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SOUND BLASTER DIGEST
Number 16
March 1992 Edition.
A newsletter for Sound Blaster Enthusiasts.
Edited and Published by Brad Barclay.
Assistant Editors: Todd Clayton and Karen O'Hearn
Musical Director: Kim O'Hearn
/\
____________________________ / \/\
\ / \ ________________________________
\ / \ /
\/ \ /
\/
TABLE OF CONTENTS
=================
Title: Page:
----- ----
From the Editor's Desk....................1
From the Assistant Editor's Desk..........3
COMMERCIAL REVIEW: KING'S QUEST V........4
Subscriptions.............................6
SHAREWARE REVIEW: TRAK INFO v2.0.........7
Advertisements............................8
Last Call for Demo Tape Offer............10
SBD SPECIAL:
MultiMedia: Its Forms and Uses.....10
Contacting Us............................13
HARDWARE REVIEW:
The MultiMedia Upgrade Kit..........14
Included Files...........................16
Of .MOD's and .NST's.....................16
Wrapping it Up...........................18
Contributions to the SBD.................18
FORMS:
------
Subscription Form........................19
BBS Registration Form....................20
Demo Tape Order Form.....................21
Advertisement Order Form.................22
The Sound Blaster Digest (SBD) Copyright (c) 1992 Brad Barclay.
You may freely distribute this file, and all included files, to
whomever you wish, as long as it is not for profit, and that all
files are kept together. The use of the SBD, in whole or in part,
for any other purpose is a criminal offence, and is punishable by
law. This is not Public Domain text, nor is it Shareware. The
SBD is a free publication, distributed monthly. If you have any
questions or comments about our Copyright, or any part of the SBD,
please feel free to write to us at the address listed near the end
of this text.
Page 1
FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Welcome readers to the 16th issue of the Sound Blaster Digest,
the only monthly magazine for Sound Blaster users!
As promised last month, this month we will be giving some
special reviews of some aspects of the Sound Blaster and Sound
Blaster Pro that we have thus far been unable to discuss: the CD-
ROM capabilities of the Pro card, and the MIDI capabilities of the
two Sound Blaster cards. In this issue we'll also review the
Sierra game King's Quest V on CD-ROM.
These past two months have been both good and bad for us here
at the SBD's main office. This is the second issue that is late to
be distributed, and as our subscriber friends can tell you, they
still have not received their disks from February. We also have
yet to contact last month's contest winners to tell them about
their prizes, and we are behind in replying to the big pile of mail
we have here.
As many of our readers know, last month we underwent numerous
computer upgrades (of which we still aren't totally finished).
First we installed a 16Mhz 80286 motherboard, some support boards,
and a new hard drive. Two days later the motherboard totally died
with no hope of recovery. We were down for a while because of
that.
So we put in a new motherboard: a 20Mhz-80286. A few days
later we upgraded to Super VGA, and then a couple of days after
that, we received our MultiMedia Upgrade Kit from Creative Labs.
We began our tests of the equipment and software that we received
with this, such as the commercial version of the Tetra Compositor,
and Windows 3.0 with MultiMedia Extensions version 1.0. Two weeks
later our Super VGA card died a horrible death, making the system
absolutely useless. A call to the card's manufacturer yielded
positive results: they are mailing me a new BIOS chip for free
(which should probably arrive sometime the second week of March).
Unable to wait, and not sure if this would totally solve the
problem, I went on to buy a Targa TVGA 8900C card with 1 Meg of
onboard RAM. This card has served me well this past day, and I
have been absolutely amazed at the graphical quality I get out of
it (up to 1024*768 with 256 colours). If you're looking for a good
graphics card to complement your Sound Blaster or Pro card, take a
good look at this one: highly recommended.
Page 2
Anyhow, the system is working again, and so everything will
hopefully be moving more or less as it should. We are still having
some problems: our new office still isn't ready and I can't order
the new phone line for our new voice support line until it's been
totally vacated. We're still trying to upgrade the Support BBS
some (mainly with the left over equipment from the 20Mhz AT and
MultiMedia Upgrade), and I need to get our staff a bit more
organized here so we can get the job done more consistently, and to
help divide the workload up.
We thank you for your great patience over the past few months
with the SBD. It has cost us much in the way of time and money:
sales have ground to a halt the past two months, and we have
incurred some hefty costs telephoning our Subscribers to inform
them of the reasons for the delays (we still haven't contacted all
of them), plus the costs of the upgrades in the first place.
The end result should prove to be better for everyone: we
are now able to run anything written for the Sound Blaster and
Sound Blaster Pro, we will have much better support for the
readers, plus we are now distributing to more places! Not only are
we distributing monthly the SBD to Super SONIC BBS and the Sound
Blaster Digest Support BBS here in the Toronto area, but we are
also starting distribution directly to Star Link Network BBS in New
York City, and the America Online Network. We also have special
distribution nodes in Singapore and many other countries! See the
new heading in our Official BBS list for more details on our
official distribution and support sites!
Also new this month, our FM music will now be distributed in
two formats: the standard Sound Blaster .CMF format, and in
Standard MIDI format for playing through Windows, or with Voyetra's
Sequencer Plus Pro and other MIDI players for a wider range of
playability.
Finally, on the topic of our music, I would like to personally
welcome our newest staff member here at the SBD, Kim O'Hearn. Last
month Kim provided us with her rendition of "Phantom of the Opera"
from the musical by the same name, and since has produced enough
songs for the SBD to last us the rest of the year! She has now
learned how to use the AdLib Visual Composer for programming FM
music, and is now going on to learn how to program using the Tetra
Compositor, so the SBD may finally be able to produce its first
ever .NST song! And yes, Kim and Karen are related.
Keep on Blasting, and enjoy this month's issue!
Page 3
FROM THE ASSISTANT EDITOR'S DESK:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
By Todd Clayton.
This month I happened to receive some interesting mail from a
user calling from Singapore. This person said that the Sound
Blaster Pro has undergone a revision, and the SB Pro v2.0 is now
available in that country. Now before we all get our hopes up, let
me remind you that this is an unsubstantiated report, and the user,
although from Singapore, isn't tied to Creative Labs in any way.
Time for some speculation: what on Earth could they do to
improve the standard to which all other sound cards are judged by?
The only card worth buying under $800. We'll have to see, simply
because we'll probably have to wait a few months for it to hit
our fair continent.
Congratulations goes out to Creative Labs for donating a Sound
Blaster MultiMedia kit to our magazine. What a surprise Brad must
have had when the mail carrier handed him another Pro card and a
CD-ROM drive! Amazing.
Darts go out to Turtle Beach software this month, due to the
fact that they haven't sent the promised copies of Recording
Studio Pro. These were to be used as prizes for an upcoming
contest. Unfortunately, after many faxes and some letter mail,
they've seemingly dropped off the face of the Earth. Too bad,
however, what can you expect for free?
--------------------
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████████████████████ Dial (718) 972-6099 █████████████████████
An Official SBD Distribution Site.
Page 4
COMMERCIAL REVIEW: KING'S QUEST V (CD-ROM VERSION)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Reviewed by Brad Barclay.
Published by Sierra OnLine.
One of the first things that I wanted to explore when I
received my CD-ROM drive were some of the game packages available
on these super-high capacity disks. This one seems to have been
the perfect choice.
King's Quest V is not exactly your typical adventure game. It
combines a gripping plot and storyline with humorous, often
cliche-like encounters, and many often deadly and dangerous
situations. In these respects, this game is not unlike most of
Sierra's other games. I have long been a fan of Sierra games, but
never have I been so immediately pulled into a game.
Unlike most Sierra adventure games, Kings Quest V on CD-ROM
has one major difference: fully digitized sound for all the
characters. Everyone who has played a Sierra Adventure game can
tell you of those sometimes annoying text boxes which come up when
someone is supposedly "speaking" to your character. But in KQ V on
CD-ROM, every character has a recorded response, giving the game a
more movie-like feel. When you speak to a character (this game
even includes you speaking to the characters via your digitized
voice) a small window pops up with their image, and they speak back
to you through an actor's digitized voice.
Not only is the sound quality quite good, but the very smooth
and fluid animation give this game a much better and user friendly
feel to it. Characters are lifelike and almost seem real.
The user interface on this game is much better than many
previous Sierra games. No typing is required if you own a joystick
or a mouse, with the exception of choosing a filename to save your
games under. Keyboard control is also supported. Of these three
input types, I found the mouse easiest to use: although the
keyboard was quite straight forward, and the joystick was also,
movement was quicker and much less impeded with the mouse. This is
not the fault of Sierra, however, but more of a limitation of
joystick and keyboard hardware.
Page 5
The game can load in one of two modes. There is a regular DOS
mode, and a Windows 3.0 with MultiMedia 1.0 mode. The latter
allows you to use Windows multitasking capabilities, plus it allows
you to utilize some of the MultiMedia Extensions special drivers
for specialized hardware, such as MIDI patches for instrument
assignments. I found both types to have their advantages and
disadvantages.
In DOS loaded mode, loading KQ V was extremely hard due to
its memory demands: it would be nearly impossible on a machine
with no more than 640Kb of memory and any version of DOS less than
5.0. I configured KQ V to use my extended memory, but it still
required about 600Kb of free memory: a task which was nearly
impossible due to the drivers required. Even through LoadHigh and
DeviceHigh through DOS, I could not boot off of my Hard Disk and
then load KQ V. Numerous drivers were absolutely required to load:
the Sound Blaster Pro CD-ROM device driver, the DOS High Memory
driver (to load all other drivers high), the MSCDEX driver (for
making DOS recognise the CD-ROM drive), and my mouse driver. It
took a lot of playing around with to get just enough free memory:
I had to scale down my BUFFERS= and FILES= in my CONFIG.SYS, load
everything into high memory, and then scale down the number of
buffers in the MSCDEX driver. To do this without messing up my
hard disk's CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files, I simply created a
special boot disk which would load only the necessary drivers at
their smallest possible memory size, and then automatically run KQ
V. This ended up to be very handy indeed, and is recommended to
anyone who wishes to play the CD-ROM version of this game.
The benefits in DOS mode were that you only needed standard
VGA, everything, including the 15 minute opening cartoon was fully
animated with no decrease in speed, and the game pointer was a good
sized colour pointer. The game also fully utilized the Sound
Blaster's FM channel.
Windows with MultiMedia mode was very easy to configure, and
had no problems with memory on my machine, but it had more
limitations once loaded than it did in DOS mode. First of all, the
game was slower to respond, and went into an automatic 'slideshow
mode' in the cartoon sequences which dotted the game, instead of
using the full animation of the DOS mode game. Also, the pointer
was a small black and white pointer which was not very appealing.
In Windows mode the game also required Windows be configured for
640 by 480 resolution with 256 colours to run properly. This mode
is not supported on any standard VGA cards, and thus requires a
VGA card with at least 512k of memory. The game also would only
support up to 3 Sound Blaster FM voices, which hampered the
background music in some places. As the final insult, when the
game was run in Windows mode, it would not load those games saved
under DOS mode.
Page 6
All in all, it was good to see someone taking the step towards
supporting the Microsoft MultiMedia standard fully in a game, but I
personally preferred playing it in DOS mode. Besides, I have
little reason to multitask when playing such a game. Such
problems incurred through Windows on my 20 Mhz 286 machine may not
be evident on a 386 machine running Windows in 386 Enhanced mode.
This game is definitely one not just to be played, but to be
experienced by every computer game lover. The really great thing
about this game was even with all its special MultiMedia support,
it was the same cost as the diskette version that did not support
MultiMedia.
CD-ROM is the perfect media for future games to be published:
they are next to impossible for the average user to copy, this
eliminating the problems of software piracy that software companies
have had to endure throughout the history of computers. It also
allows them to publish much higher quality games that can capture
the imagination. More and more often in the future we will see
games that will not be made by just a software development team,
but by producers, directors and actors and actresses as movies are
made today. And this game is the first step in achieving a new
wave in the way we play on our computers.
-------------------
SUBSCRIPTIONS:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Having a hard time finding the newest copy of the SBD on your
favourite local BBS? Why not consider a SBD subscription? A
subscription entitles you to 12 great issues, one a month, packed
full of SB and SB Pro news and reviews. Subscribers also get
special bonus files not available anywhere else, plus special
offers on software and support! Nowhere else can you find this
sort of deal for your Sound Blaster needs.
Simply fill out the attached form, and enclose the required
amount...it's that easy!
Page 7
■■■ Welcome to the SuperSONIC Sound System ■■■
┌─────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────┬─────┐
│░▒▓█░│ ░░░▒▒▒▓▓▓█████ Premiere Sound Base █████▓▓▓▒▒▒░░░ │░█▓▒░│
│░▒▓█░│ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄ │░█▓▒░│
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│░▒▓█░│ Sound and Optics Net for IBM Computers. Wave Zone │░█▓▒░│
│░▒▓█░│ ░░░▒▒▒▓▓▓█████ 416-225-8942 Tor.ON █████▓▓▓▒▒▒░░░ │░█▓▒░│
│░▒▓█░├───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤░█▓▒░│
│░▒▓█░│ SuperSONIC BBS. SysOp: Brian & Brent Bourne. S │░█▓▒░│
│░▒▓█░│ SoundBlaster Digest Distribution Site. O │░█▓▒░│
│░▒▓█░│ Technical and Other support for the SB/ADLIB. N │░█▓▒░│
│░▒▓█░│ Fido Net: 1:250/722 Home of the SONIC NET. I │░█▓▒░│
│░▒▓█░│ 700+ ROL Songs. Online RPGS. 19200 bps! C │░█▓▒░│
│░▒▓█░│ Growing selection of MOD/STM files. . │░█▓▒░│
├─────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┤─────┤
│░▒▓██│ ▄ ▄ ▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄ ▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ │██▓▒░│
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└─────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────┴─────┘
Link your Modem Tracks with us and Hear the Superior Sound
--------------------
SHAREWARE REVIEW: TRAK INFO V2.0
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
By Todd Clayton, Assistant Editor.
[1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10]
Ease Of Use ****************
Graphics ************
Sound Blaster
SB Pro Support
Picture this: you've just finished logging off your favourite
sound card/file BBS and you've downloaded a music file that had no
description. Even more to the point, the person who archived it
somehow managed to lose the file extension on the interior file.
Now, you could spend a while renaming the file to many sound file
extensions, or you could throw in a bogus extension and then run
this utility!
Page 8
Trak Info was designed by Coridon Henshaw as a utility to
solve just these problems. What at first might have been a hair
pulling ordeal is now just a minor annoyance. Using its
windows-like interface with your mouse couldn't be easier. Simply
load the file into memory, then get information about the song
(Instruments, etc.) or file information.
Everyone knows about the instruments in say, a .MOD file, but
you can find out some interesting information from the file
information area. Do you want to know what day it was originally
finished? How about the true extension of the file? True size?
Well, it may not come in handy 100% of the time, but in certain
annoying situations, it does help.
After Beta Testing the original, then testing it out for this
review, I found only one minor bug in the program. When you are
opening a file for information, it is necessary to hit the tab key
twice to toggle it from load to cancel and back again. Failure to
do so will result in the program not letting you choose the file to
analyse. Small annoyance, but noteworthy. Coridon assures us that
this bug will be gone within a few short revisions.
This file along with all other shareware files reviewed are
available from the Sound Blaster Digest Support BBS. (416)
840-2485.
--------------------
ADVERTISEMENTS:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Do you run a BBS? Have you written a piece of software? Do
you write custom music? If so, you may be interested in an
advertisement in the SBD. Thousands of SOUND BLASTER users read
the SBD every month, and many even have it delivered right to
their door. So if you give some sort of special support to those
people who use the SOUND BLASTER, advertising in the SBD would be
the logical choice!
Here's a list of our rates, effective January 1st, 1992:
Number of lines: Cost:
--------------- ----
0 - 10 $3 / Month
11 - 30 $5 / Month
31 - 40 $10 / Month
41 - 50 $15 / Month
Lines are limited to a maximum of 80 columns. All costs are
in Canadian dollars.
Page 9
\ /
___\/___ Live and on the
|| air from Toronto!
/||\
|| The Musical Chair
====
======
====
|| _______
|| | |
|| | | _____
______|| | | | |
||\ | |___| | Around the clock.....
Sky || \ | | | | Around the world.....
Dome || \| | | | Around the bend.....
|||| | | | |
|||||| | | | | The M sical Chai ...
||||||||| | | |
|||||||||| | | | What's missing? U R!
ANNOUNCING the COMPLEAT Musical Chair discography on CD-ROM!
Through special arrangement, a limited pressing of 75 discs is being
made of EVERY file in our world-renowned SOUND BLASTER collection!
For a mere $99, you can have EVERY SB, Adlib, Midi, .MOD, .STM and music
utility file you will find on The Musical Chair, on permanent CD-ROM!
Also included are 350 megs of the absolute latest and greatest in
shareware! Windows applications, games, utilities, and much much more!
Totals for the Musical Chair CD-ROM 10,056 656,245,748
The Musical Chair also sells CD-ROM players at very competitive rates!
Contact The Musical Chair's DJ, Jeff Woods, at: 416-284-4614 evenings, or
416-289-4645 fax for more details! This disc is now shipping, and about
1/3 sold out already! This is a limited run of 75 discs to be stocked!
Reserve yours TODAY! So call today, or write the following address:
Jeff Woods, PO Box 130, West Hill, Ontario, Canada M1E 4R4
Thanks for your support of The Musical Chair!
Page 10
LAST CALL FOR DEMO TAPE OFFER!
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
This is it: the last month the Sound Blaster Digest will
offer the Sound Blaster Digest Demo Tape special offer. This
special offer has been one of our most successful ever, allowing
you to take the best in Sound Blaster music with you anywhere you
go!
For those of you who have missed this offer before, this is
now your last chance to officially order the Demo Tape. But if you
happen to miss this last call, don't worry: already in the works
are plans for the SBD Demo Tape Volume ][, containing newer and
better music! Great on its own, and the perfect companion to the
original Demo Tape!
Special note to music authors/transcribers: if you have
created a piece for the Sound Blaster or Sound Blaster Pro, be it
.MOD, .NST, .CMF, .WAV, .VOC, .ROL or any other popular format,
please send it to us, and we will consider it for the new tape!
Upload you composition to either the SBD Support BBS (please see
the included file SBDBBS.TXT for the telephone number), or place it
on disk and mail it to the SBD, and we'll be sure to consider it!
--------------------
MULTIMEDIA: ITS FORMS AND USES.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Written by Brad Barclay
One of the things I find most irritating as I read many of the
more established computer magazines such as Byte, articles on
MultiMedia usually deal with high resolution graphics and faster
machines for running MultiMedia applications. Sometimes separate
articles deal with mass storage devices, and even more rarely, they
deal with the sound aspect. Many of these sparse articles about
audio MultiMedia talk about how one needs "digitized sound", and
that's about it. One author went as far to say that MIDI was a
good tool in MultiMedia applications. Being the Editor of the
Sound Blaster Digest, such lack of information published about the
sound aspect of MultiMedia seems rather misinformed on the part of
the writers of the articles.
Recent studies have shown that it is the sound that captures
the attention of someone wishing to take part in a MultiMedia
presentation, and for good reason: graphics from a monitor are
only picked up when a person is in sight of the display screen, and
is facing towards it. On the other hand, one does not have to be
facing the source of the sound to hear it. This simple fact makes
sound all the more important in MultiMedia applications.
Page 11
Part of what makes me so upset at the dozens of articles
published in so many computer magazines is that they relate
MultiMedia as separate items: sound, graphics, storage, and little
more. I have yet to read a single article which ties these items
together. The theory of MultiMedia is that all of these separate
functions should be mixed together coherently, and thus it is only
logical that an explanation of MultiMedia should be the same to
truly understand its benefits.
MultiMedia seems to be a subject on nearly everyone's mind
these days. People are asking "What can it do for me?" and "How
can I benefit from it?". MultiMedia forums are popping up all
around the world, and software and hardware companies alike are all
trying to define a MultiMedia standard.
Through all the complex definitions, the basic concept of
MultiMedia is still the same: a combination of many media forms,
preferably in their highest quality forms. This usually means
combining audio, graphical and text video. It may come as no
surprise to veteran computer users that such combining of features
has been available in video games for more than a decade.
Yet the MultiMedia of today now must meet the higher demands
of those who wish to use it. Certainly nearly 10 years ago it was
possible to combine 4 colour CGA graphics with simple sine-wave
sound, or even complex sounds through the PC speaker such as is
used in RealSound technology, but the overall effect was not as
appeasing as perhaps a slideshow with a synchronised audio tape
playing in the background in some sort of meeting room somewhere.
Now with today's technology, high resolution graphics and high
quality sound and music are available for a very good price, to the
point where even many home computer hobbyists can afford it.
High resolution video is readily available through VGA and
higher video standards, allowing photographic and near-photographic
quality images. High quality sound, as available in the Sound
Blaster Pro, is also available at a very reasonable price. The
only other two necessary components to run today's MultiMedia is a
fast microprocessor, and a mass storage device, one that's
preferably removable, and cheap to produce.
Page 12
Of the latter two requirements, one is necessary, while the
other was more or less chosen by the industry. Most MultiMedia
applications require at least a 12Mhz 80286 based machine or its
equivalent to process the large amounts of data required for
MultiMedia. From my personal tests, though, one requires a machine
capable of at least 20Mhz to perform many of the higher animation
tasks in MultiMedia. Microsoft has recently upgraded the system
requirements of its MultiMedia standard to at least a 20Mhz 80386
machine. In my tests I have found that my 20Mhz 80286 machine
performs perfectly even under the harshest of conditions I have
thus far been able to throw at it.
As for the mass storage medium, CD-ROM technology offers the
best of all worlds: relative cheap to make, nearly impossible to
copy, plus mass storage capabilities: just over 600 Mb available
on each disk. Another advantage of CD-ROM technology is that it
has been the standard in the music industry for many years, and
thus regular CD audio can easily be incorporated into a MultiMedia
show.
These are just the basics of MultiMedia, however. Many
individuals and companies go further to state that MultiMedia
should include an easy to use interface for more interactive
MultiMedia productions. For most, this requires systems have some
sort of pointing device, the most preferred being the mouse and the
trackball. For others, MultiMedia requires more than what you can
get with simply VGA in the way of graphics, but one that requires
at least a resolution of 640 by 480 pixels, with a possible 256
colours on screen at this resolution.
No matter what the differences in the current definition of
what is required for MultiMedia, the possible uses of this
technology is nearly endless. Interactive video games and
reference materials are already beginning to proliferate,
interactive tutorials with digitized speech and computer movies
with no user interaction are also uses of MultiMedia which are
actively being explored.
One of the especially nice things about MultiMedia is the fact
that for interactive MultiMedia applications, the use needs no
prior knowledge on how to use a computer to use a well programmed
interactive MultiMedia piece of software. Synchronized graphics
along with digitized speech for help in stepping a user through a
simple process can be of help to young children, disabled people,
and those who are simply computer-illiterate.
As we forge onward into the nineties, MultiMedia will be the
technology heading a brand new age of mass information exchange,
bringing on new benefits and challenges of its own.
Page 13
CONTACTING US:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
If you wish to contact us, please feel free to write us at the
following address:
SOUND BLASTER DIGEST
36 Sutter Ave.
Brampton, Ontario
CANADA L6Z 1G7
Or phone between 17:30 and 22:00 Eastern Standard Time at:
(416) 846-5599
Two BBS systems have special support for SBD Readers. You
can contact us at any of the following BBS's (See the enclosed BBS
list for telephone numbers):
SUPER SONIC BBS.
The SBD Support BBS
Also, SUPER SONIC BBS has a special password for SBD readers
to quickly download the SBD. It is:
Name: SB DIGEST
Password: SONIC
The SBD Support BBS also allows first time callers to download
the Sound Blaster Digest, and leave messages to either the Editor,
or either of the Assistant Editors.
The SBD is also distributed on America Online BBS. Use
keyword HARDWARE, and select Hardware Publications. It has every
issue of the SBD available to its members, and also supports chat
nights on topics of interest to Sound Blaster users, such as
MultiMedia, MIDI, .MOD/.NST files, and more.
You can also leave a message to the Editor on America Online.
Just address your message to SBD BRAD.
We also check for mail on a monthly basis on StarLink Network
BBS (see our Registered BBS list for their number). You can leave
mail to the SBD there by addressing it to Brad Barclay.
We hope to hear from you soon!
Page 14
HARDWARE REVIEW: THE MULTIMEDIA UPGRADE KIT
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Reviewed by Brad Barclay
From Creative Labs, Inc.
As the integration of sound and graphics moves forwards, more
and more companies are beginning to get onto the MultiMedia
bandwagon. It is no surprise that the company that has for so
long been the PC sound standard is one of the first to introduce a
kit to make your AT compatible machine a fully MultiMedia
compatible machine.
To install this kit, there are some necessary pre-requisites
which should already be installed for the best performance. Your
computer should be at least a 12Mhz 80286 machine with a minimum of
1Mb Extended memory. You should have at least a VGA standard card
and monitor with 256k of onboard memory: 512k or higher is much
preferred for many applications, but is not totally necessary. You
will also need at least 1 free slot in your computer system, but no
sound card is necessary. The kit could possibly be installed on
an XT class machine, or even an old PC, with CGA graphics, but so
much is lost in such a setup in the way of memory and speed that
the problems would outweigh the benefits to be gained in such a
setup.
The kit comes with a standard Sound Blaster Pro card, the MIDI
interface cable, all the usual SB Pro software on diskettes, a CD-
ROM drive (available in both internal and external models),
software diskette for installing the CD-ROM drive onto your
computer, the necessary CD-ROM interfaces for connecting it to your
computer, a CD caddy (a special cartridge in which you place the CD
before putting it into the drive), and 5 CD-ROM disks containing
various programs such as Windows 3.0 with MultiMedia Extensions
v1.0, and thousands of MIDI and digitized sound files, along with
numerous CD Audio pieces of music. Also included is a disk
containing a full Windows reference library (Encyclopedia, Book of
Facts, Atlas, Dictionary and others), another containing Jones in
the Fast Lane from Sierra, and one containing numerous software
demonstrations. My kit came with only the Windows CD and the
Prosonus CD which contains only music, and thus the others will not
be described further here.
The installation of the equipment was fairly straight forward,
and I was able to get all the equipment properly working upon my
first try. My kit came with the internally mounted CD-ROM drive,
which fitted perfectly in my last free drive space in the main
computer housing.
Page 15
Software installation was also very easy, with only one small
problem: one of the two necessary device drivers for running the
CD-ROM drive, MSCDEX from Microsoft, was of not the newest version,
and would not load on its own under DOS v5.0. To load the driver
under DOS v5.0, I had to first load the Version setting software,
SETVER.EXE into my CONFIG.SYS file (I know this may sound
confusing, but yes, SETVER.EXE is supposed to be loaded into your
CONFIG.SYS via a DEVICE= or a DEVICEHIGH= statement. It is an .EXE
file because you must both load it as a device driver, and you can
run it from the command line to change the version table under
DOS). This allowed me to use the CD-ROM drive with DOS v5.0.
After searching around a little, I was able to find a special
driver update on The Starlink Network BBS (see the Registered BBS
list for their number). This new driver works perfectly under DOS
v5.0, without the need of any special driver.
Once installed, everything worked just wonderfully. The CD-
ROM drive worked wonderfully with all software we had to use it
(Such as PLAYCD and the Voice Editor for the SB Pro, both of which
come with the Pro card) for playing regular music tracks on Audio
CD's. We also had no trouble reading any of the CD-ROM disks that
came with the package.
The CD-ROM drive is of about the same speed as a 20Mb XT hard
drive, with a data transfer rate of about 150Kb/s.
The MIDI interface is simply a cable that attaches to the
Joystick interface on the back of the Pro card, and ends in one
MIDI in and one MIDI out port, along with 1 joystick out port.
This should be good enough for most MIDI hobbyists. For more
complex MIDI arrangements that require more plugs, a special MIDI
connector box is available separately.
The Pro card works just as it does without the MultiMedia
equipment, although the addition of such equipment effectively
increases the functionality of the Sound Blaster Pro card.
All in all, this kit does exactly what it says it does: you
can upgrade your AT compatible computer to function as a full MPC
class computer. It ease of installation should allow even many
beginners to quickly install this kit into their computers,
although the software installation in some cases requires some more
expertise. All in all, it is the kind of quality of kit that you
would come to expect from the makers of the Sound Blaster and the
Sound Blaster Pro, and is highly recommended.
Page 16
INCLUDED FILES:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Here is a list of this month's included files:
SBDBBS.TXT This month's update of our
world-wide SBD Registered BBS's.
ALONE.CMF
ALONE.MID "Alone" by Heart. Transcribed by Kim
O'Hearn.
INSERT.SBD Special new "Subscribers Insert" for
obtaining special offers and more!
(Subscribers Only)
--------------------
OF .MOD'S AND .NST'S...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Written by Brad Barclay
One of the questions most often asked of myself on the Sound
Blaster Digest Support BBS is the difference between a .MOD and a
.NST file. We are the only BBS in the world that I know of that
makes this proper distinction between the two filetypes.
Much confusion surrounds these two filetypes, and most people
who use Shareware .MOD players think they can't use .NST files. in
fact, that's all that most of these users have been using for a
very long time.
There is only one major difference between the two filetypes,
besides their extension names: .MOD files can have up to 15
instruments, where .NST files can have up to 31 instruments
contained in their file structures. Other than this, the
differences are so minor that they can be ignored by most users.
The confusion arises because in the IBM world, most .NST files
have been renamed to have a .MOD extension, with out proper
conversion of the file itself. An understanding of the history of
these two filetypes, which I will outline below, can help get rid
of the confusion between these two filetypes.
Page 17
The filetypes we in the IBM and compatible world like to call
.MOD and .NST were originally only playable and composed on Amiga
computer systems. Due to their operating system, which is much
different from ours, they do not use 8 character filenames with 3
character extensions to name their files. Inversely, MS and PC DOS
machines can't handle Amiga filenames, and because of DOS's nature,
we tend to give like files a common three letter extension.
With the advent of Trak Blaster by Volker Zinke, Sound Blaster
users began transporting Amiga SoundTracker and NoiseTracker (two
of the more popular composing utilities for making the .MOD and
.NST filetypes respectively on Amiga computer systems) over to
their MS/PC-DOS based machines. Because the original versions of
TrakBlaster required the user to specify a file extension, but
would play both types of files, users could use any file extension
they wished. But with the release of TrakBlaster v2.0, the .MOD
extension was the default, and more and more people began to accept
this naming convention. No matter which of the two filetypes your
song was, TrakBlaster would take care of it and play it.
Nearly all playing utilities have since used this as its
default file extension, and although there were differences in the
filetypes, the playing programs would take care of them, and the
user need not worry about them.
At least nobody had to worry abut them until the advent of
Tetra, written by Bram Graveland, and published by Creative Labs.
This was the first player program available for the Sound Blaster
which made a distinction between the two filetypes, and required
the user to make sure the file was correctly named in order to play
it.
For fans of these Amiga sound files, all of this means two
things: firstly, that you can play both .MOD and .NST files with
you favourite playing utility, and secondly that there is a
fundamental difference between the two filetypes which should be
recognised. More bulletin board systems should begin to stress
this difference by attempting to make sure that these filetypes are
named correctly, and more Shareware authors should also make the
attempt to stress the differences between these two filetypes,
instead of blending them into one. This requires little extra
coding on their part, and only the mention that you can play both
filetypes with their utility in their documentation.
To distinguish between the two, we recommend that you download
the utility TrakInfo from the SBD Support BBS. A review of
TrakInfo can be found earlier in this publication. It is also
possible to differentiate between the two with the Tetra Compositor
from Creative Labs.
Page 18
WRAPPING IT UP...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Well, another late issue, but we think the extra time it took
to get this issue out was well worth it in the quality of the
articles. We hope that they have been both useful and informative
to you.
Articles you can expect to see in the next few months include
a review of Windows 3.0 with MultiMedia Extensions v1.0, reviews on
Voyetra Sequencer Plus Pro, articles on MIDI and the Sound Blaster,
updates on the mysterious sightings of a new Sound Blaster Pro (we
cannot stress enough that our reports are unsubstantiated as of
yet!), reviews on the Prosonus Sounds CD, reviews on the latest
version of the Tetra Compositor, announcements of upcoming
contests, special offers, and chat nights with the editor, and more
news and reviews of new software and hardware as it arises!
This month we'd like to thank Robert O'Daniel, forum head of
the PC Sound and Music conference on America Online for all his
help in furthering our distribution and technical support.
Thank you for reading the Sound Blaster Digest, and we hope to
see you here again next month!
--------------------
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SBD:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
If you would like to contribute an article to the Sound
Blaster Digest, please feel free to either mail it on paper or
diskette to the address in the Contacting Us section above.
Alternatively, you can upload it to the Sound Blaster Digest
Support BBS as a private upload to the Sysops, and we'll consider
it for an upcoming issue of the Digest. All articles sent to the
SBD become property of Brad Barclay, and are subject to editing for
space and grammatical purposes.
Page 19
SOUND BLASTER DIGEST SUBSCRIPTION FORM
======================================
Please enclose a cheque or money order (sorry, I don't accept
any major or minor credit cards) for $30 CDN for Canadian orders,
or $30 US for American orders. Overseas enclose $40 Canadian
funds, payable on a Canadian bank. Please fill out all the
spaces provided (except where marked optional), and mail it to
the address below. MAKE CHEQUE/MONEY ORDER PAYABLE TO BRAD
BARCLAY!
NAME:_____________________________
MAILING ADDRESS: Street address:_____________________________
City, Province/State:_______________________
Country, Postal/ZIP Code:___________________
PHONE NUMBER (don't forget the area code!):___________________
DISKETTE TYPE: (check one):
_ _
[_] 5.25" [_] 3.5"
BBS REGISTRATION:
By adding $5 to your cheque or money order and checking this box,
we will give you special upgraded access to the SBD Support BBS!
_
[_] Please give me your "Gold" Access Level on the SBD
Support BBS! Please make my password as follows:
Password:__________________________________
COMMENTS: Please fill this out also!
How would you rate THE SOUND BLASTER DIGEST (circle one):
POOR FAIR GOOD EXCELLENT
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Please mail this form, along with any additional comments to:
SOUND BLASTER DIGEST
c/o Brad Barclay
36 Sutter ave.
Brampton, Ontario
CANADA. L6Z 1G7
Page 20
SOUND BLASTER DIGEST BBS REGISTRATION
=====================================
This is a free service of THE SOUND BLASTER DIGEST, intended to
allow greater access to Sound Blaster files. Please fill out all
blanks (except where marked optional), and send to the address
below:
LIST INFORMATION:
Name of BBS:____________________________________________
Sysop's Name:___________________________________________
City, Province/State:___________________________________
Phone Number (remember the area code!):_________________
Min/Max Transmission speed:_____________________________
OTHER INFORMATION:
Although not included in the BBS listing, this information is
important for our records.
How long has the BBS been running?:________________________
Do you have a Music/Sound Card conference, message area, or
file area set aside?:______________________________________
Does your BBS support Sound Blaster files?:________________
Anything else you can think of to say that would show off your
BBS, please write it down here:
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
Mail this form, along with any extra comments to:
SOUND BLASTER DIGEST
c/o Brad Barclay
36 Sutter Ave.
Brampton, Ontario
CANADA. L6Z 1G7
Page 21
ORDER FORM: THE SOUND BLASTER DIGEST DEMO TAPE
===============================================
Please enclose a cheque or money order (sorry, I don't accept
any major or minor credit cards) for $7.50 CDN for Canadian
orders, or $7.50 US for American orders. Overseas enclose $10
Canadian funds, payable on a Canadian bank. Please fill out all
the spaces provided (except where marked optional), and mail it to
the address below. MAKE CHEQUE/MONEY ORDER PAYABLE TO BRAD
BARCLAY!
NAME:_____________________________
MAILING ADDRESS: Street address:_____________________________
City, Province/State:_______________________
Country, Postal/ZIP Code:___________________
PHONE NUMBER (don't forget the area code!):___________________
MUSIC FORMAT: In which Sound Blaster music file format are you
the most interested? (Circle all of interest).
.CMF .JMP .MID .MOD .NST .ORG .ROL .VOC
Please mail this form, along with any additional comments to:
SOUND BLASTER DIGEST
c/o Brad Barclay
36 Sutter ave.
Brampton, Ontario
CANADA. L6Z 1G7
Page 22
SOUND BLASTER DIGEST ADVERTISEMENT ORDER FORM
=============================================
Please fill out this form, and mail it, along with a cheque for
$5 (in US funds for American orders, and in Canadian funds for
Canadian orders), along with an ASCII only, typed copy of your
ad, and mail it to the address below. PLEASE MAKE CHEQUE/MONEY
ORDER PAYABLE TO BRAD BARCLAY!
NAME:_____________________________
MAILING ADDRESS: Street address:_____________________________
City, Province/State:_______________________
Country, Postal/ZIP Code:___________________
PHONE NUMBER (don't forget the area code!):___________________
BEST TIMES AVAILABLE:_________________________________________
Please mail this form, along with your cheque and a copy of the
ad as described above, along with any other comments to:
SOUND BLASTER DIGEST
c/o Brad Barclay
36 Sutter ave.
Brampton, Ontario
CANADA. L6Z 1G7
