Gravis UltraSound
CS4231 provides support for Windows Sound System specs, although the IO port range doesn't match the WSS hardware, and can be used for SoundBlaster emulation.
Released in 1995, the Ultrasound Plug & Play was a new card based on AMD InterWave technology with a completely different sound set.
The GF1 was co-developed by Advanced Gravis and Forte Technologies (creator of the VFX1 Headgear virtual reality helmet) and produced by Integrated Circuit Systems under the ICS11614 moniker.
Programmers are free to include the static version of the UltraMID library in their applications, eliminating the need for the TSR.
This latter strategy, while providing better sound quality, introduces a noticeable delay when loading patches, so most applications just preload a predefined set.
This primitive precursor to the modern sampler opened the way for Gravis to enter the market, because the requirements matched the capabilities of the GF1 chip ideally.
The problem with other sound cards playing these formats was that they had to downmix voices into one or both of its output channels in software, further deteriorating the quality of 8-bit samples in the process.
An UltraSound card was able to download the samples to its RAM and mix them using fast and high-quality hardware implementation, offloading the CPU from the task.
The emulation software ran as a huge TSR that was difficult to manage in the pre-Windows days of complicated DOS extenders.
It was enhanced to handle up to 16 MB of onboard memory, IMA ADPCM-compressed samples, have no sample rate drop at full 32 voices, and featured additional logic to support hardware emulation of FM synthesis and simple delay-based digital sound effects such as reverb and chorus.
The process of patching middleware sound 'drivers' was greatly simplified with PREPGAME utility, which could fix most known DOS games automatically either by correctly installing and configuring native InterWave drivers or replacing the binaries for some rare devices like Covox.
Some high-end OEM variants contained a full-blown 4 MB patch set in ROM[citation needed] and proprietary hardware DSPs to enable features like additional sound effect algorithms and graphic equalizer.
Software drivers for the InterWave were written by eTek Labs, containing the same development team as the earlier Forte Technologies effort.
When Gravis's list of promised supporting game titles failed to materialize, the company lost credibility with consumers and commercial developers.
Several publishers and developers threatened to sue the company over misrepresentation of their products — pointing to outright fabrication of Gravis's list.
[citation needed] Companies which did this in an early stage were publisher Apogee and developers id software and Epic MegaGames.
Gravis can also claim victory in the demoscene, which had taken the GUS to its heart, ensuring a dedicated cult following for a number of years.
Due to declining sales, Gravis was eventually forced out of the soundcard business, and the UltraSound's failure nearly took the entire company down with it.
Advanced Gravis, once one of the dominant players in the PC peripherals marketplace, had bet much of the future of the company on the UltraSound and paid the price for its demise.
After significant restructuring, including acquisition by competitor Kensington Technology Group (via its parent, ACCO World Corp), the company retreated to its core market, the one which had made it a success — joysticks and gamepads.
