AAAAA PPPPPP OOOOO LL Ll OOOOO AA AA PP PP OO OO LL LL OO OO AA AA PP PP OO OO LL LL OO OO AAAAAAA PPPPPP OO OO LL LL OO OO AA AA PP OO OO LL LL OO OO AA AA PP OOOOO LLLLLL LLLLLL OOOOO 0.92á C O M P U T E R I Z E D S O U N D I M P R O V E M E N T - A Digital Delay Program for the Gravis Ultrasound Card - written and (c) 1994 by Jochen Quante and Guido Backeshoff ---------------------------------------------------------------- What is it? ----------- Apollo is a program designed to enhance the sound of your home stereo. You can simulate all kinds of rooms by setting up the appropriate parameters for the 12 independent echo voices. Okay, it is in fact a digital delay program for the GUS. How to use it ------------- Apollo uses 12 independent mono channels to do the echoing (or 6 stereo channels, see below). To select one of these 12 Channels, simply click on the channel with the RIGHT mouse button. To activate a channel, click on it's button with the LEFT button. To change the settings of a channel, first select it by clicking on it's button with the right mouse button. The actual settings for this channel will be displayed in the control fields in the middle of the screen: Volume, Balance, Delay, and Source. Volume - used to adjust the volume at which the echoed voice is played back, i.e. you can adjust the feedback of the echo voice. This one is becoming very sensitive when many voices are activated. Balance - used to adjust the echoed voice between the left and right channel (also see below) Delay - the number of milliseconds the voice is delayed Source - select where to take the input from: From the left, the right or the difference channel (= right-left) The Source selector is very powerful in conjunction with the Balance adjustor (and the Volume control... and the Delay... :) ) (Always remember that the GUS mixes the output to the input again!) You can, for example, ... - create an echo which is does not reproduce itself by using the left channel as input, the right channel (i.e. balance to full right) as output or the other way around - create an echo which does hardly reproduce itself by using the difference channel as input and balance=0 as output - create a stereo self-reproducing echo by setting one channel to input left, output left, and another channel to input & output right. This is what the stereo button does, it sets the input and balance to the appropriate values, locks the source and balance controls for these 2 channels and redirects all further changes of volume or delay time to both channels Things to try ------------- - Activate two channels as stereo, set the volume to a value which lets the echo be as loud as the input (i.e. which doesn't let the voice become quiet) and set the delay time to the maximum (10 seconds on a >768K GUS). Now you can use Apollo to sing or play different parts of a song track by track, like on a multi-track recorder. Even the quality is quite okay, since the echo is only reproduced every 10 seconds... - Activate one channel, set the source to difference channel, balance=0, Volume to the maximum or lower. The effect can be heard very good when you're using headphones. It's the same effect as when you're connecting a 3rd speaker to your stereo. (Actually, that's where I got the idea from...) A kind of pseudo- surround sound or something. - Use several channels, all of them set to input=left, balance=right, Volume=something low, and experiment with the delay times for the different channels. You can get quite real echo effects that way. You could even calculate the values you have to use to simulate the echo in any specific rooms. Sound makes about 340 meters per second, so: delay=1000*meters/180 ms. Just an idea, I didn't try it myself. (Compare the result to the original location? Hm...) Minimum Requirements -------------------- Hardware Requirements: - Gravis Ultrasound Card, 256 KB - 768 KB supported - 386 DX processor (not tested on slower machines yet, please mail me if Apollo runs on any slower machines than 386DX40) - VGA Graphics Card - Mouse strongly recommended Software Requirements: - 240 KB free base RAM - Ultrasound configured to use 2 different DMAs What is the Gravis Ultrasound? ------------------------------ The Gravis Ultrasound (GUS) is a wavetable soundcard for your PC. It features: - 44 KHz, 16 Bit Stereo Playback on 32 simultaneous channels, - 44 KHz, 8 Bit Stereo Recording (16 Bit Recording optional), - up to 1 MB RAM on board, - capability of 3D sound, - simultaneous recording and playback, - emulation of Roland MT-32/SCC-1 and Soundblaster/Adlib by software, - a Pascal/C-Developer Kit for free, - great Internet support by Gravis and thousands of friendly GUS users, - all that for only about DM 300 / US$ 150! (or less, meanwhile) Forget these Soundblaster/Pro/16/ASP's etc... Get a GUS now! Error Shooting -------------- If Apollo doesn't start at all, it will normally tell you why it doesn't do it. If Apollo crashes while loading the title screens or shortly after, try some of the following: - remove EMM386 or any other memory managers - use DMA settings 3,5, they seem to work best (don't ask me why) - start Apollo right after a reset - disable the input meter If noise and clicks appear when using the difference channel, lower the volume of your input signal. SOME Technical Information -------------------------- Apollo samples the audio data at the fixed rate of 22 KHz stereo. You may be able to change that frequency in future versions. It uploads sampled data every 20 ms to the GUS RAM, that's why the minimum delay is set to 30 ms. But sometimes, the timing doesn't work (or something) and the program just crashes... Credits ------- User Interface Design and Code by Title Screen Design Guido The Names "Apollo" and "CoSI" Backeshoff GUS Code by Additional Code, Fine Tuning Jochen This Document Quante Copyright --------- Copyright (c) 1994 by Jochen Quante and Guido Backeshoff. This beta version of Apollo is freeware. It may be freely distributed without modifications. No money may be charged for it. Contacting the authors ---------------------- E-Mail to: ukr8@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de Please mention APOLLO in the subject. Specially bug reports are most welcome! Revision History ---------------- 0.92á 07/10/94 bug fix: now math copro *really* no longer req. 0.91á 07/08/94 bug fix: coprocessor is no longer required 0.9á 07/01/94 first public beta release 0.20 05/??/94 first running version of GUI and GUS code with 12 voices 0.10 04/09/94 first running version of GUI and GUS code with one echo voice 0.00 03/??/94 the idea was born... ================================================================ | Jochen Quante Computer Science Student | | University of Karlsruhe, Germany | | E-Mail: ukr8@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de S_Quante@ira.uka.de | | Jeckel@IRC http://rzstud1.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de/~ukr8/ | ================================================================