will be mooning us,
      com     edu      /  I have no idea."

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

Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1993 12:37:04 -0600
From: Jerry Whelan <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ: Gravis Ultrasound ("GUS") FAQ v1.10
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

In article <[e-mail]> you write:

-} a) Gravis Ultrasound 3D
-}
-}     BIG IMPORTANT NOTE: YES, this is SOFTWARE.  You will NOT need
-} to upgrade your GUS to be able to do the GUS-3D stuff.
-}
...



-}     "Utilizing Focal Point technology, UltraSound 3D processes the
-} audio signal through a technique called "convolution," new right and
-} left binaural audio signals are generated that create a wraparound
-} sound effect to the human ear.  The sound signal is actually a stereo
-} signal shaped electronically to make the listener hear the sound as
-} three-dimensional and in the correct location -- a psychoacoustic
-} effect that can be manipulated in real time.  When compared to an
-} equalizer, binaural processing adjusts the gain and phase of the
-} frequency band.  But it would take two hundred sliders for gain and
-} another two hundred sliders for phase shift per ear and the ability to
-} change all of them in real time to achieve the immersive virtual
-} reality audio effect of Gravis UltraSound 3D."

    Just reading the FAQ in comp.answers and thought I ought to
comment on this.  Whenever someone talks about binaural imaging,
they are talking about using headphones (probably insert headphones
like Sony sells).  Binaural stuff doesn't work (can't work) from
speakers because binaural sound is sound that has been `shaped' as if
it were recorded from microphones implanted in a listener's ear
(so it gets all the acoustics and 3d cues that a real human gets).
Playing that sound back through speakers causes it to get `processed'
by the shape of the human ear again and messes up all the 3d cues
that were there in the first place and it just sounds stereo.
    Anyways, since you didn't mention speakers or earphones, I figured
it would be a good thing to have the FAQ say something about it.
    I believe that those book-on-tapes that Waldenbooks sells have
the Steven King stories in binaural sound, though I haven't listened
to any of them myself.

    Personally I think it would be cool if someone would figure
out how to make a soundcard do Dolby Pro-Logic encoding so that
my 4-channel stereo could do the 3d stuff without earphones.  But,
alas, the DSP required for it is probably more than is available
to the progammer of any currently available pc soundcard.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
``written by a drunken insane pathological liar''        [e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 1 Mar 93 00:15:44 -0800
From: Daniel Hitt <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: FAQ for GUS; 16-bit, 44.1 kHz sound
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

Hi Dave,

Thanks for preparing the FAQ, i've just read version 1.12 (2-16-93).

One point that is not explicitly made, as far as i can tell,
regards 16-bit, stereo, 44.1 kHz sound.



If i have, say a 10-minute soundfile (100 M) on my hard disk
(16-bit, 44.1 kHz, stereo), and i have a Gus card with say
1 Meg of Ram on it, can it play the soundfile without
clicks or pops or interruptions?  That is, is there
software that handles buffering of samples as they
come from the disk with its 15ms seek delays?

(My particular setup would be with a 40MHz 386 clone.)

I would be using DOS, and make no attempt to have any other
software running while playing the sound file.

If there is such software, and GUS can handle this, is there
any such software whose source code is available?  (If,
for example, one wanted to turn a PC into some kind
of sound server.)

Thanks for any info you can provide.

dan

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

Date: Mon, 22 Mar 93 09:05:26 EST
From: "Burns Fisher, VMS Engineering  22-Mar-1993 0906" <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: General MIDI driver
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

There has been a lot of talk about a "General MIDI driver".  Some people
have been saying stuff like "When Gravis produces it...".  Others have been
suggesting writing one.

First, I have not heard anything that implies that Gravis (or Forte) is
actually writing such a thing.  I may be wrong, but I think it is a big
assumption.

Second, I suggest that if some of us plan to write one, or if we want Gravis/
Forte to do it, that we had better specify what we are thinking about a bit
more carefully.

I think that what I hear being asked for is not a GM Driver so much as it is an
MPU-401/GM Synth emulator.  Am I right?  I guess the other possibility is that
we try to emulate either an SB Midi port/GM Synth or an SCC1 (???).  However, I
suspect that most games which support GM support it via an MPU401, so I think
that is probably the most productive route.  (Someone suggested plugging the
GUS midi-out into a serial port and reading the serial port...this presumes
that the software we are trying to use here will write to the GUS midi port.
There is been an occasional question about whether the GUS really looks like an
MPU401, that has never been completely answered.  I think the answer is likely
to be "a subset at most", cuz the MPU is a complicated beast in its full glory,
designed to do most of the work for software running on a slow machine)



Then the other half of the GM driver is now that we have intercepted the MIDI
sequence that the game thinks it is sending into an MPU401, we need to take
that sequence and play it on the GUS.  This has been done already (at least in
part) by Playmidi.  However, the code to do this, so far as I know, is only
available on the SDK.

Then the third half :-) is how to help people that already have an MPU-401
card.  In this case, we might have an MPU-401 read-only TSR which listens
on the MIDI-in and plays what it hears on the GUS.  Then you make a loop-back
connector and plug midi-in into midi-out.

I don't really play many games, and I have a synth and an MPU-401, so this is
all only mildly interesting to me, when all these thoughts came to me, I
thought I would write them down rather than let them evaporate...Hope it is
helpful.

Burns

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

Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1993 12:15:38 -0500
From: [e-mail] (Jim Buja)
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: GM (Hamilton??) Driver
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

D. Nicholson writes:

>Date: Sun, 21 Mar 93 15:13:46 EST
>From: [e-mail] (Daniel Nicholson  )
>Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
>Subject: Ultrasound Daily Digest V2 #76
>To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>
>
>Well, well, well. A few things to say today:
>   1) The intention of my message was not to say that it's up to
>      Gravis to develop a GM driver. It >WAS< to say that it is up
>      to Sierra, Lucasfilm etc to support your card if they want
>      your money.

I checked thru all the current Digests and since no one has yet mentioned
this I will.
Over on Prodigy in the GUS group (you should see the traffic there!
unbelievable!) there was mention by someone with close connects to
Gravis that Forte was already working on a Hamilton Driver which
I assume is the term used for a General Midi driver that could be
used by Game companies.   Maybe someone else can add some details.

Jim

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

Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1993 12:30:25 -0500


From: [e-mail] (Jim Buja)
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: GM (Make that Miles) Driver
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

Correction on the GM Driver name:  MILES .. not HAMILTON ....

Jim

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

Date: Tue, 23 Mar 93 9:58:15 EST
From: [e-mail] (Adriano_Ennio RAIOLA)
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: GM - Loading patches for GM to work
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

> I think that even though you can't fit all 7 megabytes of GM patches (why are
> they so long?  The TB Multisound uses only 4 mbytes for patches) it would still
> be possible to make a GM driver.  Assuming that software can be "tricked" into
> seeing a GM device (just like how SBOS tricks software into seeing a SB),
> all Gravis has to do is make a driver that loads a custom set of patches that
> fit all 192 patches into 1024k.

Ive been thinking about this idea for ages.. so why cant the driver be programmed
to load patches AS IT NEEDS THEM, from somewhere off the hard disk? I know, this
would possibly slow down games, where in the middle of a music piece the machine
suddenly has to wait for new patches to be loaded, but it would be better than
low quality patches, and besides, most games change music pieces during scene
or menu changes, so it would hardly be noticeable.

I can imaging all sorts of compatability problems with games, crashing when
they have to load when theyre not supposed to, but then again, if a program
like ncache or smartdrv with intelligent writeback (where it gives the
processor back and continues to do disk transfers in the background) can
work with nigh on EVERY program out there, maybe a tsr to load patches on
the go might not be such a hassle..

adrian

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

Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1993 20:10:49 -0800
From: Eric N. Liao <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: GUS .PAT format
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

Does anyone have any clue as to what format Gravis uses for their MIDI patches?
I wanted to make my own MIDI patch, but WAVPAT05 apparently doesn't work with
the new 2.00 software.

Is Gravis working on a patch editor for the gneral public?



Also, I noticed a bug with the PLAYFILE.EXE (new version.)

If you play .WAV files, which automatically set the speed/depth/channels,
a bug occurs after playing a stereo .WAV file.  If you play a MONO .WAV file
after playing a stereo file, the output is all on the left channel.

And, when playing non WAV files, I noticed that the frequency box only lets
you enter 4 digits (instead of 5, which is necessary for anything over 9999Hz.)
I hope you guys (Gravis) fix these two things soon.  The Frequency-Playfile
problem is more annoying.

Also, how about letting the user change the volume as he's playing back a
digital sample (like in USS8) ?

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

Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1993 02:14:14 GMT
From: [e-mail] (Dave Roberts)
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: GUS and Jill
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

Just got ahold of Jill of the Jungle the other day and was playing it
with my GUS.  It sounds awesome!  I can get all the sounds, but the
game animation virtually stops whenever I have the digitized effects
on.  The music is no problem and so I've just been playing with the
digitized effects off.  Is this is a known issue with Jill?

I'm running SBOS 1.4B3 with no switches, however, this doesn't seem to
matter.  I tried some switches but they don't seem to help.  I tried
booting clean from a floppy and I'm just using straight EMM386 for a
memory manager.  I have not tried any previous versions of SBOS or
later versions.  Anyway, I can live with this but the digitized sounds
are really nice and I'd like to be able to turn them on again.

Has anybody else run across this?

(I just keep wondering what this game would have sounded like if Epic
had a GUS when the wrote it.  WOW!)

Dave Roberts
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Network Products Division
[e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 22 Mar 93 19:10:00 PST
From: [e-mail]
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: gus memory speed
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>



i'm certainly no expert at this, but as far as i can tell, all that memory is
used for it to load a patch into, once in there that information does not
need to be calculated, moved or changed in any way until it's time to load
another patch, therefore the chip speed should not be a problem at all,
whether you'll get parity errors i do not know since i have not tested this
out myself, i have all 70 ns chips....    i suspect that it will not, it is
likely that gus does not do parity checking on these things anyways....

remember that however fast your memory speed is, the most you will ever have
to worry about is how fast can you load that patch into your gus's memory...
my response to that is that your hard disk access time will be the limiting
feature, not the 100 ns chips
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [e-mail] (Simon Whittaker)
Subject: SOME QUESTIONS
2.  I have a GUS with 256K 100ns ram on board, and I want to
    upgrade to 1 Meg. Is adding faster memory, eg. 80ns, an
    advantage - i.e. will the GUS's performance be better ? Or
    can this cause problems, such an sync. etc ?

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

Date: Sun, 21 Mar 1993 09:12:43 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: GUS midi connector: error in faq??
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

Well after a bit of frustration I think the gus midi connector box
I built works properly now. My experience has led me to suspect that the
circuit given in the faq is not quite right.

I'll start by quoting the pinout diagram in the faq. This is the 15-pin
male connector from the solder side.

   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8
   o   o   o   o   o   o   o   o

     o   o   o   o   o   o   o
     9   10  11  12  13  14  15

The faq gives the following connections:

pin 1    +5
pin 5    gnd
pin 12    tr
pin 15    rx

This would not work for me. It *would* work if the bottom row of pins was
numbered from right-to-left instead of left-to-right, however. Using the
pinout above, what works for me is:



pin 1    +5
pin 5    gnd
pin 12    tr
pin *9*    rx

I am not game enough to say "the faq is wrong", but I thought I would at
least share my experience in case anyone else has the same problem.

Tony Dyson
University of Newcastle
Australia

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

Date: Mon, 22 Mar 93 14:14:43 -0500
From: "It's your hand, Buckaroo" <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: GusMod 2.11 Problems
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

> BTW: for gusmod, why don't you guys just read the ultrasnd environment
> variable? I think that would provide for a much more easy installation of
> the software.

I also wondered this. I send some mail to Josh but never got a response. I,
too, have had problems with GUSMOD 2.11. If I run it in a directory that
doesn't have any MOD files, it hangs. If I run it in a directory on my SCSI
drive (through an Adaptec 1540B card, which uses IRQ 11), it also hangs,
plus it upsets the SCSI card (this makes me think it's got a harcoded IRQ
11 in there somewhere). It does work fine if I run it in a directory on an
IDE drive with MODs in it...

DDA

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

Date: Mon, 22 Mar 93 18:55:00 PST
From: [e-mail]
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: gusmod 2.11 suggestion
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

i've had a look at that program, it needs an environment variable to tell it
where the executables and where the sound data files are kept...   i for one
do not like to see many hundred files all in the same subdirectory, so if i
were to use gusmod i'd rather install it into a separate subdirectory, making
the ultrasound environment setting inaccurate
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Adam Cowen <[e-mail]>
Subject: GusMod 2.11 Problems
BTW: for gusmod, why don't you guys just read the ultrasnd environment
variable? I think that would provide for a much more easy installation of
the software.



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

Date: Tue, 23 Mar 93 01:57:20 +0100
From: [e-mail]
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: Hidden file
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

In UDD 2.77, Adam Cowen writes:

> I installed the new disks last week, and had the same weird directory as
> others had. But today I also found a hidden file in my root called
> ambjadce. It seems this was also created at install time. When looking
> through the file (and noting creation date) it seems to be a file the
> install makes. Now I had to install of of my hd since I don't have a
> 1.44 floppy drive (yet). It could be an isolated case, but since the file is
> 430k I thought you should maybe check for it as its a waste of space!

I had the same file on my HD as well, so I guess it isn't an isolated case.
Just found it today, while re-installing the new set of disks for the
sixth (6th) (yes, you read it right) (no, it didn't work this time either),
time and thought about checking the hidden files, if there was any problem
there, and found that little (430 something k) file hiding among the
other hidden files in the root directory. A quick scan of the file just
gave me some names of GUS EXE-files and files from the installation +
the text the installation program writes on the screen before & after
it modifies the Autoexec & Config files (ie. 'Modified Config.sys' etc..).
Could THIS file be the cause to the problems I'm having? I have kept
the file on a disk, in case someone from Gravis wants to have a look
at it.

Gravis? Any suggestions?
Can I please be able to use the new set of disks?

 /Erik

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

Date: 21 Mar 1993 01:59:16 GMT
From: [e-mail] (Thomas Wong)
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: keyboard problem with new GUS disks
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

In reply to the fellow who's having keyboard problems with the new
GUS install disks, I have noticed that my DOS prompt utilities like
DOSKEY (that comes with DOS 5), ANARKEY, KEYBUF....etc (I tried them one
at a time instead of all at once of course 8)) fails to work once I play
anything on my Ultrasound with this new set of disks. And that's from
SBOS players to native players like PLAYMIDI. So I looked into the
problem and found that the IRQ 1 which is the IRQ for the keyboard has
been taken over by SBOSDRV. This is something internal becuase I had


SETGUS set my IRQs to 5 and 11 and I can see that as well when I checked
my IRQs. But there is this extra SBOSDRV at IRQ1 and I'm sure that this
is what killed doskey or the others once I play anything. It grabs the
irq and doesn't passes it along. Anybody else notice this? And why are
they grabbing irq1 anyways?!? John (Smith)?

Thomas.

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

Date: Sat, 20 Mar 1993 23:45:03 GMT
From: [e-mail] (Felix)
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: M2M_V12.ZIP - Converts Amiga MOD files to MIDI files
Summary: Reposted by Keith Petersen
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

I have uploaded to WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.Mil and OAK.Oakland.Edu:

pd1:<msdos.music>
M2M_V12.ZIP     Converts Amiga MOD files to MIDI files

M2M_V12.ZIP is a ZIP archive of a DOS program to convert Amiga MOD
files to MIDI files.  MOD files are four-track Amiga music files, and
MIDI stands for Music Information Data Interface.  The archive contains:

  MOD2MIDI.EXE  --  The DOS executable
  MOD2MIDI.DOC  --  A text file explaining how to use MOD2MIDI
  GUITAROU.MOD  --  A sample MOD file
  GUITAROU.MID  --  The finished product MIDI file
  GUITAROU.SET  --  A settings file containing information for
                    the conversion of GUITAROU.MOD to GUITAROU.MID

If you have any questions, please email me at...

    [e-mail]

Thank you.

Alexander Stock

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

Date: Sun, 21 Mar 1993 21:39:58 GMT
From: [e-mail] (Tierney Patrick Jo)
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: New GUS software-problems!
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Eric Pyle) writes:
>    I attempted painfully downloaded the upgraded gravis
>    disks (17-21) at 2400 baud. And I can't get it to
>    install. The first time I ran throught the install, I


>    got to disk 4, and I put disk 4 in the drive, but it
>    kept on looking for disk 4. It would not accept the
>    disk. Then I re-installed it, and it got to the end of
>    disk 3 and DOS barfed up a critical error. I checked
>    the disk and it is ok. Is the files corrupted? I would
>    hate to download these files again. Any suggestions?
>
>

    I'm not sure if this will help, but I was going to post this
anyway, so that others could benefit from my stupidity.

    I ran into the same problems as others regarding the size
of the zipped gus17-21 files on epas. I figured out I'd have to unzip
them first, which I did, but then I only copied the ultrasnd.* files
over. I had read the first disk.id file and figured it was just
for the users info. WRONG. The install prog reads this file
for each disk, so this may explain the search for disk 4 you
mention. If so, you need to add the disk.id file for each disk
and re-install.

    I haven't checked out epas in the last few days, but I think
it would make a lot of sense to unzip these files into their own
directories.

    I also ran into a critical error, but on disk4. I ran Norton
Disk Doctor on the floppy and found a bad sector. It's odd though
that someone else should run into the same problem.

patrick tierney

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

Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1993 18:29:33 +0100
From: [e-mail]
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: nicemids.zip uploaded to epas
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

I spent some time this weekend, fiddling with old cakewalk midi files,
selecting GUS patch numbers, and scaling key velocity data. The results
were kind of nice. Not as good as my Ensoniq VFX synth, but quite good.
12 GUS "optimized" MID files are uploaded in the epas .../submit directory
as nicemids.zip. As far as I can remember the songs are:

Sledgehammer (Peter Gabriel), Vogue (Madonna), Billy Jean (Michael some-
thing), Alone (Heart), Eye Of The Tiger (Foreigner???), Subdivisions
(Rush), Closer To The Heart (Rush), Pin
^^^ key stuck...

(Jan Hammer), Stairway To Heaven (Led Zeppelin), Jealous Guy (John
Lennon?) & ??? (Styx)



Hope you like them... I must have used that calliope.pat without
noticing it was out of key, so don't trust me when I say they are nice...

Christian

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

Date: Mon, 22 Mar 93 18:50:37 PST
From: [e-mail] (Christopher Jon Wilkins)
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: Recording with USS8?
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

I finally decided to buy a GUS now the new disks were out. Was
surprisingly easy to install everything. However, my attempts at recording with
USS8 have been somewhat less than successful. Some questions:

What sort of voltage are the `line inputs' set up to take in? I've tried
plugging my CD player directly into them and I get almost no signal at all.
This is a bit odd since the CD player puts out about 2V peak to peak. How
big a voltage do they expect to get in? The only thing I can think of is that
my RCA to 3.5mm cables may have some built in attenuation (since this is the
size for plugging walkmans into amplifiers). I expressly looked for ones that
didn't say this, but maybe it's just bad packaging. What do other people put
in their line ins? My current solution is to turn down the volume level on my
CD far enough to plug it into the mic input. I'm not happy about this, but at
least it gets a reasonable signal. However, my recordings with USS8 still:

. have plenty of noise in them (much, much more than my tape recorder - even
with dolby switched off). Is this the 8-bit limit? Is it due to using the mic
input?

. have these awful clicks / glitches at intervals that seem to depend on
sampling rate.

In combination, these make recording more or less impossible. This is pretty
sad because I sure don't want to use the patches that some with the thing.
(Sorry guys, but go down to your local synth store and check out some real
sounds before flaming me).

The main possible explanation for the glitches seems to me to be that they're
something to do with the hard disk writes. However, I tried running USS8 from
a ram disk and it still glitched. (I'm not absolutely sure if I did this
correctly, though. How have other people done this? It doesn't exactly seem
to know what a `default directory' is).

The glitching seems to be about every 40k or so (one a second in 22khz stereo)
. Is this a personal problem?

Some background information. I've got 1M with the 768k made up with 70ns chips
. I'm running a 486DX 33Mhz. My disk access time is about 18ms I think and I
just defragmented it. I'm using 16-bit DMA (#7). I tried setting up a 2M
ramdrive (it did exist, but I don't know if USS8 was really using it).



I'm intending to get the 16-bit card when it comes out anyway, but surely I can
do better than this? (Besides which, what if I shell out another $100 and it's
still no good?)

One other thing, anyone know how you adjust the volume of different noises
when playing a midi file (without having to rescale all the velocity data)? How
about setting the pan positions of the different parts. I'm sure it's obvious,
but I just can't seem to find it?

Sorry if these are FAQ's. For some reason I got cut off from the digest a few
weeks ago and don't really know what's been happening.

Thanks.

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

Date: Mon, 22 Mar 93 09:11:07 EST
From: Peter G.N. Scheyen <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: SBOS & X-Wing
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

I've been using SBOS 2.02 for awhile and I do get all the digitized sounds
in X-Wing.  However, I'm noticing a very strange relation between the
digitized sounds and what I assume is my joystick port (on my I/O board,
not on the GUS).  Sometimes when a digitized sound occurs my {X,Y,A}-Wing
will be "jolted" in a random direction.  Now I know this is not me moving
the stick because sometimes it happens when I'm flying straight, not even
touching the stick.  This makes stuff like the pilot proving ground very
difficult as it is hard to aim when I'm jumping all around.  I didn't
experience this will version < 2.02

Anyone else had this problem?

Pete
[e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 22 Mar 93 19:38:43 MET
From: [e-mail] (Axel Fischer)
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: SBOS 2.04 - thanks Gravis!
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

Hi,

I want to thank Gravis for the SBOS 2.04 update.

Not only XWing works now, also Tristan ist 100% ok and sounds like
with the real Soundblaster.



I'm very pleased with the fast response.

However XWing is still unplayable due to the slowdown when you shoot
your lasers or fly very nearby a ship. I would like to see that slowdown
(also noticeable with Tristan) bug fixed. Maybe Gravis gets it sometimes
to a playable level.

-Axel

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

Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1993 18:41:37 -0800
From: Shawn Talbert <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: Ultrasound Daily Digest
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

Hi folks... I haven't received my ultrasound daily digest since something
like March 7!?!! what's up?  I miss it!!!! put me back on, etc etc!
Thanks,

shawn....

[e-mail]

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

Date: Mon, 22 Mar 93 18:50:00 PST
From: [e-mail]
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: Ultrasound Daily Digest V2 #77
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

what's wrong with just simply plugging a midi patch cable from the midi out
port to the midi in port and writing a program which records from the midi?
is there more information that you will need which will not be received by
the midi port itself?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If there is a way to trap the output to the MIDI ports on the Gravis,
then we can do without the hardware interface. But I'm not sure on
this, anyone?

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

Date: 20 Mar 1993 09:23:30 GMT
From: [e-mail] (Thomas Wong)
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: Ultrasound FTP Site - Validations completed
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

                    GRAVIS ULTRASOUND FTP SITES NEWS
==========================================================================


Ftp Site: archive.epas.utoronto.ca     Directory: pub/pc/ultrasound
          wuarchive.wustl.edu                     systems/msdos/ultrasound
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

<YAWN.......> Oh.... mmmm... 'cuse me...

OK everyone, I have finished validating all the files in the submit
directory of archive.epas.utoronto.ca. So you will find all the files
that was there virus free and in their rightful, permanent directories
(those that were ok anyways) throughout the archive.

Now, I'm hitting the sack. Tomorrow, I'll proceed with the final stage
of mirroring all this work over to wuarchive.

One upload worthy of notice is GUS0022.ZIP which is now under
..../ultrasound/gravis/patch. This is SBOS 2.04 and seems to have fixed
all the bugs 2.02 had. Only time will tell once we play around with it
some more.

For those with ftp access, go through all (most) of the directories in
the archive and take a look at all the 00Index. There are a lot of
useful and pretty fancy files all over the archive which I came across
during validation which hasn't been mentioned in messages yet. A lot of
the new 669 and MOD files are pretty awesome. And a lot of the new
programs that haven't been mentioned yet are pretty neat as well. I have
already posted messages about the "must see" files. But all the others
are worth playing around with as well. For those with free ftp and lots
of time on their hands that is. Then again, you'd probably played around
with them while they were still in the submit directory. 8)

Anyways, the trick to look at 00Index file in ftp without having to
download the file is to do a....

get 00Index |more

OR

get 00Index |cat

In fact, you can do this with any text file or if you have fancy filters
on your unix box you want to feed it through. Have fun!

I'm hit'n the sack! One last job tomorrow (mirror to wuarchive) and this
project will finally be out of my hair and the archive will be running
back in normal mode again. 8) Low volume validation and no more reading
20 screen full everytime you do a "dir" in the submit directory. 8)

Thomas.

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

Date: Mon, 22 Mar 93 20:11:05 SST
From: Shih-Ping Chan <[e-mail]>


Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: What is General MIDI emulation??
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

What is General Midi emulation? I thought that General Midi was
a 'software standard' that assigned standard patches to the program
numbers, no? You guys seem to talk about it as a hardware standard.

Is it the same as COM port MIDI, e.g., the TG100 has a COM port midi
interface??  Totally confused now by the use of General MIDI .....

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

Date: Mon, 22 Mar 93 7:15:07 PST
From: Lee Bollard <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: Win Problems w/ New Diskset
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

I ran into several Windows problems after installing the new disk set:

All seem to go away when I switch from using DASHBOARD as the Windows
shell, and go back to Program Manager.  This problem was nonexistant
until I installed the new disk set.

1. When attempting to start PatchManager I am presented with a series of
dialog boxes:

      a.  "MidiOutCachePatches: This function is not supported.  Use the
      Capabilities function to determine which functions and messages the
      driver supports."

      b.  "MidiOutCacheDrumPatches: This function is not supported.  Use the
      Capabilities function to determine which functions and messages the
      driver supports."

      c.  "The Ultrasound MIDI Synth is being used by another application."

  The PatchManager then minimizes itself.


2.  WinJammer doesn't load patches anymore.  The only Windows app that works is
Media Player.


3.  Every time I run a DOS application from Windows I see the following message:

     "Error on load of Patch library (C:\ULTRASND\SBOS\SBOSLIB.SBS)"

    The dos apps run fine, but obviously something isn't right here.

I've tried setting the GUS to DMA 1,6 & 7.  No difference.
    GF1 IRQ=5


    Midi IRQ=7


PC is a Hewlett-Packard 486/66ST w/Adaptec 1740 SCSI-2 430MB HD, EISA. 16MB
RAM.

What's wrong here?

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

Date: Mon, 22 Mar 93 13:43:35 +0200
From: Shmuel Gazit <[e-mail]>
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: X-wing settings
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

Hi,

At first X-wing didn't give me the speech (using 1.43 and up), but after
I ran qemm (6.02) with the NOXMS option, my 4MB Ram were enough probably
for it to speak. Not that it did it that great - it lost words here and
there. I didn't check 2.04 yet. I noticed that ppl that complained
about not having sound effects etc, used qemm with stealth mode,
maybe that caused a prob ? btw, my machine is 386sx/25.

Could some kind soul (John smith, u are the closest one to the files),
please upload the patch mentioned in the readme of the new disks,
for HAVOC (Roger Rabbit) that is on the bbs ? Thanks in advance :)


Well, thats all for now..
/Shmulik.

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

Date: Mon, 22 Mar 93 19:31:34 EST
From: [e-mail] (Jason Jagatic)
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Subject: Zone 66
To: Ultrasound Daily Digest <[e-mail]>

I have been tinkering around with Zone 66 the last few days, and I really
enjoy it.  Congrats Renaissance!  BUT, one thing that is missing is a Save
Game feature...  At least there isn't one that I know of...  Is this available
in the commercial versions?

                        Thanks.
                        Jay.

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

End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V2 #78
******************************



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