From: ptran@nyx.cs.du.edu (Phat Tran)
Subject: Re: Best, moderately priced soundcard..
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Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 05:03:18 GMT

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. 
>
>   Thanks... 
>
>   Daryl Hawkins
>   WDH2866@ZEUS.TAMU.EDU

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.  Well, maybe that's going a little overboard, but not by much. 
Yes, the card is that good.

First, here are some specs on it:

	- 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.

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Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard