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Technical Information:

1. When installed on top of a cheap sound-card (or chip-set), that supports
only FM synthesis capability, WaveCube greatly enhances the sound
quality during MIDI synthesis.

2. WaveCube is a standard Win95 multimedia software component, that
is compatible with both MMSYSTEM (legacy) and DirectSound (new)
architectures (both by Microsoft).

3. WaveCube is capable of mixing MIDI+ WAVE(MMSYSTEM)+ WAVE(DirectSound), all at the same time. When WaveCube is not installed, WAVE-MMSYSTEM and WAVE-DirectSound are mutually exclusive (you can play either one of them, but not both simultaneously). This functionality is enabled in WaveCube since it also performs as a mixer for these 3 independent streams.

4. WaveCube includes a unique 3D sound enhancement GUI (WaveCube-Studio GUI), which is both entertaining and educational (especially for kids).

5. The Wavetable database used for the synthesis, is by a well known synthesizers manufacturer company (Ensoniq). The quality of the database, greatly influences the quality of the produced sound.

6. If installed on top of a chip-set that does not support DirectSound, WaveCube can simulate ‘direct-sound compatible’ behavior to the application/game above it, and thus avoid incompatibility issues between new software and some old hardware.

7. The WaveCube polyphony (number of simultaneous notes produced during MIDI synthesis), is configurable by the user, by editing one ASCII ini file. The way to do so is documented in the on-line documentation. By default the polyphony is 16 voices, since current CPUs are quite strong the polyphony can be significantly bigger.

8. Once installed, WaveCube is completely transparent to any standard Windows95 game or application. Nevertheless, we provide a simple applet (WaveCube-Control), that lets the user to toggle back and forth between the old sound configuration and the new (WaveCube) sound configuration.

9. WaveCube is available in both English and French version. Upon installation one can choose the target language.

10. An installation of WaveCube for evaluation can be found on the following FTP site:FTP Address: 204.146.47.25
User ID : ftp
Password: ftp

When you are connected, go to the following sub-directory: /pub/ashour

In the above directory you will find a zip file by the name: 971019.zip
The size of the zip file is: 7093524 bytes.

Download this file to a temporary directory (say c:tmp), and unzip it. The zip file is password protected, with the
password (all in small letters): wavecube

11. If you are using a Crystal sound-card, it appears that Crystal’s most updated drivers contain a bug that causes stops in the audio. If you have such a card, and experience the above problems, please contact me, and I’ll provide you with other drivers for the Crystal sound-card. Otherwise, on ESS chip-set, and other SB-compatible cards, we didn’t see any problem at all with their drivers.

Business related information:
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1. WaveCube is bundled for over a year now, with Altec-Lansing’s Dolby-Prologic speakers.
2. WaveCube is now bundled with HP machines (The licensing to HP was done by Altec, through its agreement with IBM-Israel.

Future Activities:
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We do have some ideas, but we are always opened for customers’ feedback.

General Remark:
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The software can be tuned to best fit the hardware solution (CPU, Memory, and Sound-Card configuration), to make sure that the OEM will have a good product.