Loved my Gravis, I tried most of the affordable ones, you didn't mention the COVOX SOUNDMASTER if anyone else remembers them, so few games supported them, a bit like PowerVR but I seem to remember early Lucasarts X-Wing games supported both, as did Mechwarrior 2 which had a PowerVR specific version which was great (for the time) Great reviews, good to watch you as I waft down memory lane.
Best card for demo lovers as it was picked up by the demo scene as basically the *default* soundcard. I found the MT32 and Soundblaster emulation to work pretty well most of the time, although it could require quite some tinkering, i didn't have a soundblaster when using my gus.
Given the prices, I really do wonder how hard it would be to build an arm based isa card replacement for a gus. One that would react like a gus on the isa bus and that does all the mixing...
Of course, you can probably take a Pi Compute Module, or even a fast STM32F or an FPGA. But still having original vintage hardware with its limitations is something different from a historical point of view. However it’s clear that only few can have this, because the hardware is rare nowadays
good news, your prayers have been heard: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-h4iWSnTc9Ag.html this is pretty impressive. (apparently there's still some bugs to squash, but it's pretty cool)
Speaking as a long-time Demoscene musician/fan I have to laugh at envisioning my 13-year-old self imagining there would be a day when playing a .MOD might somehow have anything to do with intellectual property violations, haha.
I have a GUS Max 2.1 that doesn't work at all (detected the CD drive until the brains chip died (GF1)) and I finally found a GUS ACE for an alright price of $200 USD + MI tax. Others are between $400USD and $1,500USD.on eBay these days. Reason for the GUS is for my 486 system so that I can have every sound card from the dreaded PC Speaker to GM/XG.
I'm oblivious to the whole Gravis Ultrasound thing since I grew up with a stock peasant Sound Blaster PC (LOL) Could anyone point me towards a few examples of games that sound so much better in Gravis to a point that no other soundcard could come close to it? Or point me towards games that had features used by the Gravis that were not present when using other cards? Just curious to hear the thing in action in its full glory
True, or even a cheap RasPi. But isn't it nicer to have the real thing to look at and plug into a real machine? :)
2 года назад
Yeah, I got copyright strike for Second Reality claimed by some "Russian girl" or what the song is. And indeed that song has exactly the music of Second Reality at one point, kinda strange. However I am more or less sure, Second Reality was the first, just by google'ing for that song/band, which is much more new. Odd. Or maybe just for me ... By the way I've just realized I have two GUS MAX cards here, I can't even tell why two :-O
I'm oblivious to the whole Gravis Ultrasound thing since I grew up with a stock peasant Sound Blaster PC (LOL) Could anyone point me towards a few examples of games that sound so much better in Gravis to a point that no other soundcard could come close to it? Or point me towards games that had features used by the Gravis that were not present when using other cards? Just curious to hear the thing in action in its full glory
In my opinion there are only few games that really pushed or utilized the GUS. Those are mainly the early Epic titles such as Jazz Jackrabbit, Epic Pinball and One Must Fall. Also the Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies games, both of which originated on the Amiga. There are probably a few other games that used the card in this fashion, but the mainstay examples are actually from the demoscene. Things like Future Crew's "Second Reality" really make the GUS shine.
Denk an den Zusatz "-dj" sonst bekommst Du Probleme mit dem Joystick der anderen Soundkarte, denn die ACE hat zwar keinen Joystick Anschluss, aber die Karte intern schon. Es gibt sicher GUS-Only Sachen die toll sind, aber manchmal finde ich, dass eine Soundblaster bei manchen Sachen besser klingt. Ist mir häufig bei den cracktros aufgefallen. Außerdem knackst der Sound bei Chasm-the Rift mit der Gus, bei SB ist der OK. Dennoch ist die GUS eine tolle Soundkarte und perfekt für einen 386/486!
Good luck! I had one as my first soundcard and I'm kind of tempted to get another one out of nostalgia - but not looking to spend $250 or more on one so probably not gonna happen. XD
@@tetsujin_144 Ebay is pretty wild, but you never know what shows up locally if you're patient. I was pretty surprised to win an auction for a 1MB GUS Classic for about $115 recently, not that it still wasn't a lot of money for something so niche.
I have a GUS classic running alongside an SB16 in my 486. In games that have native support for the GUS it sounds great, but to be brutally honest... The GUS is a special kind of beast. It's really great for a select few things, and quite bad at everything else. If it was your only sound card back in the 90's, then you would have had a pretty bad time with a lot of games. Any game without native GUS support which used DOS4GW or similar DOS extenders, simply wouldn't work with the SBOS SB-compatibility software. If you're building a retro system today, and somebody tells you that the GUS is a must-have, then take my word for it: It really isn't. It's very much a nostalgia thing. I adore my GUS and would only part with it for ridiculous money...But the SB16 is WAY more useful.
I'm oblivious to the whole Gravis Ultrasound thing since I grew up with a stock peasant Sound Blaster PC (LOL) Could anyone point me towards a few examples of games that sound so much better in Gravis to a point that no other soundcard could come close to it? Or point me towards games that had features used by the Gravis that were not present when using other cards? Just curious to hear the thing in action in its full glory
It was my only soundcard back in the (early) 1990s. :) A few years later I got a cheap Soundblaster (or hardware-compatible?) to go with it, really took the edge off those compatibility issues...
Well, the GUSAr is a GUS PnP so it has better sound quality, thanks to the Interwave. The ACE however is brilliant as a complement to a SoundBlaster, as you then can have perfect GUS and SB compatibility in one system without conflicting resources. This is also why I have these cards in my system: GUS ACE, SnarkBarker and PC MIDI. Covers all the bases for DOS Gaming up to the mid 90s. Adlib, CMS, SoundBlaster, GUS, Roland MT32
I love how that "GUS ACE is the only GUS that works alongside an AdLib/Soundblaster"-rumor has stuck around for 30+ years and has never been corrected to reflect the PnP.
Maybe ad-lib emulation was terrible. I don't think so. It was different, and sometimes problematic. But who cares? Who didn't already have 2 or 3 old junk soundblasters or generic cards lying around? Or (pretty soon) built into the motherboard? Making old games sound different, whether by ad-lib emulation or MegaEm was actually pretty fun.
The best Amiga MODs or demos probably sound way better than the worst GUS demos/MODs. However the best GUS MODs probably sound waaaay better than the best Amiga ones. The additional voices greatly help here. But indeed the GUS is probably quite a bit overvalued at the moment. This might change with the PiGUS however, which is almost feature complete: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=88440
