7/13/2026 at 9:48:38 AM
During my teenage years in what is today a post-Soviet country -- to put it in apt context -- I was briefly an absolutely ecstatic owner of a Gravis Ultrasound (Classic, I believe) card. I probably had spent my _annual_ extra income on that card. My period of ecstasy -- playing Epic Pinball, Doom and Second Reality by Future Crew etc -- enjoying the then insane sound quality (funny how that works when your comparison is Sound Blaster's MIDI and the "PC squeaker") lasted only a few months because the card fried a capacitor or something like that, and that was it. That was decades ago and I still think about it not unlike a friend I left behind that I can no longer reach back to, to be perfectly honest. I had the dead-weight on my shelf, that's the last I remember. I was young and probably didn't even think of handing it to an electronics shop for a relatively cheap repair -- a fried capacitor or loose PCB connection is not a fried custom processor, I imagine.Anyway, good memories, even in the tragedy. I can relate to people who resurrect GUS.
Since others mention similar failings of their card, I remember I too had it installed horisontally in a (Chinese/Taiwanese) mini-tower, it definitely wasn't a desktop chassis, much less an IBM PC. I guess gravity strained it to a breaking point.
by hackrmn
7/13/2026 at 10:13:57 AM
I was a Gravis Ultrasound Max owner just for Second Reality. That was Art.by smooc
7/13/2026 at 4:58:31 PM
Second Reality was art indeed, but the GUS didn't make all that much difference for it. The soundtrack didn't have higher rate samples for the GUS's memory to hold or more channels for it to mix. Later demos and games did use these capabilities, but for Second Reality, the GUS sounded just about the same as a 16-bit Sound Blaster.by vikingerik
7/13/2026 at 7:31:41 PM
I seem to remember to have watched a recent comparison on YT between Second Reality using SB vs GUS, and I did appreciate an audible improvement with the latter, but it may have been a placebo -- I admit you may be right, as sources seem to confirm that the track used 8 channels that minimised if not outright eliminated synthesis differences. I am not an audiophile or audio engineer by any stretch so more informed people will have to chime in here, but what I had going for me then was the fact I never had a Sound Blaster to compare with directly. I think the fact my card died mere months into my purchase, kind of prevented me from forming a more objective opinion on the quality difference between it and SB.by hackrmn
7/14/2026 at 4:51:50 AM
On a system of that era, some scenes look far smoother with the GUS than SB16. With the GUS running, the CPU could focus on graphics because the audio was offloaded to the GUS. This was particularly true of the 3d flight scene.by cturner
7/14/2026 at 4:17:27 AM
My GUS replaced an 8 bit sound card. The difference in 2nd Reality was night and day!by tverbeure
7/13/2026 at 12:00:38 PM
Yeah, it infused my software engineering career and interest in optimisation and 3-D rendering.P.S. When we invent the time machine, we should go back to load up on actual GUS _and_ spread the word for people to never install it horisontally :-)
by hackrmn