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 From: Peter.Enzerink@FINANCE.ausgovfinance.telememo.au Subject: GUS Pricing in Australia Message-ID: <292110240593*/G=Peter/S=Enzerink/O=FINANCE/PRMD=AUSGOVFINANCE/ADMD=TELEMEMO/C=AU/@MHS> 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: (03) 3292999 Playcorp P/L in Melbourne (02) 5401866 Aquarius Sales and Marketing in Sydney (02) 4153355 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: Peter.Enzerink@FINANCE.ausgovfinance.telememo.au ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 May 93 1:02:03 PDT From: gabrielj@sfu.ca Subject: install disk probs Message-ID: <9305230802.AA04321@fraser.sfu.ca> 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: adrianr@ecr.mu.oz.au (Adriano_Ennio RAIOLA) Subject: Lemmings 2 probs Message-ID: <9305230957.19068@ecr.mu.oz.au> 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! -- | adrianr@ecr.mu.oz.au --------| Adrian -aka- Plugger | * * * * * | _/_\ | adrianr@mullian.ee.mu.oz.au -| What time is love? | *_* * *_ *_ | / OZ | | adrianr@mundil.cs.mu.oz.au --| I think its gonna be | * * * * * | \__-_/ | -- I want more accounts! ----| long, long time. | * * * * * | v ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 May 93 22:46:50 EDT From: jvene@telxon.mis.telxon.com (Jim Veneskey) Subject: Miles Drivers Message-ID: <9305240246.AA22122@telxon.mis.telxon.com> 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: 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 Subject: Sorry Everyone for Posting the Digest! Message-ID: <9305230849.AA08761@leland.Stanford.EDU> 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 Subject: subscribe Message-ID: <199305231041.AA11287@lut.fi> ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 May 1993 19:05:41 -0300 (EDT) From: david hemsworth s Subject: subscribe Message-ID: Please add me to the ultrasound mailing list. Thanks. ------------------------------ Date: 23 May 1993 01:37:21 PST From: chrisw Subject: Tremstr and Chris mids... Message-ID: <9305230846.AA08714@leland.Stanford.EDU> ------------ From: Tony >> 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: d91-sme@nada.kth.se Subject: CUBASE for Windows 1.0 Message-ID: <9305222120.AA22382@dront.nada.kth.se> adrianr@ecr.mu.oz.au 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, d91-sme@nada.kth.se) ----------------------------- Date: Sun, 23 May 93 05:51:36 +0200 From: d91-sme@nada.kth.se Subject: GUS 2.06, and the SDK Message-ID: <9305230351.AA26967@dront.nada.kth.se> 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, d91-sme@nada.kth.se) ----------------------------- Date: Sat, 22 May 1993 18:28:50 GMT From: gkirikos@epas.utoronto.ca (George Kirikos) Subject: GUS 3D -- It works! Message-ID: <1993May22.182850.6717@epas.toronto.edu> 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: gkirikos@epas.utoronto.ca | | Toronto, Canada Telephone: (416) 537-1756 | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ----------------------------- Date: 23 May 1993 00:36:38 GMT From: cpatri@cs.tamu.edu (Curtis W Patrick) Subject: Re: GUS 3D -- It works! Message-ID: <1tmgum$47e@tamsun.tamu.edu> 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 Cpatri@cs.tamu.edu Kurt ----------------------------- Date: Sat, 22 May 93 13:48 GMT From: EXT0012@VAX2.QUEENS-BELFAST.AC.UK Subject: GUS DRAM Expansion Message-ID: <9305221246.AA04450@orca.es.com> 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. 4NJ/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 (ext0012@v2.qub.ac.uk) ----------------------------- Date: Sat, 22 May 1993 15:43:37 -0300 (ADT) From: Shadow Of Fear Subject: New 2.06L disks Message-ID: * 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: timkwan@Athena.MIT.EDU 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: gus-sdk-request%itchy@dsd.es.com 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" Subject: Re: Ultrasound Daily Digest V3 #51 Message-ID: <9305230357.AA03739@kirk.Bond.edu.au> >From: "Timothy C. Gion" >Subject: SB and GUS coexistence (something weird!) >Message-ID: >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: rlee@tartarus.uwa.edu.au (Ralph Lee) Subject: Re: Ultrasound FTP Sites - New files validated - May 9th, 93 Message-ID: <199305220823.AA10231@tartarus.uwa.edu.au> 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: cs62a67@fire.UCSD.EDU (Anthony Tang) Subject: Way to go Gravis! Message-ID: <9305230359.AA01054@fire.UCSD.EDU> 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. :-) -- This is an AANT: Anthony Tang , aktang@sdcc13.ucsd.edu /\/\/\ \/\/\/ "Aurgh!" " " " ----------------------------- End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V3 #53 ************************************* To post to tomorrow's digest: To (un)subscribe or get help: To contact a human (last resort): 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 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: nickwt@aol.com Subject: Re: Ultrasound Daily Digest V... Message-ID: <9305231259.tn29561@aol.com> 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 : nick.tucker@cforum.com or UUCP: holonet!cofurm!nick.tucker Thanks in advance! ------------------------------ End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V3 #54 ************************************* To post to tomorrow's digest: To (un)subscribe or get help: To contact a human (last resort): 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 for info about other GUS related mailing lists (UNIX, OS/2, GUS-MIDI, etc.)