NEW SOUND TOOLKIT TO SHIP IN NOVEMBER

Grand Rapids, MI -- MVP Software announced that its new library of sound
drivers, the DiamondWare Sound ToolKit (STK) is scheduled to ship in
November. The STK will provide developers of computer games and multimedia
products with a powerful tool to deliver quality music and sound effects
in their applications at a reasonable cost.

"I'm a games author too," said Keith Weiner, President of DiamondWare,
Ltd., developer of the STK. "While most of today's sound hardware is
capable of producing pretty good music and sound, developers have been
hampered by a lack of affordable quality software tools to take advantage
of that hardware."

Weiner pointed out several advantages of the STK. "First, its FM music
reproduction is very high-quality, resulting in truer and cleaner musical
output. Second, all sound cards are supported with the same API, making it
extremely easy to use. MVP is currently implementing the STK in games
written in C, C++, Pascal, and BASIC, so we are committed to supporting
these languages and most major compilers. Third, drums are done with FM,
thus not wasting dynamic range by digitizing them. Fourth, the STK
supports digitized sound effects with 16-voice polyphony. Fifth, we have
implemented a large subset of MIDI, including key velocity and dynamic
voice allocation. Finally, the STK prevents digital distortion caused by
exceeding dynamic range."

Dave Snyder, President of MVP Software, said that MVP was prompted to enter
this market because there are currently few quality alternatives for
developers wanting superior performance for a reasonable price. "The STK,"
Snyder stated, "was designed with the programmer in mind. It is written in
100% hand-coded assembler for small size and high performance. In our
tests we lowered our products' memory requirements by about 10K RAM,
increased our products' speed of operation, and improved the sound
reproduction in our upcoming games, all by implementing the STK in place
of other sound drivers we have used."

Developers will love the fact that the DiamondWare STK performs true
hardware auto-detects of most sound cards on the market, thus bypassing
the need to rely on generally unreliable environment variables or other
software shortcuts. Not only does the STK find port, IRQ and DMA settings
reliably, it works with all interrupts, including the notorious 2, 7, 10,
and 11, and all DMA channels. It uses the hardware mixer if one is
present: otherwise it does mixing in software. It is fully linkable for
seamless integration with code produced by most compilers or assemblers.

"In short," said Snyder, "we made sure the STK does what we've always
wanted sound drivers to do in our games. In our games, we don't want to
ask our users what settings their system has, but we do want speed and
reliability, and we want quality sound. The DiamondWare STK delivers all
of these. Moreover, the STK works equally well in DOS or in a DOS box
under Windows 3.1."

The DiamondWare STK has been tested with and supports the following sound
cards (in their Sound Blaster compatibility modes): Adlib, Adlib Gold 1000
(FM music only), Advanced Gravis Ultrasound (with SBOS), Ultrasound Max
(with SBOS), Aria 16, Aria 16Se, Aztech Labs PC Sound Spectacular, Best
Data Soniq Sound, Creative Labs Sound Blaster (all models), Ensoniq
SoundScape, ESS SoundPlus, Gallant Sound Card SC-3000, SC-4000, SC-5000
Pro Plus, SC-6000 Pro Plus 16, Logitech SoundMan, SoundMan 16, SoundMan
Wave, MAD16, Media Concept Pro, Media Vision Thunderboard, Pro Audio
Spectrum, Pro Audio Studio 16, Microsoft Windows Sound System, Packard
Bell Multimedia Sound Card, Reveal SoundFX Wave 32, Sound Pro 2, SoundGold
NX Pro, Sound Maxima Rock 16, Multimedia Add-on Card, and Zoltrix Audio
Plus.

The following processors are also supported: Intel, Cyrix, IBM, AMD, and
Texas Instruments.

Operating systems supported include DOS 5 and 6, DOS with EMM386 (all
versions), Windows 3.1, Windows 3.1 Enhanced Mode, QEMM version 7, 386MAX
versions 6 and 7, OS/2, Novell DOS 7, Novell DOS 7 with Novell EMM386.

The DiamondWare Sound ToolKit will sell for $299 and is completely
royalty-free. Site licenses are available. Free technical support is
provided, as are several utilities and bundled products to assist the
developer in designing and implementing high-quality sound and music.

A shareware version of the DiamondWare STK will also be available in
November. Developers and programmers will be able fully to test and
implement the STK into their own applications and thus be completely
satisfied with its performance before purchasing the product.

MVP Software
1035 Dallas SE
Grand Rapids, MI 49507-1407
616-245-8376,  fax 616-245-3204
CIS: 70363,15

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