DOS Days
Old PC Computing Resource
Advanced Gravis
In 1991, Advanced Gravis and Forte Technologies launched their joint venture Sound Blaster Pro competitor - the Ultrasound (GUS). It could mix 16 voices in 16-bit, with up to 44 kHz playback (CD quality) or 32 voices at 16 kHz playback. Opinions of users generally thought the audio quality from the GUS was better than the Sound Blaster Pro. One key thing the GUS had was built-in wavetable, so the processing of samples was done on-board rather than having the CPU dedicate cycles to do the task, and no wavetable daughterboard was required. Because playback was only achievable in 8-bit, Gravis later offered an add-on board called the "16-bit upgrade module". This add-on module was integrated on the board of the later Gravis Ultrasound Max released in 1994. The GUS' downfall was twofold: it didn't have an OPL chip, and it didn't support Sound Blaster 100%. When running in "AdLib mode", the GF1 chip would take over the equivalent of what the OPL chip did on other cards, and software provided compatibility with Sound Blaster.
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Gravis UltraSound AceFM synthesizer: Gravis GF1 Rich Heimlich said this of the Ace: "The best of the UltraSound family for most people. Still doesn't provide acceptable compatibility with existing standards and doesn't address any of my concerns with the other Ultrasound cards. But if you like its features and the software you're using supports it natively then at least you could get it inexpensively.". The score for digital quality was 6 out of 10, with music quality coming in at 5 out of 10. |
Gravis UltraSound VIP/ViperMAX/ExtremeIntroduced: 1995 DOS Days contributor Eirik Øverby contributed all the information on this incredible sound card. The Extreme was possibly the last UltraSound released. It's key feature was that it included an embedded ESS AudioDrive 1688 chip to provide full Ad Lib and Sound Blaster compatibility - something that was lacking on all earlier GUS cards. The ESS chip provides the board with full Ad Lib, Sound Blaster 2.0 and Sound Blaster Pro compatibility. The Extreme was actually created by an authorised third-party, called Synergy. They created 3 separate variants: first to come was called Ultrasound VIP. This was followed by ViperMAX, and finally Ultrasound Extreme. The VIP got a memory slot that supported a further 512 KB SOJ module. The ViperMAX and Extreme models got two 512 KB banks soldered to the board and got no memory upgrade slot. One of the best things about these cards is their ability to use both the GF1 and ESS at the same time - either GF1 for music audio and ESS for sound effects, or vice versa. The cards however, are not General MIDI compatible, so playback of GM audio with this card might be hit and miss. Given that the patch set is loaded into the onboard RAM from software, you can switch out the patch set that gets loaded, and several exist out in the wild (both 512 KB and higher-quality 1 MB sets).
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Games Titles That Use the GUS Hardware Mixing Capabilities
The following games make use of the Gravis Ultrasound's hardware mixer. This typically resulted in a higher quality audio outputs:
- Archon Ultra
- Crusader: No Remorse
- Crusader: No Regret
- Death Rally
- DOOM v1.2 or below
- Epic Pinball
- Extreme Pinball
- Jazz Jackrabbit
- The Lemmings Chronicles
- One Must Fall 2097
- Pinball Arcade CD-ROM (Pinball Dreams & Pinball Dreams II)
- Pinball Fantasies
- Pinball Illusions
- Silverball
- Star Control II
- Turrican 2
- Zone 66