Precedence: Bulk
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 93  2:25 MST
Errors-To: gus-music-owner@dsd.es.com
From: gus-music-server@dsd.es.com (GUS Musician's Server)
Reply-To: gus-music@dsd.es.com (GUS Musician's Digest)
Subject: GUS Musician's Digest V1 #12


GUS Musician's Digest       Sun, 31 Oct 93  2:25 MST     Volume 1: Issue  12  

Today's Topics:
                     GUS Musician's Digest V1 #11
                         piano20.zip on EPAS
                      Pianos, Pianos, Pianos...
                 recording, adpcm, & archive.orst.edu
                  Recording in Stereo (sans Windows)

Standard Info:
	- Meta-info about the GUS can be found at the end of the Digest.
	- Before you ask a question, please READ THE FAQ.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1993 15:44:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: Phat H Tran <ptran@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca>
Subject: Re: GUS Musician's Digest V1 #11

> Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 10:59:51 -0400 (EST)
> From: "Matthew M. Nordan (SY 1997)" <mnordan@minerva.cis.yale.edu>
> Subject: GUS revisions.
> 
> I've seen the term "GUS 3.4" mentioned in the digest--i assume the
> hardware has undergone some revisions.  Does anyone know what has been
> changed?  I have a very, very early GUS and think some of my
> timing/WAV-file problems could be solved by new firmware.  Do i need to
> get an upgrade, and if so, how do i go about doing this?

The only modifications in the 3.4 GUS that I know of are improved 
hardware assist for SB DAC emulation, an MPU-401 compatible MIDI interface,
and a joystick port than can be enabled/disabled in software instead of
via jumper.  I don't think that any of these changes would affect the 
types of problems you mentioned.  If you can describe your situation,
perhaps the people here can help.

> Date: Fri, 29 Oct 93 11:09:18 EDT
> From: echen@media.sra.com (Eugene Chen)
> Subject: something wrong with archives
> 
>  the ..sound/mod/util directory was there
>  but there were no files!

Look on wuarchive for MODs, MIDs, and other sound files.  They were
deleted from Epas because the site was running out of room.  I thought
that the other mirror, like wuarchive, would have the files, but 
apparently not.

Phat.

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 31 Oct 93 1:16:13 EST
From: dmcintyr@muselab.ac.runet.edu
Subject: piano20.zip on EPAS

Reposted from my article in csips:

Everyone who's even remotely interested in MIDI go check out a program
called Piano (on EPAS as piano20.zip) which lets you (suprise!) play the
GUS (or other soundcard) with your keyboard (like the one I'm typing on
right now) in Windows.  At my suggestion he has improved the program so
that now people like me without the GUS MIDI box can use it as a MIDI
controller keyboard.  It works great!  I've never in my life been able to
actually record notes as I played them and it's just unbelievably better
than step recording everything.

While it's rather crude compared to a real keyboard, it's a great
alternative for people like me who lack either the MIDI box, a MIDI
keyboard or both.  Unfortunately I could not get Cakewalk 1.3 to recognize
the "Piano MIDI Input" driver that comes with the program.  This is its
only serious flaw that I could find in the time I played with it.

You guys should all go check it out.  ALL of you guys.  This is the ticket
for anyone who's ever wanted to screw around with music but lacks a keyboard.
--Michael--

------------------------------

Date: 30 Oct 1993   09:23:42 PST
From: chrisw <chrisw@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Pianos, Pianos, Pianos...

------------

Well, it looks like everyone's an expert when it comes to piano patches...

Anyway, there's a new piano patch called Piano2.pat on epas. The difference
from piano.pat is that I filtered down the waveforms to get a more mellow
sound. So I've now got piano2 as acpiano and piano as brite piano.
What would be nice I guess is to filter down piano.pat just a little bit,
to stop it being quite so harsh but I don't know if I can be bothered.

Piano2 probably feels better for playing solo on a keyboard (piano.pat was
a bit too harsh for this really - better in amongst other sounds).

Anyway, some comments on peoples comments:

I'm not going to keep a list of midi files where `acpiano sounds better
than piano' because I still haven't found one where I agree with this and its
not very sensible to have a list of what other people thought. By the way,
this goes for striving.mid (which other than the silly introduction which
sounds bad on everything sounds fine to me on piano.pat), and gmmaple
(although I would probably recommend piano2.pat for this - BTW I think
it's really that the file is no good, not the patch. My guess is that someone 
was bouncing off a non-weighted keyboard more quickly than they could off a
real piano keyboard). 

The bottom line is this: I hate acpiano.pat. As soon as I hear it I 
think of those horrible little casio `portable organ' keyboards. What's 
more, I still think that acpianos envelopes are wrong if reality is the 
comparison. Never heard a piano go dong and ding like that one does. 

Now, this is a purely personal opinion. There are obviously some big fans 
of acpiano out there. My advice to them is:

1) use acpiano if you want - I really don't mind!

2) modify the envelopes yourself to get the decay of your dreams. It's
not hard using patch.exe (remember the F5 and F6 buttons though - very 
useful).

3) make your own piano patch from scratch. I'd be pleased to have some
competition in the new piano patch market.

Anyway, I think I'll leave piano patches now. As I said, too many experts...

Chris.

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 30 Oct 93 12:01:52 PDT
From: "DAVE MERCIER" <D3140058@BCIT.BC.CA>
Subject: recording, adpcm, & archive.orst.edu

================================================================================
--------------
So now there's a multitrack recorder for the GUS that has problems with pops/
hiss/noise and uses lots of disc space (MRGUS01A.ZIP), a program to record
"jitter-free and dropout-free" stereo (GUSDELAY.ZIP), and a program to compress
recorded data that achieves 4:1 compression with little loss in sound
quality (ADPCM).  Is anybody else thinking what I'm thinking...?  That maybe
these guys should get together...
--------------

     I would gladly take a look at david's new 'revolutionary' recording
techniques =). My program does need help in recording. I just ran out of
time before I could put together a decent technique.
I don't think the ADPCM implementation would work so hot on a 14 track
multi-track recorder though. I've played around with trying to program
some adpcm stuff. The problem is, it would be great for 2 tracks, but
could you imagine trying to do this on all 14 tracks at the same time?
Wint ADPCM, I would maybe have to only read 8K off the disk for each
track, saving me the other 56K of time, but the amount of tracks you
could support would be in direct relation with your CPU speed.
So you might get 2 tracks on a 386, 4 on a 486, and maybe 8 on a Pentium.
It's an idea I've thought about over the last few weeks, but would be more prac
tical only on super fast machines.
--------------
Does anyone think there'd be a market for digital multitrack recording
with stereo output, low disc space overhead, and potentially 16-bit recording
in the near future, on a $US130 soundcard?
--------------
I sure hope there is =). Forget about the ADPCM thing though =). Actually
even if you used the 16 bit card to do hardware ADPCM for recording, you are
still stuck with the problem of getting it back to normal format when you
play the samples back.

--------------
Subject: something wrong with archives
 i just tried to get the multitrack HD recorder
 from the archive.orst.edu site

 the ..sound/mod/util directory was there
 but there were no files!

 i was suprised.
 -----------------------------

 Hi Eugene, I just checked this out myself, and it looks as if lots of
 stuff is missing. My program was in the submit directory last week, but
 this week there isn't even a submit directory there =). Was the program
 in the Mod directory before? It shouldn't be, since it has nothing to
 do with mods.





 DAVE MERCIER
 D3140058@BCIT.BC.CA

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1993 09:54:31 -0700 (PDT)
From: mikebat@netcom.com (Mike Batchelor)
Subject: Re: Recording in Stereo (sans Windows)

Not the GUS Musician's Server once wrote...
$  
$  ------------------------------
$  
$  Date: Sat, 30 Oct 93 02:29:20 -0400
$  From: hal wayne black <sylk@mik.uky.edu>
$  Subject: Stereo Mic.
$  
$  Hello!
$     I have been having problems getting the GUS to record in stereo in Windows,
$  namely, it will only record to one channel.  I have factory setttings, 1mb,
$  2.06a disks.  I have tried CoolEdit and GoldWave, but only the "top" channel
$  gets any waveforms.  On occasion, there are minutes blips on the other line.
$    I have an Electret from Radio Shack, with an 2 1/8inch-mono to 1/8inch-stereo
$  converter plugged into the microphone in on the ultrasound.  Brand new
$  batteries, that work.
$    One thing: I can't record (except for REALLY small traces) in Windows unless
$  I go to the ultrasound Mixer, and enable the Mic. first. 

Naturally!  That's what the mixer is for. 

$    To see if this is Windows, or just my hardware, can someone name a program
$  that samples in stereo in DOS?  I may have gotten the wrong adapter from radio
$  shack.
$    Thanks for your help.  I am new to most of this sound stuff, but I am
$  starting to get into it.

The included utility playfile.exe in your \ultrasnd directory will record
in stereo.  "Playfile -wav -r -s sample.wav" will give you the default
22Khz sample rate for stereo, and record to a .wav file.  Or you can just
run Playfile with no parameters and pick your settings from the menu, and
start recording.  You DID get manuals with your GUS, right? :)  There are
several other recording utilities on archive.epas.utoronto.ca in
/pub/pc/ultrasound/util and ../submit.  Gusdly03.zip is one you want to
check out.

$  ------------------------------
$  
$  Date: Fri, 29 Oct 93 06:15:32 PDT
$  From: deraud@power.amasd.anatcp.rockwell.com (Robert Lee DeRaud)
$  Subject: This post is not filtered...
$  
$  >From: james@maths.exeter.ac.uk
$  >Subject: Re: GUS Musician's Digest V1 #9
$  
$  >The snag is that most of these packages only supply a static filter ie you
$  >set it up and it can cut out mains hum or hiss or whatever.
$  >What is needed for voicing is a dynamically controllable filter.
$  >Fortunately, the csound package can do this and has a huge selection of filters
$  >( resonant, comb, vocoder ) but unfortunately its flexiblity means its a bit
$  >tricky to set up.
$  
$  Two points:
$  
$  1. I've fiddled a bit with csound on the Sparc: the software is VERY 
$     impressive, the hardware it's playing through (8-bit ulaw, 3" speaker)
$     somewhat less so.  If a PC version is available, I haven't been able 
$     to locate it.

There is a version that runs on Intel PCs, but not under DOS, or Windows,
or even OS/2.  It runs under Linux and 386BSD.  I'm busy this weekend
trying to get sound support compiled into my Linux kernel, will let you
know how it works.


-- 
Mike Batchelor      |
mikebat@netcom.com  |                  This space for rent
mikebat@qdeck.com   |

------------------------------

End of GUS Musician's Digest V1 #12
***********************************

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