About SE

The IRCAM Signal Editor (SE) is a general-purpose digital sound editor that runs on NeXT computers. SE is particularly optimized for rapid display and editing of large sound files, which SE calls signal documents. Unlike other sound editors, opening and editing large documents takes no more time than small documents. Signal document navigation is flexible in SE. The program supports an unusually wide range of scrolling and zooming behaviors, including continuous scrolling and continuous zooming, as well as precise and repeatable incremental scrolling and zooming.

Another unique feature of SE is its capacity for "unlimited undo." SE keeps a history of all editing operations so you can go back to an earlier point in the editing at any time during a session, and even across sessions.

SE is supplied with a Scheme interpreter called Elk as its extension language (Laumann 1990). This is to allows developers and users to extend the functionality of the editor, particularly with respect to signal processing operations and the undo facility.

SE is distributed with the IRCAM Musical Workstation (IMW) software package. However, it is not necessary to have the IMW hardware in order to run SE, since Release 0.9 SE runs on the NeXT's 680X0 microprocessor with no assistance from the Ariel IMW signal processor board.