Gravis ultrasound MAX WIN95/98 drivers
Fedde Bouwman
Hi,
Does anybody have better drivers for the GUS MAX than those supplied by
Gravis ?
I have a lot of trouble with the standard drivers for Windows 95. It
would also be great to have
special Win98 drivers !
I would also be very happy with the source from the original Gravis
drivers.
Greetz,
Fedde
Qwert
I hate to say it but those are it. This is why many of us were forced to
buy another sound card. Those drivers never did support DirectX in hardware
but rather in software mode which can cause all sort of problems. Gravis
was caught in a big lie (kept selling there MAX cards with "full" dirextX
or win95 support when they clearly did not) Their next card, the interwave,
supported directx in hardware but had it's own set of problems. Gravis gave
up on the soundcard market after this. Their cards were always ahead of
their time in hardware but they (or those who they hired) could not write
proper drivers if their life depended on it. -JB
Qwert
I'm not sure *WHY* they could not write a proper "hardware" driver for the
Classic/Ace/Max series of cards (or at least the Max as it had that extra codac
chip) but they never did. Shortly after "admitting" that they would never
release a hardware driver for the Max, they released their AMD Interwave card
and offered a great deal on a trade in. You could send in your old Max card and
get a new interwave card for only $5 less than you could buy the new card on
the shelf. Your credit for the Max card went against *LIST* price of the
interwave. Since AMD wrote the drivers for the interwave cards, their were
proper drivers (they had bugs also) for DirectX hardware support. Rumor has it
that there would have been hardware drivers for the Max card but Gravis did not
want to pay the software developers (outside company) to write them. They even
told us to call this company and bug them!
Ever since this happened I have vowed NEVER to buy another Gravis product and I
never did. I called Gravis (Canada long distance) two months before win95 came
out and was promised that the Max win95 driver was almost done and would be
100% compatable with win95. Taking their word (what a fool I was) I spent $200
for a new Max card. Almost a year later they released the "software emulation"
drivers and they stated that it took them so long because they got stuck and
had to call microsoft to help them finish the drivers. Then (we all had slower
systems then) discovered what "software emulation" in direct x was and how slow
it was! Basically *ANY* non-supported sound card default to emulation mode in
win95 (or it used to) when there are not proper drivers.
Basically what Gravis did was to modify Win 3.1 drivers to work slightly better
with win95. They were still 16 bit drivers and could NEVER be work in hardware
with the new (at the time) 32 bit (mostly) win95 opperating system.
Do yourself a favor.... dump Gravis and be carefull about anything they make
and say in the future. I, and others, learned the hard way. Sure the !@#$% Max
sounded better than a Sound Blaster but that does not matter when the !@#$% Max
would not work with games as Gravis would not support their own products.
Many of us (me inculded) figured a way to get the Max and a cheap Sound Blaster
to work in the same system. This way we got the great MAx Midi and used Sound
Blaster to run games.
-JB
Thanh Tran wrote:
> All this directx in software/hardware business!
>
> I don't get it! The MAX has a 16bit Crystal Semiconductor codec. Writing a
> directx driver for this codec should be just as a any other 16bit codec.
>
> SB16 or any other crappy 16bit codec'ed soundcard does directx in software,
> and things run more or less fine.
>
> -Thanh
Thanh Tran
Dave Hamaker
N.B. JB has never used "the interwave."
Qwert
I reward good support with past products with future purchases from that
company. Gravis "screwed" me once and I will not give them another chance. As
long as I have a choice (other companies make good controllers) I will never buy
gravis. I have also written off Diamond after they sold (and abandoned) their
Speedstar 24x video card. Same story..... promise of Win95 drivers that never
came about. There answer was to buy another video card from them and trade in my
old card (once again the credit was against the suggested retail price) so I
could get a new Diamond card for only $5 more than I could buy one at the store.
Activision lost my support after the lies and dropping of support of the Mercs
mess. They got caught in lies (we even re-printed their lies curtesy of
deja-news) and they basically said "so what"
These companies think they can get away with screwing the customer as they have
done it for so long and people make excuses for them. If the same thing was done
in other consumer areas (lies, faulty products that do not fully work, box
stating different features verse what is delivered in the box (hardware and
software))
When was the last time you bought a tv that was missing a few channels but with
a promise that they would add the missing channels later? The computer hardware
and software industry has gotten out of control and maybe the origin lawsuit
goes a little too far but if I had to pick a side it would most certainly *NOT*
be origin.
Sorry if I seem to be jumping on you.... I am not but you struck a nerve with
Gravis. I hope they, Activision, and Diamond go broke.
-JB
P.S. The Ultrasound sure did play nice midi.... too bad it crapped out with most
games of which it was marketed for.
Thanh Tran wrote:
> Hello,
>
> [snip]
> >Rumor has it that there would have been hardware drivers for the Max card
> >but Gravis did not want to pay the software developers (outside company) to
> >write them. They even told us to call this company and bug them!
>
> Well, someone once told me they almost went bankrupt in 1996. Maybe that's
> why they couldn't afford to pay E-tek Labs to make the new drivers.
>
> In fact, Gravis had a lot of help making the UltraSounds. Sure they probably
> designed it, but Forte/E-tek Labs made the GF1 and the core of the drivers.
> AMD made the Interwave and again the drivers, though i've read that E-tek
> also helped.
> And lastly Synergy assembled in cards at their plant in Taiwan.
> I guess all Gravis had to do was market and support the UltraSounds, and in
> retrospect I don't think they did a very good job of it either.
>
> >Ever since this happened I have vowed NEVER to buy another Gravis >product
> and I never did.
> Notice how you are quick to say you'll never to buy a Gravis product, when
> the culprit is the UltraSound MAX _soundcard_
>
> They make excellent game controllers you know. You'd be silly to turn a
> blind eye to that.
>
> >Do yourself a favor.... dump Gravis and be carefull about anything they
> make
> >and say in the future. I, and others, learned the hard way. Sure the !@#$%
> >Max sounded better than a Sound Blaster but that does not matter when the
> >!@#$% Max would not work with games as Gravis would not support their >own
> products.
> I guess unlucky MAX owners were also the losers in that period when Gravis
> was sued by Focal Point. But if what i'm saying is really true, then they
> couldn't really afford to pay E-tek- desperate times called for desperates
> measures.
>
> >Many of us (me inculded) figured a way to get the Max and a cheap Sound
> >Blaster to work in the same system. This way we got the great MAx Midi and
> >used Sound Blaster to run games.
>
> Yes, i too have owned a SoundBlaster card, and once had it residing with my
> GUS PnP. But i took it out once i realized that it wasn't being used.
> SBPro emulation in IMHO probably the best of all the non- hardware
> compatible SB's.
>
> -Thanh
> Still a proud GUS PnPer
Thanh Tran
Roel de Wit
>Thanh Tran wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> [snip]
>> >Rumor has it that there would have been hardware drivers for the Max card
>> >but Gravis did not want to pay the software developers (outside company) to
>> >write them. They even told us to call this company and bug them!
>> Well, someone once told me they almost went bankrupt in 1996. Maybe that's
>> why they couldn't afford to pay E-tek Labs to make the new drivers.
No comment... I guess though that everybody that would think straight
could derive why what did or didn't happen.. I can say one thing, we
can be darn happy that we ever got Interwave NT drivers !
>> In fact, Gravis had a lot of help making the UltraSounds. Sure they probably
>> designed it, but Forte/E-tek Labs made the GF1 and the core of the drivers.
>> AMD made the Interwave and again the drivers, though i've read that E-tek
>> also helped.
E-Tek wrote ALL of the Interwave base software (except for megaem and
some other small things), same goes for the pre-GUS PnP card's
software.. Actually Forte split off in two groups.. E-Tek (programming
part) and Forte something for hardware.. As far as I have tracked
things down it the past it seems like Forte actually did the GUS
Classic hardware too (or at least a base design board).
>> And lastly Synergy assembled in cards at their plant in Taiwan.
>> I guess all Gravis had to do was market and support the UltraSounds, and in
>> retrospect I don't think they did a very good job of it either.
>> >Ever since this happened I have vowed NEVER to buy another Gravis >product
>> and I never did.
>> Notice how you are quick to say you'll never to buy a Gravis product, when
>> the culprit is the UltraSound MAX _soundcard_
>> They make excellent game controllers you know. You'd be silly to turn a
>> blind eye to that.
Yup they are indeed the best (price vs performance ratio at least)
<CUT>
>> Still a proud GUS PnPer
Me too but I'm happy to have an EWS64 XL aside to it :)
--
Roel / Utopia Sound Division
http://sdc.wtm.tudelft.nl/utopia
ICQ# 11800163
Thanh Tran
Hello,
>These companies think they can get away with screwing the customer as >they
have done it for so long and people make excuses for them.
I don't think any company thinks they can get away with screwing their
customers. Maybe they don't think much about it, but it'll catch up to them
in the long run, as it did for Gravis.
> If the same thing was done in other consumer areas (lies, faulty products
>that do not fully work, box stating different features verse what is
delivered >in the box (hardware and software))
>When was the last time you bought a tv that was missing a few channels >but
with a promise that they would add the missing channels later?
How can you compare TVs to computers? TV are much more mainstream and
whether this has to do with industry maturity, or vice versa, I don't know.
On the other hand, mainstream (ie. affordable) computers, and esp. PCs have
only been with us for... geez, not even 20 years.
But one thing i know for certain is that back in the ol' days when TV's were
a new thing there were a shitload of problems with them.
>Sorry if I seem to be jumping on you....
Not at all.
> I am not but you struck a nerve with
>Gravis. I hope they, Activision, and Diamond go broke.
By your logic (company should go broke because they "screwed" you on a
single product) every computer company should go broke- no doubt they've all
released poor, under-supported or generally ill-fated products sometime over
their lifetime.
IMHO M$ would be the first to go- when Win95 was to supercede 3.1x didn't
they say Windows95 didn't need DOS.
Now that's the biggest lie if you ever heard one.
>P.S. The Ultrasound sure did play nice midi....
> too bad it crapped out with >most games of which it was marketed for.
Ah, well, that's another long long story...
Dave Hamaker
"Thanh Tran" <tktran@NO_sp.tartarus.uwa.edu.au> writes:
>But i'm more afraid of the ISA vs PCI situation. It seems that any future
>mobos, (past PII at least) will have no ISA slots...
Don't feed the monster. :-) If everyone buys into this thinking, it'll
just make it happen sooner. I don't feel so threatened by this because
I weigh where I am when I get there. For example, I'm about to buy the
AT-form PII mobo with the most ISA slots I could find, and I'm actually
going to go with an older LX board over a newer BX because of a layout
more to my liking, etc. Sure that sticks me with 333MHz max, but not
really, as I could probably upgrade to the same BX boards I could buy now
later to move up. It would be a different situation if mobo's were the
big-ticket item, but they're not. The net effect of this is that when
mobo's with ISA slots really transition out, I'll probably delay moving
as long as I can, which creates an opportunity for someone to offer me
an ISA slot mobo. Besides, who knows how computer sound will have
progressed by then; something else as elegantly-designed as the GUS
could easily appear out of nowhere. :-)
-Dave
d...@cfcl.com
Thanh Tran
>>> Well, someone once told me they almost went bankrupt in 1996. >>>Maybe
that's why they couldn't afford to pay E-tek Labs to make the >>>new
drivers.
>No comment... I guess though that everybody that would think straight
>could derive why what did or didn't happen.. I can say one thing, we
>can be darn happy that we ever got Interwave NT drivers !
Hehe. I recall is was you Roel who told me that Gravis almost went
bankrupt...
>>> In fact, Gravis had a lot of help making the UltraSounds. Sure they
>>>probably designed it, but Forte/E-tek Labs made the GF1 and the core
>>>of the drivers. AMD made the Interwave and again the drivers, though
>>>i've read that E-tek also helped.
>E-Tek wrote ALL of the Interwave base software (except for megaem and
>some other small things), same goes for the pre-GUS PnP card's
>software..
Agreed. I must of been drinking- it should have said "and again Forte wrote
the drivers, though i think AMD also helped.
> Actually Forte split off in two groups.. E-Tek (programming
>part) and Forte something for hardware.. As far as I have tracked
>things down it the past it seems like Forte actually did the GUS
>Classic hardware too (or at least a base design board).
That's true- I hear Forte are still trying to make it with their VFX-1 VR
headset.
>>> They make excellent game controllers you know. You'd be silly to turn a
>>> blind eye to that.
>Yup they are indeed the best (price vs performance ratio at least)
>>> Still a proud GUS PnPer
>Me too but I'm happy to have an EWS64 XL aside to it :)
Yeah, I've love to have one, but they aren't even close to affordable or
commom in Aus.
But i'm more afraid of the ISA vs PCI situation. It seems that any future
mobos, (past PII at least) will have no ISA slots...
Sad for both GUS PnP and EWS64XL...
:-)
Thanh Tran
>BTW. any chance that we will get GUS PnP drivers for NT5 or Win98?
Well, Roel claims he has the driver source codes
(http://sdc.wtm.tudelft.nl/utopia)
When/if he distributes them to the driver team they'll be some real
progess. There are some darn clever/enthusiastics programmers on
that team, considering the nature of GUS and demoscene...
Btw, NT5/98 use the same Windows Driver Model (WDM).
Thanh Tran
Pity really. I guess that's why Linux drivers are the best...
W9x may suck, but it does have it's uses...
-Thanh
Roel de Wit
>>>BTW. any chance that we will get GUS PnP drivers for NT5 or Win98?
>>Well, Roel claims he has the driver source codes
>>(http://sdc.wtm.tudelft.nl/utopia)
>>When/if he distributes them to the driver team they'll be some real
>>progess. There are some darn clever/enthusiastics programmers on
>>that team, considering the nature of GUS and demoscene...
>Yeah, but it seems like most of the scene hates windows 95.
Well I fear that most of the demo-scene doesn't even know about sound
programming anymore.. They simply all seem to use MIDAS these days..
--
Roel / Utopia Sound Division
http://sdc.wtm.tudelft.nl/utopia
ICQ# 11800163
Roel de Wit
Assuming you're talking about the demo-scene....
>>Yeah, but it seems like most of the scene hates windows 95.
>Pity really. I guess that's why Linux drivers are the best...
>W9x may suck, but it does have it's uses...
Face it or not but eventually the scene will shift to Windows xx (not
that I see a reason (perhaps it's just that the newcomers have been
raised with Windowz) for it but it just seems to happen and this will
accelerate as the CPU's get faster).. The only alternative I've seen
so far are JAVA demos (back to the 286 age YEAH... Well not quite
since I've seen two really good JAVA demos at TakeOver '98) which
could also run under Linux, but that's about it.. Everybody is yelling
I WANT A 3DFX COMPO !!! The result.. Only one or two entries.. The
most stupid thing I've seen till now is that at TakeOver '98 (in the
Netherlands) they played DOS demos under Windows 95 !! Newbies I guess
;-((
Personally I see no reason to shift to Windows xx personally (except
for JAVA demo's perhaps).. I see NO reason for switching to windows
for demos except for making it het programmers easier and easier and
easier and slower of course.. For those that can't do their own
music-replayer there are things like MIDAS that does support "most"
soundcards out there.. Most Windows versions of demos that I've seen
run reasonable slow under Windows while their DOS versions just have
a steady 15-30 frames/sec..
Since the release (in the period 1990-1992 I think) of Putrefaction
(or whatever it's called), Crystal Dreams (AT version), Unreal,
Crystal Dreams 2 there came many "WOWs".. Again and again limits were
broken but this year I haven't seen a real "WOW" at all... The only
thing that made an extreme impression on me was last years 64 Kb
"STASH" intro... Oke last year there were demos like Boost (didn't
make the impact on me that 2nd Reality originally made), their other
demo (can't recall the name right now), 303, Tribes, Final Reality
(windows, but kewl) but nothing up till now this year. There were of
course a few others but it seems like it's getting less and less.. 80%
of the demos just seem like the exact copying of effects of other
demos.
Then there's the problem with guys that have a name out there.. If one
of those enters a music compo they get pre-selected and win (or get a
good score).. E.g. (again) the TO'98 music compo seemed extremely
unfair.. I just couldn't image that the module from that guy from ACME
(Vic ??) won (no offence.. Respects..). I'm not saying things went
unfair but it's just the oppinion I have..
Demo parties seem like Internet/Copy parties these days.... Nah the
scene is dying.. Sometimes there is a peek and then there is a
fall-back again..
Hmmm I'm getting off-topic here... I guess I'll end the subject..
Thanh Tran
>programming anymore.. They simply all seem to use MIDAS these days..
That's so poo.
I remember that even b4 Gravis released an SDK for the GUS,
ppl like Tran (not me, but Tomas(?) Pytel) had hacked into the thing,
figured out how it worked, and even made demos for it.
Ah, those were the good `ol days.
Roel de Wit
Yupz the great dude from Renaissance (just want to show my knowledge
:)) actually debugged the Windows drivers.. I think I still have the
document he wrote back then...
>Ah, those were the good `ol days.
Snifff...
Roel de Wit
>[snip] >(back to the 286 age YEAH
>Hey i recall Trixter wanting to organize an ol'skool demo comp- 386DX40,
>VGA + SBp maximum. Does anyone know whether this happened?
>Would be _very_ interesting!
Errr sh*t who was Trixter again ?? Wasn't he one of the dudes that did
EMF versus (hmm I'm getting old too) ??
>>... Well not quite
>>since I've seen two really good JAVA demos at TakeOver '98) which
>>could also run under Linux, but that's about it.. Everybody is yelling
>>I WANT A 3DFX COMPO !!! The result.. Only one or two entries.. The
>I have a suspicion TBL will release a 3dfx demo at ASM98- It seems that TBL
>want to prove that win9x can be a good demo "platform"
>And it'll be a winner no doubt.
If they will there is a good chance that it'll be at least nice to
see/hear.. The last thing I've seen from one of the TBL members was a
Windows 95 crash demo at TO'98 if I remember correctly... The problem
with 3D cards out there is that the only "real" standard is
Direct3D/OpenGL (don't forget that VooDoo(2) isn't the only card out
there) which both are quite slow with 3DFX.. For something like a
3D(FX) compo to grow there must a be cheap and far superiour standard
which can be used for almost everything for about 3 years.. Just like
GUS was the standard for MOD-music all those years you need something
on the 3D (preferrable a 2D+3D in one solution) territory that the
most of the sceners have bought or will buy, to get it really
supported. Oke VooDoo(2) seems to be the most spread
3D-graphics-accelerator out there but I doubt how long this will stay
this way. Just have a look at the new RIVA128 TNT (or whatever it's
called) of which the 16 MB version will cost about 199$ (giving you
the performance of about 200% of the VooDoo2, if I should believe the
benchmark results that is).. Then there are some of the great looking
games that support 3D cards already. Demo-coders will have a hard time
beating the graphics in games like Unreal. Since the demoscene has
always been the starting place of new effects I don't have must
confidence in it for the coming year.. The only "WOW" effect in a
3D(FX) demo I can imagine will be a demo with a Crystal Dream 2 like
Virtual Reality effect (just follow the ship in CD2 closely and you
know what I mean).
>>most stupid thing I've seen till now is that at TakeOver '98 (in the
>>Netherlands) they played DOS demos under Windows 95 !! Newbies I guess
>>;-((
>I have at at hornet.org the other week and checked out the polls- there was this question that went somewhere along the lines of "How long have u been interested in demos?"
>Most of the responses were in the 2-3 yr group. I was shocked to see so few in the 6+ yr group.
>Shit i'm getting old!
Tell me about it ;-(
>[snip] >.. Most Windows versions of demos that I've seen
>>run reasonable slow under Windows while their DOS versions just have
>>a steady 15-30 frames/sec..
>The DOS and Win9x versions Astral Blur, Jizz and Stash seem to run at approx. the same speed for me (P166mmx)- i'm convinced: it _can_ be done.
I was afraid you would bring those up :) Still they are very few..
>>80% of the demos just seem like the exact copying of effects of other
>>demos.
>Yeah, the result of newbies copy effects from their fav. demo coder, whilst the fav. demo coder moves onto newer (and better?) things.
I actually planned to code a demo about a year ago but didn't want to
"steal" code from others because I considered that lame.. Boy I
regretted that.. So eventually I stopped (after about a week) when my
3D-engine was in a state that it could almost read/display 3DS files
with only a few assembly lines in it (I didn't want to use what I
didn't understand), when I realized that it would never be able to do
fancy texturing, shading, light-sourcing etc. without dropping below 1
frame per sec on a p100 ;-( Oh well perhaps I'll feel active after we
finish "Utopia EWS" :)
>[snip]
>>Demo parties seem like Internet/Copy parties these days.... Nah the
>>scene is dying.. Sometimes there is a peek and then there is a
>>fall-back again..
>To me the demoscene brings nothing really interesting anymore. Every once in a while i chuck in my GUS PnP CD and fire up CD2 on my 386 + beeper.
Well the V.R. effect is the greatest I've ever seen I must say.. The
light-sourcing (or whatever it's called isn't real but it sure kicks).
>For some reason or another i'm more interested in music compo's, eg. MC6
>nowadays.
The problem is that there is so much crap among the entries. Then
there were the complains about the MC5 voting.... Then there is my
slow 14.4k modem :)
At the TakeOver '98 demoparty we downloaded over 2 gig of modules from
the Internet.. 2 dudes from our group sorted them out till there was
650 MB left which is on a CD now :) I guess they will do for now.
Thanh Tran
[snip] >(back to the 286 age YEAH
Hey i recall Trixter wanting to organize an ol'skool demo comp- 386DX40,
VGA + SBp maximum. Does anyone know whether this happened?
Would be _very_ interesting!
>... Well not quite
>since I've seen two really good JAVA demos at TakeOver '98) which
>could also run under Linux, but that's about it.. Everybody is yelling
>I WANT A 3DFX COMPO !!! The result.. Only one or two entries.. The
I have a suspicion TBL will release a 3dfx demo at ASM98- It seems that TBL
want to prove that win9x can be a good demo "platform"
And it'll be a winner no doubt.
>most stupid thing I've seen till now is that at TakeOver '98 (in the
>Netherlands) they played DOS demos under Windows 95 !! Newbies I guess
>;-((
I have at at hornet.org the other week and checked out the polls- there was this question that went somewhere along the lines of "How long have u been interested in demos?"
Most of the responses were in the 2-3 yr group. I was shocked to see so few in the 6+ yr group.
Shit i'm getting old!
[snip] >.. Most Windows versions of demos that I've seen
>run reasonable slow under Windows while their DOS versions just have
>a steady 15-30 frames/sec..
The DOS and Win9x versions Astral Blur, Jizz and Stash seem to run at approx. the same speed for me (P166mmx)- i'm convinced: it _can_ be done.
>80% of the demos just seem like the exact copying of effects of other
>demos.
Yeah, the result of newbies copy effects from their fav. demo coder, whilst the fav. demo coder moves onto newer (and better?) things.
[snip]
>Demo parties seem like Internet/Copy parties these days.... Nah the
>scene is dying.. Sometimes there is a peek and then there is a
>fall-back again..
To me the demoscene brings nothing really interesting anymore. Every once in a while i chuck in my GUS PnP CD and fire up CD2 on my 386 + beeper.
For some reason or another i'm more interested in music compo's, eg. MC6
nowadays.
-Thanh
Sean Hannan
I'll have to drop by and check those out. I was thinking of tryig to put my
two cents into WinNT drivers or something like that. I was also going to try
and get hold of the guy who write some software drivers for the GUS before
being snapped up by Gravis and heading off to refine them. He will probably be
able to give me some good info on GUS driver programming (I hope!!)
Woodster
Thanh Tran
>drivers for the GUS before being snapped up by Gravis and heading off to
>refine them. He will probably be able to give me some good info on GUS
>driver programming (I hope!!)
Are you talking about Jason L. Steere of MegaEM fame?
:-)
Is he still in Perth???
I wanna go and pat this guy on the back, and a few hundred times too.
-Thanh
Thanh Tran
>Errr sh*t who was Trixter again ?? Wasn't he one of the dudes that did
>EMF versus (hmm I'm getting old too) ??
Could be. (dunno)
He's one of the guys of Hornet "demogroup" and is always complaining about
how the scene stinks nowadays...
But he made that weddingtro and modplayer with all those dancers synced to
the music. (Gripe/Grind???)
> The only "WOW" effect in a
>3D(FX) demo I can imagine will be a demo with a Crystal Dream 2 like
>Virtual Reality effect (just follow the ship in CD2 closely and you
>know what I mean).
Boy i remember the first time i saw this demo. My jaw dropped even at the
bouncing soccer ball bit.
Years later i learnt about fractals and realized that wickedass
fractalzoomer.
>>>80% of the demos just seem like the exact copying of effects of other
>>>demos.
>>Yeah, the result of newbies copy effects from their fav. demo coder,
whilst the >>fav. demo coder moves onto newer (and better?) things.
>
>I actually planned to code a demo about a year ago but didn't want to
>"steal" code from others because I considered that lame.. Boy I
>regretted that.. So eventually I stopped (after about a week) when my
>3D-engine was in a state that it could almost read/display 3DS files
>with only a few assembly lines in it
Hehe. Well at least you can do a few lines.
[snip]
>>To me the demoscene brings nothing really interesting anymore. Every once
>>in a while i chuck in my GUS PnP CD and fire up CD2 on my 386 + beeper.
>Well the V.R. effect is the greatest I've ever seen I must say.. The
>light-sourcing (or whatever it's called isn't real but it sure kicks).
And the music was so cool as well! I think it was the first great sounding
trackmo that i watched, and when you're used to cheesy fm on an SB... oh
boy.
"Ooop, Ah!" [ending credits part]
Hell, i could reminisce all day...
:->
>>For some reason or another i'm more interested in music compo's, eg. MC6
>>nowadays.
>The problem is that there is so much crap among the entries.
I just download stuff from the veteran section. This year i'm trying to
guess which one is by Necros.
:-)
See if i'm 99% sure it's by him maybe i'll consider voting (a hatrick at
2nd- he deserves to win for once)
90% of the stuff in the rookie section stinks, much like my tracking.
:-)
> Then there were the complains about the MC5 voting....
What i really hate is the 1,000,000 byte limit.
S#^t I have an 8mb guspnp for a reason.
(and re. the other reason- yeah yeah i know, gimme some more time)
-Thanh
Roel de Wit
>>Errr sh*t who was Trixter again ?? Wasn't he one of the dudes that did
>>EMF versus (hmm I'm getting old too) ??
>Could be. (dunno)
>He's one of the guys of Hornet "demogroup" and is always complaining about
>how the scene stinks nowadays...
>But he made that weddingtro and modplayer with all those dancers synced to
>the music. (Gripe/Grind???)
Well it was a nice MOD player back then but it could annoying after
several hours :)
>> The only "WOW" effect in a
>>3D(FX) demo I can imagine will be a demo with a Crystal Dream 2 like
>>Virtual Reality effect (just follow the ship in CD2 closely and you
>>know what I mean).
>Boy i remember the first time i saw this demo. My jaw dropped even at the
>bouncing soccer ball bit.
>Years later i learnt about fractals and realized that wickedass
>fractalzoomer.
Yep but how did they do it ?? A 386 isn't able to calculate that
fractal zoom that fluently (or is it ?).. So it must be stored as an
animation of some kind but that again would be too big for the amount
of available RAM those days.. Any ideas ??
>>>>80% of the demos just seem like the exact copying of effects of other
>>>>demos.
>>>Yeah, the result of newbies copy effects from their fav. demo coder,
>whilst the >>fav. demo coder moves onto newer (and better?) things.
>>I actually planned to code a demo about a year ago but didn't want to
>>"steal" code from others because I considered that lame.. Boy I
>>regretted that.. So eventually I stopped (after about a week) when my
>>3D-engine was in a state that it could almost read/display 3DS files
>>with only a few assembly lines in it
>Hehe. Well at least you can do a few lines.
>[snip]
Well about 50% of it was comments to avoid that I wouldn't understand
what I was doing anymore after a few days :)
>>>To me the demoscene brings nothing really interesting anymore. Every once
>>>in a while i chuck in my GUS PnP CD and fire up CD2 on my 386 + beeper.
>>Well the V.R. effect is the greatest I've ever seen I must say.. The
>>light-sourcing (or whatever it's called isn't real but it sure kicks).
>And the music was so cool as well! I think it was the first great sounding
>trackmo that i watched, and when you're used to cheesy fm on an SB... oh
>boy.
Not to mention the cheesy noise SB PRO DAC those days..
>"Ooop, Ah!" [ending credits part]
>Hell, i could reminisce all day...
>:->
Yupz.. The whole demo actually consists out of two 8-channel modules
if I remember correctly with the last one (the credits one by vogue
with two songs in it) being one of the greatest modules ever (of that
time that is)..
>>>For some reason or another i'm more interested in music compo's, eg. MC6
>>>nowadays.
>>The problem is that there is so much crap among the entries.
>I just download stuff from the veteran section. This year i'm trying to
>guess which one is by Necros.
>:-)
Well I've found some of the music from FM hard to keep appart....
>See if i'm 99% sure it's by him maybe i'll consider voting (a hatrick at
>2nd- he deserves to win for once)
Well, if you ask me who made the best modules up till now.. Well
actually I accidentally bumped into his modules but his nick is:
Elwood.. Just download his modules from Hornet and listen to them
again and again :)
>90% of the stuff in the rookie section stinks, much like my tracking.
>:-)
Oh well... I promised the group I'm in (Fusion) to make a modules this
summer to enter at the Bizarre '98 (In Holland again) music compo.. I
hope that I'll get at once one vote :)
>> Then there were the complains about the MC5 voting....
>What i really hate is the 1,000,000 byte limit.
>S#^t I have an 8mb guspnp for a reason.
>(and re. the other reason- yeah yeah i know, gimme some more time)
Well I'd prefer a 1 MB size more :) For the TO'98 we had a .XM of
about 2.7 MB which I squeezed (you know, resampling, looping etc..)
down to exactly 1 MB (errr minus a few bytes) which fitted exactly in
a GUS Classic.. Boy this was kewl, FT2 actually showed 0 KB GUS RAM
free :) I think it was the first module to do so. The 1 MB limit just
gives you to possibility to show what you can do with 1 MB (oke oke
about 95% of all composers just rip the samples from other modules)..
Still I like a 2 MB limit myself so that I could use some stereo
percussion/strings and things like that..
Roel de Wit
>>I was also going to try and get hold of the guy who write some software
>>drivers for the GUS before being snapped up by Gravis and heading off to
>>refine them. He will probably be able to give me some good info on GUS
>>driver programming (I hope!!)
>Are you talking about Jason L. Steere of MegaEM fame?
>:-)
>Is he still in Perth???
What's Perth ??
>I wanna go and pat this guy on the back, and a few hundred times too.
Last I heard of him, he worked for NEC doing some software for the
PowerVR.. I don't have an email adress for you guys though (wouldn't
give it if I had it though :)).
Randy Simons
>Yep but how did they do it ?? A 386 isn't able to calculate that
>fractal zoom that fluently (or is it ?).. So it must be stored as an
>animation of some kind but that again would be too big for the amount
>of available RAM those days.. Any ideas ??
Hmm, this is getting quite off topic, but here goes:
Read the docs that came with it. They indeed din't calculate realtime, but
use something they'd call mip-mapping nowadays...
Randy
Kevin Boye
altough here goes anyhow :)))
rde...@a1.nl (Roel de Wit) wrote:
>Yep but how did they do it ?? A 386 isn't able to calculate that
>fractal zoom that fluently (or is it ?).. So it must be stored as an
>animation of some kind but that again would be too big for the amount
>of available RAM those days.. Any ideas ??
>
The numbers were calculated/loaded on beforehand. I think if you read the last
part (the information part of the demo) you'll notice this as a topic.
>Oh well... I promised the group I'm in (Fusion) to make a modules this
>summer to enter at the Bizarre '98 (In Holland again) music compo.. I
>hope that I'll get at once one vote :)
>
So, that's the group you told me about ..oh, half a year ago? Nice!
Any modules I can download made by you as of yet?
>>> Then there were the complains about the MC5 voting....
>>What i really hate is the 1,000,000 byte limit.
>>S#^t I have an 8mb guspnp for a reason.
>>(and re. the other reason- yeah yeah i know, gimme some more time)
>
Umph, I still have 5mb onboard my Gus PnP. It's there for a reason though, it
automatically forces you to do optimizations right from the beginning when doing
samples.
>gives you to possibility to show what you can do with 1 MB (oke oke
>about 95% of all composers just rip the samples from other modules)..
>
Now, that stinks to high degrees!!!! It's OK I guess if they put it as text in
the module.
>Still I like a 2 MB limit myself so that I could use some stereo
>percussion/strings and things like that..
>
Ehem....
Stereo percussion / strings you said?
PS: Utopia EWS 7mb drumkit partly stereo -is- possible, but with reduced reverb
quality and about half the kit in stereo (no way EWS reverb sounds better than
the current stereo drum reverberation! Hell, Utopia GUS will sound better..).
For best quality, 12mb in full stereo is currently our best bet. Also, I might
be able to sample another real piano at someone I watch the house at....a -real-
oldie :))
Kevin / Utopia Sound Division
http://sdc.wtm.tudelft.nl/utopia
http://utopia.a1.nl
Thanh Tran
City i'm (and Sean Hannan) are in. Jason went to the same uni as me so i
figured...
>>I wanna go and pat this guy on the back, and a few hundred times too.
>
>Last I heard of him, he worked for NEC doing some software for the
>PowerVR.. I don't have an email adress for you guys though (wouldn't
>give it if I had it though :)).
Hehe. I wouldn't really bother him - i just said it to mean how cool it was
that he wrote an Mt32/GM emulator, and remember it did lead to SB FM
emulation too.
Thanh Tran
>several hours :)
I never used it for that long. But i'm telling you, it was a big step ahead
of most of the other modplayers. If someone made a hi-rez full colour
version today it'd be kickass.
>>Years later i learnt about fractals and realized that wickedass
>>fractalzoomer.
>Yep but how did they do it ?? A 386 isn't able to calculate that
>fractal zoom that fluently (or is it ?).. So it must be stored as an
>animation of some kind but that again would be too big for the amount
>of available RAM those days.. Any ideas ??
I remember reading something about it in the end credits bit. Something
about another democoder saying that it was precalculated, and Triton
vehemenantly denying so. (ie. something along the lines of: F@#k OFF, you
don' know what you're talking about)
>>And the music was so cool as well! I think it was the first great sounding
>>trackmo that i watched, and when you're used to cheesy fm on an SB... oh
>>boy.
>Not to mention the cheesy noise SB PRO DAC those days..
What do you mean those days? I've still got one right here. Everytime the
hdd accesses i can actually hear the sounds amplified thru the SBp's output.
So bootup time is great fun- nice electro "music" generated on-the-fly!
:-)
>Yupz.. The whole demo actually consists out of two 8-channel modules
>if I remember correctly with the last one (the credits one by vogue
>with two songs in it) being one of the greatest modules ever (of that
>time that is)..
Still one of my fav's today.
>Well I've found some of the music from FM hard to keep appart....
IMO BH's and Mellow-d's tracks are hard to differentiate, but Necros's style
is quite different to the others (esp. Wave)
What i dislike is that mods are judged too much on their tracked content-
eg. vol/pan and other effects done by hand, no. of rows, and speed at which
they're played etc...
I'm not sure if you know what i saying but for some mods, it's just so much
better when you're playing it and looking at the pattern data. There's a
sense of "Look at all that scrolling s@#t - this guy put a heck of a lot of
work into this one!"
I mean just take a look at Wave's MC5 no. 1 Vet. entry.
>Well, if you ask me who made the best modules up till now.. Well
>actually I accidentally bumped into his modules but his nick is:
>Elwood.. Just download his modules from Hornet and listen to them
>again and again :)
I've got some of his tracks (littlema.xm, sweetdr.xm, elw-sick.xm). Sure
he's a good tracker (again pattern data), but i don't really like the music.
Necro's progression disk on the other hand has some of my fav. music. I wish
i could find more of these type of tracks.
IMHO the best tracked music is by Karsten Koch. He's not (was ever?)
involved in demo/mod scene but he's a damn talented (both as a tracker and
musician)
He's also involved with that Imago Orpheus tracker/midi hybrid proggy (uses
S3M-like interface for XM-like modules.
[snip]
>Well I'd prefer a 1 MB size more :) For the TO'98 we had a .XM of
>about 2.7 MB which I squeezed (you know, resampling, looping etc..)
>down to exactly 1 MB (errr minus a few bytes) which fitted exactly in
>a GUS Classic..
> Boy this was kewl, FT2 actually showed 0 KB GUS RAM
>free :)
Btw, why is it that trackers like this and IT don't (or can't) use the GUS
classic in softmixing mode. I recall Midas can do this...
Ft2 has a nice interface but 1mb isn't really enough to play with on a GUS.
> I think it was the first module to do so. The 1 MB limit just
>gives you to possibility to show what you can do with 1 MB (oke oke
>about 95% of all composers just rip the samples from other modules)..
Well then instead of a 1mb mod size limit they should have a 1mb samples
limit. How much pattern data you want to use it up to you.
>Still I like a 2 MB limit myself so that I could use some stereo
>percussion/strings and things like that..
I think that the 1mb limit is due to the classic GUS and less to do with
"Here- see what you can do with 1mb. (take a look at Hornet polls- one of
the replies that you can vote for is that you don't like the 1mb MC limit,
and in brackets is something like 'Screw the GUS owners!'
-Thanh
Thanh Tran
>PS: Utopia EWS 7mb drumkit partly stereo -is- possible, but with reduced
>reverb quality and about half the kit in stereo (no way EWS reverb sounds
>better than the current stereo drum reverberation! Hell, Utopia GUS will
sound >better..). For best quality, 12mb in full stereo is currently our
best bet. Also, I >might be able to sample another real piano at someone I
watch the house >at....a -real- oldie :))
One thing i've been meaning to ask (but always forget) is that you say
Utopia is "homebrewed". How the f#@k? Do you guys have access to some real
pro equipment? I'd be interested in where you got your pianos, guitars etc.
from...
Or did you draw the waves by hand?
:-)
-Thanh
Kevin Boye
Yes, we drew the waves by hand. Quite difficult without too much aliasing, but
it went ok. You see, simply scanning art won't work, as there will be way too
much noise / aliasing ;( Then we listened to a few birdsounds and thundering,
and drew them using CorelDraw as well (Corel is very accurate when doing this,
sure AutoCad works as well..still, I like Corel better). For the reverb, we
simply cut the last part of the waveform (or the part with largest dB value),
and pasted it in succession at the end with increasingly lower volume.
As for the piano and guitars, we printed out a few Roland SCC1/Pro piano
waveforms at different velocities, then tried to make similar drawings/sketches
instead of making illegal digital copies. Now, this was a bit difficult, so we
had to use a hex-editor a bit to control volume and loops correctly.
Seriously.....
It could be, but QUITE OBVIOUSLY not the case as most semi-professional/amateur
wave-editors would know :)) I personally used cassette players (at a friend of
mine, a musician..Steinar..nice for old piano they had ..which now is rather
old), proper software and different synthesizers for my waveforms. With my
Sw60Xg synthesizer (it's still a synthesizer, altough not like most people would
think with keys and sliders) I could fake proper reverb, distortion (listen to
those guitars!), tremolor (strings..) etc. I sampled off the entire GM set of
my friend's synth, altough did not actually use the waveforms. It was a nice
starting point really (say, a pad there uses piano+string, a very nice
combination I had not thought of so why not make one? Altough mix them myself
so they only use one voice instead of having them layered..with pre-made patches
that is with that personal touch in it). Also, the sampled GM set also gave me
some pretty nice experiences with looping waveforms, I learned alot in 2-3
weeks. With the software I could cross-fade the looppoints for quicker and in
some cases nicer loops (this works better on long loop points). Now, the SW60Xg
has a line-in which I can process anything through its effects engine, hence
distortion on those guitars ;> If you've seen XgEdit you'll know the vast array
of sliders/knobs one can fiddle with to control the XG effects engine.
What did I get in return? Worse hearing by all the looping.....Not worth the
one year investment of headaches, constant ear-noises, eye-problems I
think....Altough it is nice having a proper GM set now, future-proof as well.
And I am proud of those drums (cool concept, eh? Stereo...process behind it I
called Steroid, altough Roel found the word a bit funny;> So I changed it to
StereoID :))) DAMN, there is a reason why it took me half a year to do those
drums, there's alot of effects / sound processing / sampling behind them to make
them sound this clean&nice. As for technical info, there's over 40 exclusion
groups with the stereo drumkit...and 4-500 waveforms... I tried to make them
velocity-sensitive, altough in this case the 65k FFF barrier would have been
broken by a hundred kilobytes or so ;(
There is one thing I gained tremendously with though...Altough my hearing did
get a bit reduced, I still hear a lot more details than I did before, like a
blind guy senses more with his hearing than normal people do. I hear whenever
there's a car outside (I live in a nice cellar..I've surprised my friends quite
a few times by this! Just as they hit the bell, I open the door ;>> ), when the
phone upstairs rings (when no-one else hears it), and I cannot stand the
electric noise (bzzz and high-pithced beeps, fans etc) my Modem nor my brand-new
19" HP monitor makes. And my PC casing is OUTSIDE my door, with door closed.
It's all rather ironic, isn't it..? And still I hear whenever the HD is being
accessed...Needless to say, I'm tremendously happy with my EWs64, altough the
SB32PnP is now in my sisters PC ;( Damn, that bugger made alot of noise....much
much more than my Gus PnP, Much more..
Sean Hannan
>>
>>Last I heard of him, he worked for NEC doing some software for the
>>PowerVR.. I don't have an email adress for you guys though (wouldn't
>>give it if I had it though :)).
>
>
>Hehe. I wouldn't really bother him - i just said it to mean how cool it was
>that he wrote an Mt32/GM emulator, and remember it did lead to SB FM
>emulation too.
Yeah - I haven't spoken to him for a while. I've been meaning to catch up with
him over the last few months for a couple of drinks but I haven't got around to
it yet! Anyway - as far as I know he is still programming for NEC as Roel
mentioned.
Woodster
sim...@videologic.com
rde...@a1.nl wrote:
> Hi,
>
> >>I was also going to try and get hold of the guy who write some software
> >>drivers for the GUS before being snapped up by Gravis and heading off to
> >>refine them. He will probably be able to give me some good info on GUS
> >>driver programming (I hope!!)
> >Are you talking about Jason L. Steere of MegaEM fame?
> >:-)
> >Is he still in Perth???
>
> What's Perth ??
Capital of Western Australia.
>
> >I wanna go and pat this guy on the back, and a few hundred times too.
>
> Last I heard of him, he worked for NEC doing some software for the
> PowerVR..
Yes he is. AFAIK he did most of the work on the Quake Drivers for PowerVR.
>I don't have an email adress for you guys though (wouldn't
> give it if I had it though :)).
He was over at VideoLogic last week, and when I asked if he wanted me to
forward on this message, and his answer was "No!". :-)
Simon Fenney (also an Aussie)
VideoLogic
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
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Roel de Wit
>Read the docs that came with it. They indeed din't calculate realtime, but
>use something they'd call mip-mapping nowadays...
Let me guess.. You have an X amount of pictures and let the program
zoom/interpolate between them ??
--
Roel / Utopia Sound Division
http://sdc.wtm.tudelft.nl/utopia
http://utopia.a1.nl
ICQ# 11800163
Roel de Wit
>>Well it was a nice MOD player back then but it could annoying after
>>several hours :)
>I never used it for that long. But i'm telling you, it was a big step ahead
>of most of the other modplayers. If someone made a hi-rez full colour
>version today it'd be kickass.
Well did you ever see "State of the Art" from SpaceBalls (Amiga demo)
?? I'd like to see something like that on PC (yeah I know Witan's
"something" of life demo)..
>>>And the music was so cool as well! I think it was the first great sounding
>>>trackmo that i watched, and when you're used to cheesy fm on an SB... oh
>>>boy.
>>Not to mention the cheesy noise SB PRO DAC those days..
>What do you mean those days? I've still got one right here. Everytime the
>hdd accesses i can actually hear the sounds amplified thru the SBp's output.
>So bootup time is great fun- nice electro "music" generated on-the-fly!
>:-)
Well I actually used it to see whether or not the computer was doing
something.. Then there came the GUS Classic and I had to watch for the
HD light again :)
>>Well I've found some of the music from FM hard to keep appart....
>IMO BH's and Mellow-d's tracks are hard to differentiate, but Necros's style
>is quite different to the others (esp. Wave)
To make things worse.. Two of my group's (Fusion) musicians co-joined
Logic just because Wave and some others were in it.. Go figure :) Some
guys are seen as legends to some.. The only thing that could make me
freak out is meeting Elwood, or some of the Future Crew members and
that's that.. I know too many of those people till now. And yup
they're all quite normal people like you and me :)
>What i dislike is that mods are judged too much on their tracked content-
>eg. vol/pan and other effects done by hand, no. of rows, and speed at which
>they're played etc...
>I'm not sure if you know what i saying but for some mods, it's just so much
>better when you're playing it and looking at the pattern data. There's a
>sense of "Look at all that scrolling s@#t - this guy put a heck of a lot of
>work into this one!"
>I mean just take a look at Wave's MC5 no. 1 Vet. entry.
Yups I hate breakbeats and samples with whole melodies in them too.. I
guess that's why I hate the no.1 of TakeOver '98...
>>Well, if you ask me who made the best modules up till now.. Well
>>actually I accidentally bumped into his modules but his nick is:
>>Elwood.. Just download his modules from Hornet and listen to them
>>again and again :)
>I've got some of his tracks (littlema.xm, sweetdr.xm, elw-sick.xm). Sure
>he's a good tracker (again pattern data), but i don't really like the music.
Just download "Into the Shadows", "Unknown Phuture" and "Fall from the
sky" and tell me again what you think about it..
>Necro's progression disk on the other hand has some of my fav. music. I wish
>i could find more of these type of tracks.
>IMHO the best tracked music is by Karsten Koch. He's not (was ever?)
What about Chris Huelsbeck (Turrican, Apidaya etc..) ?
>[snip]
>>Well I'd prefer a 1 MB size more :) For the TO'98 we had a .XM of
>>about 2.7 MB which I squeezed (you know, resampling, looping etc..)
>>down to exactly 1 MB (errr minus a few bytes) which fitted exactly in
>>a GUS Classic..
>> Boy this was kewl, FT2 actually showed 0 KB GUS RAM
>>free :)
>Btw, why is it that trackers like this and IT don't (or can't) use the GUS
>classic in softmixing mode. I recall Midas can do this...
>Ft2 has a nice interface but 1mb isn't really enough to play with on a GUS.
Because it's harder to do than HW mixing and because they're really
old mostly.. Streaming audio through the GUS MAX/PnP CoDec is much
easier (and more standar) than via the GF1 (unless you're directly
poking to the card which takes away a lot of CPU power)..
>> I think it was the first module to do so. The 1 MB limit just
>>gives you to possibility to show what you can do with 1 MB (oke oke
>>about 95% of all composers just rip the samples from other modules)..
>Well then instead of a 1mb mod size limit they should have a 1mb samples
>limit. How much pattern data you want to use it up to you.
Agreed uppon but it's hard to check.. Appart from that the GUS classic
works with 256 KB banks which 16 bit samples can't cross..
>>Still I like a 2 MB limit myself so that I could use some stereo
>>percussion/strings and things like that..
>I think that the 1mb limit is due to the classic GUS and less to do with
>"Here- see what you can do with 1mb. (take a look at Hornet polls- one of
>the replies that you can vote for is that you don't like the 1mb MC limit,
>and in brackets is something like 'Screw the GUS owners!'
But were to set the limit then ?? 2MB, 4 MB ?? Just imagine
downloading a 4 MB on a normal phoneline just to discover that it's
total crap.. Nah..
Roel de Wit
>I hope my intrusion doesn't mess up the Roel de Wit - Thanh Tran loop too much
>altough here goes anyhow :)))
Of course not ;-)
>rde...@a1.nl (Roel de Wit) wrote:
>>Yep but how did they do it ?? A 386 isn't able to calculate that
>>fractal zoom that fluently (or is it ?).. So it must be stored as an
>>animation of some kind but that again would be too big for the amount
>>of available RAM those days.. Any ideas ??
>The numbers were calculated/loaded on beforehand. I think if you read the last
I'm not sure about this since it would require a lot of RAM..
>part (the information part of the demo) you'll notice this as a topic.
It's just been proven again that if there is one thing the GUS owners
have in common it's DEMO's :)
>>Oh well... I promised the group I'm in (Fusion) to make a modules this
>>summer to enter at the Bizarre '98 (In Holland again) music compo.. I
>>hope that I'll get at once one vote :)
>So, that's the group you told me about ..oh, half a year ago? Nice!
>Any modules I can download made by you as of yet?
NO ! :) Perhaps in a week or two if I find/make the time..
I'll send you my (perhaps to that is) module and those from my group
on the CD with the next Utopia EWS update... (Hmmm are we discussing
private mail in this big SPAM-o-like newsgroup ??)
>>>> Then there were the complains about the MC5 voting....
>>>What i really hate is the 1,000,000 byte limit.
>>>S#^t I have an 8mb guspnp for a reason.
>>>(and re. the other reason- yeah yeah i know, gimme some more time)
>Umph, I still have 5mb onboard my Gus PnP. It's there for a reason though, it
>automatically forces you to do optimizations right from the beginning when doing
>samples.
No problems with that.. The problem is that some people are tend to
use big 44 Khz samples for a simple bass that could had been 22 Khz
and looped at halve the size.. Not to mention that people will start
to use samples with whole melodies in them.
>>gives you to possibility to show what you can do with 1 MB (oke oke
>>about 95% of all composers just rip the samples from other modules)..
>Now, that stinks to high degrees!!!! It's OK I guess if they put it as text in
>the module.
;-) I've told those in my group that it's oke to use Utopia
percussion/and other samples as long as they state there origine in
the sample info (but I talked about this already some time ago)..
>>Still I like a 2 MB limit myself so that I could use some stereo
>>percussion/strings and things like that..
>Ehem....
>Stereo percussion / strings you said?
:)
>PS: Utopia EWS 7mb drumkit partly stereo -is- possible, but with reduced reverb
>quality and about half the kit in stereo (no way EWS reverb sounds better than
>the current stereo drum reverberation! Hell, Utopia GUS will sound better..).
>For best quality, 12mb in full stereo is currently our best bet. Also, I might
>be able to sample another real piano at someone I watch the house at....a -real-
>oldie :))
If it's for the Acoustic Piano do so but it it'll be for the "Honky
Tonk" leave it since it'll take too much space (perhaps as an add-on
to Utopia EWS though). About that drum reverberation.. I think it
should be a tiny bit less (not much).. You've probably tried already:
How does the EWS reverb f*ck up the drums ?? Why ? I think it's better
to use the un-reverberated version of the samples..
As for the instruments in Utopia EWS.. Although most samples will come
from Utopia GUS PnP/Interwave it sounds nothing like it. Generally
everything sounds much better while being somewhat (not much, which is
something I have to work on) smaller because of heavy multi-layering..
Now just hope the EWS's polyphony can cope with it...
P.S. What about moving to email ??
Roel de Wit
What Kevin means is that this is no rip-off of some sample CD or
whatever.. We actually produced some of the sounds ourself (e.g. with
a microphone standing in a forest ;-)) . E.g. 95% of the percussion
was sampled from some synths but afterwards processed with some nice
hardware etc to create a fully unique sound resulting in probably th
best percussion set out there for ANY soundcard. NO single instruments
equals the data that is present in any Synthesizer ROM but is a
mixture of the synths interpretation of the sound (with it's added
effects, filters), the hardware we used to enhance/change those, our
selection of looping points and processes put over them by other
software/means. Added to that we used a great range of sources..
So we can safely say that our product is quite unique and legal (I
even phoned BUMA/STEMRA (one of the two since both deal different
territories) here in the Netherlands which goes about these things)..
It would had gotten critical if we had found a way to completely
disable all filters, effects on the sources, kept the exact loop
points, etc. and spreaded those (which would have been quite useless
with a GUS PnP). The event that comes close to that is what DREAM did
with their 3.2 Mb SoundCanvas set (for the EWS64/ST'97-128/MaxiSound
cards) which contains some of the actual SC ROM data in uncompressed
mode (if I understood it correctly).. They found a way to actually
read the sample data directly/digitally from the synth/rom/whatever
and copied that, which about equals reverse enginering the actually
Sound Canvas.. They got sued for that and are now paying money per
copy sold (only in the states I think)..
(Sorry for the long quote but I think I should include the full
previous message)
>>>PS: Utopia EWS 7mb drumkit partly stereo -is- possible, but with reduced
>>>reverb quality and about half the kit in stereo (no way EWS reverb sounds
>>>better than the current stereo drum reverberation! Hell, Utopia GUS will
>>sound >better..). For best quality, 12mb in full stereo is currently our
>>best bet. Also, I >might be able to sample another real piano at someone I
>>watch the house >at....a -real- oldie :))
>>
>Kevin / Utopia Sound Division
Thanh Tran
>>I never used it for that long. But i'm telling you, it was a big step
ahead
>>of most of the other modplayers. If someone made a hi-rez full colour
>>version today it'd be kickass.
>Well did you ever see "State of the Art" from SpaceBalls (Amiga demo)
No i didn't.
I'm in Australia - modems? HA! Back then I've have to rob a bank to buy one.
And then pay an international phone call to connect to some Euro BBS.
LOL!!!
Watching demos in those days were a rare and treasured experience - they
were just so hard to come by- whenever one of your friends got a new demo
there was a shroud of mystery and secrecy surrounding it: "Where/How the
h#ll did you get that?"
>?? I'd like to see something like that on PC (yeah I know Witan's
>"something" of life demo)..
Hmm, seen that, but i still don't know what you're talking about.
>>>Well I've found some of the music from FM hard to keep appart....
>>IMO BH's and Mellow-d's tracks are hard to differentiate, but Necros's
style
>>is quite different to the others (esp. Wave)
>To make things worse.. Two of my group's (Fusion) musicians co-joined
>Logic just because Wave and some others were in it.. Go figure :) Some
>guys are seen as legends to some..
Apparently MoN(?) were responsible for a lot of music for the C64 days, and
on all sorts of other platforms. If that is true then they've been around
for a while - Wave _is_ a legend i guess.
But still i don't like his tracked music.
>The only thing that could make me
>freak out is meeting Elwood, or some of the Future Crew members and
>that's that.. I know too many of those people till now. And yup
>they're all quite normal people like you and me :)
Speaking of freaking out- John Carmack! Crazy coder- i dare say
that one cannot typecast him as normal
:-)
>>What i dislike is that mods are judged too much on their tracked content-
>>eg. vol/pan and other effects done by hand, no. of rows, and speed at
which
>>they're played etc...
>>I'm not sure if you know what i saying but for some mods, it's just so
much
>>better when you're playing it and looking at the pattern data. There's a
>>sense of "Look at all that scrolling s@#t - this guy put a heck of a lot
of
>>work into this one!"
>>I mean just take a look at Wave's MC5 no. 1 Vet. entry.
>Yups I hate breakbeats and samples with whole melodies in them too.. I
>guess that's why I hate the no.1 of TakeOver '98...
Actually "Nine One One" has no melody in the samples. All short samples.
But s#$tloads of note data, effects and about 9999 bpm.
>Just download "Into the Shadows", "Unknown Phuture" and "Fall from the
>sky" and tell me again what you think about it..
I'm listening to all 3 looped at the moment (Modplug). VERY tempted to load
FT2 and see how he made it!
You are right- he's an incredible tracker. Great music too. Wish the samples
were of higher quality though (not very dynamic on loudspeakers)
Personally though i like more progressive and longer tracks. His songs are
what i'd call "short and sweet"
>>Necro's progression disk on the other hand has some of my fav. music. I
wish
>>i could find more of these type of tracks.
>>IMHO the best tracked music is by Karsten Koch. He's not (was ever?)
>What about Chris Huelsbeck (Turrican, Apidaya etc..) ?
Never heard of him. <gasp> Turrican, the game? Heard that music though,
both
Amiga and SNES. Has he released any multichannel mods?
Btw, have you heard ASTARIS.XM (KK) ?
If you're interested i think you'll have to go the IMAGO homepage.
>>Btw, why is it that trackers like this and IT don't (or can't) use the GUS
>>classic in softmixing mode. I recall Midas can do this...
>>Ft2 has a nice interface but 1mb isn't really enough to play with on a
GUS.
>Because it's harder to do than HW mixing and because they're really
Can't be that hard for Vogue or Mr. H though!
Since there will probably never be GUS/MAX software mixing or IW support in
FT2 I have the sneaking suspicion they've abandoned their GUS for an SB.
BOO!
[snip]
>>I think that the 1mb limit is due to the classic GUS and less to do with
>>"Here- see what you can do with 1mb. (take a look at Hornet polls- one of
>>the replies that you can vote for is that you don't like the 1mb MC limit,
>>and in brackets is something like 'Screw the GUS owners!'
>But were to set the limit then ?? 2MB, 4 MB ?? Just imagine
>downloading a 4 MB on a normal phoneline just to discover that it's
>total crap.. Nah..
Hehe, just like MP3s.
-Thanh