From: cmetz@thor.tjhsst.edu (Craig Metz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard
Subject: (none)
Date: 13 Sep 1992 17:08:11 -0500
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu


  Please forward to Paul Jain, President, Media Vision, Inc.
  Please also forward to "Gary", Developer Support, Media Vision, Inc.
  Thanks.

----[ Abstract ]--------------------------------------------------------------

  This message is being carbon copied to the USENET newsgroup "comp.sys.ibm.
pc.soundcard" in hopes that this rather large complaint that is being voiced
by me and has been made by every Pro AudioSpectrum 16 owner I know will be
heeded by potential purchasors of the card. It is being sent to Ken Nicholson
of Media Vision, Inc. with instructions to forward this message to Paul Jain,
President of Media Vision, Inc. It specifically outlines a major fallacy in
their current developer support policies which not only turns away the
hobbyist programmer but also insures that there will be no support of this
card in freeware, shareware, public domain software, or GNU CopyLeft software
as anything other than a marginally SoundBlaster-compatible device. Also
attached is my original posting on this newsgroup about this and, for
reference, a copy of the press release by Media Vision which claims that such
information on programming the card is freely available to potential
programmers when it is not.

  Those who are owners of any Media Vision sound cards or potential buyers
are encouraged to read this extremely long message in its entirety, the rest
of you can safely ignore this long-winded flame.

----[ Complaint Text ]--------------------------------------------------------

	The following is a message I posted to "comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard", a
USENET newsgroup with worldwide distribution of tens if not hundreds of
thousands of sites and, well, a whole lot of readers. If it is not obvious,
the topic of this newsgroup is PC sound cards. My original decision to
purchase a Pro AudioSpectrum 16 card was based entirely from information
posted to this newsgroup - among which, and probably the strongest, being
a press release obtained from the Media Vision support BBS and posted to
this newsgroup entitled "Media Vision Opens its Sound Standard: Pro
AudioSpectrum Technology Now Available to any Developer of PC-Compatible
Sound Hardware or Software." After purchase of the card and numerous problems
stemming from the fact that the wrong driver disks were packed with my card,
rendering it totally useless for two weeks and only solved after two days
of continuous calls to Media Vision tech support finally got somebody to
call back, I found out that what is documented in the press release is
anything but the case. Specifically, if you are not willing to sign a
nondisclosure agreement which is the single most restrictive legal document
I have ever read in my entire life and restricts the recipient to the point
where creating and distributing software supportting Media Vision cards is
in violation of several major parts of the document, you cannot get any
information regarding programming the Pro AudioSpectrum 16 card. You can't
get it without signing the contract, and once you have signed the contract,
it is in violation of it to do anything with the information you just got.

  It is quite an understatement to say that this is not a way to get people
to write programs that support your cards. Large software vendors with
hoardes of lawyers may be able to deal with such legal contracts and general
hassles, but this is beyond simply discouraging to the hobbyist programmer -
the very people who made the Adlib and the SoundBlaster the standards they
are, and are quickly making the SoundBlaster Pro another major standard in
the sound card market - it makes the programmer so frustrated as to not only
not pursue information on programming the card, but not to ever support the
cards whether or not information is publicly available. You cannot expect for
sales of these cards to continue to increase or even to hold current levels
unless there is software support, and you are turning away potential software
support by overly burecratic procedures that discourage all but the most
determined person from being able to get the most basic information on how
to program the card.

  This is unfortunately compounded by the fact that the compatibility claims
made by Media Vision as to being hardware Adlib and Sound Blaster 1.5
compatible have hidden qualifications that render them worthless in any
environment not supported by Media Vision (ie, not DOS, OS/2, or Windows).
If the MVSOUND.SYS driver or equivilant is not loaded, the card fails to 
function with a large number of programs as a SoundBlaster or Adlib. Even
with the driver, I have several freeware and shareware programs for DOS that 
will not function properly with the Pro AudioSpectrum 16 card that work 
perfectly with my SoundBlaster 1.5 card. I am also working with another person 
to develop a sound card driver for Linux, a free, UNIX-like operating system 
for 386-based PCs, and this driver in its current incarnation works perfectly 
on SoundBlaster 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 cards as well as on SoundBlaster Pro 1.0 
and 2.0 cards, but no Media Vision card that has been tested with this driver 
has functioned properly. The Pro AudioSpectrum totally fails both detection 
sequences (coded from information in the Sound Blaster developer's kit as I 
understand it) and any functional programming. In short, without a specific
driver to enable the card, the Pro AudioSpectrum card is absolutely useless
in a 32-bit native operating system. And under this system, I can say without 
any reservation that my SoundBlaster 1.5 card is far better and more useful 
than any Media Vision product. There are thousands of people who use this 
operating system, and the number of users just about doubles monthly. This 
user base is a far cry from that of 386BSD, which is documented in a series 
of articles in Doctor Dobbs' Journal and as I understand it is quickly moving
toward having a hundred thousand users worldwide. Then there are the thousands
of Mach users  and similarly no less than tens of thousands of users of 
commercial 386 UNIX products. To all of these users, your Pro AudioSpectrum 
card is totally worthless - not supported, not compatible with something 
support is available for (such as the SoundBlaster-series cards), and as 
current policies by Media Vision make it functionally impossible for the 
hobbyist to obtain the information needed to write drivers for these systems to
support the card. Because of this, all of these systems do not support your
hardware in any way, SoundBlaster or Adlib compatibility included, and due to
your policies they will not be supporting your cards in the forseeable future.
Media Vision is blowing off hundreds of thousands of potential customers, or at
least turning them away, because of these practices.

  These users are people who are not in any way tolerant of such behavior.
Recently, Diamond Computer released the Diamond SpeedStar 24 and the Diamond
SpeedStar 24x cards, which instead of using a set of fixed-frequency
oscillators to drive the video signal output used a proprietary programmable
oscillator chip the frequency outputs of which could be programmed by
software. The on-board BIOS ROM and Windows drivers contained code necessary
to program this chip to output the correct frequencies, but in the XFree86
X Window System server for 386 UNIX-compatible systems, both are useless.
Direct hardware access must be used for all operations, and these card
required special programming of this chip to be compatible with the current
standard ET4000HC support drivers. Diamond was willing to release information
about programming this chip only under nondisclosure, and source code
distribution of code accessing this chip was strictly forbidden, which
conflicted seriously with the full-source form of the XFree86 server. The
maintainers of this program, along with such companies as Zeos, who also could
not get this information from Diamond without dragged out legal procedures,
organized a boycott of Diamond Computer's products and set up a mailing list
to which people could send messages to be forwarded to Diamond numbering the
computer systems they purchased that specifically did not contain Diamond
cards because of this boycott. After a month and a half, the estimates are
very high, near the tens of thousands. There are a lot of people in powerful
purchasing positions and many more who are simply hobbyists who user 386
UNIX-compatible operating systems for which peripheral support comes solely
from the hobbyist, and these people do not take kindly to manufacturers who
do not provide information on programming their equipment to the public,
unencumbered, for a reasonable fee.

  I suggest highly that from the highest levels within your organization you
completely rethink your developer support organization to cater not only to
the large Fortune 1000 software developer, but to the hobbyist. Your original
Pro AudioSpectrum card had modest commercial support but absolutely no
support by any public domain, freeware, shareware, or GNU CopyLeft program
I have ever seen to this day, and it had poor compatibility. It failed rather
miserably. In a 32-bit free operating system, your next generation card, the
Pro AudioSpectrum 16 card similarly has no compatibility, and under MS-DOS it
has only about 90% compatibility. Because Media Vision refuses to make the
information needed for public domain, freeware, shareware, and GNU CopyLeft
applications which serve as the bread-and-butter applications for sound cards
available unencumbered, you are dooming yourself to suffer the same fate with
the Pro AudioSpectrum 16 card as you did with the Pro AudioSpectrum card. Keep
in mind also that Creative Labs is about to release the SoundBlaster Pro 16
card, and as always, they have a well-polished software development kit
available for a fee, but unencumbered. It is no wonder that the SoundBlaster
Pro is already supported by about half of the public domain, freeware,
shareware, and GNU CopyLeft software that I have in native stereo mode, while
the Pro AudioSpectrum can only be used as a marginally-compatible SoundBlaster.

  Unless Media Vision makes significant policy changes in the very near future,
you can count one customer who will not only be returning his Pro AudioSpectrum
card and getting a SoundBlaster Pro 16 when it is released, but will strongly
encourage everyone he knows with a Pro AudioSpectrum 16 card to do so, and
strongly discourage the purchase of a Pro AudioSpectrum 16 card. There is no
support currently from the class of programs which ultimately determine the
fait of a peripheral card, and Media Vision is not poising itself to change
this. Instead, it is poising itself for another massive failure due to lack of
software support where it most needed.

                                                  Sincerely,

                                                  Craig Metz

PS: Because you have no Internet connection (another example of your ignoring
  the large segment of users who know better than to use DOS), I am sending
  this message through the mail gateway to CompuServe. In the event that
  they do not gate standard RFC 822 mail headers, I will warn you that this
  message is being carbon copied to the newsgroup "comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard"
  for digestion by similarly unhappy users and for warning to the potential
  purchasor of a Media Vision product that currently it would be a very bad
  idea.

----[ Original Message ]-------------------------------------------------------

Article 1824 (5 more) in comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard:
From: cmetz@thor.tjhsst.edu (Craig Metz)

Subject: PAS 16 Programming / Complaint
Date: 13 Sep 92 00:23:41 GMT
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu


        I have a complaint about the PAS 16 that has no technical bound - from
a technical standpoint, I think this is the best sound card actually being sold
via normal channels (assuming that your PC can keep up with it. It don't take
a real brain to figure out that 16 bits * 2 channels * 441000 samples/sec means
a *lot* of data coming in!). Their customer service is good - not particularly
because they are so good, but because other companies really SUCK (ie, our
friend Microsoft). But there is one point about MediaVision that I am extremely
unhappy about, and I have a strong suspicion will kill the card if they don't
listen. (And since they are trapped in the DOS world where CompuServe and
Prodigy are "the" nets, they'll probably never read this, either...).

        If you are a hobbyist, you basically cannot get any information from
them on programming the card.

        They have an extensive developer's support system, but there is one
major piece of work that cuts it off from a large number of people - a very
extensive, and very screw-you-over nondisclosure contract that is worded such
that any non-business use is totally in violation. The wording is in fact so
screw-you-over that technically distributing a binary executable that uses the
card with code or information on programming the card from their books is in
violation of the contract. The kit is not very expensive, but the freedom to
really use it without fear of legal problems is not available at any price.
(Plus they have the legal right to require you to send them back or destroy
the kit at any time without reimbursement - another plus for the broke hobbyist)

        Potential buyers who are hobbyist programmers, be warned
in advance of this rather significant problem that makes it really hard to
get ahold of any programming information from Media Vision. If anybody from MV
is actually reading this (ie, some brave soul dares to look beyond CompuServe),
you can chalk one person who will not be supporting your cards in his programs.

        Oh, by the way - taking information from recent Sound Blaster SDKs
(which you don't have to go through this mess to get - just send them a check),
stuff that works on the SB 1.5, 2.0, SB Pro 1.0, 2.0, and variants doesn't
work at all on the PAS 16. Nor does Adlib SDK code, either. Nor does about half
the free software programs for the SB (some half-work, like ModPlay). Code I'm
working on right now absolutely will not work on the PAS 16, but will on the
SB-series cards. Gee, this is a great way to get a software base.

                                                                -Craig

----[ Press Release ]----------------------------------------------------------

June 22, 1992

To:  Media Vision ISV Developers,

The Pro AudioSpectrum 16 sound card has proven to be a phenomenal
success.  In the first month of shipment alone, we bypassed our
projected sales for the entire quarter.  We can't seem to keep up with
the demand - a good problem to have.  The Pro AudioSpectrum 16 has
also won some prestigious awards such as The Best of 1991 from PC
Magazine.  Media Vision is launching a proactive effort to open both
the hardware and software sound standard to provide sound to the PC
market.  We are also offering our designs and chips to anyone in the
industry who wishes to develop Pro AudioSpectrum or Thunder Board
compatible hardware.  Enclosed you will find a copy of the press
release titled "Media Vision Opens Its Sound Standard."

Media Vision is proud to announce our First Annual Developers
Conference.  The conference will be held at the Hilton in Newark,
California on July 31, 1992.  If you would like more information
please contact the ISV Department at (510) 226-2529 or (510) 770-8600.

We are significantly expanding our developer program to provide a
stronger communication channel between you, the software developer and
Media Vision.  We are adding two field support engineers who will be
available for on-site support, including assisting with the
development of sound drivers.  We are installing a toll free line in
the ISV Developer Department, as well as a specialized developer BBS.
These steps are being taken because Media Vision realizes the
partnership created between us is critical to the continuing success
of the sound market, as you are an integral part of our business.

There are great benefits of being a Media Vision developer.  

                *       Special price on Media Vision products
                *       Developer tool kits at no charge
                *       Toll free phone number
                *       Special developer BBS
                *       On site programming support

We want you to support the full feature set of the Pro AudioSpectrum
product.  If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to
call the ISV Developer Program at (510) 226-2529 or (510) 770-8600.
We look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
Debbie Gronski
Product Marketing Manager
News for immediate release

Editor's contacts:

Claire Merriam
Media Vision (510) 770-8600

Abigail Johnson
Roeder Johnson (415) 579-0700


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MEDIA VISION OPENS ITS SOUND STANDARD
Pro AudioSpectrum Technology Now Available to any Developer of
PC-Compatible Sound Hardware or Software.

Fremont, California, June 11, 1992   Media Vision Inc, has announced
that it is offering to license, without charge, its proprietary sound
technology to any hardware or software developer interested in
creating Pro AudioSpectrum(Tm) compatible products.  Pro AudioSpectrum
technology is the foundation of Media Vision's line of 8- and 16-bit
sound products and allows PC compatible computers to create sounds
such as music or voices when used with applications software.

Media Vision is the first company to open both its hardware and
software sound architecture to the development community.  With this
announcement, Media Vision has opened the door for manufacturers of
IBM-compatible computers, VGA boards, video boards, and audio boards
to incorporate Media Visions audio architecture in their products
easily and without fear of violating any Media Vision copyrights.
This move is intended to lower the cost of sound products for
PC-compatible computers and make the use of multimedia accessible to
all computer suppliers and users.

"Media Vision is dedicated to making multimedia affordable,"  said
Paul Jain.  "With this step, we are giving software and hardware
developers easy access to our award-winning Pro AudioSpectrum sound
technology and enabling high quality sound products to proliferate.
We live in an era of open computer architectures; companies with
closed standards will not go far in making multimedia solutions
affordable.  Ultimately, we want the end user to win."

Pro AudioSpectrum technology is a series of complex computer
algorithms that is built into personal computer hardware and used in
applications software development.  Pro AudioSpectrum technology was
developed by a Media Vision team of hardware, software and chip
engineers over a two year period.  It offers "true 16-bit" or compact
disk quality sound, which is the same level of sound fidelity as has
been adopted by such multimedia industry participants as Sony and IBM.

The Pro AudioSpectrum technology is available to hardware and software
developers in several forms:  Media Vision will provide design
specifications for hardware and software required to develop a Pro
AudioSpectrum-compatible sound product from scratch.  Such a sound
product can also be developed by using off-the-shelf chips available
from Media Vision.  These same chips are also available on a
second-source basis from Crystal Semiconductor, a wholly owned
subsidiary of Cirrus Logic Inc.  (Fremont, Calif)

Media Vision's mission is to popularize multimedia by offering
multimedia solutions at affordable prices.  media Vision's products
range from systems and add in boards to chips based on emerging
multimedia standards for mainstream personal computers.  Media Vision
Inc. is a venture capital funded company based in Fremont, California.
The company's founders successfully formed two earlier ventures,
Video Seven and Paradise Systems, which were responsible for the early
popularization of color graphics technologies in personal computers.
The company was founded in early 1990.

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Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard