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Topic: WinGroove concerns. (Read 16625 times) previous topic - next topic

WinGroove concerns.

There has been some dialogue regarding this piece of shareware. I posted a note in response to a reply to another message. Nigel Horne is the person who has said that he has issues with WinGroove and I'd like to know what they are when I consider using it. The request I posted is as follows: >>> Nigel, October's Forum notes are not available in the archive. I've downloaded WinGroove with a view to using it, but your note has me concerned. I have a 486DX4 100Mhz machine with 20 Mb of memory. I'm operating under Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and I have an SB16 soundcard. I have the latest NWC V1.50. I do not have a midi-card. Could I ask you to reiterate your issues with WinGroove ? and let me know what I need to do to 'hear' the sound of NWC files to some degree of accuracy (at least to hear flutes differently to the piano! and not like a "comb and paper"). If it is because I have not set up NWC or the Sound-card properly I would appreciate some guidance. <<<< Nigel Horne, could you assist please ?

Re: WinGroove concerns.

Reply #1 –
I attempted to run with WfW and an SB16 like you. Wingroov
kept crashing my PC and losing my settings. The author did
not respond to any e-mails from me. Often when hitting play
from NWC, or other S/W such as finale or mozart, the nothing
would play - it would just abort. I also got lots of 'out
of memory' messages - I have 32Mb, though I suspect Wingroov
may be hitting the 640K problem. It was fustration with this
bug which caused me to ditch it (manually - the author
doesn't supply an un-install program or instructions). Pity
really, the sound quality on the few times it worked, is
very impressive. I now have an AEW64Gold card. This has
also had some problems - see my earlier messages here, and
the brass sounds awful, but `tis a far better alternative
to Wingroov if a little pricey at well over £100.

Re: WinGroove concerns.

Reply #2 –
Nigel, thanks for taking the time to reply. Much appreciated.

Re: WinGroove concerns.

Reply #3 –
Ken,

I also tried using Wingroove and couldn't get rid of it fast enough.

I had some of the same problems as Nigel but aside from that, I actually thought that my portable with its Yamaha sound card sounded better.
(The portable is a pentium with Windows for workgroups)

I also have a SB16 on a 486, 66MHz runing W4WG but this was too slow to drive wingrove without the
Noteworthy display being way ahead of the Wingroove sound.

I also objected to the fact that there was no uninstal feature and I was certainly glad that I had taken the precaution of backing up Windows INI's and the MIDI mapper before installing.

I will not try this product again.

Richard

Re: WinGroove concerns.

Reply #4 –
I have a Pentium 90 laptop, 16Mb (WFW) with built-in "comb and paper" 16b sound card.
With no slot to plug in a good sound card, I have been delighted with Wingroove 1.09e and had but joy with the excellent sound quality it produces.
Considering the amount of real-time signal processing it does, I am not surprised it glitches on slower machines - I get the impression it is already "limit" with my Pentium 90 as sometimes I hear a crackling sound, or it may miss a beat in a heavy section with lots of parts.
Reducing the sampling rate from 44 to 33 fixes this (Wingroove setup).
For a registration fee of $20, I'm a happy customer.

Re: WinGroove concerns.

Reply #5 –
Jon,

My machine was not a slower machine, it is also a Pentium 90.

-Nigel

Re: WinGroove concerns.

Reply #6 –
Just last night I downloaded Wingroove from the suggestion of a
friend of mine. It does sound pretty good, but it does not play
complicated pieces very well, and it is also annoying to hear
the notes in Noteworthy a second after they are shown as red notes.

Overall, I have found that the best overall way to get fairly
good quality is to plug in a MIDI-capable PCM keyboard. The
instruments don't sound as real in some cases as Wingroove, but
it plays quicker and considerably more accurate.

Any ideas on how to delete it? I am using Win95.

-Steve

Re: WinGroove concerns.

Reply #7 –
I have found Wingroove to be great, but I'll admit, the old
delete when the shareware expires and reinstall method
doesn't work with this software. I am getting sick of my
MIDIs being interrupted every 10 seconds so I was
wondering... does anybody know how I could register? I've
e-mailed the author and KAGI and have gotten no responses.

Dan

Re: WinGroove concerns.

Reply #8 –
I just hate the options that you are given to register this program.
You can give them all of the personal information including your
credit card numbers and information that is found upon it, knowing
that anyone can access this email to the owner. Why don't they have
a 1-800 (toll free) phone number that you can call like other companies?
I would love to register this program, but refust to want the "couple to
three weeks" to receive the password via snail mail, which in this case
seems more secure.

Re: WinGroove concerns.

Reply #9 –
I have had no problems with WinGroov. Send me an e-mail and I will tell you how to remove it! I am currently using a
K6-233 CPU on a Mustang R581A motherboard with only 16 Meg
on board ram. Before that, a Pentium 75, which followed a 486 DX. No problems with WinGroov on any of'em. Hard Drive-
MORE than adequate!!!

J.G.

Re: WinGroove concerns.

Reply #10 –
Use ROLAND VSC-55 It works more accruate than WinGroov

Re: WinGroove concerns.

Reply #11 –
I've no problems with WinGroove. It runs great on my P120 (16 Mb RAM) and on my 386-33 (4 Mb RAM), well, I have to turn all the settings down as low as possible on the 386, but it seems to run fairly stable, although it's quite slow. Personally, I'd choose this program over a new sound card. Long live the 'Groove! :)

Re: WinGroove concerns.

Reply #12 –
I downloaded Wingroove and thought it was pretty cool. The sound quality was better than Windows Media Player. On one midi I have Wingroove added a drumbeat that I KNOW was not supposed to be there. Even though it sounded cool, that dosent mean it will sound as good. Also it changed the way all the midis sounded in WMP, until I got rid of it. By the way if u need to know how to uninstall go to lycos.com and search wingroove got to Nakayama(?)' s homepage it tells u how.

Re: WinGroove concerns.

Reply #13 –
I'm WinGroover user from Ver 0.A1. I have used at 486DX100MHz with unknown soundcard, Pentium 100MHz with SB16 compativle, Cerlon 400MHz with Yamaha YF274 and On board ESS-solo. I liked its strings and Pf sound .

WinGroove requires 486 above. ( recomend Pentium 100 MHz ) and about 1.5 Mega Byte Memory and sound-card ( includes inner sound chip ) and about 2 Megabyte
Fix Disk Drive.

At english site
( http://www.cc.rim.or.jp/~hiroki/english/wgdl.html),
the latest verstion is 0.9E beta3. But, in real, the latest version is 0.A2.

And I searched at japanese site(http://www.wg7.com/) . From 0.9E to 0.A2 ,

- WinNT4.0/2000 - speed up ( x 1.7 ) for Pentium
- fit to MMX CPU - expand maximum voice 128
- new reverve and chorus - controls of delay of sing.
- have UNINSTALL program - bug fix. ( win3.1 ) etc.

I think ungoodness someone has is owing to ver 0.9E .
So I think one had better update to ver 0.A2 . It's font is Japanese. But, the Author ( Nakayama ) has written
'Runing Japanese WinGroove ver-0.A2 under non-Japanese Windows'
http://www.cc.rim.or.jp/~hiroki/english/v0a2jp/

takahiro

Re: WinGroove concerns.

Reply #14 –
I have a 400 mhz machine with 192 mb of RAM. I have an SB16 as my sound card. I installed Wingroove and nothing has been the same ever since. My machine keeps crashing and I've never been able to get sound from my computer ever again. I rebuilt the machine and even installed the sound card driver multiple times. Anyone know how to get my sound back? Wingroove simply does not work with SB16.

Re: WinGroove concerns.

Reply #15 –
An interesting thread... reminds me of the time when I was hiking through Europe. I made the terrible mistake of making the round trip around Europe instead of doing the usual capital city center to capital city center routine, you know, Paris, Berlin, and so on. Anyway I was in Italy at the time and wanted to see Turkey (this was several months after the earthquakes). So I got to the border and the security were going through my bags and the one of the guys was rummaging through and pulled out my general computer CDs (I usually travel with a Compaq 486 - how's that for a high-tech backpacker?). Anyway the guy said, "How much do you want for these?" And I said, "No sorry buddy they're not for sale." He pointed his handgun at me and said, "How much you want?" So I said "Okay you can have them for nothing." Anyway the second guy there pulled out a CD with 'brad's Noteworthy stuff' written on it. And so I called out, "NO! You'll have to shoot me for that one!"

Re: WinGroove concerns.

Reply #16 –
You may have to reinstall Wingroove before you can uninstall it's drivers!!!! (this is mentioned in the documentation).
If you just uninstall Wingroove the driver remains to wreak havoc on your system.
Reload Wingroove and follow the instructions to disable the driver then reboot and uninstall Wingroove.
And it does work with an SB16!

Re: WinGroove concerns.

Reply #17 –
Ok, wanna uninstall Wingroove (0.9E)? Here's how:

1.) Go into the little configuration utility (it's called setup, and can be located on the "Start" menu). Uncheck the option of having Wingroove as a device driver. A message box will pop up confirming that you did so.

2.) Restart Windows.

3.) Go to C:\WINDOWS\Start Menu\Programs

4.) Delete the Wingroove folder

5.) Go to the your main hard drive (usually C:).

6.) Delete the Wingroov Folder.

7.) There you have it, folks!

By the way, if you don't want to go through the trouble of emptying the recycling bin, hold down the Shift key before you hit delete. That'll skip the recycling bin altogether. Also, don't delete the Wingroove.ini file in the Windows directory, unless you don't want to use it again.

Re: WinGroove concerns.

Reply #18 –
I first started using wingroov when it first came out by the author.  I never had any problems and that it really makes the enjoyment of listening to midi files better.

[remainder of message deleted by sysop]

Re: WinGroove concerns.

Reply #20 –
Try installing it in XP Mode.

XP Mode is a predefined Windows XP VM (virtual machine) that runs in Win7 - downloadable for free from Microsoft:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

Requires Win7 Pro or Ultimate...
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.