Exactly, it is a pitty that only few games not only support the GUS somehow but really make use of its advantages.

Epic is probably the best example in GUS support. Jazz Jack Rabbit and Epic Pinball do a good job on the GUS.

The Wolfenstein 3D patch, which came with my GUS is also an significant improvement over SB as in several samples playing at once. I didn't got the music working on it, though.

Turrican II would be awesome as well, if they would have fixed the driver.

The C64S, an really old C64 emulator had a much better SID sound on the GUS than SB. Of course, this was far before accurate SID emulation existed, and even today, no one got the filters (which didn't even exist on those old emulators) sound right.

I'm not sure which games supported the GUS directly, but i think most of them were "small" titles from European developers, mainy the ones coming from the demo scene. As Marek wrote, Epic had some games, and i believe the "21st Century Pinball"-titles came with special GUS support.

The tracker support of the GUS was indeed a nice feature, but one that shouldn't be overrated. Most tracker pieces use low-quality samples (8bit, 22Khz if i remember correctly), so these pieces would, when using a decent playback routine, sound very similar on a GUS and a SB.

I'm a pragmatic person when it comes to gaming. I used to have a GUS back in the day, but sold it quickly after discovering that it was not very suitable for gaming purposes. The GUS may be a technical masterpiece (considering the standards back then), but it was more or less unusable for general gaming. The reasons for this were mainly the incompatible "SB compatibility" driver, and a lot of memory problems with the drivers in general. I don't know how well the GUS sold, but i think it could be considered a failure, in terms of gaming (the demo scene is a different topic).

It is all about the quality of the output.

There is much talk here about Sound Blaster compatibility and 8 and 16-bit, but the discussion of the quality of and type of hardware used to achieve this output is glossed over.

16-bit does not equal 16-bit, ever; and with Creative at the helm things become even more blurry. Frequency response and signal to noise ratio should be considered just as important when choosing a sound card after having decided on the essentials.

Compare the output of a GUS with a SB16 in any game and you will be overwhelmed by the difference. I've said this before in a thread here, but I can't remember anyone having tried it, or in fact someone coming back on it. I stand by it.

Since SB compatibility is a number one priority, if you have an empty slot in your system put in a GUS and you will have the opportunity for greatly enhanced audio output in any game that supports the card. No, not better output within the range of a standard, such as Gen MIDI or FM synthesis, but better output in the sense a Denon ampflifier sounds better than a Yoko.

Try it.

I really wonder that nobody has mentioned it before, because it is one of my all-time-favourites where a GUS is absolutly inevitable:
Star Control 2!

Whereas the "digital effects" in the game are only few, the music is great and fits perfectly to the game's atmosphere. What a huge difference between Soundblaster and Ultrasound! Not only lacks the soundblaster version any stereo effects, but is also very noisy and flat. (as if someone is transmitting the sound using a sw radio).
Furthermore the GUS is a very quiet card, so background noise is far less than that of other cards (of that time).

On the other hand, GH is right - games using General Midi will sound better with a Roland or Yamaha device. In my experience it depends a little bit on the "style" of the game's music. The GUS will be inferior if the composers tried to reproduce the sounds of natural instruments (pianos, horns, trumpets a.s.o.). But if the music is more "electronic" the GUS might by an interesting alternative to the standard GM devices.
Descent is a good example. It is also one of those games where it makes a difference if your GUS is equipped with 256k or 1MB (it loads more patches with 1MB installed).

For me the question is more which GUS to choose? Apart of the "GUS Extreme" (which has an additional ESS chip and should therefore somehow be SBPro compatible) I have them all, but I'm not sure where the advantages of the individual cards lay (refering to the gaming value).
Surprisingly the GUS Classic Rev. 2.2 apears to be the most quite card.
The ACE is also very quite and has a jumper on it to close the adlib adress / port, so it might be the ideal extension for a retro system that is allready equipped with other cards.
My GUS Max seems to be noisier and I'm not sure what kind of advantage the Crystal CS4231 chip gives me over the other two.
Same with the legendary GUS PnP...

you know people, if that doesn't exist a list for the Dosbox Wiki would be great, so people would know for which game it really is worth to enable and use the GUS emulation. I know, now that *I* mentioned it, in the spirit of open source it is *my* duty to do this 😀
But I lack the knowledge of GUS and the time. So if anyone of you more knowledgeable would volunteer... 😀

Please may I raise a question here regarding the GUS?

The GUS Classic came in a variety of revisions. I think it ended with revision 3.4 or 3.74 or something.

Question: What revisions did the GUS PnP come in? Did they only release 1.0, or did they revise it after this initial release?

Thank you.
Best regards, Robert.

I have gus classic with revisions 2.4; 3.71; 3.73; 3.74, gus max 1.8; 2.1, gus pnp 1.0 and gus pnp pro 1.0; 3.0. Yes, PnP models was with 3.0 revision.

Have a look at http://www.mars.dti.ne.jp/~odaki/mod/welovegus.htm

re GUS Classic 3.73 and 3.74, please can you explain the difference?

re GUS PnP, which is the best model to get, and are any of the PnP versions better than a GUS Classic?

Thank you.

retro games 100 wrote:

re GUS Classic 3.73 and 3.74, please can you explain the difference?

re GUS PnP, which is the best model to get, and are any of the PnP versions better than a GUS Classic?

Thank you.

Would like to know these differences too...

Not sure if a GUS PnP can be used in a nobn PnP system

Another reason to own a GUS is the music you get in Heretic...it blows you away
😀