Bs0Dd wrote on 2025-07-16, 02:54:

I have a Primax SoundStorm M16C (a.k.a. AltraSound) sound card, which is built on the Gravis GF1 chip (along with the GF1A1 chip […]
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I have a Primax SoundStorm M16C (a.k.a. AltraSound) sound card, which is built on the Gravis GF1 chip (along with the GF1A1 chip and ICS2101 mixer, typical for GUS Classic).
Therefore, I suppose the card is 100% (or at least 99%) compatible with the GUS Classic, even though it is a clone.

Photo

I have GUS drivers 4.11 + updated Mega-Em 3.11 + updated ULTRINIT 2.31.
I also installed a Pro Patches Lite 1.61 set and noticed problems with at least two games: Rise of the Triad: Dark War and Duke Nukem 3D.
These problems do not occur if I use the original Gravis patches.

Duke 3D plays SFX only in the right channel if PPL 1.61 is selected
PPL set: https://voca.ro/11nOqGRLwhXR
Original set: https://voca.ro/1hvLMdoNNngt

It seems that in the stable version of DOSBox 0.74-3 stereo SFX does not work (at least on two different computers, when running the Duke or Descent stereo test, I always hear sounds in both channels, but music seems to be stereo).
So I can't check if such a problem exists at least in emulation. But there is an old issue for DOSBox-X with the same problem when using PPL 1.61: https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/issues/1029
So it seems to me that this is not an emulation problem, since the problem shows itself in the hardware as well (at least for me).

RotT refuses to start, citing a lack of GUS RAM (1024k installed) for the GUSWAVE and redirecting to the sound setup.
If I initialize SFX and then Music, I have both. But otherwise, it shows the same error. And I think there is no way to reverse the init order in the game itself.
The problem is present in DOSBox.

Screens

Do these issues exist on the original non-PnP GUS cards? And has anyone found a solution to the problems?
I only know two solutions for now:

1. Switching between sets before running these games (for myself, I wrote a small batch file for quickly replacing folders with patches). The problem does not appear, but the ability to listen to higher-quality music is lost.

2. Using SB16 as SFX card 😀

Photo

Although for this, an external mixer is probably desirable. Also... I don't know how comparable the two cards are in terms of digital sound quality...

Maybe someone knows other solutions?

See this about using third party patch files (like Propatches Lite) in games .

Re: Blood 1997 & Gravis Ultrasound

darry wrote on 2025-07-16, 03:02:

Re: Blood 1997 & Gravis Ultrasound

Well. It looks like everything is as I suspected. So I'll have to use one of the solutions I came up with...
It's a pity that GF1 is quite limited in terms of maximum RAM. For some reason, the card's music seems to me to be of higher quality than AWE32.
If only it had OPL3 for backward compatibility. SBOS and Mega-Em emulate it very poorly (only the presence of MT/GM support in games saves it, then you get good WT sound without native support), so you have to keep two cards in your computer.

Bs0Dd wrote on 2025-07-16, 15:39:

Well. It looks like everything is as I suspected. So I'll have to use one of the solutions I came up with... It's a pity that GF […]
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darry wrote on 2025-07-16, 03:02:

Re: Blood 1997 & Gravis Ultrasound

Well. It looks like everything is as I suspected. So I'll have to use one of the solutions I came up with...
It's a pity that GF1 is quite limited in terms of maximum RAM. For some reason, the card's music seems to me to be of higher quality than AWE32.
If only it had OPL3 for backward compatibility. SBOS and Mega-Em emulate it very poorly (only the presence of MT/GM support in games saves it, then you get good WT sound without native support), so you have to keep two cards in your computer.

A simple solution to the RAM limit is to use the original patches from Gravis in the games that run out of RAM with Pro Patches Lite. IMHO, the stock GUS patchset sounds rather nice in most scenarios.

I never really bothered much with alternate patchsets on the original GUS. Newer cards with more sample RAM capacity were more suited to such experiments. To me, the GUS experience is mostly about enjoying its MIDI playback with stock patches and taking advantage of its hardware mixing support for Amiga-style tracker music (and also demoscene productions and few games that used it directly).

That being said, the GUS' SB and FM emulation is best avoided. Most people I knew who had a GUS back in the day used it with at least one other card too (myself included).

Bs0Dd wrote on 2025-07-16, 15:39:

It's a pity that GF1 is quite limited in terms of maximum RAM.

From what I have gathered that is one problem overcome in the AMD InterWave variants (I have a GUS PnP clone card I would be willing to part with once it gets replaced with the MK1869 Xtreme I ordered). Software configuration, particularly supporting Epic games, is not as "out of the box" but if you can learn to get around that it offers a superior feature set to GF1.

One more thing of note: GUS, regardless of variant, is not the best digital sound choice for any Apogee Sound System game because of a bug with the mixing code (https://github.com/dosbox-staging/dosbox-staging/issues/1532).

Bs0Dd wrote on 2025-07-16, 15:39:

For some reason, the card's music seems to me to be of higher quality than AWE32.

Agreed: like all soundtracks it depends somewhat on the composition, but the posted 1-to-1 comparisons I have listened to have Gravis sounding better than even AWE64 much of the time. Not a huge wonder, seeing as its wavetable was powered by a variant of the same Ensoniq OTTO chipset that was standard for much of the later SoundScape line.

darry wrote on 2025-07-16, 16:39:

Most people I knew who had a GUS back in the day used it with at least one other card too (myself included).

This is the reason why CT2290 is located next to GUS.

BaronSFel001 wrote on 2025-07-16, 19:54:

One more thing of note: GUS, regardless of variant, is not the best digital sound choice for any Apogee Sound System game because of a bug with the mixing code (https://github.com/dosbox-staging/dosbox-staging/issues/1532).

Ouch. It's a shame that such a famous game has problems with GUS... I guess RotT, being an Apogee game, has a similar sound system? That explains a lot.

BaronSFel001 wrote on 2025-07-16, 19:54:

seeing as its wavetable was powered by a variant of the same Ensoniq OTTO chipset

As far as I understand, OTTO came later than GF1, and its true predecessor is ES5504 DOC II (a.k.a. ICS1399).

Also, there is misinformation on the Internet that GF1D1 is a hardware mixer. As far as I understood, having looked at my card, GF1D1 is only an intermediary between GF1 and ISA (for which, in revisions older than 3.4, logic chips were used), and also implements GamePort. The mixer is ICS2101N, presented on cards starting with revision 3.7 (at least in the photos of older revisions, I do not see it, only the inputs switching chip).

Bs0Dd wrote on 2025-07-17, 18:13:

Ouch. It's a shame that such a famous game has problems with GUS... I guess RotT, being an Apogee game, has a similar sound system? That explains a lot.

You read the whole of the conversation I linked? It is remarkable how a litmus test for the accuracy of GUS emulation is whether it exhibits that particular error, since it is an issue with the Apogee Sound System rather than the GUS. Yes, this goes for Rise of the Triad and just about anything using the Build engine: error-free 16-bit digital sound needs either a Sound Blaster 16 (NOT connected to a MIDI device since that leads to a different kind of issue; see https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Duke_Nukem_3D) or Ensoniq SoundScape.

Bs0Dd wrote on 2025-07-17, 18:13:

As far as I understand, OTTO came later than GF1, and its true predecessor is ES5504 DOC II (a.k.a. ICS1399).

Ensoniq SoundScape did not arrive until 1994, but OTTO had been used in Ensoniq synthesizers for years by then. You know something? GUS and SoundScape are practically kissing cousins, all the way down to their terrible FM synthesis; I think of SoundScape as a sort of "Gravis UltraSound Plus." GUS Sound Blaster emulation actually has a leg up on the 8-bit front (it supports ADPCM in Duke Nukem II while SoundScape does not) but weaker GUS game support in its waning days left SoundScape superior in the 16-bit realm...now if only SoundScape was backwards-compatible with the handful of games tuned to use GUS hardware mixing, it would fulfill most of my DOS gaming needs. If there is any weakness in GUS wavetable it was the tight RAM back in its heyday, prompting few to take advantage of its potential in that area; as is public knowledge, GUS was known far more for its 16-bit tracker capabilities than being more-or-less the first General MIDI device made for computers. When one takes note that GUS and SoundScape use the same chipset family it makes a lot more sense why the former was not bad at all in that area, despite Rich Heimlich getting ire for suggesting Wave Blaster offered marginally better wavetable than GUS (he always gave SoundScape very high marks).

BaronSFel001 wrote on 2025-07-18, 15:36:

error-free 16-bit digital sound needs either a Sound Blaster 16

So... is the second option (GUS Music + SB SFX), which I mentioned at the beginning, the most correct?

BaronSFel001 wrote on 2025-07-18, 15:36:

Ensoniq SoundScape did not arrive until 1994, but OTTO had been used in Ensoniq synthesizers for years by then. You know something? GUS and SoundScape are practically kissing cousins

However, there were arguments here that the contents of the OTTO and GF1 chips are completely different. And that the GF1 technology is based on DOC chips...
GF1 and OTTO chip comparison?

Bs0Dd wrote on 2025-07-23, 01:41:

So... is the second option (GUS Music + SB SFX), which I mentioned at the beginning, the most correct?

"Correct" can be a loaded term, but as far as working at best quality there is only one way to find out for sure 😀 At least with DOS games, emulation is a perfectly valid testbed. Ensoniq came into the discussion because it so happens most games past 1994, including anything on Build, feature native SoundScape support and I have heard of no function problems with it like on GUS or Sound Blaster.

Bs0Dd wrote on 2025-07-23, 01:41:

However, there were arguments here that the contents of the OTTO and GF1 chips are completely different. And that the GF1 technology is based on DOC chips...
GF1 and OTTO chip comparison?

A good discussion to have since sources do not always correspond. The link posted in the most recent response seems to confirm, as stated in the GUS Wikipedia article (and picked up by DOS Days, among others), that the DOC chipsets (the original of which was used in the Apple IIGS) were of the same line of Ensoniq technology as OTTO (Wikipedia uses the term "derived" but no source is cited). That they are different enough adds explanation to why SoundScape is not backwards compatible with UltraSound, but at the same time I can stand by my considering them extended family.