From: ptran@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca (Phat H Tran)
Subject: Re: Ultrasound vs Soundblaster Pro
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 05:20:19 GMT

In article <gf03UVG00iUzQ63gl4@andrew.cmu.edu> Kevin Wengcheong Cheng <kc3b+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
>Does anyone know anything about the Ultrasound? ( by Gravis )
>How is it compared to the SB pro?
>Does it have any incompatibility problems?
>Any opinions about the price and those (@#&%@ daughter cards for 16-bit
>sampling...?
>
>I'm posting here coz... WHO KNOWS MORE ABOUT SOUND CARDS THAN GAMERS, anyway?!?
>
>:)
>/<evin

The Ultrasound is a great card for its price.  It sounds a hell of a lot 
better than the SB and any other FM synthesis card, and it can probably
hold its own against cards three times as expensive.  Developers seem
bent on supporting it.  Star Control 2 already drives the Ultrasound,
and rumour has it that Strike Commander will support it as well since
its author, Chris Roberts, owns the card.  Such enthusiasm for a card 
that has just been released is probably indicative of good things to come
for it.  Anyway, another person asked a similar question in comp.sys.ibm.-
pc.soundcard, and I wrote the following response:

Included file:

In article <14NOV199216160424@zeus.tamu.edu> wdh2866@zeus.tamu.edu (HAWKINS, WILLIAM DARYL) writes:
>
>   I'm getting ready to purchase a sound card, and was wondering
>   what is the best, moderately priced ($100-$250) soundcard?
>   Any help would be greatly appreciated. 
>

This is an easy question to answer if you are not concerned about SB/Adlib
compatibility.  The best sounding soundcard in your specified price range
is, by far, the Gravis Ultrasound (GUS).  I've been using a Sound Blaster
for the last two years, and have just moved up to the GUS two days ago.
I won't hesitate to say that the Ultrasound is to the SoundBlaster (and SB
Pro and PAS-16 and others of their ilk) what the SoundBlaster is to the PC
speaker.  Okay, maybe that's going a little overboard, but not by much.
Yes, the card is really that good.

First, here are some specs:

	- 32 channels of 16-bit digital audio in mono or
	  16 channels of 16-bit digital audio in stereo
	- playback and recording up to 44.1kHz sample rate
	- hardware mixing and resampling
	- 256k standard RAM, expandable to 1 Meg
	- 8-bit recording/16-bit with daughtercard
	- speed compensating joystick port 
	  (i.e. one that works on even the fastest of machines)
	- standard UART MIDI 
	- SB/Adlib compatible through a TSR
	- optional SCSI interface
	- around $150US in price

The GUS uses wavetable synthesis to reproduce instruments, while the SB
uses a 4-op FM chip which is quite lousy at imitating natural sounds.
Wavetable synthesis involves recording a sample of an instrument to 
capture its timbre, and then changing its pitch, filtering it, modulating
its amplitude envelope, etc., when you play it back.  In this way, sounds
can be reproduced with much greater realism than FM synthesis.

Some may argue that the SB's and PAS's with their 16-bit DAC can also 
do wavetables, as evidenced by the plethora of MOD players for these
cards.  However, to imitate wavetable synthesis on these soundcards
requires the software to do relatively complicated and cpu-intensive
resampling and mixing of the sounds.  In games or other environments
where cpu cycles are in ever decreasing supply, such an approach is not
satisfactory.  The Ultrasound has a chip to do all the mixing and 
resampling, thus alleviating the cpu of this computational burden.
The GUS is even better in that it has 32 16-bit channels in mono or
16 in stereo whereas MODs are 4 channels of 8-bit audio.

The Ultrasound's greatest weakness is its SB/Adlib compatibility.  Since
it uses a synthesis technique vastly different from what is used by the
SB and Adlib cards, the emulation is rather weak, though quite bearable.
Programs written for the SB/Adlib will sound better on a true SB/Adlib
than on the Ultrasound, usually.  Soon, though, software will support the
GUS in its native mode, and nobody will care that its SB/Adlib emulation
isn't perfect.

Phat.