From: echuang@cco.caltech.edu (Ernest Y. Chuang)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard
Subject: Re: THE GRAVIS ULTRASOUND
Date: 7 Oct 1992 05:42:32 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: sandman.caltech.edu

In article <92280.172003DXB132@psuvm.psu.edu> <DXB132@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>In article <1asm4mINNjok@gap.caltech.edu>, echuang@cco.caltech.edu (Ernest Y.
>Chuang) says:
>
>>In article <2362.22.uupcb@outlan.ersys.edmonton.ab.ca>
>>terry.walter@outlan.ersys.edmonton.ab.ca (Terry Walter)  writes:
>>>From what I am reading, the Gravis Ultrasound is like a Sound Blaster
>>>Stereo Sound Card, but if you want the SCSI interface (is it true SCSI
>
>>There have been a quite a few posts in the past that have stated
>>(paraphrasing), "<Soundcard X> already has 16-bit sound; That's already
>>CD-quality sound, so how can you get much better than that?"
>
>>The point is that sampled sounds, especially recorded at 16-bits,
>>take up too much disk space for any reasonably long piece of music.
>>(I'd hate to see the size of Wing Commander III if they were to
>>record all of the background music in 16-bit samples -- unless, of
>>course, it's on CD-ROM.)
>
>>Unless the music consists of a very short tune played over and over
>>and over, most games will still rely on synthesis (OPL-3 or whatever)
>>to produce the background music.  So if a soundcard can come up with
>
>This is absolutely wrong! On a sample-based card like the Ultrasound, music
>is made up of instruments. You don't sample the whole thing, just the
>instruments. Synth music was great on the C64 because it requires very
>little memory, but come on! The Amiga doesn't use synth and most of its games
>fit on a 880K floppy disk! It's time for PC sound to get real.

Sorry, bad choice of words on my part.  When I used the term, "sampling,"
in my previous post, I was trying to refer to the DAC part of a sound
card (where you play back entire segments of music/sound that were 
previously recorded through sampling, and not just samples of instrument 
sounds such as what the Gravis and Roland SCC cards do). 

I was looking for a simple term to encompass both FM-synthesis (OPL-3
and the old Adlib/SB) as well as the sound-sample modulation, and I
mistakenly thought "synthesis" might do.  I guess I should have said,
"FM-synthesis / digital-channels-but-not-the-DAC" or maybe, "the-stuff-
they-use-to-play-background-music-as-opposed-to-sound-effects." :-)

At any rate, to restate my previous post in a (hopefully) clearer way,
I was trying to say that comparisons of sound cards based on their
capability to do X-bit sampling (DAC) doesn't tell the whole story
when it comes to computer games, because space limitations will not
permit the use of this kind of sampling for long pieces of music,
such as background music.

Therefore, a more practical comparison IMHO would have to compare
the FM-synthesis/OPL-3 chips of Adlib/SB/PAS to the digital channels
of the Gravis Ultrasound, since this is how most computer-game music 
using these cards will be produced.  And in this area the Ultrasound
seems to be superior.

Or do I still have my terminology screwed up?  Anyone understand what
I'm trying to say?  Bueller?  Bueller?

(In case anyone missed the beginning of this thread, I was replying
to a post which asserted that the PAS-16 already does what the Gravis
Ultrasound can do, and more, since the PAS-16 comes with 16-bit
sampling and a SCSI port.)

- Ernest
  echuang@cco.caltech.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard