NED Player 3.0/3.1

Shiuming Lai reckons this is one of the smartest sample players
available for STe machines...

Play 25kHz samples at 50kHz, hear twice as much music in the same
time!
 

NED Player (short for NEw Design) shuns superfluous gadgets in
favour of supplementing the now de-facto requisite of multiple
format support, with some truly useful, time-saving features. The
real icing on the cake implemented in this exclusive release is
direct-from-disk playing - from 6.25kHz all the way up to 50kHz in
stereo. As you can see from the screenshot I'm actually listening
to some music streaming off my hard disk as I write (please note
the oscilloscope is only for flash factor and isn't part of the
package...)

It's a joy not seeing those irritating "Out of memory" messages
when loading large samples made prior to the installation of NVDI
and countless other system enhancements - but there's more! The
so-called SW Mode lets you adjust the playback frequency in real
time over 19 steps between 6.755kHz and 25.033kHz (emulated in
software, hence "SW"). Although this offers hours of amusement
making samples wobble up and down like a faulty cassette deck, its
practical application is to eliminate the proportionally long wait
normally associated with remapping a sample not recorded at any of
the STe hardware replay rates - it's done on the fly to the
nearest SW Mode frequency. Transitions in playback frequency are
completely glitch-free, whether in software or hardware direct
mode.

While it's far from perfect (for example, certain system events
stall the DD mode playback buffer and you get gaps in the sound)
it works very and is altogether classier than PH Player. It's also
more tolerant, and stable, with some problematic samples. PH
Player scores over NED with its support for industry standard 32,
44.1 and 48kHz sampling rates and more accurate off-line
resampling.

NED's resampling is real time but doesn't include common industry
rates because its range is almost linear and has a ceiling of only
25kHz

PH Player is freeware but NED's extra class comes with an
invitation to pay the œ10, $15, DM 30 shareware either direct to
the author or via CyberSTrider. The Czech author, Petr Sumbera,
has kindly made an exclusive v3.1 release for Atari Computing
readers and it's included on the Reader Disk. This version
includes AIFF and IFF import plus a few other internal
streamlining tweaks compared with the current release.
 
 
 

Tech corner

How does NED play a file larger than the available RAM? 
Even though the designers of the STe probably never envisaged this, it's fairly simple due to the way the STe is designed. The trick 
is to fool the DMA fetch mechanism into thinking two separate 
memory blocks are in fact one. By alternating the sample start 
address between these two blocks you can load one while the other 
plays. An implementation in C would consist of two linked lists as 
the buffers, with each list's tail pointing to the other's head, 
making a continuous loop. 
Standard GEMDOS functions can then be used for I/O and the sample file need not be split into smaller chunks (though custom routines would still be needed to get around 
clashes with other tasks).
 
 
 
 
NED Player v3.0/3.1

Publisher
New Design
ul. 24 dubna 283, Zelesice, 664 43, Czech Republic

Availability
PD libraries, on-line services and the New Design web pages:
 

URL: http://www.stud.fee.vutbr.cz/~xsumbe00

 

NED Player v3.1 is available exclusively to Atari Computing
subscribers on the Reader Disk/CD-ROM.

Requires
STe/TT (Falcon enhanced version coming soon), any memory, hard
disk recommended

Pros
Multitasking friendly, good attention to detail, small program
size

Cons
Limited control over playing (only start/stop!)

84%
 
 
 
 

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