Do you have a dumb Mac? Of course I'm not accusing your favorite computer of being stupid, but if you have a mute Mac, you're not making use of its full potential to speak, sing and chirp. One person who certainly doesn't have a silent Mac is Macintosh RoundTable staff member Jerry Kindall. By day, Jerry's a technical writer and magazine editor for a major mail-order computer retailer in the education market. On his own time, besides reading, hacking and going online, Jerry describes his "other passion" as music. Along with an eclectic collection of over 450 CDs, Jerry plays and composes in his home MIDI studio. Bulletin Board Fun You'll find Jerry and other Mac music and sound mavens hanging out in Bulletin Board Category 8 (Multimedia) of the Mac RoundTable, exchanging experiences and opinions on hardware and software. For example, in Topic 4 (MIDI software) James Bordner recently cast his vote for Performer 5.0 as "the very best Mac sequencer." As he describes his evaluation process, "This comes from a die-hard Atari/Notator/Export user who bought a Performa 450 in January. Performer 5.0 was the clear choice after 3 months of reading, testing and side-by- side evaluations with Vision. (I was making a purchase decision for a group of players doing long distance collaboration, so I had to do the right thing or live with the guilt, don't you know)." In that same Category, Topic 8 (Sounds), the recent questions "Is there any problems with copied sounds?" and "Is there such a thing as copyrighted sounds?" set off a lively discussion about the complex and still-evolving issue of copyright law in the multimedia age. Music Downloads Loads of interesting sound-related files are available for downloading from the Mac RoundTable Library. For example, File 32711 SOUNDAPP.CPT V1.2 provides a freeware "one-stop sound player and converter" that can play or convert just about any sound or music file format including MOD, SND resources, SoundCap, SoundEdit, AIFF, WAV, VOC, and others. Anyone shopping for music editing software should take a look at ENCORE DEMO 3.0.6.SEA, a recent addition to the Mac RoundTable MIDI Library. Although you can't save or print from this demonstration file, it will certainly help you decide if it's the right program to purchase. Another fine music-oriented file in the MIDI Library is 21618 HOW TO PLAY KEYBOARD. This is an electronic version of the book "The Musical Idiot's Complete Guide to Improvisation at the Keyboard." Speaking of multimedia, file 32766 GRABAUDIO.SIT is a program that will read digital audio data directly from a CD and save it to disk where you can explore it. It requires CD-ROM software version 4 or higher and an Apple CD300 player or better. Jerry describes 32831 WAVEWINDOW.SIT V2.1, a software oscilloscope, as a fascinating program. It displays sound visually on your screen in real-time, and provides several different modes including dynamic color waveforms. If you play guitar and have a Mac with sound input capability, take a look at 32730 GUITAR.TUNER V2.0. The tuner alone has a shareware fee of $12, and the author offers a package deal that includes a guitar tuner, chromatic tuner, lab meter and other useful items. Recently uploaded Mac Library files of general interest include the latest version of Apple's QuickTime, 32634 QUICKTIME 1.6.2.SIT; 32633 SPEEDYFINDER7 1.5.9F.SIT, an award-winning shareware Control Panel that offers many useful improvements to the System 7 Finder; and 32632 EYE ON THE CLOCK.SIT, a set of continuously updating time counters (essential for clock watchers everywhere). Tune Up Mac owners who dabble in MIDI should also get familiar with the MIDI RoundTable at Page 430, keyword MIDI. You'll find discussions about Macintosh music hardware and software in Category 2 on the Bulletin Board, and loads of great music files in the Library there. So tune up your Mac and start making it sing. It's easy -- with a little help from your Macintosh friends on GEnie.