The Soundblaster Multimedia Experience 3

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ The Soundblaster Multimedia Experience 3 / The Soundblaster Multimedia Experience Vol 3.iso / tools / smix12 / mix.doc < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1994-03-13 | 31KB | 729 lines

Superiority MIX Audio Player v1.2 Copyright (C) 1994 by Avery Pennarun For Superiority Complex What's a MIX? ------------- I'd like to tell you that Superiority MIX is an entirely new concept, but, well, it's not. MIX is a program designed to play Amiga-format .MOD music files on a PC. Of course, this has been done a million (or at least five) times before... but you have to start somewhere. USELESS TRIVIA: Superiority MIX is actually the name of the audio-playing library I'm working on. This program is actually just a "wide beta" of the MIXLIB which we (Superiority Complex) will be and have been using in our productions. Even though I branded MIX a "test" right from the start, I sort of lost control halfway through and added a user interface, including: - "Realistic" (not "real" - actually, quite fake!) volume bars; - Sample-tracker that displays all sample names, which voices are playing which samples, which samples actually CAN be played, and which samples HAVE been played; - Time, memory usage, note-tracker, speed... and other displays - Advanced shell-to-DOS that works with "most" programs (all that we tested, in fact, although we didn't try very hard to find a "bad" one); - Control over MOD playing, including speed, volume, note-position... and other controls. USELESS TRIVIA: I wrote the original user interface all in one day. It then took me about a week to make it work RIGHT. MIX supports a number of sound cards. Unlike many MOD players, I didn't go crazy and support every sound card I could find. (that comes later!) Instead, I supported Sound Blaster, which most are compatible with, and then added GRAVIS ULTRASOUND, COVOX SOUND MASTER II, and HOMEMADE DAC support. Other cards that are Sound Blaster compatible can just use the "Sound Blaster" setting. I left out other cards, like Sound Blaster Pro because I just couldn't find any information on programming them (still looking - hint, hint) and it would be incredibly hard to test since I don't have one. USELESS TRIVIA: All the supported cards are currently operated in their respective NON-DMA modes. (Why? Because I couldn't find sufficient information, of course - hint, hint) However, in the case of the GRAVIS ULTRASOUND, it takes virtually no processor time to handle the audio anyway. Summary: make my job easier! GET A GUS! MIX does NOT support the internal speaker (I have an idea that could allow this in the future) or the Ad Lib card. Neither of these support "easy" digital audio, so I didn't bother with them in this version. WARNING: If your GRAVIS ULTRASOUND has not been upgraded to 1 meg, very long MODs will not play correctly. Well, on with the story. Page 2 Licence Agreement and Unlimited Warrantee ----------------------------------------- Boring Version -------------- NOTE: This licence, dated March 1994, supersedes all previous licence agreements applying to this software. It applies ONLY to this version 1.2 of Superiority MIX. This software is provided on an as-is basis. The author, Avery Pennarun, will not be responsible for any damages that may result from the use or inability to use this software. The author specifically disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, regarding this software. While we encourage free distribution, you are not permitted to redistribute all or any part of this software in a modified or incomplete form. If at all possible, MIX should be distributed in its original compressed archive. If a new archive or distribution disk must be created, it should have the same name as the original and MUST CONTAIN all files listed under the section of this document entitled "File List." This version of MIX is FREEWARE. This means that it is free. You may use, distribute, copy, archive, and enjoy this program as long as you like, and we encourage you to do so. However, YOU MAY NOT SELL THIS SOFTWARE! The only charge that may be applied to the distribution of MIX is a distribution/copying charge of less than five Canadian dollars. It must be made clear that this is a payment to the distributor, NOT a registration with the author. FREEWARE is not the same as Public Domain software. The author reserves his copyright to MIX. Modifying, reverse engineering, or decompiling MIX or any of its included files is expressly prohibited. This agreement shall be governed in accordance to the laws of Ontario, Canada. Not-So-Boring Version --------------------- Do what you want with this software (within reasonable and legal range - such acts as manslaughter are often considered felonies, and can lead to a not-so- happy situation) but don't sue me for it. No limitations are made regarding the warrantee of this product. Why? Because THERE IS NO WARRANTEE. Superiority MIX, at least this version, is FREE SOFTWARE, and we take no responsibility for it or anything that may happen because of it. Not that anything SHOULD happen, but heck... Page 3 File List --------- The following files were originally included in the distribution archive and/or on the distribution disk. A legal copy of MIX MUST include these files: MIX.EXE - The main program MIX.DOC - That's this. This is that. And that's that. REVHIST.DOC - MIX revision history since v1.0. (list of changes) MOD_INFO.TXT - Handy-dandy programmers' info for MODs. SCS.NFO - Information about Superiority Complex. Read this! FILE_ID.DIZ - 10-line description for BBS's DESC.SDI - 1-line description Getting Started --------------- This tutorial will get you started playing MOD files with Superiority MIX. Most people can figure it out anyway, but PLEASE read this for important information regarding MIX. WARNING: If you have EMM386, QEMM, 386MAX, or another memory manager (NOT including HIMEM), you should disable it when you use MIX. They slow down the program because they use your processor's protected mode, resulting in reduced sound quality. If you have DOS 6, just use the multi-boot configuration to remove your memory manager when you need to. (See your DOS manual) If you have a fast computer you might experiment with leaving your memory manager alone. Users of the 8086 and 8088 processors: I have good news and bad news. The good news is that your processor doesn't even SUPPORT protected mode, so you don't have to worry about memory managers. The bad news is that they don't support MIX, either. It's time to either upgrade your computer or delete MIX. USELESS TRIVIA: The GRAVIS ULTRASOUND play mode doesn't particularly care whether you have a memory manager loaded because it does all the processing internally anyway. Also, once I figure out DMA, the Sound Blaster and Sound Master II sound cards will work the same way. DigiLen 100 doesn't support DMA. STEP 1: Pick a MOD. Previous versions of MIX were distributed with VOCIF.MOD, but this version no longer is (we thought you might be tired of it by now). Pretend you're using XMASSONG.MOD for this tutorial. (Why? Because it's one of the soundtrack MODs from our Christmas '93 demo, and we released it at the same time as MIX 1.2! You DID download XMASMODS.ZIP, right? So what if it's March!) Page 4 STEP 2: Run MIX. Another easy one. MIX v1.2 currently supports only two command-line options (and you don't NEED to use them). It works like this: MIX xmassong.mod USELESS TRIVIA: Advanced users can use wildcards or multiple MOD names on the same line. Separate multiple names with spaces. MIX sports two command line options: /D - Disable detect. MIX will ask for your sound card type and address instead of trying to detect it. STEP 3 demonstrates a use for this. /S - Select sample rate. The REALLY lazy people who don't want to select a sampling rate every time they start, can use this option on the command line, ie: /S15000 for a 15KHz sampling rate. USELESS TRIVIA: You can select ANY sampling rate with this switch, including ones that aren't in the menu. For example, if 15000 Hz is too fast for your computer, but 14999 Hz works, you can use this switch. Unfortunately, this will never happen. STEP 3: Watch as MIX detects your sound card. The first time in MIX, watch the message to make sure that the correct card and address are detected (although you'll notice soon enough if they aren't, since sound won't play). Detection should take no more than a couple seconds, and it has never taken that long. If you have a DigiLen 100 or a DAC on LPTx, MIX will not be able to detect your card. Select DAC on LPTx from the resulting window. If it hangs your computer or detects the wrong card... there ARE a few ways around it: - Leave caution to the wind, reboot, and try again. This usually doesn't work, but it actually does sometimes. - GUS or Sound Blaster users: set the appropriate environment variable. (ULTRASND or BLASTER) Your manual should explain how to do this. In fact, the install program for your hardware should have created these in the first place. - Try running MIX with the /D (disable detect) parameter. This will force MIX to ask you for your sound card type and address. Example: MIX xmassong /d Page 5 STEP 4: Choose a sampling rate. It's a long list, but I've recommended certain sampling rates for certain processors. Try starting with that, and then increasing the sampling rate within the program (using the [R] key) until the display starts to slow down. USELESS TRIVIA: The sound has pretty much reached maximum quality at about 25 KHz. (DNA made me add in the others because he has a big hyperactive 486 - he can't tell the difference either but is sure there must be one) Because the GRAVIS ULTRASOUND mixes sound internally, MIX bypasses this step. STEP 5: Look, listen, learn. If you're hearing beautiful music through your sound card, you've succeeded and can skip to step 6. If the sound or display is too slow, choose a lower sampling rate with the [R] key. (you may need to reboot if the sampling rate is WAY too high and your display is frozen) GUS users: ignore all notes regarding sampling rate. STEP 6: Try a higher sampling rate and return to step 5. Sampling rates are a give and take system; you can use the very low 5 KHz on any computer, and the sound will be correct. However, it will also be very low-quality. As you increase the sampling rate, the sound quality improves, but the display begins to slow down. The higher the sampling rate, the more processor time that is devoted to music. USELESS TRIVIA: Unlike many other MOD players, MIX doesn't totally screw up your system clock while playing a song. However, there's a very good chance that it won't run at EXACTLY the same speed as normal, since MIX has to increase your clock speed "invisibly" and then compensate. Don't worry, losing a few seconds here and there is a lot better than completely stopping time. STEP 7: Experiment with MIX's controls and make the song sound nothing like it really should. The controls are listed later in this DOC and a quick-list of them is available if you press F1 from within MIX. STEP 8: Enjoy this incredible experience and have a NICE day. Page 6 Using the User Interface ------------------------ +------------------------- (1) SongTitle ----------------------------+ | | | | (2) VoiceTracker | (3) SongTracker | | | | |-----------------------------------------------+--------------------| | | | | | (4) MemTracker | | | | | (6) SampleTracker |--------------------| | | | | | (5) TimeTracker | | | | +------------------------Superiority MIX v1.2------------------------+ The above diagram is a (rather cheap) rendition of what an actual MOD playing screen looks like. Each area works as follows: (1) SongTitle Displays the filename and title of the song. (2) VoiceTracker Displays the sample (instrument) being played and the volume level for each of the four voices. USELESS TRIVIA: No, we can't read the numbers in the volume display either, but they look pretty. The volume bars (next to the numbers) are a bit more informative. (3) SongTracker Displays information about the player: POSITION The current and maximum pattern-positions in the song. A MOD consists of up to 128 positions that play in numerical order. When you get to the last position, most MODs will end. Some will loop back to a previous position and play forever unless you use the [L]oopmode command. PATTERN The current/maximum pattern in the song. A MOD can contain up to 64 unique patterns. Each pattern-position (above) selects one pattern to play. Particularly repetitive songs (like VOCIF) will use the same pattern in more than one pattern- position to save space. NOTE The current/maximum note number in the current pattern. There are always 64 notes in a pattern, but certain MOD commands can end a pattern prematurely. Page 7 SPEED The speed at which a song plays. (tempo) USELESS TRIVIA: The songspeed is actually expressed in ticks per note. One tick is 1/50th of a second. So, a song playing at speed 3 would take 3/50ths or 0.06 seconds per note. VOLUME Hint: It changes when you use the set volume keys (+,-). USELESS TRIVIA: The volume level, while displayed in percent, is really a number from 0-64. When you adjust the volume, you are adding or subtracting 1/64th, not 1%. This is why the volume control sometimes adjusts the display by 2% and sometimes by 1%. SAMPRATE The current song sampling rate. See "Getting Started" above for more information on choosing a sampling rate. In GUS mode, the sampling rate shows "UltraHi" because of the card's hardware mixer that seems to have indefinite quality. USELESS TRIVIA: The GRAVIS ULTRASOUND's internal sound mixer theoretically can increase the quality of the sample so that is sounds better than playing one sample at a time on Sound Blaster-like systems. GET A GUS! LOOPMODE Controls how long a song will play. There are three different loopmodes, selected with the [L]oopmode command: NORMAL Plays a MOD like it was originally designed. If it wants to loop itself permanently, it can. Otherwise, it will end. ALWAYS Replay a MOD from the beginning if it ends. FADE Fade out and terminate MODs that try to loop themselves. (4) MemTracker Displays information about system memory: TOTAL The amount of memory available after MIX loaded but before the MOD was loaded. This shows you how much memory is available for playing MODs. USED The amount of memory being used by the current MOD. This includes buffers needed for mixing voices on non-GUS cards. USELESS TRIVIA: The Gravis Ultrasound takes a WHOLE LOT less memory when playing MODs since it requires no mixing buffers and all samples are loaded into the card's memory. GET A GUS! Page 8 FREE The amount of memory left at the moment. This is useful for determining the kind of performance you'll get if you shell to DOS, or how close you are to running out. (i.e. if you only have 50k free, don't try to play a MOD 200k longer than this one or MIX will give you an error) (5) TimeTracker Displays information about the play-time of the song: NOW The length of time (in minutes:seconds) that the current song has been playing. ESTIMATE The length of time that MIX expects a song to play. Note that looping songs will play forever: in this case, MIX will display "No End." ESTIMATE is simply for your information, and is an "educated guess" - it's seldom exactly right, but usually close. (6) SampleTracker Displays information about the different samples in a song. A MOD can contain up to 31 different samples, each up to 128k long. USELESS TRIVIA: MIX will only load up to 64k of any sample. This screws up the playing of U4IA.MOD, and a couple of other songs. We will fix this in the future... The entry for each sample is as follows: 1 o SampleName The "1" is actually a: blank, "1," "2," "3," or "4," depending which voice is playing that sample. If more than one voice is using that sample, an "M" is shown. The "o" is either a blank, a dot, or a block. A blank indicates that there is no sample in that position (a sample may be loaded and have a name, etc, but it has no corresponding sound effect in the MOD). I dot indicates that this sample is playable (contains a sound effect), and a block indicates that this sample has already been played in the song. The samplename can be up to 22 characters long and generally gives the name of the sample. USELESS TRIVIA: Many MODs use the samplename for another purpose: greetings. The author renames all or some of the samples to form a few sentences. XMASSONG.MOD contains an example of this, although DNA left the actual samples alone and changed only the unused slots. Page 9 Controlling The Player ---------------------- As I mentioned above, MIX gives the user a lot of control over its play. The following keys affect MIX's operation: F1 Brings up a help window with an abbreviated version of this list. P Pauses the song. Press a key to resume playing. 1,2,3,4 Toggles the corresponding voice on or off. When a particular voice is off, it will show "MUTE" in the voicetracker window. R Change current sampling rate. See "Getting Started." D Shell to DOS. There are a number of things you should know: - When shelled to DOS, you can expect MIX to retain from 100k of memory to a lot more depending which MOD you are playing. Check the "memory free" meter if you don't know how much is left. You need about 100k minimum if you want to shell to DOS at all, and more if you want to do anything useful. - Don't run any programs that use sound while in the shell. - Other programs will slow down while playing a MOD because of the time required to mix voices. - If a song ends while you are shelled, it will be played again. (and again and again...) - Type EXIT at the command prompt to return to MIX. ],[ Adjust speed. ] will turn up the speed value, thereby slowing down the song. [ will lower the speed value and speed up the song. If the song adjusts its speed after you've set it, the speed will become normal again unless you change it. Generally it's not too useful to play with the song speed, but it can be fun. <-,-> Position Jump. Use the right and left arrow keys as "fast forward" and "rewind" respectively. +,- Turn the master volume up or down respectively. You don't have to use the SHIFT key to press +, although you can if you want. N Next song. (also ENTER and SPACE) If you gave wildcards or more than one name on the command line, this will end the current song and start the next one. See "Getting Started" for more information about using the command line. If you only gave one name or this is the last song, MIX will terminate as if you had pressed ESC. ESC Exit MIX. This will end the current song and immediately dump you to DOS. It differs from [N]ext in that ESC will ignore all pending songs. Page 10 MOD File Implementation ----------------------- This section is mostly for the techies out there. If you don't particularly care how MIX implements MODs, you can safely skip this section. Voice Mixer ----------- The mixer routines are entirely Object-Oriented and written using Borland C++ 3.1 w/ Application Frameworks. I didn't use the Application Frameworks, for those who don't find that obvious. The processor-intensive code is written using inline assembly and/or TASM 3.1, which came with BC++. The mixer can theoretically handle any number of voices at once, although MODs are limited to four. In non-GUS mode, I mix the voices into one of two variable-sized buffers which are then played by my timer-oriented digital player routines. When one buffer is entirely played, the digiplayer begins playing the other buffer in the background and tells the mixer to begin filling the first buffer, and so it goes, back and forth. In GUS mode, the operation is similar except there are no buffers at all. Every 50th of a second (one "tick"), a routine is called that handles special effects and increments the note counter if necessary. When a new note begins, the GUS is informed of the new data and handles the rest of the work. Effects ------- MIX supports the following special effects: Porta Up Pattern Break Porta Down Set Speed Sample Offset Retrig Note Volume Slide FineVolume Up Volume Set FineVolume Down Position Jump TonePortamento This should be enough to make most MODs sound OK, unless you're a real perfectionist (like DNA). I'm already working on adding the other, more subtle, effects. Page 11 Known Bugs ---------- What, me? Know about bugs, and not fix them? Don't be silly! Well, okay, you've convinced me... there ARE a few... - MIX will only load 64k of each sample, and so songs like U4IA.MOD will not play properly, if at all. If the list of songs that doesn't work grows extremely huge, we WILL try to fix this. Until then, it's probably not worth it. - "Clicking" in non-GUS mode has been FIXED! We hope. We all have a GUS now, so it's really hard to tell. LET US KNOW if it still clicks, PLEASE! - Sometimes-clicking in GUS mode. We're working on it... - The GUS inititialization bugs were fixed when I moved to the Gravis SDK. However, now looping samples do weird things sometimes. It's not my fault! I swear! - Many arthropods. Greetings go to: ---------------- Everyone! - Hi! How are you today? WRITE TO US! And, more specifically: Mom & Dad - Hi! Dave's Mom & Dad - Hi! Jurgen Huneborn - The first person outside of Thunder Bay to EVER write to us! And presently, still the last! Hi, guy! Future Crew - I've never met you, or talked to you, or conversed with you, or written to you, or heard from you, but I like you anyway! Cascada - Likewise! Renaissance - Same idea! GUS Users - Isn't life wonderful? Advanced Gravis & Forte - Great sound card!! Keep up the terrific work... (and hey, how bout an SBPro emulator for all those programs that refuse to support your card? SBOS is good (sorta) but, well, it's mono...) Page 12 Special Thanks To: ------------------ ANDREW SEARS, Whitby, Ontario - Original definition of the MOD file format for us (see MOD_INFO.TXT for more information) via North Amerinet. DAN LYNES, Thunder Bay, Ontario - Provided information on the 669 file format, which I have yet to implement. Keep waiting... KEVIN SIDLAR, Thunder Bay, Ontario - Reported non-GUS "clicking" bug and recently sent us information about the STM file format, which I finally got around to implementing! Otto Chrons, Finland Somewhere - Sent us information on the S3M format, which we also haven't implemented yet. Thanks! (he also wrote a mod player: DMP - try that too) Jurgen Huneborn, Germany Somewhere - The first person outside of Thunder Bay to EVER write to us! And presently, still the last! Hi, guy! Advanced Gravis & Forte, Canada - You know why... :) The End ------- USELESS TRIVIA: Our logo is the pulsating chicken. As you continue with MIX, always remember: There Had to Be A Chicken Somewhere... And remember our motto to lead you through life: "If it doesn't have a chicken on it, it's USELESS!" USELESS TRIVIA: This is the end of the documentation. Bye. Siella piti olla kana jossain!! :) (Fin(n)ish ending... get it? Ha ha ha ha ha) Page 13