SOUND BLASTER DIGEST #2

                              SOUND BLASTER DIGEST

                                    Number 2
                              January 1991 Edition.

                   A newsletter for Sound Blaster Enthusiasts.

                             Edited by Brad Barclay.

           Made possible by the contributions of Sound Blaster users.
                             
                                   /\
____________________________      /  \/\
                            \    /      \      ________________________________
                             \  /        \    /
                              \/          \  /
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                                TABLE OF CONTENTS
                                =================

                    Editor's Forum..........................1
                    Letters to the Editor...................2
                    Commercial Review.......................3
                    Shareware Review........................4
                    Improving your system through .VOC......5
                    VOUT vs. VPLAY..........................8
                    Sound Blaster in the BBS world..........9
                    Enclosed Files.........................10
                    Wrapping it up.........................11


                                                                - 1 -
     EDITOR'S FORUM
     --------------

     By Brad Barclay.

  Well, here it is, ready in time for the new year.  Yes, this is actually the
second edition of THE SOUND BLASTER DIGEST, and it is improved over the last
edition:  more letters, more articles, more information, more authors, and all
around much more of what you, the user, wants in a newsletter.  In this issue we
discuss the differences between VOUT and VPLAY, we make our reviews on
Commercial and Shareware software, we list numerous BBS's with Sound Blaster
support, and you will first-hand be able to read the first letter sent to myself
in our 'Letters to the Editor' column.

  One of the greatest joys that I have encountered when writing this newsletter
is the amount of user support that I get every day.  This newsletter is unique,
as it is not only written by the users, but their ideas and support keep it
going.  So if you like this newsletter, help the cause, and distribute it around
to other systems in your area.  We all win when more people have more access to
this publication.

  For those of you who are new to reading the SBD (as we around the 'office'
like to call this), we welcome you, and we hope that you enjoy this little
publication, and feel that it is worth your support.  For those of you who have
read the first edition, I hope you enjoy this second one, and that you too will
continue to support this fine newsletter by sharing it around, and submitting
your ideas.

  Before we start, there are a few people I would like to thank, who really made
a difference in making possible this issue.  They are Jeff Woods, sysop of THE
MUSICAL CHAIR BBS, and author of our first review, Edward R. Fenton for sending
the gracious letter (reprinted below in the LETTERS TO THE EDITOR column) and
the accompanying cheque, and many others who submitted the information contained
in the article on Sound Blaster BBS numbers.  You are the ones who help make
this possible!  Thank-you!
                                                                - 2 -
     LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
     ---------------------

  Just today I was happily excited to have received the SBD's first letter to
the editor, from a reader who lives in Topeka, Kansas:

                              --------------------

Dear Mr. Barclay:

     Cheers for your Sound Blaster Digest!  As an owner of an "old" card I am a
novice with its full use and welcome information as your Digest provides.  I
downloaded it from GEnie's IBM section and look forward to future issues.

     You wrote on page 6 about extensions.  I have acquired gobs of .ROL and
.CMF files but lack the proper software to use them.  Where do I obtain PLAYROL,
PLAYCMF or MUCH MUSIC?  I've searched GEnie with no luck.  I'm also having
trouble converting .ROL files to .CMF files using the ROL2CMF file (GEnie IBM
#19789).  The sparse instructions aren't very clear.

If you can't respond personally to my problems, please consider addressing them
in a future Digest issue.  Many thanks.

                                                       Sincerely,
                                                       Edward R. Fenton

P.S. Please accept a small contribution enclosed and keep up the good work.

                              --------------------

  Well, Mr. Fenton will be glad to know that I am sending him both a personal
reply and an advance copy of this edition.  It is the least I can do for the $20
US (which comes out to about $24 Canadian) he so kindly sent me.  See the end of
this issue for information about sending a LETTER TO THE EDITOR.
                                                                - 3 -
     COMMERCIAL REVIEW
     -----------------

  Here's an article by the SBD's home BBS sysop, Jeff Woods:

                              --------------------

Space Ace, by ReadySoft (Richmond Hill, ON)

A review by Jeff Woods
______________________

Retail:  $69.95/CDN

That lovable character out to save the world from the evil Commander
Borf and his infanto-ray is back.... However, this time, he's not quite
so lovable.    Oh, the concept of the game was great in the arcade --
three levels of play, the top one offering about 25 minutes if you could
successfully navigate it.    The plot in the arcade was terrific, and
there was a lot of dialogue between the characters of Kimi and Dexter
(call me Ace, eh?).     This is missing entirely in the game, as is the
rescue of Kimi.  In converting this classic laser-disc game to the PC,
something is lost.    What is there in the way of graphics and Sound
Blaster support is quite stunning.   But many of the best scenes from
the game were left out, leaving the PC version with very little plot,
and next to no continuity.     I do realize the ReadySoft was limited in
what they could do by disk space (even what little is there took 10
floppies to ship), but then, that's no excuse in my book.    I'd MUCH
rather have paid twice the price for a reasonable facsimile of the
arcade game.

Noticeably annoying is a spot near the beginning of the game where the
user is left in a situation that looks much like the character is dying
over and over, when in fact, a complex series of moves is required at
that point.   Once past that, the game is actually quite simple, and not
near as challenging as the arcade version.

My ratings:

Sound Blaster Support :  9.5    Playability:   4.5
Graphics (CGA/EGA/VGA): 10.0    Enjoyment:     5.0
Closeness to original:   2.0    Value:         6.0

In short, if you're an SB junkie, it might be worth purchasing.
However, I wish I had not.   Sullivan Bluth's implementation on laser
disc was MUCH better, and I'll now wait for these types of games to
appear on CD-ROM for the PC before I pop for one again.
                                                                - 4 -
     SHAREWARE REVIEW
     ----------------

  This month's Shareware review is on Winfred Hu's MUCH MUSIC, as written by our
editor, Brad Barclay.

  MUCH MUSIC by Winfred Hu is the perfect program for playing those .ROL and
.CMF files.  It's easy to use menuing system allows you to select multiple files
of both types to play one after another, giving you the effect of playing a
record.

  The program gives the user a number of options.  The user may select in what
directories to read the music files from, he/she may select to play music files
out of a ZIP file (which is an excellent idea, as it usually saves a lot of
space), and the user may skip on to the next song at any time they wish.

  But this piece of software does have it's faults.  Firstly, the songs will not
play in the order you marked them in, but will instead play the first listed
.ROL song file marked (if one is marked), and then continue playing all the
.ROL's. Once finished, it then goes on to play the marked .CMF's, in the order
that they are listed.  This can be a problem for those who compress their hard
drives with programs that also sorts the files in their directories as, for
example, the files will play in alpha order.

  Secondly, there is a slight but noticeable difference in the sound quality
when playing back .CMF files.  The difference is usually not enough to warrant
not using this program as the song is still usually well played, but instead the
instrument tone may seem to differ then when played with PLAYCMF.

  Lastly, MUCH MUSIC does not work very well playing the .ROL files with the SB-
SOUND driver.  There is a tendency to get the separate voices out of
synchronization when this driver is used.

  But all in all, this is an excellent program, and is well worth downloading.
No Sound Blaster enthusiast should be without it.

  MUCH MUSIC
  Author:  Winfred Hu.
  SBD Rating: ***1/2 (out of 5 stars).

                                                                - 5 -

     IMPROVING YOUR SYSTEM THROUGH .VOC
     ----------------------------------

     Written by Brad Barclay.

  One of the greatest things about the Sound Blaster card is it's support for
playing back digitized files, with it's built-in decompression, and it's DMA
(direct memory access) capabilities to take nearly all the work away from the
microprocessor.

  But isn't there a better use for these great files then just to listen to
every so often?  The answer is yes.

  There are numerous ways you can improve the look and feel of your system by
putting digitized capabilities into it.  By placing .VOC support into batch
files, you can instruct or help those who are not as familiar with your system,
provide easy information to all, and make it all-around a system with a
difference.

  All of the ideas included in this article are mainly for hard disk users.
Using these ideas on a diskette-based only system can take up a lot of diskette
space, and make your system act and run batch files slower, and can only annoy
people.  So if you run off of diskettes, you will probably be able to use some
of these, but determining for yourself their merit on your system.

  Of course, you're going to need a few things.  A Sound Blaster card is
imperative, and you should have VPLAY and the VOXKIT for playing back and
recording your voice files.  You could use VOUT, but it will cause your system
to act more slowly.  See the article VOUT vs VPLAY in this edition of THE SOUND
BLASTER DIGEST for more information on the differences between these command
line players.

  Here's some ideas for things to do in batch files with those wonderful
.VOC's...

     1) Try playing someone saying 'Hello' or something into your AUTOEXEC.BAT 
        file, to greet people when they log-on.
     2) If you have programs that only run on certain days, such as scanning
        for virus' on the 1st of the month, try playing a .VOC in a batch 
        file that will run the scan or whatever to let other users know   
        what's happening.
     3) Play a .VOC file at the end of batch files that control events that
        often occur on your system, where you probably leave the room to   
        wait for the function to stop.  For example, my system says "Hey   
        you!  Yeah you!  Your transfer's done!" at the end of a transfer   
        using an external protocol.
                                                                - 6 -
         
     4) If you run on a password based system that can detect which user is on 
        from a batch file, you could easily create a voice mail system.  I have
        personally done this, and have found it very useful to let others know 
        that perhaps there's a problem with a certain program, or to remind   
        myself to print out an important document, or to call my favorite BBS at
        a specific time.  It's easy to construct, and you could create a simple
        menu-system to play/record/delete each users mail.  Just create a     
        directory containing sub-directories which are named after your users. 
         Included are some sample batch files to allow your users to           
        send/receive
        mail.  All you need to do is to change USER1, etc to the user name, etc.
        The batch files are for use with PC-VAULT, a popular protection program,
        but could be adapted to fit any password system, as long as it can     
        determine which user is which.
          Not included, but useful for this purpose is to add a part to your   
        AUTOEXEC.BAT file to check if the file exists, and then notify the user
        that a piece of mail is waiting.

  The .VOC files are not limited in any way to just listening to "Hello" upon
booting your system anymore!  Let your imagination fly:  you can never tell what
you might come up with!
  If you come up with another great use for those .VOC files, write a letter to
the Editor, and he'll be sure to post your recommendation (we reserve the right
to edit any letter as to make it fit into the issue).
                                                                - 7 -



















     \  /
   ___\/___    Live and on the             Now in stereo!
      ||         air from Toronto!
     /||\                                  Node 2 is now up!
      ||       The Musical Chair
     ====              at               Experience the difference of:
    ======    438-1686 & 438-3009
     ====                            1000's of Adlib and SB music files
      ||    _______    1200-14,400     50 gaming doors online
      ||   |       |   baud & v.32      3 mail networks
      ||   |       |    _____           1 crazy and caring sysop
______||   |       |   |     |
      ||\  |       |___|     |          Around the clock.....
Sky   || \ |       |   |     |             Around the world.....
 Dome ||  \|       |   |     |                Around the bend.....
     ||||  |       |   |     |
    |||||| |       |   |     |         The M sical Chai ...438-3009
   |||||||||       |   |     |
  ||||||||||       |   |     |         What's missing?     U R!
                                                                - 8 -
     VPLAY VS. VOUT
     --------------

     By Brad Barclay.


  Many of the new Sound Blaster users don't realize it, but Creative Labs didn't
always send the program VPLAY.EXE with the Sound Blaster.  The first major
version of the Sound Blaster came with a program called VOUT to play those
Creative Voice Files.  VOUT is suffeciently differant from VPLAY that I thought
it warrented an entire article of it's own, and I believe any serious Sound
Blaster user should have both.

  The differances are many.  Both have features the other doesn't.  The first
really noticable one is that VOUT does not use two buffers to read/play a voice
file at the same time, and thus you are limited by RAM memory on your system for
playing a Voice File, as VOUT must load the entire .VOC at once, and then play
it.

  But this can be an advantage.  Even on faster machines there is a slight pause
as the computer loads in sme more data.  There isn't this problem with VOUT, as
it doesn't have to do anything while it's playing.

  The next differance is that with VPLAY you can play your .VOC in the
background, where with VOUT all that you can do is sit and wait while it plays:
unless you're running under a multi-tasking system, there is no way to do
anything else while you're playing your .VOC.

  But not all the differances between the two make one think that VPLAY must be
the better program.  In fact, there are a few things that you can do with VOUT,
but not with VPLAY.  For example, with VOUT you can specify what speed to play
your .VOC at:  thus you can play is either faster or slower, without having to
change the actual speed of the .VOC.

  Also, with VOUT you can play an 8 bit digitized file that doesn't have a Sound
Blaster header.  This is good for testing, for example, the proper playing speed
of a digitized file from a different computer system before adding the header.

  So, as you can see, both VOUT and VPLAY have their advantages, and thus are
both an equally valuable part of any Sound Blaster users software library.
                                                                - 9 -
     SOUND BLASTER IN THE BBS WORLD
     ------------------------------

     By Brad Barclay.

  Here's a small but growing list of BBS's in North America that are officially
registered with THE SOUND BLASTER DIGEST.  If you can't find the newest version
of the SBD, try checking one of these BBS's.  They are all fine systems, and
have support for Sound Blaster users, and ar ethus also a great place to get in
touch with other users in your area.
  The list will be updated every few months as new and more systems register
with us.  If you run a BBS, with Sound Blaster conferences and and files, let me
know: you can find out how to reach me below.
  Where information was not available, or wasn't recieved, the entry will be
left blank.  This only occurs for CITY/PROVINCE/STATE and SYSOP'S NAME.  Check
the area code of the phone number if you would like to get an idea of where it's
located.


  SYSTEM NAME       PHONE NUMBER   CITY/PROVINCE/STATE      SYSOP'S NAME       
  ===========       ============   ===================      ============

  Arkon BBS         (416)593-7460  Toronto, Ontario.        Jacky Lee
  Beltway Bandits   (703)764-9297   -- Unknown --           -- Unknown --
  Data Dimention    (404)921-1186  Atlanta Georgia          -- Unknown --
  Dead End BBS      (703)821-7544   -- Unknown --           -- Unknown --
  Electronic Age    (703)620-0851   -- Unknown --           -- Unknown --
  Friends & Family  (214)960-3189  Dallas, Texas            Jim Neargarder
  House of Ichthys  (305)360-2991  Deerfield Beach, Florida Leonzo E. Miller III
  Jim's Dream       (202)581-1422   -- Unknown --           Jim Walls
  Musical Chair     (416)438-3009  Toronto, Onatrio         Jeff Woods
  Running Board     (301)229-5342   -- Unknown --           -- Unknown --
  The Double AAce   (214)606-0703  Grand Praire, Texas      Mike Hutchkins
  The HUB           (703)685-0019   -- Unknown --           -- Unknown --
  Trolls &
     Tribulations   (703)263-0827   -- Unknown --           -- Unknown --

                                                                - 10 -
     ENCLOSED FILES
     --------------

  Enclosed in this edition are two different .ZIP files.  The first is
BNK945.ZIP, the largest collection of Adlib insturment files in the Adlib .BNK
format that I have ever seen.

  The second, VMAIL.ZIP are some sample batch files for use with PC-VAULT to
allow different users to leave each-other Voice Mail.  They are not intended to
be run 'as-is', but will require editing and shaping for your own system.  A
knowledge of DOS batch files is nesissary to use these.

                                                                - 11 -
     WRAPPING IT UP
     --------------

  Well, that's about it for another edition of THE SOUND BLASTER DIGEST.  I
would like to thank once again those who helped me get this edition going:  they
know who they are.

  Although this edition had some things from a few different authors, it is
still nearly totally my effort that makes THE SOUND BLASTER DIGEST what it is.
This is to be expected for the editor, but more authors would be welcome.  If
you wish to write an article for THE SOUND BLASTER DIGEST, write it up, and send
it to me (see below for details on contacting me).

  About correspondance to myself:  I will attempt to answer all letters sent to
me, if not in the next issue, I will at least always send a personal reply.  You
need not send money:  true, the author of the letter we featured above sent
money, but it is in no way nesissary.  But by sending a small ammount, you can
feel good about supporting this publication, and I will send you the newest copy
of THE SOUND BLASTER DIGEST before it's ever sent to any BBS system.  Your money
also helps keep me motivated, and helps me buy gifts for my girlfriend, who
provides me with moral support.

  A note to Shareware authors and Sysops:  if your software or BBS contains a
large ammount of Sound Blaster support, let me know.  For the sysops, we will
add your BBS as one registered with the SBD, giving you a spot on our BBS list,
and bragging rights.  For software authors:  by sending a copy of your software
to us, you can guarentee that we will write a review as soon as possible.
Registered versions are more prefferable if you're distribution version is
crippled in any way, as it allows us to give it a better, more true review.
This can be worth ignoring the registration fee:  your software will be
advertised and read by people in both North America and Europe (reports have it
that we're being sent to the United Kingdom by some users).  But the choice is
totally up to you.

  To contact the editor, you may leave E-mail on a number of BBS systems to Brad
Barclay.  Nearly every BBS number given in this issue has the echoed Sound
Card/Adlib conferance, of which I am a frequent participant.  You can also
contact me by mailing a letter, or telephoning myself at the following address:

                              SOUND BLASTER DIGEST
                                c/o Brad Barclay
                                 36 Sutter ave.
                                Brampton, Ontario
                                     CANADA
                                     L6Z 1G7

                             Phone: (416) 846-5599.