From: rafetmad@cheshire.oxy.edu (David Giller)
Subject: Re: Read before buying MediaVision
Organization: Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA 90041
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 22:27:46 GMT

Macbeth@cardinal.sc107.wesleyan.edu (Macbeth) wrote:
>I'm sorry for other readers that I quoted the entire message but IT IS 
>RELEVANT. First of all, Mr. Rotsten, I can not understand how you can call 
>yourself a computer technician/programmer and not understand the manuals for 
>the Pro Audio Spectrum 16. I happen to be a computer science major and 
>completely understood that the IRQ setting for the SoundBlaster is SET at 
>IRQ 5 and CAN NOT be changed. You can change the IRQ for the PAS portion 
>and, in the case you set it to 5 it will override the SB and not have it 
>work at all!

Uh, no, I've got mine set to IRQ 7.  There's a jumper on the board, in
practically the same physical location as the one on the Soundblaster
itself.

>Next, I own a Pro Audio Spectrum 16 MPC upgrade myself, and have had no 
>problems with it whatsoever. All I did was plug in the board, slide in the 
>NEC CD-ROM drive, install the drivers and VIOLA! As for the 3.5" floppies: 
>All I can say is that if you know of the MPC standards you will see that 
>these include a (you guess it!) 3.5" High Density floppy drive. As for tech 
>support: My ver. 1.2 drivers disk was damaged, however, I got tech support 
>in 2 minutes of waiting. And Media Visions is the only company that has 
>replied to my first call on the same day (when tech support people were 
>busy). I am sorry your experience was bad, however, this does not mean the 
>company does ALWAYS do that. Oh, and BTW, I am not a Media Visions 
>representative: I'm just a satisfied customer.

I must say that the installation of the PAS-16 is a bitch.  There are
MANY different combinations, and most of them will not work.  I praise
the people who write the manual for including all relevant
information, like common IRQ and DMA mappings for most computers; this
makes it possible, given enough time, to figure things out for
yourself.  But the person who did the actual WRITING of the
installation portion of the manual needs to be fired, or at least
needs a LOT more practice.

Once past installation, however, the PAS-16 is a QUALITY product.
The included programs, while admittedly just a collection of rather
unrelated utilities, are quite nice, and really do the job.  The board
itself has excellent sound quality, and at least for the PAS-16
(non-soundblaster) portion of the card, the ability to change DMA and
IRQ without cracking open the case is a real boon.

I've got a friend who writes Windows sound editing/mixing software,
and he's worked with just about every board out there (and some that
aren't really out there yet) including the Ultrasound and some other
Wavetable Synthesis boards that are in development.  He told me that
unless you are dead set on wavetable synthesis (and except for certain
applications, there's no reason to be) the PAS-16 is IT, and will
remain so for some time.

-Dave

-- 
David Giller, Box 134 | Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light
Occidental College    | bulb?  A: Three.  One to replace the bulb, and two to
1600 Campus Road      | fend off all the Californians trying to share the
Los Angeles, CA 90041 | experience. ---------------------------rafetmad@oxy.edu
Newsgroups: alt.cd-rom