Xref: utzoo rec.games.misc:13750 comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc:6227 comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware:5209 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!caen!acc.flint.umich.edu!jal From: jal@acc.flint.umich.edu (John Lauro) Newsgroups: rec.games.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware Subject: Re: New sound board (Soundblaster/Adlib compatible) Message-ID: <1991Feb6.223133.15170@engin.umich.edu> Date: 6 Feb 91 22:31:33 GMT References: <6082@mahendo.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> <12311.27ae7e5c@ecs.umass.edu> <91037.094240MMK102@psuvm.psu.edu> Sender: news@engin.umich.edu (CAEN Netnews) Organization: University of Michigan - Flint Lines: 32 In article <91037.094240MMK102@psuvm.psu.edu> writes: >OK - here is what all this means. 1. The computer does no "musical" >work except dump the data to a printer port. 2. The music/voice/sounds >can be as complex or as simple as Disney wants. 3. The sound will >take up more disk space that Windows 3.0 (for anything real complex) >NOTE - This might not be a factor if a game needs 5 or 6 sounds all >about 0.5 seconds long. 4. There might be copyright problems with >a company called Covox who has been selling this product for years >now. There is no reason why you can't have the computer do musical work. You just digitize the instruments, and let the computer adjust the frequencies and merge multiple tracks. It's the instruments that take up the bulk of the data. For a hundred K of storage, you can have many minutes of music. The less instruments the better. Obviously the better the quality, the more memory it will generally take. (This is far from new technology. The Radio Shack color computer which only has 6 bit D/A can produce reasonably good music with 4 voices this way. I even have some software that produces 8 simultaneous voices on the the CoCo.) > All in all, Disney's device will sound as good as a mono SB, if >someone takes the time to program the sounds correctly (8 bit D/A >sounds pretty good). Good luck to Disney. True, with the exception it will take more CPU power to do anything else at the same time because of no DMA. (In other words, not as good for arcade games on slow machines.) (This is without knowing exactly what hardware is in the box. Does the computer or the box determine the timing? Is there any buffer at all in the box?) - John