modiromppu/modiromppu.iso/PROGRAMS/PLAYERS/CUBIC20A/NEWUSER.DOC

Text File | 1996-09-10 | 11.0 KB | 213 lines

  Introduction to Computer Music

   What is a MOD-file?

   For a description of WAV or MIDI files, click here.

   What I refer to as a MOD-file includes many file types with extensions
       such as MOD, XM, S3M, MTM, as well as many others. I refer to all
       these various formats as a MOD-file because the MOD format was the
       original, and all the other formats are pretty much the same
       concept, but have various enhancements and improvements. MOD-files
       follow the basic formula:



   Real Recordings of Instruments + Information on How to Play the
   Instruments = Great Music

   The instruments in a MOD are actual recordings in .WAV format embedded
       into the file itself. The sheet music is a set of
       commands which tell the computer such information as when to play a
       note, at what pitch, volume, panning, effect,...and the list goes
       on. This concept is similar to a MIDI file, but MIDI does not
       contain its own samples. Thus, a MOD-file can be thought of as a
       combination of a WAV and MIDI file. The advantage is that they
       are much smaller than WAV files for their playing time, and sound
       much better than MIDI because the composer can use instruments which
       are more suited to the style of each individual song.



   How do I play a MOD-file?

   There are many MOD-players available, but Cubic Player is the best DOS
       player. I hear it will also work under Windows 3.1 / 95 and OS/2. If
       you want a Windows-specific MOD player, try MOD4WIN, which can be
       found at the MAZ Sound Tools Page. Be forewarned, however, that this
       particular player will stop working after 30 days if you don't pay
       for it.



   How do I set up Cubic Player to play a MOD?

   First of all, download all the files you need to run Cubic, create a new
       directory, and un-zip all the files into this directory. At the
       DOS-prompt, start Cubic by typing cp If you get an error
       message saying that DOS4GW couldn't be loaded, make sure that this
       file is in your directory also. Cubic should start fine even if you
       don't edit your CP.INI file, but it will be a little slower loading.
       After starting Cubic, you will find yourself in the fileselector.
       Use the arrow keys to change directories and select the files you
       wish to play. To play the highlighted file immediately, press Enter.




   How do I get the best playback quality in Cubic Player?

   If you have a wavetable card: (GUS or AWE)
   If you have a wavetable card, there is generally very little you can do
       to increase your sound quality. However, you may wish to take note
       of the following points:
   1) Cubic will use your wavetable memory to load the instruments. If you
       don't have enough memory to load the samples, Cubic will decrease
       the quality of the samples until they fit. This is called
       sample crunching or memory multiplying. To
       see what samples are crunched, go into instruments mode and press
       i until you see a list of the names of the instruments
       with sample information next to each name. Find the column which
       says bit This is the bit depth of the sample. A fraction
       or exclamation point next to it indicates that the sample is
       crunched. A crunched sample doesn't sound nearly as good as the
       original. If you have many crunched samples, you may wish to play
       the sample back using the software mixer instead of using the
       wavetable part of your card (if you have a GUS, download the Player
       Device on the previous page.) See below for optimizing the software
       mixer.
   2) In the fileselector, press Alt-b to tag a file for playing with a
       different device (software mixer)
   3) The AWE supports only 16-bit samples. Therefore, Cubic converts all
       8-bit samples up to 16 bits when it copys the instruments into your
       AWE's RAM. This means that the samples take up twice as much memory
       as it seems they should. In other words, a 300k MOD which uses only
       8-bit samples may not fit into 512k memory without crunching,
       becuase it will take up 600k of memory when the samples are
       converted to 16-bit.
   4) If you have an AWE, press Alt-F4 to toggle the view from panning /
       balance to reverb / chorus. Use Ctrl-F5 and Ctrl-F6 to increase /
       decrease reverb, and Ctrl-F7 and Ctrl-F8 to increase / decrease
       chorus.
   5) If you have a GUS, edit your CP.INI file to change your number of
       MIDI output channels. More means more simultaneous notes, less means
       a higher sample rate. You will have to experiment until you reach
       the best value for your tastes.
   6) The high-quality mixer actually sounds better than the hardware
       mixing of the GUS or AWE, but it requires a lot of CPU time (and you
       don't get the AWE's reverb or chorus.) If you have a fast enough CPU
       (Pentium-120 or faster), you may wish to use the mixer instead. Now
       works with GUS also.
   If you don't have a wavetable card: (or don't know)
   Optimizing Cubic's software mixer for a particular computer can be a bit
       tricky. You want to get the best sound quality for each individual
       file, but you may not have enough CPU power to play the more intense
       MOD's at the highest quality. Try each of the following for your
       MOD's; if you don't have enough CPU power, go to the next one down
       on the list. I hear that a Pentium-120 can handle #1 at 32 channels.
       My Pentium-60 can handle #1 at 13 channels, #2 at 16 channel, and #3
       at 32 channels.
   1) High quality mixer, FOI, surround
   2) High quality mixer, AOI, surround
   3) Low quality mixer, FOI, surround
   4) Low quality mixer, AOI, surround
   5) Low quality mixer, AOI
   6) Low quality mixer, FFI
   7) Low quality mixer, digital filter (1/4, 1/2,...)
   8) Low quality mixer, 8-bit, mono, lower sampling rate
   To select the high or low quality mixer: press f to go into
       the fileselector. Scroll down until you get to drive @:
       Select this drive and go into the directory devices.
       Select the high-quality or low-quality mixer by highlighting them
       and pressing Enter. (You can also add them to your playlist)
   To select / deselect surround sound, press F4. At the top of the screen,
       o means disabled, x means enabled.
   To select FOI or AOI, press Backspace.
   To select FFI, press Alt-Backspace
   To select a digital filter, press Ctrl-Bakcspace
   To use 8-bit output or decrease your sample rate, edit your
       CP.INI



   What specific changes should I make to CP.INI?

   Be sure to make a backup of the original before proceeding.
   1) If you want MIDI playback, under [general], change the
       guspatchpath to the directory where the UltraSound
       patches are located.
   2) (optional) If your pictures or animations won't load, under [general]
       change your datapath= to be the directory where your
       animation and picture files are located.
   3) Under [sound], find the line which says playerdevices=
       and delete the devices which you don't have.
   1) If you have a SoundBlaster, delete devpWSS and  devpPAS
   2) If you have an Ultrasound, delete devpSB, devpWSS, and devpPAS
   3) If you have a Windows Sound System card, delete devpSB and devpPAS
   4) If you have a ProAudio Spectrum, delete devpSB and devpWSS
   5) Don't delete devpNone or devpDisk
   4) Under [sound], find the line which says samplerdevices=
       and delete the devices which you don't have.
   1) If you have a SoundBlaster, delete devsGUS and devsWSS
   2) If you have an Ultrasound, delete devsSB and  devsWSS
   3) If you have a Windows Sound System card, delete devsSB and devsPAS
   4) If you have a ProAudio Spectrum, delete devsSB and devsWSS
   5) Don't delete devsNone
   5) Under [sound], find the line which says wavetabledevices=
       and delete the devices which you don't have.
   1) If you have an AWE, delete devwGUS
   2) If you have an Ultrasound, delete devwAWE
   3) If you have a Windows Sound System or ProAudio Spectrum, delete
       devwGUS and devwAWE
   5) Don't delete devwMix or devwMixQ
   6) Under [sound], change the rate32=48000 to rate32=44100
     I don't know why the default is this value, most cards can't handle it.
   7) Under [sound], change midichan=24 to fit your
       preferences. If you don't have a GUS, I recommend
       midichan=32
   8) Under [sound], you can change bigmodules=devwMix to
       bigmodules=devwMixQ if you have a fast CPU. This is the
       wavetable device which will be used to play modules marked with
       Alt-b in the fileselector. If you don't have a wavetable card, try
       keeping the default value and using devwMixQ as your default mixer.
       You can then tag modules with too many channels in the fileselector
       to play with devwMix. (by the way, devwMix is the regular mixer and
       devwMixQ is the high-quality mixer)
   9) If you prefer, change surround=off to surround=on
   10) If you prefer, change filter=6 to filter=7
   11) Under [fileselector], change the playonce, randomplay, and loop
       parameters if you so desire. These can also be configured in the
       fileselector itself by pressing Alt-c. playonce=on will remove
       modules from the playlist after playing, randomplay=off will play
       modules in the order they were added to the playlist, and loop=off
       will play each module only once before going to the next module.
   12) Under [fileselector], change path=. to the path that
       your MOD files are located. This will start the fileselector in the
       directory you specified. (Potential to save lots of time here...)
   13) If you wish, you may also delete the configuration sections for
       those devices which you deleted in steps 3-5.



   How do I play MIDI files in Cubic?

   First of all, Cubic's MIDI playback uses the Gravis UltraSound patches
       to play the MIDI files. If you have an UltraSound, this is nothing
       special; but if you don't have one, then this is pretty important.
       For one thing, most soundcards use some form of an FM synthesizer to
       play MIDI files, which sounds pretty horrible. Cubic treats the MIDI
       file as it would a MOD file, but it uses the UltraSound patches as
       instruments because a MIDI file doesn't contain waveforms which
       can be treated as instruments. This sounds much more realistic
       because the instruments actually sound real. The first thing you
       must do is to obtain the UltraSound patches and follow the
       instructions on the previous page for installation. Put all of the
       .pat files along with default.cfg into a separate directory, and
       follow step #1 (above) to modify your CP.IN file. Then you can
       start Cubic in the usual way, select a MIDI file, and start jamming!