Version History

2.0, April 1, 1996.
• Completely rewritten in C++ using Metrowerks CodeWarrior and PowerPlant as a fat binary for native PowerPC performance,
• Support for multiple Play Lists with full drag and drop support, including drag conversion to the Finder,
• Improved Status window that contains more information and a progress indicator,
• Added support for the following formats:
 ◊ IMA 4:1 and µ-law in AIFF/AIFC, 'snd ' resources and QuickTime movies,
 ◊ IMA 4:1, µ-law and a-law in WAVE files,
 ◊ IRCAM,
 ◊ MPEG audio layers I and II on PowerPC computers, and
 ◊ ScreamTracker 3 (S3M) files using the ZSS driver.
• Conversion of QuickTime movies without an intermediate file,
• Conversion options to force mono/stereo and 8-/16-bit output and to “DOSify” output filenames,
• Revamped Preferences dialog,
• Enhanced AppleScript support for playback and conversion,
• Rewrote the Help text, and
• Created a better-looking application icon.
2.0.1, April 26, 1996.
• Fixed a problem with the playback of mono IMA WAVE files,
• Fixed a problem which may crash due to a bug in the Apple’s Sound Manager header,
• Fixed a problem playing very short files using double buffering.
2.0.2, April 29, 1996.
• Corrected build problem which caused 2.0.1 to crash frequently.
2.0.3, June 11, 1996.
• Corrected a length problem with some odd WAVE files,
• Uses the “applFont” instead of “geneva” to permit localization,
• Dragging a file onto the SoundApp icon with a Play List open no longer adds the file to the list,
• SoundApp now maintains looping and base note information when converting between AIFF and 'snd ' resources, including System 7 sound files,
• MPEG playback now no longer causes jerky mouse movement,
• Mono MPEG files now play at the proper speed,
• Closing the Status window via AppleScript no longer crashes.
2.1, July 10, 1996.
• Added support for the following formats:
 ◊ MIDI (type 0, 1 and karaoke) files using the AMP drivers and
 ◊ GSM-compressed WAVEs and raw GSM (“.au.gsm”) files.
• Incorporated new ZSS drivers,
• Files passed to open/play/convert via AppleScript can now be specified as strings,
• Added Name/Type column headers to Play List windows, implemented title click sorting like the Finder and added Sort sub-menu (sorting method is saved in Play List files and dragging items into a sorted list maintains sort order),
• Can now pause playback using the spacebar,
• Added “;”-key for stopping after the file that is currently being processed,
• Added floating button bar and a menu item to show and hide it,
• Play Lists now support continuous shift-selection with scrolling,
• The DOSify preference now allows underscores in the converted filenames,
• Fixed a bug which crashed after sending an quit AppleEvent while playing,
• Fixed a bug which would insert a very short click at the beginning of a WAVE output file,
• Fixed a bug while converting MPEG files with an internal CRC check which caused the conversion to fail,
• No longer write non-standard AIFF headers when converting,
• Fixed a bug that would cause a crash when two MOD files are played one after the other using the ZSS drivers,
• Removed some math calls which would prevent SoundApp from running with some old versions of MathLib on Power Macs.
2.1.1, July 12, 1996.
• Corrected playback problem on 68K Macs.
2.2, December 3, 1996.
• Added a new Convert menu to group all the convert output options, added the capability to save conversion preferences as a named configuration, added an editor for saved sets, and removed all output format related options from the Convert preferences pane,
• Added Sound Designer and direct QuickTime output formats,
• Added support for MACE-3 and MACE-6 compression in SoundEdit files,
• Added support for AIFF and 'snd ' files explicitly encoded with the 'twos' and 'raw ' codecs,
• Re-wrote the MIDI code from scratch and added OMS support and a new MIDI Preferences pane,
• Included new ZSS drivers with MTM support,
• Added Script menu which lists the scripts in a “Script Menu Items” folder,
• The volume preference is now relative to the system volume, thus will have no effect on other applications’ volume, and can now go from 10% to 150%,
• Fixed sample rate specification with AIFF files due to an incompatibility with CodeWarrior and extended floating point numbers,
• Fixed a bug which could cause a hang while playing MED/OctaMED files with the ZSS driver set as preferred,
• Fixed a problem which caused some files to be left open when dragged to the Play List,
• Now properly calculates the length of MPEG Layer I files,
• Removed two-byte click at the beginning of converted System 7 sound files,
• Added Info window to provide more information on a sound file,
• Added extensive AppleScript support,
• Added a “SoundApp Home Page” to the Help menu if Internet Config is installed,
• Conversion of suitcases or MOD files now places the sounds in a sub-folder,
• ADPCM file playback is now no longer affected by the “Play a/µ-law as 8-Bit” or the “Convert a/µ-law as 8-Bit” preference,
• Upgraded to CodeWarrior 10.
2.2.1, December 5, 1996.
• Corrected a problem upgrading the preferences file from 2.1.1 to 2.2, which would result in a corrupted file.  If you used version 2.2, you’ll need to reset your preferences.
2.2.2, December 12, 1996.
• Conversion downsampling from 44.1 or 48 kHz to a lower rate (e.g., 32 kHz) no longer produces slight clicks,
• Playback of MIDI files using OMS now uses the proper selected device,
• Work around a bug in QuickTime 2.1 which prevented many MIDI files from playing,
• Fixed a bug which prevented MOD conversion on 680x0 Macs,
• Fixed a bug which caused random shuffling of Play Lists to not be very random.
2.2.3, February 26, 1997.
• SoundApp no longer gets confused if the Controls Palette is closed while playing a file from a Play List,
• Made another attempt to allow SoundApp to work without a PowerPC-native AppleScript,
• Corrected two AppleScript dictionary problems (one which prevented conversion to a specific format type and another which prevented saving a Play List to a specified file),
• If SoundApp is in the midst of playing some sounds and a folder is dropped onto SoundApp, the sound files contained therein will now be added to the playback queue,
• Cleaned up internal memory management and fixed some issues with drag and drop in Play Lists,
• Significantly speeded up the sorting of Play Lists.
2.3, April 26, 1997.
• Added support for the following formats:
  ◊ MPEG audio layer III (for computers with a PowerPC processor),
  ◊ uncompressed stereo Amiga IFF/8SVX files.
• Partially corrupt MPEG files will now skip over the corrupt frames,
• Added new preferences to copy files when dragged from a Play List and to append the “.type”  suffix to output filenames,
• Fixed a bug which would cause a crash when using AppleScript to get info on an invalid file,
• Fixed a bug in the conversion to WAVE and AIFF files,
• Using the space bar to pause play back now updates the Controls Palette,
• Added AppleScript commands to get and set the playback volume,
• Fixed a minor Play List button highlight problem,
• QuickTime soundtracks with non-standard time bases are now dealt with properly,
• Closing an empty Play List will not ask whether to save,
• Fixed a bug which could crash while attempting to drag an item from a sorted Play List to itself,
• Now better deals with file systems which are too slow to keep up with playback,
• Added Q&A topic to the Help window to address some frequently asked questions concerning SoundApp.
2.3.1, May 7, 1997.
• Fixed a small preference problem which prevented conversion from working unless a version 2.2.3 preferences file existed,
• Improved MPEG playback stability and made decompression more responsive,
• Converting to AIFF, System 7 or QuickTime IMA now no longer introduces a low frequency buzz.
2.4, August 11, 1997.
• Added support for the following formats:
  ◊ stereo Fibonacci-delta compressed Amiga IFF files,
  ◊ original Sound Designer files,
  ◊ SoundEdit 16 SWE/Shockwave MPEG Layer III files with their weird, non-standard headers,
  ◊ MPEG-2 Layer III files,
  ◊ 24- and 32-bit PCM-encoded Sun Audio, NeXT and AIFF files,
  ◊ 32- and 64-bit floating point-encoded Sun Audio and NeXT files,
  ◊ 32-bit PCM-encoded WAVE files, and
  ◊ 32-bit floating point-encoded IRCAM files.
• Added support for conversion to:
  ◊ MACE-3 and MACE-6 encodings in AIFF, System 7 sound files and QuickTime files,
  ◊ PSION sound files, and
  ◊ a-law in WAVE and AU files.
• Incorporated the new Amp MPEG Layer III playback code for increased performance and support for MPEG-2 Layer III files,
• QuickTime files with multiple sound tracks are now converted properly,
• Enhanced SoundApp’s AppleScript support:
  ◊ Added a current file AppleScript property to the application,
  ◊ Added a fetch information verb to return information about a sound file on disk and renamed the get information verb to display information for clarity,
  ◊ Added a send oms data AppleEvent to send MIDI data to an OMS synthesizer, and
  ◊ Added start at and stop at parameters to play and convert to process portions of a sound file.
• Completely re-did the Preferences dialog, removed “Fast Macintosh” and “Process Files in Directories” and added “Use Playback Volume” in the MIDI pane,
• Using the “Repeat” playback option on a single file now loops extremely smoothly,
• First pass at random access playback by clicking in the progress bar,
• Suffixes will only be removed from file names when converting if they are a valid sound file suffix,
• Added time elapsed and remaining displays to the Status window,
• Get Info on a MOD file while playing a MOD file will now work correctly,
• Calculated play times for music files using the ZSS drivers are now correct,
• Now sends tone bank control (32) to MIDI synthesizers if OMS MIDI driver is selected,
• Fixed a problem which created incorrect WAVE headers for µ-law and IMA output data and in general when converting 8-bit sounds to µ-Law,
• Also corrected a problem which created a slightly non-standard AIFF header,
• Re-did the document icons and the buttons in the Controls Palette,
• Better support for playback using virtual memory or RAM Doubler,
• Enabled drag-and-drop and active scrolling in the Help window and active scrolling in Play Lists,
• Upgraded to CodeWarrior Professional 1.
2.4.1, August 21, 1997.
• Fixed a problem with the OMS output device getting corrupted in the Preferences dialog and changing the output device no longer requires quitting SoundApp to take effect,
• SoundApp now recognizes two more file types as MP3 files: Shockwave’s and MacAmp’s,
• Incorporated new MacAmp MPEG playback code which now handles MPEG Layer II,
• Slipping around in an MPEG Layer III file now no longer resets the volume to 100%, removed a slight glitch with some low bit-rate MPEG Layer III files and improved disk reading for smoother playback,
• Fixed a glitch when jumping around in a MPEG Layer I file which would result in some odd noise,
• Fixed a problem playing sounds that are less than 100 ms long and MPEG Layer I files less than 64K.
2.4.2, November 23, 1997.
• Added a sound volume slider to the Controls palette,
• Added Export From QuickTime menu option,
• Added a play position AppleScript parameter,
• The Add… menu option now presents a new multiple get files dialog to add files to a Play List,
• The send oms data AppleScript command now uses the selected device,
• The Get Info and Status windows now display the stereo mode for MPEG files,
• Added a new Auto Play option which will automatically play a Play List when it is opened,
• Added a new icon to trick Netscape into selecting a semi-valid file type as its default,
• Now supports playback of some partially corrupt MIDI files,
• DOSifying file names is now a little smarter with file names with non-standard suffixes,
• Fixed an initialization problem when playing MIDI files via QuickTime,
• Get Info on MPEG files now works properly while playing MPEG files,
• Converting MPEG Layer III files no longer ignores the last little bit,
• Enabled conversion of MPEG Layer II and Layer III sounds on a 680x0 Macintosh with an FPU,
• Fixed a problem converting short MPEG Layer II and Layer III files,
• Added limited parsing of the id3 text information standard for MP3 files to display the song name,
• The default base note for System 7 sound files is now 60 (middle C) which may fix problems using SoundApp-generated sounds in HyperCard,
• Fixed a problem sending SysEx messages when playing MIDI files via OMS,
• Fixed a problem playing truncated AIFF files,
• Fixed a problem with getting a “File Not Found” error while converting files,
• Fixed a problem playing stereo 8SVX files using the AppleScript start at parameter,
• Fixed a problem deleting files from a sorted Play List,
• Better compatibility with SWA files, especially version 6.0 files,
• Enabled drag-scrolling in the Help window,
• Upgraded Amp MP2 and MP3 engine to 0.7.6.
2.4.3, December 15, 1997.
• MPEG Layer I and Layer II decoding has been rewritten for better compatibility with joint stereo files, although MPEG-2 Layer II is not supported at this time,
• MPEG conversion on 680x0 Macs now works without FPUs and can convert all layers,
• Fixed a cosmetic problem while changing the selection in a Play List via AppleScript with SoundApp in the background,
• Playing MOD files using the ZSS driver will now obey the “Stereo Mode” preference,
• Enabled playback of MPEG audio QuickTime files,
• Upgraded to CodeWarrior Professional 2.
2.4.4, December 16, 1997.
• Oops, fixed the volume slider which wouldn’t move due to changes in the control class of PowerPlant in CW Pro 2.
2.5, April 16, 1998.
• Added support for the following formats:
  ◊ MPEG-2.5 Layer III files, including WAVE MP3 files,
  ◊ MPEG-2 Layer I and II files,
  ◊ EPOC 32 (Psion Series 5) sound files (a-law only),
  ◊ Atari AVR, and
  ◊ arbitrary QuickTime compression formats.
• Also added conversion to EPOC 32 (Psion Series 5) sound files (a-law only),
• Conversion on PowerPC-based computers should now be faster,
• Enhanced looping in the following ways:
  ◊ Now reads and writes looping information to and from Sound Designer II and WAVE files,
  ◊ Single-file looping from a Play List now honors the looping parameters in the file,
  ◊ Single-file looping from a Play List using the ZSS driver is now done smoothly, and
  ◊ Conversion of looping points is now scaled properly during conversion.
• Enhanced the Play Lists in the following ways:
  ◊ Added an indicator which displays the processing status for the files, for example whether it has already been processed or is currently being processed,
  ◊ The Play List save-file alert now has command-key equivalents, and
  ◊ Opening a Play List that’s already open no longer creates a new window.
• Added support for GS instruments when playing MIDI files using QuickTime 3.0,
• Added another value to the current file AppleScript property which is the entry in a Play List being processed,
• Pressing the left arrow while playing a file will now go to the previous file if less than one second has elapsed; otherwise, it will restart playback from the beginning of the current file (like most CD players),
• The “Stop Processing After the Current File Has Finished” button in the Controls palette now highlights when clicked and it can be turned off by clicking it again or by clicking the Play button,
• Added a slider to the playback Status window for formats which support random access,
• MPEG decoding on 680x0 Macs with an FPU is now much faster,
• Now uses the Mac OS 8 floating window for the Status and Control windows if using Mac OS 8 or higher,
• Getting information on a file for which a Get Info window already exists will now bring that window to the front,
• Average data rate for conversion to IMA WAVE is now calculated correctly,
• Conversion of MPEG files no longer produces extra silence at the end of the output file,
• Tempo calculation for MIDI files on 680x0 Macs is now correct,
• Removed the “Resolution” preference on the Play pane.