Gravis UltraSound

The GF1 chip

The Gravis UltraSound or GUS is a sound card for the IBM PC compatible system platform, made by Canada-based Advanced Gravis Computer Technology Ltd. It was very popular in the demoscene during the 1990s.[citation needed]

The Gravis UltraSound was notable at the time of its 1992 launch for providing the IBM PC platform with sample-based music synthesis technology (marketed as "wavetable"), that is the ability to use real-world sound recordings rather than artificial computer-generated waveforms as the basis of a musical instrument. Samples of pianos or trumpets, for example, sound more like their real respective instruments.[citation needed] With up to 32 hardware audio channels, the GUS was notable[citation needed] for MIDI playback quality with a large set of instrument patches that could be stored in its own RAM.

The cards were all manufactured on red PCBs, similar to fellow Canadian company ATI. They were only a little more expensive than Creative cards, undercutting many equivalent professional cards aimed at musicians by a huge margin.