From: dionf@ERE.UMontreal.CA (Dion Francois)
Subject: Re: THE GRAVIS ULTRASOUND
Organization: Universite de Montreal
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 01:54:41 GMT

In article <Bw0w0w.A8J@news.udel.edu> jon@chopin.udel.edu (Jon Deutsch) writes:
>	OK, I understand this.  Now, who's-to-say that people actually
>	WILL start supporting the Gravis?  I mean, OK, it's gotten a lot
>	of net-hype, but as far as real-world advertising, NO ONE has
>	ever heard of the damned thing.  

Well, sorry to disapoint you, but all the cards Gravis can produce till next
year are already claimed. If you have not yet placed an order, tough luck
finding one before christmas. In Canada, all the cards ( i phoned every
computer stores in Montreal - the second biggest city in Canada, with more than
2 millions people and a lot of computer stores - 1 week after they left Gravis
and of all who had ordered them, nobody had any left in stock. Today i called
Gravis, and they are shipping to the US the next batch, then back to Canada
for another batch. Distributors in Canada are several hundreds cards back
ordered each! The major software developpers in Canada and the US (and the
rest of the world) have developpers kit that you have to pay for. Support is
already in place by EA. Dynamix (and so probably sierra) will support it in
all it's future release. The willy beamish CDROM will support it.

That's not all. All the games in Windows ( we will see more and more of them)
which fully support MPC specs, will take full use of the Gravis.

Last, but not least. You have seen several people on this newsgroup or on
comp.binaries.sounds.d saying that they will support the GUS in their wares
(shareware, freeware, nagware, etcware...). Today Jens Kirkeb of Twilight
Zone, said he would talk to the Codeblasters so that GUS support is included
in Whacker Tracker within 24h when he receives his card. I wouldn't be
surprised to see the next releases by Epyx or Apogee (or ID) with GUS support.
You'll also see scientific applications ported to the GUS ( csound anyone?).
You'll see GUS support with rend386. You'll see GUS support for Unix ( i will
be working on that shortly, as soon as Gravis says ok, you can get the
Dev. kit and release this driver source code without beeing sued.)

Also, net hype is good and reflects what the students will buy. This can only
diffuse praise worldwide for this card (now that it's finally out).

>	I understand that eventually, a new sound card standard will evolve,
>	it HAS to.  But, I'm not too convinced that Gravis' marketing campaign
>	is going to be able to pull it off.
>
>	Watch out for SB16, Gravis.

All the third gen cards coming out have wave table synthesis. SB16 is just
an enhanced SB, so its a 2nd gen card. Watch out for Gravis, RTM, Ensoniq,
Cardinal ... Creative labs better start beeing creative 8) (no flames)

>	As far as SB compat with GUS... how good/bad is it?
>	It uses samples instead of FM crap, right?  So, it
>	will obviously sound much MUCH better, right?
>	Any problems?

Absolutely no problem. If it doesn't sound right, change the samples.

>	What's up with these .mid files?  Is the GUS a midi device as well?

Yes. It plays midi files from windows media player, cakewalk, winjammer,
the drums, etc... Directly from the wavetables or thru the midi port.

If you have more questions, join the ultrasound mailing list.

Ciao,
--
Francois Dion
    '  _   _   _
 CISM (_) (_)  _) FM       Montreal , Canada       Email: CISM@ERE.UMontreal.CA
      (_)  / . _)             10000 Watts          Telephone no: (514) 343-7511
_______________________________________________________________________________
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard