From: twong@civil.ubc.ca (Thomas Wong)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard
Subject: Re: I got my UltraSound!!!
Date: 9 Oct 1992 08:22:26 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Civil Engineering, U.B.C., Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: sam.civil.ubc.ca

Now to answer all my email all at once...

Hello there. By now, I guess you must have already read all hte messages
in Usenet's comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard newsgroup from the other GUS owners
about what is in there. But in case you haven't here is a brief summary:

- the card itself
- 256K ram (I played the whole Gilligan's 2001, Cheers themer songs 
  (one at a time of course) and didn't fill out the whole 256. But I'm 
  sure I will so I'll jack it up to 1 Meg sooner or later.
  It use 256K chips and these are really cheap nowadays since SIMM and
  1 Meg SIMM especially is the in thing to buy)
- 6 disks of software including fli (animation with sound) demo, midi demo 
  files, Sound Blaster files, audio files, Sound Blaster/Adlib emulator 
  TSR, 2 programs and utilities (needed by these prgrams) for playing 
  sound files, and USS 8 (Ultra Sound Studio 8)(complete editing/mixing 
  GUI tool). It took about 15 minutes to install all the files and for 
  the install program to extract them all out. It takes over 5 Meg of 
  diskspace but well worth it when you hear thse sound files.
  Almost forgot Ultrafli for playing animation/sound player
  synchronizer. And Windows 3.1 drivers that works! :)
- It comes with 2 audio out. A normal one I'd use with my headphones
  and attach to my stereo. Then an amplified one that has a 2W output
  that almost blew my ears off when I had my headphones on. :) So I
  tried to plugged them on a pair  bookshelf speakers I have (plain
  speakers, no build-in amps or anything) and it drove those speakers
  fine. In fact, it was quite loud on those speakers. Enough for me
  to feel vibration on the "booms". So if you have amplified walkman
  or soundcard speakers, plug them in the normal audio out. Otherwise,
  you don't even need to get anything fancy, get a spare pair of
  speakers (bookshelf size stereo speakers I guess) and just plug them
  into the amplified out. I applaud Gravis for providing a means for
  the normal family who just want to use this thing for games a means
  of using the card without having to buy expensive amplied speakers.
- There is also the game/midi port. The game port is a speed adjustable
  one meaning it speed compensates your joystick response depending
  on whther you have a blazing 50mhz 486 or an ancient XT. :)
- Then there is the audio in port and the stero mic in port.

So how does it sound? To test it, I suggest that you use headphones so
that you don't hear any other distractions and you are listening for
details. As if you are buying a stereo. Because unless you have an
awesome stereo system nearby with good speakers, headphones will be the
next best bet I'd say. Then for the test, listen to a cd player. Then
listen to the Sound Blaster Pro. Now listen to the Ultrasound. I have to
admit, the Ultrasound is right up there with the CD Quality claim. Not
as good as a good cd player of course. But boy, can you hear the
difference between the 32 digital audio voice of the Ultrasond compared
to the 2 for the current generation of sound cards like the Soundblaster
Pro/Adlib/Pro Audio Spectrum... The specs were right about the effects of
the Ultrasound's use of the Wavetable synthesis technique to recreate
sounds of each instrument for a more accurate reproduction. Unlike the
other sound cards which uses FM synthesis (FM = frequency modulation of
one waveform with another then data fudging till it sounds ok :) ).
16 stereo digital voice vs the others with 1. Now to test how close it
comes to CD quality witht the 2 - 44.1 kHz sampling rate, anyone have
equipment to benchmark the thing? :)

Now remember though. To test the card, play the MIDIDEMO to hear midi
files. These midi files are really impressive! Most of them are almost
the whole song too (never played one long enough to hear the end). I
suggested the midi files because a lot of the normal sound files I have
from before doesn't have much in it to show off much of anything. Sure
some did sound better but other must have been recorded at 8 bit or was
recorded from a mono mic or something. This also goes for games. Some of
the games does sound better on the Ultrasound but some sound the same.
Especially the public domain ones I downloaded but that's understandable.
Now that this technology is out and game writers starts to write with
GUS in mind.... OOoo I can;t wait! :)

I'm also quite impressed with the FLIDEMO. I won't spoil it by telling
you what it is but it is animated and have some oomph of a demo sound in
there. Check out your local computer stores for demos of the card!

Thomas.
Happy GUS owner....
Xref: sparky comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard:2701 comp.os.os2.apps:7105