On 12/10/2022 7:53 AM, Mike S. wrote:
>> I still love my GUS, though. The /primary reason/ I'm building my
>> "Win95" retro-computer is to give my Gravis Ultrasound Max a new home.
>> It deserves better than moldering away in the closet.
>>
>> (I /told/ you not to get me started!)
>
> I thought the GUS was a piece of crap. I had trouble getting it to
> work in games that did not directly support it and I did not think the
> midi was that much better then the FM synthesis of the SoundBlaster to
> justify keeping it. It still sounded very fake to me. So I returned
> it.
>
> I eventually purchased several Roland products to go with the
> SoundBlaster card. That is the combination I use to this day for DOS
> gaming.

I guess I made a wise move to go to SB instead GUS then! Thanks God! :D
--
"The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like [Moses] from
among your own brothers. You must listen to him." —Deuteronomy 18:15.
Doom will B almost 30 yrs. old in a yr. :O
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On Sat, 10 Dec 2022 10:53:57 -0500, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

>On Sat, 10 Dec 2022 10:31:19 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson
><spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I still love my GUS, though. The /primary reason/ I'm building my
>>"Win95" retro-computer is to give my Gravis Ultrasound Max a new home.
>>It deserves better than moldering away in the closet.

>I thought the GUS was a piece of crap. I had trouble getting it to
>work in games that did not directly support it and I did not think the
>midi was that much better then the FM synthesis of the SoundBlaster to
>justify keeping it. It still sounded very fake to me. So I returned
>it.

You're welcome to your opinion, of course ;-)

Actually, one of the problems the GUS faced is that, while its native
MIDI support was very good (especially for the early 90s), its
SoundBlaster compatibility was lacking. This wasn't just an issue of
getting a game to use the Soundblaster, but getting it to sound well
when emulation was in use.

Many game soundtracks were tuned to make the tinny FM synthesis of the
OPL2 and OPL3 chips on the SoundBlaster sound as good as they could,
but that tuning actually worked poorly when combined with patch-based
soundcards (which is also why you don't want to output SoundBlaster
'midi' to a Roland ;-). The Fat Man (aka George Alistair Sanger) rose
to prominence not only because of his excellent soundtracks, but
because he sold a third-party tool used by many developers that tuned
MIDI timbres to the Soundblaster's limited soundscape. But those same
timbres didn't play well when run through the Gravis's Soundblaster
emulation. Thus many people who tried the GUS as a Soundblaster
replacement were disappointed with the sound; the music felt 'off'.

The Ultrasound's MIDI playback was also limited in comparison to the
Roland cards (and later, the AWE32), lacking support for certain
instructions (fading and sustain? I forget exactly). GUS also
supported GM but not GS. These meant some of its MIDI playbacks lacked
some of the richness of its competitors.

Nonetheless, when developers targeted the GUS directly, it produced
excellent sound, far superior to anything on its peers of the time
(AdLib, SoundBlaster, Soundblaster Pro, Pro Audio Spectrum), and
fairly competitive with cards that came out after it (Sound Canvas,
AWE32). It had the additional advantage in that its soundbanks were
not as limited as its competitors (Roland cards were limited to what
was in its ROMs, AWE32 patch-sets maxed out at 32MB... and then only
if you spent an arm and a leg upgrading the card) since the ability to
move patches into and out of the GUS's RAM on the fly allowed
impressively large (70+MB) patch-sets. However, the ability to acquire
these patch sets wasn't readily available to most users until long
after the Ultrasound had faded into obscurity. Still, it speaks of the
card's impressive architecture.

>I eventually purchased several Roland products to go with the
>SoundBlaster card. That is the combination I use to this day for DOS
>gaming.

The MT32 was an excellent card, but - subjectively, of course -
offered inferior sound to the Ultrasound. The SCC-1 was very
competitive with the Ultrasound, and had - arguably - better at MIDI
playback (although with some GUS patchsets, its quite difficult to
decide). However, it was an expensive MIDI-only device that required a
secondary card (usually, as in your case, a SoundBlaster) to provide
digital support. Later Roland cards - like the RAP10 - helped
alleviate this problem, but by the time those were available the
Gravis was already on the way out. Similarly, the AWE32 was an awesome
card but in terms of sound output the GUS was very competitive with it
until you fully upgraded the card (added a Waveblaster add-on card and
maxed out its onboard memory), which made the AWE32 a far more
expensive proposition.

But for its time - '90-'93 - the Ultrasound was probably the best
sounding card you could get for PC, especially at its price point.
Even in 94-96 it was still one of the better options.... so long as
you had apps/games with native GUS support.

The Ultrasound's problem was never its capabilities so much as a lack
of people developing specifically for the card and making use of its
abilities to full advantage. When they did, wow! But when they didn't,
you often ended up with sub-par results... if you could get the game
to run at all.

TL;DR: your results speak more of the limitations of the games you
played than the hardware itself ;-)

On Sat, 10 Dec 2022 18:28:49 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

>Nonetheless, when developers targeted the GUS directly, it produced
>excellent sound, far superior to anything on its peers of the time
>(AdLib, SoundBlaster, Soundblaster Pro, Pro Audio Spectrum), and
>fairly competitive with cards that came out after it (Sound Canvas,
>AWE32). It had the additional advantage in that its soundbanks were

The earliest GUS came out in 1991. The Sound Canvas came out in 1991.
The MT-32 came out in 1987. Both sounded better then what I heard
coming out of the GUS at the time that I owned one. That does not
surprise me. They were both more expensive then the GUS. I could only
afford one back then and I chose the Sound Canvas for GM support.

>not as limited as its competitors (Roland cards were limited to what
>was in its ROMs, AWE32 patch-sets maxed out at 32MB... and then only
>if you spent an arm and a leg upgrading the card) since the ability to
>move patches into and out of the GUS's RAM on the fly allowed
>impressively large (70+MB) patch-sets. However, the ability to acquire
>these patch sets wasn't readily available to most users until long
>after the Ultrasound had faded into obscurity. Still, it speaks of the
>card's impressive architecture.

My opinion of the GUS is shaped by my experience with the card at the
time. How many games had direct support for the GUS and added patch
sets that made it sound better then what I heard coming out of it?

Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com> wrote:
>My opinion of the GUS is shaped by my experience with the card at the
>time. How many games had direct support for the GUS and added patch
>sets that made it sound better then what I heard coming out of it?

Well, the killer app for the Gravis Ultrasound was Star Control 2,
which came out at the same time. It used tracker music, so it sounded
more or less the same on all soundcards, but on the GUS playing music
used almost no CPU and mixing and interpolating the 8-bit MOD samples
in 16-bits rather than 8-bit.

I'm not sure how many games had custom patch sets, but native support
for the GUS was pretty commom after that. For games released before
the GUS, a SoundBlaster plus MT-32 was unquestionably your best option,
but GUS was a real contender as games switched to General MIDI tracks.
There was a lot of debate of which General MIDI patch sets were the best,
whether for the GUS or other devices, and I don't think there was ever
a consensus on which patch set or which device was the superior choice.

The problem with the GUS wasn't it's patches, it was it's SoundBlaster
emulation. Emulating the SoundBlaster's DAC was pretty CPU intensive,
and could cause slow downs, while emulating the SoundBlaster's OPL
based FM synthsis worked pretty flawlessly but worked by the emulator
picking a patch that it tought best match the FM parameters being used.
So if the emulaotr though the game was trying to create a sound like a
flute or a piano, it would play a flute or paino sample.

Personally, I think the FM emulator worked well, substituting a better
paino patch for a crude attempt to make something sound like a piano with
FM synthesis, but unquestionably it wasn't always making subsitutions
that a human would choose. So you were hearing music being played with
different instruments that the original composer intended. Sound effects
in particular could come out particularly weird, but most games used
the DAC for these.

The original X-Wing I think was a perfect example of this. I really
liked how the Star Wars soundtrack was rendered by the GUS's FM emulator,
but when a TIE figter streaked passed you, the game would play a swoosh
effect on the DAC and there was noticible studdering as it played.

--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca:11068/
db //

On 12/11/2022 12:35 PM, Ross Ridge wrote:
....
> Well, the killer app for the Gravis Ultrasound was Star Control 2,
> which came out at the same time. It used tracker music, so it sounded
> more or less the same on all soundcards, but on the GUS playing music
> used almost no CPU and mixing and interpolating the 8-bit MOD samples
> in 16-bits rather than 8-bit.

Ha, I remember this game in my high school's computer club. I don't
remember if it was using GUS back then.

> I'm not sure how many games had custom patch sets, but native support
> for the GUS was pretty commom after that. For games released before
> the GUS, a SoundBlaster plus MT-32 was unquestionably your best option,
> but GUS was a real contender as games switched to General MIDI tracks.
> There was a lot of debate of which General MIDI patch sets were the best,
> whether for the GUS or other devices, and I don't think there was ever
> a consensus on which patch set or which device was the superior choice.
>
> The problem with the GUS wasn't it's patches, it was it's SoundBlaster
> emulation. Emulating the SoundBlaster's DAC was pretty CPU intensive,
> and could cause slow downs, while emulating the SoundBlaster's OPL
> based FM synthsis worked pretty flawlessly but worked by the emulator
> picking a patch that it tought best match the FM parameters being used.
> So if the emulaotr though the game was trying to create a sound like a
> flute or a piano, it would play a flute or paino sample.
>
> Personally, I think the FM emulator worked well, substituting a better
> paino patch for a crude attempt to make something sound like a piano with
> FM synthesis, but unquestionably it wasn't always making subsitutions
> that a human would choose. So you were hearing music being played with
> different instruments that the original composer intended. Sound effects
> in particular could come out particularly weird, but most games used
> the DAC for these.
>
> The original X-Wing I think was a perfect example of this. I really
> liked how the Star Wars soundtrack was rendered by the GUS's FM emulator,
> but when a TIE figter streaked passed you, the game would play a swoosh
> effect on the DAC and there was noticible studdering as it played.

I still love how those games changed music while playing. It was called
Interactive Music Streaming Engine (iMUSE):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMUSE.
--
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give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a
son, and will call him Immanuel." --Isaiah 7:14
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