ReadMe for Soundprobe 2.0 (05/06/98) ==================================== DEMO Information ================ The DEMO version of Soundprobe II has several less features. The FULL version of Soundprobe II can be obtained from HiSoft (address and details at the bottom of this text). The FULL version of Soundprobe contains: · Sampling/Playback upto 65Khz, mono and stereo. · Sampling support for: - Megalosound, Aura12/16, Clarity16, Many different 8-Bit parallel port samplers (DSS8+, Technosound etc.), Megamix-Master. - Full AHI sampling support, many sound cards supported. · Audio support for: - Standard 8-Bit "Paula" Amiga output. - "Simulated" 12/14-Bit Amiga output. - Aura12/16 output. - Clarity16 output. - AHI audio output. · Over 80 powerful ARexx commands. · Load support for: - 8SVX, AIFF, AIFC, 16SV, RAW (16/8-Bit, signed/unsigned, mono/stereo-interleaved) including RAW CDDA support, MPEGA (using MPEGA.library available on Aminet), RIFF-WAV, Studio16, AVR. · Save support for: - 8SVX, AIFF, AIFC, 16SV, RAW (16/8-Bit, signed/unsigned, mono/stereo-interleaved) including RAW CDDA support, RIFF-WAV, Studio16, AVR. · Over 60 special effects including powerful DSP effects using the special Soundprobe DSP library for very fast DSP processing (including real-time) without need for special hardware (totally software based). · Built-in virtual memory system. · Direct file editing. · Standard 2D time domain graphing. · 2D/3D Frequency domain graphing. · Fully customizable interface, style-guide compliant. plus much more... Support ======= An official web page for Soundprobe is now available to all users, see below... You can find the HiSoft Soundprobe sales page at: http://www.hisoft.co.uk/soundprobe/ The support page for Soundprobe is at: http://www.york.ac.uk/~djor100/sprobe You'll find the latest version of Soundprobe+ ready for download (as a patch from V2.0), and all the latest info and libraries! See bottom of ReadMe for details of Technical Support from HiSoft. Notice ====== Due to Soundprobe's heavy use of the systems interrupts and high performance requirements, it is important to ensure that your system is running at its maximum speed. Ways to do this are as follows: If your system has a small amount of fast RAM (e.g - less than 4 Mb), then it is important that whilst running Soundprobe, you have as much free fast RAM as possible. If possible, ensure Soundprobe is executed without many other programs/utilities being loaded into RAM first. It is also advisable to have the systems ExecBase, the System Stack and VBR mapped to fast RAM. Programs such as "BlizzMagic", "FastExec", "MCP" and other "system enhancers" will map these for you, this gives the system improved performance and hence ensures Soundprobe runs at the maximum performance for your system. In the MISC page of the settings window is an option `Fast Stack'. This will map the system stack into fast RAM. If this is disabled then it is already in fast RAM. Basically it means that sampling/audio will perform at the best possible speed for your system. Before enabling it, a warning appears. Don't worry about trying it, just ensure you have nothing running, and all your work saved etc. When Soundprobe quits, the original stack will be restored. It is important to make sure you've read your User manual for full details of how each part of Soundprobe works, and what you need to do. It isn't as complex as it may seem at first sight. A1200 Owners/Accelerator Owners ------------------------------- If your A1200 has an accelerator board with MMU, it is important to ensure that your kickstart ROM is mapped into fast RAM, this ensures Soundprobe will function at full efficiency. Read your accelerators manual for details on how this can be done. !Important! =========== When first using Soundprobe on your system, it is advised that you test how high the sampling and audio rates can be set without causing your system to become unusably slow, or to lock up. To ensure your system doesn't lock up, ensure that the fail counts for audio/sampling/monitoring are low enough for you not to have to wait too long before it stops (See the User Manual for details). If your system is unable to have them very high, it is advised that when sampling, you set the sampler options to use the monitoring rate whilst it monitors, and ensure that this is set low enough. Switching off the system enabled option in the sampling window will give maximum performance whilst sampling and similar for the audio options (See the User Manual for details). Installation ============ To install Soundprobe simply double-click on the `Installer' icon and follow the instructions, this will install SoundProbe for you. Settings File ============= The Soundprobe settings file can easily be edited via the WB 'ed' command. All the paths which Soundprobe uses can be set by changing the paths text. The settings file is in the `Settings' drawer, it is called `SPDefault.settings' e.g - AUDIO_PATH=SP16:Audio/ could be changed to... AUDIO_PATH=LIBS:Audio/ if you wish to keep the Soundprobe libraries in your LIBS: drawer. If Soundprobe can not find a default settings file, it will assume that all the files it needs are contained within the same drawer that the main editor is located in, it will then create an assign called 'SP16:' to this location when it is executed. If you wish, you can assign 'SP16:' yourself, forcing Soundprobe to use this instead. If SoundProbe fails to find any of its main libraries, it will not be able to run, these are the one contained in the "Libs/" drawer. Button Graphics =============== The buttons which Soundprobe uses for the Tools window can be changed simply using any IFF-ILBM graphics editor which allows you to save out a brush. The size of the buttons is defined by the size of the brush, take a look at the default buttons. You can create a drawer with your own button images, then simply set the buttons path to where they are located and Soundprobe will load the new images next time it is executed. Sound Player ============ The Sound Player has been set up to operate from an assign to the drawer where SoundProbe is, and an added assign to the Soundprobe `Libs' drawer. If you have the files in a different place, edit the tooltypes of the SoundPlayer icon. Icons ===== For people with the "Magic Workbench" there are several icons contained in the icons drawer. Simply rename these and copy them over the original icon. The installer will handle all this for you. Known Bugs ========== - None known at this time. Changes ======= 07.07.97 - The Effects menu has had the echo effects moved into a sub menu, two new echo effects have been added: AreaEcho, SurroundEcho. - Three new display libraries have been added: 3DFrequencyGraph, 2DFrequencyGraph, QuickGraph. - Three new Sampling Monitors have been added: 3DSpectrumAnalyser, 2DSpectrumAnalyser, HIFISpeccyAnalyser - Sampling monitor `SpectrumAnalyser' has been improved to show 64 frequency bands, and uses an improved 256 point FFT. 09.07.97 - Resample now has an extra option to resample just the selected area, or if this is disabled, then it will resample the whole sample. 10.07.97 - The pitch routines have been altered from using a rate to using a scaling percentage. Change Pitch, Chorus, Modulate and Pitch Bend now use a range of 1-400% instead of resample rates. - Default Effects menus have been extended with a Settings menu. This allows you to snapshot the current windows position and size, or unsnapshot it so it always centres it. 11.07.97 - NoiseGate, Compressor and DeCrackle rewritten, much improved performance and results. 13.07.97 - Resonance effect added, shows up in the FX List. 18.07.97 - AHI Audio library added. Allows you to use the AHI.device to play through. Has only been tested with the Paula support. AHI is available as PD. 19.07.97 - Added new monitor meter "LightOrgan" based on the lightorgan in DeliTracker. Displays the input level based on a colour change of a box. - Meter update speeds have been improved, updating now uses the sampling timer, and no longer waits for a frame update. This could cause sync problems and sometimes some flicker, but this could also happen with frame waits, so it makes little difference, except now it updates every 50th of a second, and not when the frame and sampling event happen in sync! 21.07.97 - Added menus to monitoring meters. Now supports the following menu options: Project -> About ----- Quit Settings -> Snapshot Window Unsnapshow Window Snapshot will now save the current window position and size for your meter, so the next time you use it, it'll appear in the same place and size. If you have meters open when you save the default settings, the snapshot will be ignored and the location and size at saving will be used, this means that you can still leave the meters open at quit time, and they'll reload as you left time. 23.07.97 - Amiga14Bit audio library added. 24.07.97 - Reverb has an extra option to turn off the flange, reducing the number of calculations it makes. Also had some general improvements. New decay slope type "Random" added. Diffusion algorithm improved, but speed is now slower due to more calculation. 25.07.97 - Three new effects added: LowPassBoost, HighPassBoost, BandPassBoost. These can be accessed via the FxList as with any further effects. 28.07.97 - Fixed small bug in layerhook, caused graphics errors on KickStart3.1. - Added new effect: "FastReverb" (access through FxList). Uses less computation, and is only linear so sounds less "natural". It's much better for Real-Time as the full Reverb is pretty slow! 29.07.97 - Improved speed of "HIFISpeccyAnalyser", update now uses tables for dB calculations and not floating point calcs. - Fixed small bug in sampling monitoring, wasn't telling the meter the sampling rate, causing probs with Frequency meters. - Improved 2DFrequencyGraph/2DSpectrumAnalyser to use tables for dB calculations, now slightly faster. 30.07.97 - Extended sampler library functions to give more flexible sampling support. 31.07.97 - AHI sampler support added. Doesn't support Real-Time FX, and stopping sampling early will only keep the last saved block (see the Sampler Info). This is a test of AHI support so shouldn't be taken too seriously. The sampler/audio support is not full or perfect, and may not fully work, or even work at all. If AHI developes further I may add full (true) AHI support. - Removed rate mapping, sampling rates are no longer mapped onto the Amiga clock frequency, this allows expansion to samplers which can support other frequencies, use the rate requester "MapRate" to get the correct Amiga rate. - Improved colour scheme of 2D/3D FFT displays, shows up details much clearer, especially 2D graphs. 01.08.97 - Added extra palette functions: Copy,Swap,Mix,Spread. - Added new monitor meter: Monoscope. Based around the DeliTracker monoscope idea. 03.08.97 - Added two new monitor meters: 3DSurfaceFFT - Displays the frequencies as a 3D "Surface" map. ColourMultiscope - Displays faded previous displays. - Added new display graph: 3DFFTSurfaceGraph. Sames as the monitor meter. 20.08.97 - Fixed bug in multi-file load, at startup. - Fixed bug in 'cancel' load. - Added Multi-File load requester, you can now select multiple files. Load will load first into current project and then create new projects for each extra file. Open will create a new project and then start loading. 16.10.97 - Fixed small bug in 8SVX saver, could have caused crashing. - Changed Resample window, now shows the time stretch options more clearly as Amiga Format said they didn't exist! 18.10.97 - Fixed stereo<->mono for 8 bit interleaved file storage. 20.10.97 - Improved stereo->mono mix routine and general mix. 09.11.97 - Fixed a very small bug in the guimaker.library, was causing a few gfx errors in the settings window. - Fixed minor bug at load cancel. 12.11.97 - Fixed some small bugs in the pitch routines. 20.11.97 - Removed SPTitle and background, also changed dates to say only 1997 (i.e - release date), changed name to only Soundprobe (HiSoft name for SoundProbe16). Altered About to reduce detail in both pages, and moved Editor Info into second page. 30.11.97 - Double the speed of the FFT routine! Now all frequency displays run twice as fast!!! :)) - New FX! "Finite Impulse Response" filter, allows you to boost frequencies above/below a set level different amounts, giving low/highpass if you wish too! Performs a much more accurate filter than the built in ones (I'll add an option later on). 01.12.97 - First, improved frequency display axis, now shows you the frequencies and markings. - Doubled the speed of the FFT routine AGAIN!!!! :)))) NOW FOUR !!! TIMES FASTER !!! ... you ain't seen anything like it!!! ;) - Doubled speed of FIR routine too!!! ;) - Improved the filter added yesterday (!) now is Filter+Booster and supports bands and a fast mode for even more speed! - Added new FIR filter as the default Resample filter, now even clearer resampling!!! and TIME STRETCH!!! :) 02.12.97 - Fixed bug in check_play(), wasn't stopping play when auto stop selected!! Caused GURU! (Thanks Pauli!) 06.12.97 - Added mix operators (ADD/SUB/MUL/DIV). 07.12.97 - Fixed phasing problems with the FIR filter, changed code so fast now only filters (SO EVEN FASTER!), and fixed GUI updating bugs. - Added a menu bar between Save As and Save Changes, I keep selecting the wrong one and my test sample gets overwritten! :( - Added new 3DColourPlot display and input meter. Shows the level as a colour change. (blue->red) 08.12.97 - Added windowing to FFT routine, now all freq displays have less noise. - Fixed some small bug in the IEEE convert, now works with badly written headers (i.e - produced by Aura!) 10.12.97 - Added yet another (I know!) Frequency display. This one is based on the 2DFrequency plot, but this can give a clearer view. The 2DFreqOverlay does a log plot of the level of the various frequencies but allows the plots to overlay slightly, take a look and see, an input meter in the same style also added. - Add IFF-16 Bit support to load and save. 12.01.98 - Fixed some bugs in dosIO. 24.01.98 - Improved display for large file based storage. - Fixed cache bug in WAV DosIO, was using old code with DBRA (when max cache used to be <65K). 08.02.98 - Fixed small bug in storage of very large files (100+Mb). [02-05].98 - Many changes, new effects, now Soundprobe+. 09.05.98 - Finished adding ARexx commmands. 10.05.98 - Fixed lock-up bug in file storage. [10-25].05.98 - Add MPEGA support using 'mpega.library'. - Fixed 3D axis text overlay problem. - Menus sorted to remove NoiseGate/Compressor, replaced with SoundExpander. - AHI_Low added, uses low-level access to AHI to remove any problems with device access. 29.05.98 - Changed from Soundprobe+ -> Soundprobe v2.0! 30.05.98 - Added invert effect to menus. 01.06.98 - Fixed a few bugs. 03.06.98 - Fixed some more bugs, almost all gone! - Added preset defaults (thanks Christian!). 04.06.98 - Fixed display libraries, dragging a range from the right channel to left wasn't selecting the right. 05.06.98 - Fixed "elibraryhandler.library", flushing the libraries caused some to crash, now fixed. - Fixed FreeProject(), was using the wrong string deallocation function! - Fixed 2D/3DFrequency preferences, they weren't removing their pen allocations. Thanks ====== · I'd like to thank John Kennedy for his help with reviews of Soundprobe. · Tony Horgan for he great help with Soundprobe, and also with his ideas for Vocoder, Resonant-Filter and much much more! · Christian Munk, for help debugging, and ideas for Soundprobe. Also many thanks for the default presets for the effects! · Dhomas Trenn, for wanting ARexx, finally got me to finish it off and get it added! Also thanks for help with Soundprobe and reviews. · Martin Bolm, emailed me back and told me basically to do a AHI low level library! So I did ;) Also for AHI, nice... · Thanks for the following for ideas/debugging and just general thanks! Pauli Porkka, Darren Rozier, Goeff Milnes, John Evans, Tom Pereira, Martin Halberg, vOmIt, Stuart H ... an everyone who has emailed me via the Soundprobe support page! - Keep up the excellent feedback, and maybe we'll see a Soundprobe v3.0! Finally - Technical Support ======= ================= To obtain your 30 days free technical support and notification of SoundProbe software updates, please complete your registration card and return it to: North America Rest of world Oregon Research HiSoft 16200 SW Pacific Highway The Old School Suite 162 Greenfield Tigard Bedford OR 97223 MK45 5DE U.S.A. U.K. Phone: +1 503 620 4919 +44 (0)1525 718181 FAX: +1 503 624 2940 +44 (0)1525 713716 Email: orres@teleport.com hisoft@cix.compulink.co.uk Please remember, UK technical support IS between 2-3p.m. Mon-Fri If you need technical support, please remember to have when you phone, your: Serial Number Software version number Machine configuration (RAM,Processor,Hard disk etc.) Please also have a clear and concise description of the problem you are having to ensure that we can deal with your problem as quickly as possible.