Specifications

converter 1.5

2000 - 2005 urr Sound Technologies Inc.
14
supported soundcards / hardware
There are several standards for interface cards which converter supports. These standards are
implemented on a variety of cards; however testing for each potentially compatible card is impossible
due to the sheer number of interfaces on the market. The following guide outlines the interface
standards implemented in converter, the specific interfaces which were used in the development of
converter (and hence are directly known to work), and any information about cards which typically
wouldn’t work.
If you are successful using an interface card that is not listed here as specifically known to work,
or you find a card that should work but doesn’t for some reason, please let us know so it can be
added to this list and assist other users in the future.
Note that soundcards will require a midi/joystick breakout cable or breakout box in order to be
connected with standard midi cables
. These are standard breakout cables or boxes which should
work across all the different types of consumer soundcards on the PC market (including modern PCI
soundcards), and can still be purchased or built ( see www.harmony-central.com/MIDI/interface.html
).
If purchasing, simply look or search for a “SoundBlaster midi breakout cable” or “SoundBlaster midi
adaptor”. A variety of companies (such as Midiman) manufacture very inexpensive solutions – it certainly
doesn’t have to be ‘Creative Labs’ or ‘SoundBlaster’ - branded. The better ones are opto-isolated, to
protect your computer and outboard midi equipment, and have an LED on the midi input and output
ports to indicate midi transmission activity.
Roland / Generic UART-mode MPU-401
DEVELOPMENT INTERFACES: ROLAND MPU-IPC-T, MUSIC QUEST MPU-401 CLONE, SOUNDBLASTER 16 SERIES,
SOUNDBLASTER AWE-32/AWE64 SERIES, ENSONIQ SOUNDSCAPE
Any 100% MPU-401 UART-mode hardware compatible midi interface card is supported by converter.
This includes the Roland family of interfaces (MPU-401, MPU-IPC-T, LAPC-1, SCC-1, etc.), and should
include various devices from MusicQuest, Turtle Beach, Terratec, and hundreds of others. Note that the
‘intelligent’ mode of the MPU-401 is
not
used – only the UART mode.
Unless using one of converter’s dual-card modes, users with a SoundBlaster 16 (or newer) card who
would like to use one of converter’s midi-only input modes should use the SoundBlaster midi mode
(mode 3) of converter, since it will automatically configure itself for your SoundBlaster’s MPU-401
interface based on the SET BLASTER line in your
autoexec.bat
file.
Gravis Ultrasound
DEVELOPMENT INTERFACES: ULTRASOUND ‘CLASSIC’ (GF1-BASED)
There are several variations of the Gravis Ultrasound (“gus”) card based on two different main processor
chips. The first series of cards were based upon the GF1 processor, and as such are: Ultrasound
(‘classic’), Ultrasound Max, Ultrasound Ace (
not
recommended), and Ultrasound Extreme. The more
recent Ultrasound cards, called either the Ultrasound Plug & Play or Ultrasound Plug & Play Pro, are
based upon the AMD Interwave chip. Either the Ultrasound ‘classic’ or Ultrasound Max will work with
converter (with the SET ULTRASND line in your autoexec.bat file set correctly – the installation software
should do this automatically). The Ultrasound Extreme and Ultrasound P&P series
may
work (we have
no way of testing these cards), while the Ultrasound Ace will
–not-
work (it has no ability to record
audio, and no hardware midi interface).