From mailserv@gaia.ucs.orst.edu Tue May  3 17:27:46 1994
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Date: Tue May  3 15:19:40 PDT 1994
From: gus-sdk-request@gaia.ucs.orst.edu (GUS Programmer's Server)
Reply-To: gus-sdk@gaia.ucs.orst.edu (GUS Programmer's Digest)
Subject: GUS Programmer's Digest V11 #3

GUS Programmer's Digest     Tue, 3 May 94 15:19 PST      Volume 11: Issue   3 

Today's Topics:
                   RAP-10 WAV software and the GUS?
                       SDK and Borland C++ 3.1?
                         Unsubscribe request
                   Wake up and smell the future...

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.

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Date: Tue, 03 May 94 10:25:00 PDT
From: "Ford, Richard            x2056" <rford@infocomp.csir.co.za>
Subject: RAP-10 WAV software and the GUS?

Morning all

Can anyone advise me on whether the RAP-10 WAV software works with a GUS? 
 Or, where I can obtain multiple merging WAV software?

I have an SCC-1 and am looking at getting a GUS and a RAP-10, but I have
since realised that the SCC-1 and the RAP-10 will be overkill,  However, if
the RAP-10 software works with the GUS, then I could just get the software,
and I would be away!

Basically, I want to be able to use the RAP-10 software facility of merging
multiple WAV files on a timeline, and then creating a master WAV file which 
I
can then include in Cakewalk and drive the GUS.

Any advice, information, other, would be welcome!

Regards - Richard

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

Date: Tue, 3 May 1994 08:55:35 -0500 (CDT)
From: read@utpapa.ph.utexas.edu (Dave Read)
Subject: SDK and Borland C++ 3.1?

 
Has anyone out there had success compiling any of the sample
code from the SDK 2.1 with Borland's C++ compiler v3.1?  I can't seem
to get the linker to resolve all the externals...It also gives me
some oddball warnings about 'no stack.'  

It's been a while since I used Borland's command-line compilers,
so please excuse me if these questions are fairly moronic.

Thanks!

-Dave

-- 
Dave Read   (read@utpapa.ph.utexas.edu)      "When in doubt, sheet it out."
UT-Austin Heavy Ion Physics Grad Student 
PGP public key available by 'finger'              G O   B R A V E S ! !

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

Date: Mon, 2 May 1994 19:09:20 -0500 (EST)
From: James Reutter <jreutter@silver.ucs.indiana.edu>
Subject: Unsubscribe request

unsubscribe "James Reutter"

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

Date: Tue, 3 May 1994 01:56:48 -0400
From: <Mcq@oti.on.ca>
Subject: Wake up and smell the future...

***IMPORTANT: Please read.***

The GUS is dying. What are we going to do about it? 

The problem is that the GUS has missed its window: It just isn't interesting 
anymore that the GUS has got wavetable synthesis. Lots of cards do. 

Combine that with the fact that *many* game/music/pc magazines have reviewed 
the GUS and decided that it's only "average" and has "compatability problems",
and you've got a recipe for disaster.

There is hope though. There is a way for the GUS to outright *win* the soundcard
wars. That way is through ***GOOD SOFTWARE***. I'm not talking about the fact that
we can emulate GeneralMIDI as well as the rest of them (boring!). I'm talking about 
new and interesting software which just isn't available for any other card. If you 
want an example of how much impact this has, think about the GUS 3D sound stuff. 
Despite that fact that it has so far been almost COMPLETE VAPOURWARE, it has IMPACT.
Heck, it scared Creative Labs enough that they went and got Q-sound. In fact, 
everybody talks about 3D sound support now. You see?

Ok. What we need is the Next Big Thing. We need to write some software which
makes people *lust* after the GUS.

What? You want some suggestions? Ok. Here you go: 

Number one, all encompassing, absolutely the most important:

    EASE OF USE! People must see the GUS as "just working" with *everything*.
    No more "Do I use SBOS or MegaEm?". It's just got to work. If the average
    Luser on the street thought that he would never have to think about his
    sound card again when he bought a GUS, Gravis would sell MILLIONS of them. 
    Of course to do this, *all* of the current Gravis provided software would 
    need to be rewritten. Definately hard, and perhaps impossible.

Of course, that's really not new or interesting, even if it is important,
so here are some ideas for new software which I don't think anybody has done for 
any sound card yet. Be warned though, my personal focus is on music rather than 
games, so I only have one idea that would stand out in the gaming world, and I'm not 
sure how feasible it is.

An idea for the gaming world:

1) *Accelerated* AIL drivers

   The Windows graphics community has been doing this for years: Take the standard
   graphics calls; detect the special cases which can be done more efficiently;
   then implement them as optimally as possible (i.e. in hardware if possible).
   
   How would this apply to the AIL drivers? Well, for example, the driver could
   check if the sample it is being asked to play had been downloaded recently
   (how? make a guess: Is it the same address and is some hash function of the
   first few bytes the same?) and if so, just play the one it has cached in 
   local ram. This probably wouldn't work for all games, but it would work for 
   some.

   Another possibility is: try to detect when multiple samples are being
   played and play them even though AIL can really only do one at a time.

   I don't know. Maybe their's something in this idea, maybe not.

Some ideas for the music world:

1) Universal sample converter

   Do you have any idea how many sounds are available in the formats used
   by commercial samplers? Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands.

   What we need is a piece of software which takes any (multi)sample, and converts
   it into something we can use on the GUS. It must have enough intelligence
   to know the (musical) ways that samples can be reduced in size so they
   can be used in our limited ram: reducing the number of samples in the multi,
   backing off on the sample frequency, converting to 8-bit if necessary, etc.
   I want to just:
     1. drag-and-drop a sample for some other machine on this tool
     2. turn a nob on it to set how much memory it should take up
     3. let it compute for a while and spit out a gus patch

2) Analog synths are IN!

   Imagine having an application which had a window that looked just like a
   miniMOOG front panel... You twiddle the nobs just like you would on a mini.
   If you hit a note on your music keyboard (the software watches midiIn, of course)
   the software *computes* the sound a miniMOOG would have made with those
   settings (It's just some serious math, after all!), downloads the sample to
   the gus and plays it. When you get the sound exactly the way you want it, 
   you say "Make Patch" and it generates a reasonable set of samples which cover
   the whole keyboard range and constructs a GUS patch. Not quite real-time, but
   it sure would be impressive!

3) Wavestation on a card

   Have you ever heard a KORG Wavestation? It's arguably the only truly interesting
   sample playback synth on the market today. Believe me, if you haven't heard
   what it can do, you should go and listen to one.

   The way it works its magic is by splicing together little segments of many
   different samples and crossfading them into each other over time. They call
   this "wave sequencing". You can set loop points and hold points, pitch, and 
   volume, but that's about it. The results are amazing. Huge sweeping pads and 
   sounds that *seem* natural but you can't quite put your finger on what instrument
   it is (like "pluckrimba" that starts out with a guitar pluck, but ends up
   sounding like a marimba).

   To do this on the GUS, you just need a slightly more interesting driver. It
   would use two voices for each sound it plays (more if you want to allow
   layers (and I do)), and would cycle through the waves according to a simple 
   description. Easy.

Finally, having said all that, I would like to be able to say that I am hard at 
work trying to make the above ideas happen. Unfortunately, I'm not. My life is 
a little (actually, quite a lot) too complex right now. In fact, I've probably
used up my free time for the next year just typing up this message. My hope
is that peoples' imaginations will be fired either by these ideas, or by the
"spirit of the possible" which they encompass to build us the Next Big Thing,
so the soundcard which we all love will have a future.

McQ

p.s. Anybody else got some ideas?

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

End of GUS Programmer's Digest V11 #3
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