From: twong@civil.ubc.ca (Thomas Wong)
Newsgroups: bc.general
Subject: Re: I got my UltraSound!!!
Date: 9 Oct 1992 16:57:07 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Civil Engineering, U.B.C., Vancouver, B.C., Canada
NNTP-Posting-Host: sam.civil.ubc.ca

In article <derry.718573895@sfu.ca> derry@monashee.sfu.ca (Andrew Derry) writes:
>
>Just curious.. What's Ultrasound?

I'll just give a brief description of the product. For more
details, please read comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard....

The Gravis Ultrasound (GUS) is the best thing to come along since the
harddrive! :) It's the next generation soundcard that costs less than
the current generation soundcard for the PC. It uses a new technology
called Wavetable synthesis to recrate sounds of each instrument for a
digital quality of a CD, instead of the current generation of sound
cards (Sound Blaster Pro/Adlib Gold/Pro Audio Spectrum....etc) which
only uses FM stereo. Which also means that the Ultrasound has 32 digital
audio voices comparing to the 2 voices of FM. It's like listening to FM
radio, then to a CD.

Cheaper? Here is how Gravis is doing things right IMHO. While other
cards comes with 16bit samplimg, scsi port, ....etc, Gravis sees the
market as most familly who buys soundcards only buys it to play games or
to listen to multimedia sound or sound effects from Windows for example.
Most people won't have a Roland keyboard attached to their card or will
be producing midi music. Most home computer owners are still just
learning how to use the computer or are only using it for the basic
things like word processing, spreadsheet or database. The average joe
family don't need all the gadgets. They buy a sound card to listen to
sounds. With that said, the Ultrasound comes with the basic card and
non of the other fancy gadgets to keep the price of the card down. It
costs me $189 compared to the other soundcards that cost just less than
$300. It comes with all you need and a couple more things that the other
cards doesn't even have. For example, it comes with 256K onboard memory
(expandable to 1 Meg) to free up your PC while playing sounds. It comes
with an amplified audio out port (2W) so that you don't need to buy
those speakers with built-in amps like the other cards need. Just plug a
pair of normal speaker, spares or any cheapo plain speakers to the
amplified port and away you go. For headphones or plugging onto your
stereo, there is the normal audio out line.

And it comes with everything you need, 6 disks worth of software. Progra
for playing sound files, TSR to emulate Sound Blaster/Adlib to play
games (game writers have began writing games for the GUS so you won't
need this before long. And games written for this new technology will
sound better too), a program to synchronize fli animation files with
sound files (there is a demo FLIDEMO which is very impressive. Use
headphones to really feel the demo). Players for midi sound (For those
who will be heading to local computer stores for a demo, you have to 
hear the MIDIDEMO. The midi sound really brings out the digital sound
quality of the card. Use headphone instead of those tiny speakers that
have at the computer stores to hear the details and filter out the noise
around the store), USS (Ultra Sound Studio) for those who wants to fool
around with sounds using a GUI, and a Windows 3.1 driver with a midi
mapper and a mixer for Windows.

There is also audio in and stereo mic in. And it also comes with
game/midi port where the game port is speed compensating which means
it's a smart port that compensates response depending on the speed of
your machine, from a blazing 50mhz 486 to a XT.

So this is the basic package. For those who wants to do more, the
Ultrasound uses add-on daughterboards for cd rom, scsi, 16 bit sampling
and a midi port for those who want to do midi. These are the options
you can get. So you can just buy the daughterboard that you want. And
not have to pay for everything like the other soundcards. Or you can buy
later if money is tight right now. And this also makes upgrading as
simple as plugging in another daughterboard.

The Ultrasound is using many new ways of doing things and it looks like
the other soundcards will have to follow . But this is why the
Ultrasound had a long list of backorders even before it was released 2
days ago. Software Alley sold out of their stock of 50 cards in the
first 2 days. That's why I quickly posted my notice when I got mine
cause there were only 3 left at that time and I have talked to others
around here who wanted one. Call around the other computer stores and 
see if any others have them in stock or even have demos for you to 
see...er...  hear. :) For more info, again, please read 
comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.

Thomas.

Newsgroups: bc.general