Recherche avancée

Sur d’autres sites (5849)

• Ode to the Gravis Ultrasound

  1er août 2011, par Multimedia Mike — General

  WARNING : This post is a bunch of nostalgia. Feel free to follow along if you recall the DOS days of the early-mid 1990s.

  I finally let go of my Gravis Ultrasound MAX sound card a little while ago. It felt like the end of an era for me, even though I had scarcely used the card in recent memory.

  
  
  

  The Beginning
  What is the Gravis Ultrasound ? Only the finest PC sound card from the classic DOS days. Back in the day (very early 1990s), most consumer PC sound cards were Yamaha OPL FM synthesizers paired with a basic digital to analog converter (DAC). Gravis, a company known for game controllers, dared to break with the dominant paradigm of Sound Blaster clones and create a sound card that had 32 digital channels.
  
  I heard about the GUS sometime in 1992 through one of the dominant online services at the time, Prodigy. Through the message boards, I learned of a promotion with Electronic Arts in which customers could pre-order a GUS at a certain discount along with 2 EA games from a selected catalog (with progressive discounts when ordering more games from the list). I know I got the DOS version of PowerMonger ; I think the other was Night Shift, though that doesn’t seem to be an EA title.

  Anyway, 1992 saw many maddening delays of the GUS hardware. Finally, reports of GUS shipments began to trickle into the Prodigy message forums. Then one day in November, 1992, mine arrived. Into the 286 machine it went and a valiant attempt at software installation was made. A friend and I fought with the software late into the evening, trying to make this thing work reasonably. I remember grabbing a pair of old headphones sitting near the computer that were used for an ancient (even for the time) portable radio. That was the only means of sound reproduction we had available at that moment. And it still sounded incredible.

  After graduating to progressively superior headphones, I would later return to that original pair only to feel my ears were being physically assaulted. Strange, they sounded fine that first night I was trying to make the GUS work. I guess this was my first understanding that the degree to which one is a snobby audiophile is all a matter of hard-earned experience.

  Technology
  The GUS was powered by something called a GF1 which was supposed to use a technology called wavetable synthesis. In the early days, I thought (and I wasn’t alone in this) that this meant that the GF1 chip had a bunch of digitized instrument samples stored in the ASIC. That wasn’t it.

  However, it did feature 32 digital channels at a time when most PC audio cards had 2 (plus that Yamaha FM synthesizer). There was some hemming and hawing about how the original GUS couldn’t drive all 32 channels at a full 44.1 kHz ("CD quality") playback rate. It’s true— if 14 channels were enabled, all could be played at 44.1 kHz. Enabling more channels started progressive degradation and with all 32 channels, each was only playing at around 19 kHz. Still, from my emerging game programmer perspective, that allowed for 8-channel tracker music and 6 channels of sound effects, all at the vaunted CD level of quality.

  Games and Compatibility
  The primary reason to have a discrete sound card was for entertainment applications — ahem, games. GUS support was pretty sketchy out of the gate (ostensibly a major reason for the card’s delay). While many sound cards offered Sound Blaster emulation by basically having the same hardware as Sound Blaster cards, the GUS took a software route towards emulating the SB. To do this required a program called the Sound Blaster Operating System, or SBOS.

  Oh, how awesome it was to hear the program exclaim "SBOS installed !" And how harshly it grated on your nerves after the 200th time hearing it due to so many reboots and fiddling with options to make your games work. Also, I’ve always wondered if there’s something special about sampling an ’s’ sound — does it strain the sampling frequency range ? Perhaps the phrase was sampled at too low a bitrate because the ’s’ sounds didn’t come through very clearly, which is something you notice after hundreds of iterations when there are 3 ’s’ sounds in the phrase.

  Fortunately, SBOS became less relevant with the advent of Mega-Em, a separate emulator which intercepted calls to Roland MIDI systems and routed them to the very capable GUS. Roland-supporting games sounded beautiful.

  Eventually, more and more DOS games were released with native Gravis support, sometimes with the help of The Miles Sound System (from our friends at Rad Game Tools — you know, the people behind Smacker and Bink). The library changelog is quite the trip down PC memory lane.

  An important area where the GUS shined brightly was that of demos and music trackers. The emerging PC demo scene embraced the powerful GUS (aided, no doubt, by Gravis’ sponsorship of the community) and the coolest computer art and music of the time natively supported the card.

  Programming
  At this point in my life, I was a budding programmer in high school and was fairly intent on programming video games. So far, I had figured out how to make a few blips using a borrowed Sound Blaster card. I went to great lengths to learn how to program the Gravis Ultrasound.

  Oh you kids today, with your easy access to information at the tips of your fingers thanks to Google and the broader internet. I had to track down whatever information I could find through a combination of Prodigy message boards and local dialup BBSes and FidoNet message bases. Gravis was initially tight-lipped about programming information for its powerful card, as was de rigueur of hardware companies (something that largely persists to this day). But Gravis eventually saw an opportunity to one-up encumbent Creative Labs and released a full SDK for the Ultrasound. I wanted the SDK badly.

  So it was early-mid 1993. Gravis released an SDK. I heard that it was available on their support BBS. Their BBS with a long distance phone number. If memory serves, the SDK was only in the neighborhood of 1.5 Mbytes. That takes a long time to transfer via a 2400 baud modem at a time when long distance phone charges were still a thing and not insubstantial.

  Luckily, they also put the SDK on something called an ’FTP site’. Fortunately, about this time, I had the opportunity to get some internet access via the local university.

  Indeed, my entire motivation for initially wanting to get on the internet was to obtain special programming information. Is that nerdy enough for you ?

  I see that the GUS SDK is still available via the Gravis FTP site. The file GUSDK222.ZIP is dated 1998 and is less than a megabyte.

  Next Generation : CD Support
  So I had my original GUS by the end of 1992. That was just the first iteration of the Gravis Ultrasound. The next generation was the GUS MAX. When I was ready to get into the CD-ROM era, this was what I wanted in my computer. This is because the GUS MAX had CD-ROM support. This is odd to think about now when all optical drives have SATA interfaces and (P)ATA interfaces before that— what did CD-ROM compatibility mean back then ? I wasn’t quite sure. But in early 1995, I headed over to Computer City (R.I.P.) and bought a new GUS MAX and Sony double-speed CD-ROM drive to install in the family’s PC.

  
  
  

  About the "CD-ROM compatibility" : It seems that there were numerous competing interfaces in the early days of CD-ROM technology. The GUS MAX simply integrated 3 different CD-ROM controllers onto the audio card. This was superfluous to me since the Sony drive came with an appropriate controller card anyway, though I didn’t figure out that the extra controller card was unnecessary until after I installed it. No matter ; computers of the day were rife with expansion ports.

  
  
  The 3 different CD-ROM controllers on the GUS MAX
  

  Explaining The Difference
  It was difficult to explain the difference in quality to those who didn’t really care. Sometime during 1995, I picked up a quasi-promotional CD-ROM called "The Gravis Ultrasound Experience" from Babbage’s computer store (remember when that was a thing ?). As most PC software had been distributed on floppy discs up until this point, this CD-ROM was an embarrassment of riches. Tons of game demos, scene demos, tracker music, and all the latest GUS drivers and support software.

  Further, the CD-ROM had a number of red book CD audio tracks that illustrated the difference between Sound Blaster cards and the GUS. I remember loaning this to a tech-savvy coworker who disbelieved how awesome the GUS was. The coworker took it home, listened to it, and wholly agreed that the GUS audio sounded better than the SB audio in the comparison — and was thoroughly confused because she was hearing this audio emanating from her Sound Blaster. It was the difference between real-time and pre-rendered audio, I suppose, but I failed to convey that message. I imagine the same issue comes up even today regarding real-time video rendering vs., e.g., a pre-rendered HD cinematic posted on YouTube.

  Regrettably, I can’t find that CD-ROM anymore which leads me to believe that the coworker never gave it back. Too bad, because it was quite the treasure trove.

  Aftermath
  According to folklore I’ve heard, Gravis couldn’t keep up as the world changed to Windows and failed to deliver decent drivers. Indeed, I remember trying to keep my GUS in service under Windows 95 well into 1998 but eventually relented and installed some kind of more appropriate sound card that was better supported under Windows.

  Of course, audio output capability has been standard issue for any PC for at least 10 years and many people aren’t even aware that discrete sound cards still exist. Real-time audio rendering has become less essential as full musical tracks can be composed and compressed into PCM format and delivered with the near limitless space afforded by optical storage.

  A few years ago, it was easy to pick up old GUS cards on eBay for cheap. As of this writing, there are only a few and they’re pricy (but perhaps not selling). Maybe I was just viewing during the trough of no value a few years ago.

  Nowadays, of course, anyone interested in studying the old GUS or getting a nostalgia fix need only boot up the always-excellent DOSBox emulator which provides remarkable GUS emulation support.

• NAB 2010 wrapup

  15 avril 2010

  Another year of NAB has come and gone. Making it out of Vegas with some remaining faith in humanity seems like a successful outcome. So, anything worth talking about at the show ?

  First off, there’s 3d. 3D is The Next Big Thing, and that was obvious to anyone who spent half a second on the show floor. Everything from camera rigs, to post production apps, to display technology was all 3d, all the time. I’m not a huge fan of 3d in most cases, but the industry is at least feigning interest.

  Luckily, at a show as big as NAB, there’s plenty of other cool stuff to see. So, what struck my fancy ?

  First off, Avid and Adobe were showing new versions of Media Composer and Premiere. Both sounded pretty amazing on paper, but I must say I was somewhat underwhelmed by both in reality. Premiere felt a little rough around the edges - the Mercurial Engine wasn’t the sort of next generation tech that I expected. Media Composer 5 has some nice new tweaks, but it’s still rather Avid-y - which is good for Avid people, less interesting for the rest of us.

  In other software news, Blackmagic Design was showing off some of what they’re doing with the DaVinci technology that they acquired. Software-only Da Vinci Resolve for $999 is a pretty amazing deal, and the demos were quite nice. That said, color correction is an art, so just making the technology cheaper isn’t necessarily going to dramatically change the number of folks who do it well - see Color.

  Blackmagic also has a pile of new USB 3.0 hardware devices, including the absolutely gorgeous UltraStudio Pro. Makes me pine for USB 3.0 on the mac.

  On the production side, we saw new cameras from just about everyone. To start at the high end, the Arri Alexa was absolutely stunning. Perhaps the nicest digital cinema footage I’ve seen. Not only that, but they’ve worked out a usable workflow, recording to ProRes plus RAW. At the price point they’re promising, the world is going to get a lot more difficult for RED.

  Sony’s new XDCam EX gear is another good step forward for that format. Nothing groundbreaking, but another nice progression. I was kind of hoping we’d see 4:2:2 EX gear from them, but I suppose they need to justify the disc based formats for a while longer.

  The Panasonic AG-AF100 is another interesting camera, bringing micro 4/3rds into video. The only strange thing is the recording side - AVCHD to SD cards. While I’m thrilled to see them using SD instead of P2, it sure would have been nice to have an AVCIntra option.

  Finally, Canon’s 4:2:2 XF cams are a nice option for the ENG/EFP market. Nothing groundbreaking, aside from the extra color sampling, but it’s a nice step up from what they’ve been doing.

  Speaking of Canon, it’s interesting to see the ways that the 5d and 7d have made their way into mainstream filmmaking. At one point, I thought they’d be relegated to the indie community - folks looking for nice DoF on a budget. Instead, they seem to have been adopted by a huge range of productions, from episodic TV to features. While they’re not right for everyone, the price and quality make them an easy choice in many cases.

  One of the stars of the show for me was the GoPro, a small waterproof HD camera that ships with a variety of mounts, designed to be used in places where you couldn’t or wouldn’t use a more full featured camera. No LCD, just a record button and a wide angle lens. I bought two.

  Those are the things that stand out for me. While there was plenty of interesting stuff to be seen, given the current economic conditions at the University, I wasn’t exactly in a shopping mindset. The show definitely felt more optimistic than it did last year, and companies are again pushing out new products. However, attendances was about 20% lower than 2008, and that was definitely noticeable on the show floor.

• Matomo Further Invests in Security by Doubling Bug Bounty Rewards

  7 janvier 2022, par erin — Community, Press Releases

  Matomo is the leading open-source analytics solution free from data limitations. 

  As our mission states, we aim to create, as a community, the leading open digital analytics platform that gives every user full control of their data. 

  To do this, we operate a Security Bug Bounty Programme. This programme is designed to reward the hard work of skilled security researchers who sacrifice their time and energy to find and report security and vulnerabilities. 

  To continue our investment in security, privacy and transparency, we are increasing the security bug bounty reward to as much as $10,000 USD. This is an increase of 100% from our previous 2020 bug bounty announcement.

  How much can I earn for reporting security bugs ?

  Reward amounts vary depending on the impact :

  • Low issues receive $222
  • Medium issues receive $555
  • High issues receive $1,000
  • Critical issues receive $10,000

  How can I take part ? 

  As of January 2022, global independent security researchers have identified and suggested 138 security related improvements. If you are interested in joining this growing community, head to our Security Bug Bounty Programme to find out how you can take part. 

  We thank you for keeping Matomo safe for our users and theirs.

  About Matomo

  Matomo is the leading open-source analytics solution free from data limitations. Make more informed decisions and enhance your customer experience while ensuring data privacy and ownership. Matomo is the trusted solution for over 1.5 million websites globally. Take back control of your data ownership and challenge the status quo.