ARM Club 3/TheARMClub_PDCD3.iso/hensa/sound/a126_1/!DSE%a0Demo/!Help

Text File | 1992-06-30 | 23KB | 552 lines

Help for !DSE Demo
==================

This DEMO version of DSEdit II is FREEware, and is Copyright
© Jason Williams 1992.

DataSuite is FREEware, and is Copyright © Philip R. Banks 1992.

Conditions of use and contact addresses are included at the bottom of this
file.


What IS the DSEdit demo?
========================

Well, I got a bit sick of ignorant cretins (This one's for you, JB! If your
initials happen to be JB but you aren't the 'real' JB then please don't take
offence!) telling me that I couldn't design decent interfaces, so I decided
it was time to release a cut-down copy of the developmental version of the
DSEdit II digitised sound editor package, and shut them up for good. I also
thought it was about time you lot saw something new from me, or you'll start
thinking that I've evaporated in a puff of logic!

History lesson: DSEdit I was a FREEware digitised sound editor. You may have
a copy of it already. It was written in BASIC and then hacked to work on the
desktop, and the result is a useful but pretty grotty program, with an
absolutely hideous interface.
Now that I have the Acorn C compiler, I am re-writing DSEdit *from scratch*
in C, and this demo shows you a teensy taste of what the final version may
be like... without giving away too many of our secrets to the competition!

DSEdit II also uses Philip Banks' excellent DataSuite sound modules, which
gives it some impressive new features, as well as integrating it much better
with the RISC OS desktop. This demo was released with these modules in order
to demonstrate some of the abilities of the modules.

Please note that this is an early developmental version of DSEdit II, so you
should not be surprised if it crashes or behaves strangely. There are also a
couple of oddities in the interface which will be fixed long before a real
version of DSEdit sees the light of day! There are also a multitude of extra
options and abilities which are currently pending... and a few bugs awaiting
removal. Please save any important data before running DSEdit, just in case!

DSEdit runs fine on every machine I have been able to run it on. This
includes 4 410/1's with wildly different configurations, 2 310's, 3 A5000's,
and a 540, so it should run on any Archimedes without hassles.


Instructions
============

Double-click the !DSE Demo icon to run the program. You should get an icon
in the iconbar just like the old DSEdit gave you. This is where the
similarity between DSEdit I and DSEdit II ends!

Samples (and any file in fact) can be loaded by dragging them to the iconbar
icon. If the file type is unknown, the *first* time you drag the file,
DSEdit will check that you really meant to load that file...

DataVox (108) and DSEdit I (ED0) files can be loaded simply by
double-clicking them.

As many samples as you like may be loaded in this manner, though (due to
problems with RISC OS Lib) too many samples will crash DSEdit under
RISC OS 2.00.


Example data files
==================

Three example data files are supplied:

Two of them are DataVox samples (A white icon with a speaker on it)
  'Ahh' is an instrument to play with the 'keyboard' option (see below)
  'AyeKarumba' is a speech sample (Bart Simpson)
Double click either/both of these files to load them.

The second example file is a protracker song. It can be played as a song
with programs such as !STracker and !ProTracker. The instrument samples from
it may also be loaded into DSEdit II.
To load the samples from this file, drag it down onto the DSEdit iconbar icon.
(Further details on the use of this file are included below...)

If you have them, Armadeus sample/song files may be loaded by dragging them
to the iconbar icon. Any other file may be loaded (warning: DataSuite
sometimes crashes with very small files such as Obey files!) by dragging it
to the iconbar.

Various types of sound samples can be loaded and played with use of the
"Alter" window. This includes .au, .snd, .voc, 8svx, v8, .wav, and most
amiga (Linear Signed) and Macintosh (Linear Unsigned) samples. (See "Alter
window" below for details of how to play these samples correctly)


The IconBar menu
================

Clicking MENU over the iconbar icon gives you a menu with the following
items:

Info
  As usual...

Preferences...
  Clicking this brings up the global preferences. See below for a
  description of this window.

Keyboard...
  This opens the DSEdit keyboard window. This is also described below.

Spectrum...
  This opens a spectrum analyser window. While any sample is being played,
  a real-time spectral analysis will be displayed in the window. If you click
  the full-size icon, the window size will be doubled - this doubles the
  number of frequencies displayed, but also slows update down.

  This only operates on the last sample that you started playing. (Note that
  adjusting the speed or type of a sample or unpausing a sample qualifies as
  'starting' in this case)

  (Hint: On Arm-2 machines, the spectrum analyser is much more useful if you
  turn the playback speed down, and quit from all those small applications
  that suck up NULL events. Closing the Oscilloscope also slightly speeds up
  the Spectrum analyser)

Oscilloscope...
  This window works identically to the spectrum window, but gives a
  real-time display of the waveform being played, in a similar fashion to an
  oscilloscope.

Quit
  er... quits.


Preferences
===========

This window allows you to alter some items of user preference... Down the
right hand side of the window are some buttons:

Default
  Restores the default (saved) preferences.

Save
  Saves the current preferences as the new default. This makes any changes
  permanent (until you alter them again, that is)

Cancel
  Closes the preferences window without changing the current preferences -
  any changes you have just made in the window will not have any effect.

OK
  Sets the current settings in the window as the current configuration. Note
  that this will only remain in effect until you quit from the application -
  you must use the SAVE buttopn if you want changes to be permanent.


The left side of the preferences window contains the preference options.
They are:

Sound volume
  Drag the red bar to set the overall volume level of DSEdit. Remember that
  the change won't come into effect until you click OK. (And currently will
  not affect any playing samples, only samples that are subsequently played)

Internal speaker
  Use this to turn the speaker on or off. Off is a good idea if you have
  plugged your sound output into a stereo...

Minimum active voices
  The Archimedes sound system provides 8 voices that can be active at once.
  However, due to the way the system works, the volume changes depending on
  how many voices are active. Thus, if you have one sample playing and you
  start another playing, both samples will drop to half volume. When one
  sample stops playing, the other may suddenly get louder again. This is not
  good.

  By selecting this option you can set the minimum number of voices that
  will be left active at any time (1, 2, 4, or 8), which eliminates this
  problem.

  Some other applications (in fact all that use sound without using
  DataSuite) simply 'grab' sound voices for their own use, and can thus
  clash with DSEdit. In *some* cases, setting the minimum number of active
  voices to 8 will stop DSEdit from accidentally turning off the sound from
  other applications it doesn't know about.

  A good example of this problem is with !Protracker - if you are playing a
  tracker in the background and you close a DSEdit window, 'unnecessary'
  voices will be turned off, causing Protracker to lock up the machine.
  However, with min. active voices set to 8, this merely causes tracker
  playback to suddenly sound awful, but at least the machine keeps running!

Display: Dots/Lines/Bars/Outline
  Sets the default style for drawing samples in windows. (See Display menu
  options, below)

Display Colours: Sample/Level lines/Marker/Repeat loop
  Sets the colours used for various sample displays...
  Click on the radio button of the colour you wish to change, and then
  select the colour in the palette to the right.
  The Marker and repeat loop are explained below.

Display System 'BFONT'/Outline Trinity.Medium
  The normal Archimedes font (BFONT) looks, quite frankly, crappy.
  Using an antialiased outline font (Trinity.Medium) looks MUCH nicer. Set
  this on if you want to use the outline font (Try it once at least, just to
  see how much nicer it looks!)

  You MUST have a big enough (48kB should be plenty) FONT CACHE, and you
  will need to have 'seen' the !Fonts application before this will work.
  Currently no check for the font is made, so if these things aren't
  available, nasty things might happen. You have been warned!

  NOTE: Due to problems with RISC OS Lib it is not possible to change over
  to the outline font while running the application - you must SAVE the new
  preferences, and QUIT and re-run the application.

  Also, due to a problem with the WIMP, the font will not always be
  displayed correctly if you change screen mode, so ensure you are in the
  screen mode you like before running the application. Mode 20 or equivalent
  is recommended, because this looks really nice!

Overflow Truncate/Wrap
  Affects the way samples are 'clipped' if they are altered to a value which
  can't be represented in a normal sample value. This is of little concern
  to you with this demo version.


Keyboard
========

This window displays a piano keyboard. If you have any samples loaded, the
name of one sample, and its current play speed will be displayed. Clicking
on the sample name will cycle through all the available samples.

Clicking on the piano keyboard will play the sample at different pitches
(speeds). The main Archimedes keybaord can also be used like a piano
keyboard, using two sets of two rows of keys - the two rows starting at
A and Z for lower octaves, and the two rows starting at 1 and Q fr the
higher octaves. (These will only correspond to specific notes if the sample
has been correctly adjusted for middle C)

If you click "Set speed", the sample's default playback speed will be set to
the speed of the last keyboard-played note.
A demo sound sample ('Ahh') is provided for playing with the keyboard.


The Main sample window
======================

Well, by now I'm sure you've loaded in a sample - if not, double click one
of the demo samples provided.

A window appears with four buttons along the top and a display of the sample
below. The four buttons are:

Stop
  Stops playback

Paues
  Pauses playback. Clicking pause a second time recommences playback where
  it left off. (Clicking with adjust recommences playback in reverse)

Play
  Starts playback from the beginning of the sample. (Clicking adjust on this
  button plays in reverse fom the end of the sample)
  During playback, a blue "cursor" is displayed to show which part of the
  sample is being played. This may be a bit jerky if you have the spectrum
  window open or a lot of other tasks running (clocks are particularly bad)

Record
  Has no function in this demo, but will be used for sampling sounds with
  sampler boards...

The main window display has a red arrow at the left end, with a red line.
This is the MARKER line. It is used to make some actions quicker and easier.
Dragging in the left end of the window (over the arrow) allows you to set
the marker position. It is used in some editing functions (below).

There are a set of grey lines across the window (the level lines) for
reference, and the sample is displayed as black lines. All these colours can
be set via the preferences window.

Dragging the mouse over the main window area will invert (select) a region
of the sample. This can be adjusted as usual with the adjust button.
Clicking once in the window clears the selection, and double-clicking
selects the entire sample.

Clicking MENU over the window pops up the sample menu:


The sample menu
===============

This is where all the action is!

Info
  Shows some useful information on the sample.

Alter...
  Brings up a window that allows you to alter the sample parameters.
  (This will be placed on the iconbar menu later so that it can be left up
  permanently, because at the moment it's a bit of a pain!)

  At the top is displaye the current status of the sample - name, playback
  speed, and sample type.

  Below this, you can enter the playback speed - either type in a new number
  and click "Set", or drag the red bar. (This can be done while the sample
  is playing). The radio buttons allow you to set the speed in terms of Hz
  (samples per second), kHz (thousands of samples per second), us delay
  between samples, number of seconds for the entire sample to play, or a
  multiplication factor based upon the current speed setting (i.e. if the
  current speed is 10kHz, a multiplication factor of 2 make sit twice as
  fast, 20kHz)

  To the right you can change the interpretation of samples (even while
  playing thee sample!). Currently, Logarithmic, Linear Unsigned, Linear
  Signed, and ULAW logarithmic are supported. If a sample sounds like static
  (krrrrrrt!), try clicking on the differnt types until it sounds better...
  the sample display should also look better when the correct type is chosen.

  These options update the sample immediately, even during playback.
  Clicking OK has no real purpose except to remove the window.

Save
  Has options to save in either DataVox (III) or Armadeus (I) formats.
  Needless to say, as this is a demo version, nothing will happen if you
  try to save the sample!

Selection
  Save
    Doesn't allow you to save either!

  Zoom in
    Attempts to set the zoom level so that the selected region fills the
    window. This is a very rough zoom, so won't always get as close as you
    might like.

  Make Repeat
    Makes the selected area the repeat-loop. This means that when you play
    the sample, at the end of the sample, instead of stopping playback, the
    repeat-loop will be played repeatedly until you stop it. (See Repeated
    Play, below)

  Select repeat
    Sets the selection to the same area as the repeat-loop, for easy
    adjusting of the repeat.

  Clear repeat
    Clears the repeat loop so nothing is repeated.

  Repeated play
    If ticked, then whenever samples are played, the repeat loop (if
    any) will be played, otherwise the repeat loop will NOT be played.
    This option will soon be moved to a more logical home...

  Delete
    Deletes the current selection from the sample. (Copy/Move selection will
    be available later)

Display
  Dots/Lines/Bars/Outline
    Sets different display options. Lines is fastest to redraw and usually
    pretty good, but dots sometimes allows you to see things that are not
    visible in lines mode. Bars and outline are less useful but look pretty.

  Zoom
    Set the desired zoom level here (up to 50:1 magnification)

Edit
  This menu provides a taster of a few editing functions. All editing
  functions multitask completely, and can be applied to a single sample or
  to ALL loaded samples, and to the whole sample or just the selected part
  of each sample - these options are at the top of each Edit function
  dialogue...

  Keyboard equivalents for all these options are currently unavailable, but
  will be added soon...

  Amplify
    Either specify a percentage amplification (100% means leave as-is, 50%
    means halve volume, 200% means double volume), or choose "To maximum",
    which makes the sample as loud as possible without introducing
    distortion or crackle.
    Click "GO" when you are satisfied.

  Ramp
    This 'fades' the sample in and out. 8 types of fade (4 fade ins and 4
    fade outs) are provided. Select one and click GO.

  Centre
    This moves the center of the sample up or down in the sample window.
    Some samples, after being digitised, are not centered correctly,
    resulting in nasty clicks at the start and end.

    Move to marker moves the sample up or down so that the current 'center'
    moves to the marker.

    AutoCenter counts the average of all samples and adjusts the center to
    this average position.

    Add allows you to add or subtract any constant from all sample values.
    Samples have values in the range -128..+128 with the center (silence) at
    0, so enter an appropriate number between -128 and +128

  Reverse
    This reverses the play-order of samples. For the entire sample you might
    as well just click adjust on the play icon, but this is useful for
    reversing only a part of the sample...


Loading ProTracker files
========================

As mentioned at the top of this help file, it is possible to load ProTracker
files into DSEdit II. This can be achieved in two ways:

  1 Drag a Protracker file to the DSEdit II iconbar icon.
    This will pull out all of the instrument samples from the Protracker
    file and put each into a separate sample window.
    NOTE: Under RISC OS 2.00 it is very easy to create too many windows with
    this technique, resulting in DSEdit crashing. This will be fixed in
    future releases.

  2 Holding down CTRL, drag the protracker file onto the icon.
    This will load the file as a whole into a sample window. (This includes
    all of the samples and the header information and song data)

NOTE:
  This code has only just been written, and although it works fine with
  most of my Soundtracker collection, it fails on some files, resulting
  in nothing happening, or the samples being taken from the wrong parts
  of the file!

  This will only load Amiga SoundTracker/NoiseTracker/Protracker files
  (15 or 31 instrument versions) at present, but Archimedes Tracker should
  also be added soon.

  *Trackers are currently recognised by the filetype CB6. You must set
  files to this type before DSEdit will attempt to decode them as Protrackers.

  Often, instrument names in *tracker files are given names to provide a
  comment and name & address when viewed in *tracker players. This results
  in odd (or blank) names being given to samples when they are loaded!

  !Protracker does not seem to get on well with DataSuite. Closing sample
  windows, and some other activities, while !Protracker is running often
  crashes the machine. (In fact, trying to save from StrongEd seems to crash
  if Protracker is running!!!)

  Occasionally DSEdit is unable to decode a file correctly and causes
  corrupton of the RMA, giving errors "Not a heap block". The only fix
  for this with this DEMO is to reset your machine and start again. So
  please remeber to save any important data before playing with this demo!


Final notes
===========

As with DSEdit I and Armadeus I, it is necessary to store samples in the RMA
area of memory so that the machine doesn't crash while playing them!
This had the problem in DSEdit I of 'trapping' a lot of memory in the RMA.
Armadeus I was even worse, because it grabbed as much memory as it could get
and put it in the RMA, which was really nasty on 1 and 2 megabyte machines.

DSEdit II still suffers from this 'trapping' problem, but whenever it
releases memory in the RMA, it compacts the RMA as much as possible, which
helps to reduce the problem.

To avoid problems, you should try to avoid running other applications while
you have samples loaded in DSEdit - if you do find vast chunks of memory
trapped in the RMA, then the only way to fix things properly is to reset the
machine (save those files first, though!)

Also, please note that due to one of the bugs in RISC OS Lib that I was NOT
able to circumvent, DSEdit occasionally loses NULL events, which means that
the cursor stops updating and any running edit-tasks stop dead. These can
sometimes be temporarily regained by opening any of the edit dialogues
(Acorn, if you are reading this, I would really like my NULL events back!)
The only real solution to this problem at present is to quit and re-run
DSEdit.

As I am planning to re-write DSEdit again to remove RISC OS Lib for good,
this bug will dissappear. (Not to mention I should be able to HALVE the size
of the application!)

Oh, and if you want the sample bigger in the window, then edit the templates
and make the sample window taller... but be careful not to move it, or ...
well... you'll see... ;-)


Western capitalist yuppie pig avarice & greed section
=====================================================

DSEdit II will be available as a commercial product as soon as it is
completed, which should be somewhere near the end of 1992.


Pinko liberal commie subversive section
=======================================

Enjoy playing with this demo!


Conditions of Use
=================

1. This software remains the copyright of the author, Jason Williams, but it
   may be freely distributed and used, provided that:
   a) it is kept as a whole- All files associated with the application must
      be included in their original form, especially THIS one.
   b) no charge is made for any copying or distribution other than third
      party transmission costs (eg disc purchase cost, postage, phone
      charges).
   c) Any profits should be donated to a registered charity.
      (i.e. If you charge £1.50 for a copy, but it costs you £1.49 for
      disc+postage, etc. then £0.01 should be donated per copy issued)

2. The software may not be distributed with or as part of any other product
   for which a charge (other than a third party charge as (1) above) is
   made, without prior permission of the author.

3. The author does not accept any responsibility for any use or misuse of
   the software or any consequences thereof.


I would prefer that anyone wishing to distribute this (or any other) item of
software that I have written, please contact me first. This way, I can
assure you that you are not breaking the law (As many people are doing with
my non-free software), and I will quite possibly have a newer version of the
software that I will be quite willing to post back to you. I am already
getting sick of people using my software for profit without my permission,
and I will simply stop releasing my software AT ALL if this continues.


=============================================================================

Any feedback, including bug reports, would be appreciated.
Contact me at the following addresses:

SnailMail: Jason Williams,         (Send a disc, and I'll return it with
           R.D.2, Manuel Road,      latest versions, etc. on it)
           Silverdale,
           North Auckland,
           NEW ZEALAND.

email:     [e-mail]

or just post a message to UseNet's comp.sys.acorn newsgroup.