*********************************** AM/FM ***********************************     Editorial       AM/FM Issue #14       By Bjørn A. Lynne (Ed)    Ok! We're back in business after a month's vacation, and although our skin colour has changed radically due to hours and hours in the sun (at least mine has), our need to dig into the latest on the Amiga Music front is none the less!! It's good to be back - AM/FM is a bit late this time, but that's because of the holidays and everything. Your favourite AM/FM-Editor (me) spent most of his holiday in Turkey, and although the Palestinians threw a few bombs at the hotels in our neighbourhood, I had a really swell time. Sure, the food gave me instant diaré, and the temperature almost killed me (40-45°C in the shadow), but nevertheless I got my share of sun, sand and Raki (The Turkish national drink, representing Pure Raki Power!) and here I sit, nice and tanned, enjoying myself more than ever, working day and night to complete another issue of AM/FM. It feels great to get away from everything for a few weeks, but I'd be damned if it feels any better than getting back home! Well, you're about to dig into another great issue of AM/FM; as always. Unfortunately, there are no utilities for you non-MIDI users this time - there are only two utilities and those are MIDI-oriented. But these two are of such a great quality that they also demanded their fair share of disk-space, and there was simply no room for any more utilities this time. But take a look at AM/FM Special Disk #6 though, which is a Utilities Special! This disk, too, is mostly concentrated on Amiga+MIDI users, but it also contains a superb new module player (my new personal favourite!) called SmartPlay. One thing I'm not quite satisfied with is the number of submissions to our Basement Tapes section. Come on you guys!! I know for a fact that a lot of you are composing your own music; so why not be a bit of a sport and record some of it to a tape, and call it your own production?! Wouldn't it be fun to have the tape featured and pictured here in AM/FM?? Come on now - remember, the music can be made with ANY equipment you want - even just the Amiga! (Eric Gieseke's tape "Technological Bytes" which was given a good review in a previous Basement Tapes section was made with the Amiga only!). Of course, if you add some more instruments, synths, vocals, anything, that would be great too. I think it's great fun to get these tapes, so COMEON! Ok?! Don't just sit there passive and read about the others - I was more of you to take part a bit more actively! (By the way, that also goes for every other aspect of AM/FM - not just the Basement Tapes!). We've had some compatibility problems, especially with old Amigas using the Kick 1.2/1.3 and with only 500 kb of memory, and we've also had a few problems with other models, but please forgive us - we're trying our very best! It's as good as hopeless to make something that will work on every possible Amiga configuration and model. Issue #13 was tested on lots of different models, including those on which we had the problems (!) so frankly I don't understand a thing! Our beta testers tested the disk on standard A500's with Kick 1.2 and 500 kb memory, and according to them everything worked fine... I just don't get it. Well, please have patience with us, and we will keep trying to find that ultimate solution that will work on every Amiga model and configuration (NOT!) We've replaced NPlay with a new and hopefully more system-friendly module player cleverly titled AM/FM-Play, programmed by Stephan Fuhrmann (thanks, Stephan). With this implemented, we hope to avoid some of the problems. Well, I really don't know what more to bore you with, except saying welcome back and I hope we'll have a great Amiga-autumn and winter ahead of us. See you soon in AM/FM #15! Bjørn A. Lynne AM/FM Editor 12. July 1993 *********************************** AM/FM ***********************************