INDEX:
Tab Descriptions
In Brief
1) General Settings
2) Plug-ins Settings


TAB DESCRIPTIONS:

General Settings:
1 - System Tab
2 - Audio Tab
3 - Visual Tab
4 - File Types Tab
5 - Vis FX Tab
6 - Internet Tab
7 - Skins Tab

Plug-In Settings:
1 - MikIT Plug-in Tab
2 - Stardust Plug-in Tab
3 - CD-Audio Plug-in Tab


In Brief:

The Setup Options area allows one to configure Sonique, set preferences, and make customizations. Setup Options is divided into two areas, General Settings and Plug-in Settings. Each area contains a unique set of options and tabs.  The General Settings are displayed by default. To get to the Plug-in Settings, just click on the "plug-ins" button at the bottom of the screen.

Both areas have a similar layout: on the right is a set of tabs that access different pages of configurable settings, on the left the various pages of settings are displayed.   If you click a tab, the options associated with that tab will appear on the left.   The currently selected tab will appear slightly longer than surrounding tabs and blue instead of green.


1 : : General Settings

System Tab

Always on top - This option toggles whether or not you want Sonique to remain always visible even when you are using a window that would normally cover it. This option applies to all of the states of Sonique.

Display _ as space - This option will cause Sonique to display any underscores (_) in a filename as a space. So for example, if you had a song whose file was named "this_is_my_song.mp3", and you had this option checked, Sonique would display the name of the file as "this is my song.mp3".

Show Sonique on the Taskbar - When this option is unchecked, sonique will no longer have a tab on the start bar when it is running, instead the functionality of the taskbar tab would be within the Sonique Quickstart icon in the system tray. Double click on Sonique Quickstart to maximize Sonique once it is minimized.

Append to playlist - When this option is checked, whenever a file is added to sonique, it is appended to the playlis instead of replacing the playlist. If it is not checked, new files will replace whatever is in the playlist. So, for example, let's say that I had ten songs in the playlist, and I had this option checked. If I found a new song that I liked, I could double-click it, drag and drop it on Sonique, or load it with a button, and it would be added to the end of the playlist. If this option was unchecked, the playlist would be cleared and the one file would replace it. It would not play the song, however, unless "Play added songs immediately" was checked.

Play added songs immediately -  This option forces Sonique to play the song, or first song of a group of songs, immediately after it is added. So, if this option were checked and I was listening to a song, and I found another one that I liked, when I opened it, it would stop playing the song that I was listening to and play the new song.

Auto CD Insert - When this option is checked, Sonique will automatically load all of the tracks of an audio CD into the playlist when you insert it into your CD-ROM drive.

Clear Playlist on CD Insert - This option will force Sonique to clear the playlist when the audio tracks from an audio CD are automatically loaded into the playlist. This option is only works if you have "Auto CD Insert" checked.


Audio Tab

Select Output - This will let you select which device you want to use to output sound information from Sonique. You can either output sound information to an audio device, or to a file.

Selecting different output devices is useful if you have multiple soundcards or a soundcard that has multiple output channels. Then you can select the general Sonique option "Allow multiple instances" and have different instances of Sonique playing different songs.

If you select "WAV disk writer" and specify a "WAV disk writer path" (see below), the file that is being played will be saved as a .wav file (with the same name as the original file; so if the name was filename.mp3, it would be saved as filename.wav). CD audio cannot be saved as a WAV file due to the fact that the CD audio is not processed by the soundcard, but merely passed through.

WAV disk writer path - If you have the Output selected to be "WAV disk writer," this option allows you to choose a directory to save the .wav file in. If you do not specify a directory, Sonique will prompt you for one.


Visual Tab

Animation Smoothness - This slider allows you to set the frame rate of the animated transitions from screen to screen. Moving the slider to the left decreases the number of frames that Sonique displays between screens, moving it to the right will increase them.

Animation Speed - This slider allows you to adjust the speed at which the animated transitions move. For example, if you have this slider set at it's maximum setting, sonique will go from screen to screen very quickly.


File Types Tab

Sonique media types- These are the file types that Sonique can play. In actuality, one could rename a filename to whatever they wanted to and Sonique could play it, but this is a rare case. Most files that you will find will be one of these types. If you check the box next to the file type then its icon will become the icon of a Sonique file type, and when you double click on the file, it will open up in Sonique. Depending on how your system is configured, if you change the associated file types, the icons for those files may not change until you restart your computer.


Vis FX Tab

Visualization Effects Settings - The Visualization Effects Settings allow you to modify the way that the Visualizations are displayed in MSM and NC Visual Mode. These settings will affect all of the plugins that support these functions of Sonique. If a plugin shows no reaction to these settings, it is not because Sonique is malfunctioning, it is because the author of that plugin did not write in support for them.

blur fx - This will blur the visualization. It is more of a motion blur than an overall blurriness effect. An impression of the displayed image remains after the original image moves or changes and slowly fades.

smoke fx - This causes the image that is being displayed to emit "smoke" of whatever color it consists of. So if the vis is displaying a red square, it will emit red smoke. This effect is most noticable in the Spectrum and Waveform visualizations.

zoom fx - This effect zooms in on the visualization image as it changes. It is a motion trail, so to speak, the complement of the blur effect. The "zoom speed" slider and "reverse" checkbox only affect this effect.

reverse - This reverses the direction of the zoom. It causes the image to look as if it is moving away from you.

effects level - This slider changes the amount that the visualization is affected by the visualization effects. Putting the slider at its maximum setting (all the way to the right) will change the way the visualization looks by a lot, whereas moving the slider more to the left will reduce the amout that the effect changes the visualization.

zoom speed - This only affects the zoom effect. It lets you seet the speed at which the zoomed image reaches the edge of the visualization window. Increasing the speed basically makes the image look like it is moving toward you faster (or away from you faster, if you have reverse selected).


Internet Tab

Use Webproxy - This lets you use a webproxy with Sonique. To enable it, check the "use webproxy" check box and click on the bar under that to input an address and port for the webroxy.

Skins Tab

Skins Tab - This tab allows you to manage and load alternate "skins" for Sonique.  The current skin is displayed in the thumbnail image with the author of the sking listed below along with the author's contact information.   You can cycle through any skins you have with the large gray page up/down buttons.   To learn more about skins, see the Appendix 3.

2 : : Plug-in Settings

MikIT Plug-in Tab

What Is MikIT? - MikIT is the decoder that Sonique uses for module playback. Any files with the following extensions are considered modules: .xm, .s3m, .it, and .mod. MikIT was written by Jean-Paul Mikkers for Sonique in an exclusive license agreement.

Channels - The Channels setting allows you to select wether you want to play the modules in stereo sound or mono sound.

Quality - The Quality setting will toggle playing the modules at either 16 bit or 8 bit quality. Higher is better.

Interpolation - Interpolating the song makes the song play smoother. It is like anti-aliasing for module files. It uses more CPU but it makes the song sound much better.

No Click - No click clips the very beginning and end of the samples off to ensure there is no clicking white noise when the sample starts or finishes.

Mix Frequency - The Mix Fequency is the number of times per second that the sound file (in the "quality" amounts) is sampled to the sound card. A higher number is better. So if you have this set at "44100" and the quality at 16 bits, it is processing song in 16 bit segments at the rate of 44,100 times a second.

Dither - Dithering is another method of making a song playback smoother. Like interpolation, this takes up more CPU but makes the song playback better.

Max Channels - The max channels is the maximum number of tracks that the module file is allowed to use. Using more tracks eats more CPU and ram and so users of slower machines may want to lower the max channels. But usually the highest setting (128) is fine.

Priority - Priority is the level of importance that you want to associate with module playback. If you set this to "Highest" then Windows will give the song playback highest priority when allocating resources to other simultaneously running programs. This could cause other programs to run more slowly while Sonique is running. If you lower the priority, then your other programs may run faster, but Sonique might "stutter" when system resources run low.


Stardust Plug-in Tab

What is StarDust? - StarDust is the mp3 decoder that was written specifically for Sonique by Tony Million, designer of the AudioEnlightenment decoder. StarDust is recognised as being the most robust and highest quality decoder of MPEG Audio Layers 1, 2, and 3.

CPU Optimization - This option bar lets you select either Pentium/P-II or AMD/Cyrix/486 optimizations for the StarDust decoder to use.

high priority - This is similar to the "Priority" option available for the MikIT module decoder. It tells the operating system that the StarDust decoder is to be given high priority when allocating system resources to simultaneously running programs. This could cause other programs to run more slowly while Sonique is running. If you un-check this setting, then your other programs may run faster, but Sonique might "stutter" when system resources run low.

Streaming - These settings apply when Sonique is opening an mp3 at an URL. The Buffer is the amount of RAM that is used to buffer the stream. The PreBuffer is in effect a buffer for the buffer. Increasing these settings almost always results in better performance, but it causes Sonique to use more system resources.

save stream - This option will cause Sonique to write the mp3 stream to a file on your hard drive.


CD-Audio Plug-in Tab

Sample Sound for Visuals This option makes Sonique record the CD audio in chunks as it is being played to output visualization information. The visualization for CD audio is not as fast or accurate as it is for mp3 because of the complexity of the operation. This option causes Sonique to use more system resources during CD audio playback.