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!SampleCD v1.16 A sound sample creator for Acorn Risc Computers © Paul Wilkinson 1997 About !SampleCD =============== ********************************************************************** Read the distribution conditions below. Under *NO* circumstances must !SampleCD be used to violate Copyright on audio recordings. ********************************************************************** N.B. !SampleCD requires RiscOS 3.10+, CDFS 2.21+, CDFSdriver 2.21+ and a CDRom drive which supports the CD_ReadAudio software interrupt. This program is designed to sample audio data from CDs and convert it into a variety of formats understood by your Acorn computer. It can currently save data in the following formats:- Raw CD data (16 bit stereo, signed linear) Acorn Replay (16 bit stereo) Armadeus (8 bit mono) Logarithmic (8 bit mono representation of 12 bit mono) Linear unsigned (8 bit mono) Linear signed (8 bit mono) Any decent sample editor should be able to handle most of these formats (commercially Prosound, Sonor or AudioWorks are available, whilst in the public domain SampConv, Effex, DSEdit, Sox or SoundCon should suit most requirements). How to use !SampleCD ==================== The Main Window --------------- Double click on the !SampleCD icon to launch the program. The program will check your system for you before starting up. Firstly, if you don’t have the modules mentioned above, !SampleCD won’t start. If you have the correct modules you still won’t be able to use the program if your drives do not support the CD_ReadAudio call. !SampleCD will test any CDRom drives attached to your computer and will warn you if any of them don’t support this call. Clicking on the iconbar icon which appears will open the SampleCD window. At the top of this window are a row of CD-style controls. While the disc is playing, these act as normal CD player controls (i.e. play, stop, pause, previous track, next track, rewind, fast forward). When the disc isn't playing, the last four controls (ie the track and position ones) affect the ‘Start’ setting in the ‘Selection’ panel (see below). The action of the ‘play’ button has three settings; play entire disc, play selected track and play current sample selection. The action can be set by clicking the appropriate radio button under the CD controls. Below these radio buttons on the left are the controls for selecting which drive to create samples from. On the right are two other icons which show the currently playing track and time. Initially, only the first panel is visible. This is because !SampleCD can also be used as a simple CD player, in which case the other functions aren't needed. To access the other panels, click the toggle box in the top right. The second panel selects the section of the disc you wish to sample. As mentioned above, when the disc isn't playing, the CD player icons can be used to set the start time. However, there is an easier way to choose which section of the CD you want to sample. Set the disc playing and use the CD player icons to get the disc near to the section you wish to sample. Then when you hear the start of this section, press the ‘Set Start’ button. Similarly, when you hear the end of this section, press ‘Set Length’. This automatically enters the correct values in the writable icons. For even ﬁner control, these values can also be typed in. The format of the writable icons is Minutes:Seconds:Hundredths. Note that when entering the time in these icons, the handler is reasonably intelligent, so you can get away with typing 1:5 and this will convert to 01:05:00 (one minute and ﬁve seconds into the given track). The third panel controls the saving of the sample. The three upper left-hand icons are a standard RiscOS save box; simply drag the icon to where you want the sample to be saved. The uppermost text icon shows the format that the sample will be saved in. To change this, click menu over the text icon, or click the menu icon just to its right. The sample frequency is selected in exactly the same manner. The ‘buffer’ icon selects whether or not the sample is taken in sections via a buffer or all in one go. The advantage of using a buffer is that your sample can be any length (without using the buffer, only samples that are short enough to ﬁt into the available memory can be taken). The length of the buffer sections (in seconds) is displayed in the text icon to the right. This can be increased/decreased by clicking the up/down icons respectively. The last icon in this panel, labelled ‘Correction’ is only available if sampling via a buffer is on. If this icon is selected, any errors caused by the sample sections not quite aligning properly will be corrected. These errors can cause audible ’clicks’ at the edges of each section. It takes just a little longer than if no correction is used. Finally, the main menu has three options. ‘Info’ and ‘Quit’ are the standard menu entries, and ‘Save Options’ saves the state of the Sample Type, Frequency and the three Buffer icons. Note that Acorn’s interactive help is supported by SampleCD. Creating A Sample ----------------- Set the correct start position and sample length in the writable icons as described above. Select the desired sample format and frequency. If you are using the buffer, set the desired buffer length and whether you need alignment correction. If the CD is playing ******STOP THE DISC****** and let it spin down for a couple of seconds. If the disc isn’t stopped there is a good chance that some or all of your sample will be corrupted. I’m not sure why this is but I guess that the CD driver has some sort of audio buffer that must be allowed to clear. Now drag the save icon to a directory viewer or enter a complete path name in the icon and the sample will be saved. Help! The start of my sample is corrupted! ------------------------------------------- If the sample you’ve lovingly crafted turns out to have noise in the ﬁrst couple of seconds, don’t worry, this is quite common. To ﬁx it you can try two things. Firstly, press the ‘Stop’ CD player control and wait a few seconds. Now try taking the sample again (the settings in the ’Start’ and ‘Length’ boxes should still be the same, so you’ll get the same sample). If this doesn’t work, click in the box next to ‘Start’ that shows the track number and type in the previous (or next) track number and press Enter (note, don’t use the ‘Next’ and ‘Previous’ CD player controls as this sets the start time to zero). Now take the sample from this track. This hopefully will clear out any garbage from the buffers. Once this is done, type the original track number back into the writable icon and save the sample you wanted originally. It should now be ﬁne. What are those two ﬁles ‘ErrorOn’ and ‘ErrorOff’ for? ----------------------------------------------------- If you happen to have two or more CD players connected to your system, and some of them aren’t CD_ReadAudio compatible, the program will warn you of this every time it starts up. I reckon this could be quite annoying, so I put in these two ﬁles. If you want to disable the compatibility warning, simple double click on ‘ErrorOff’. Similarly, double-clicking ‘ErrorOn’ reenables this warning. Finally ------- !SampleCD was developed on a RiscPC with a Cumana Indigo CD-Rom drive. The program should now be able to test your system for compatibility, so if you don’t get any warnings about a particular drive, it should work! I would be very interested to know of any drives that slip through this net, or any drives that do work but claim that they don’t! Especially PLEASE let me know if the program works (most people only seem to want to get in touch if there is a problem!) Please note that this program has been developed without the aid of the PRMs and in-between times whilst studying for my PhD and doing all the other interesting and cool things that physicists get up to in their spare time. If it works on your system, great. If not, please get in touch and I’ll do my best, but I’m not promising anything. I can be contacted via the internet at ppxpbw@ppn1.physics.nottingham.ac.uk This address is likely to cease being useful after about April 1997. You may not get your mail bounced back, but it certainly won't get answered as I won't be there any more. When I get back on the net, I'll try and make my presence known. Stop Press ---------- There is a problem with the ATAPI driver on newer systems that will cause SampleCD to think audio CDs are in fact CDRoms. There is nothing I can do about this, it *isn't* my fault! I have included a posting to C.S.A.Programmer which gives a possible fix. All I can suggest is; try it! Terms and Conditions ==================== This application is Freeware. I retain copyright, but it may be freely distributed as long as:- 1) All the files accompanying this message remain intact and unaltered and are only distributed together. 2) Only reasonable charges are made for its distribution (I used to define reasonable, but I haven't bought stuff from PD libraries for ages. If you feel you've been ripped off, complain loudly and never use them again. When I didn't have net access, I used APDL and I think their prices serve as a good guide.) 3) The only exceptions to condition 2) above, are (i) this program may be distributed on a magazine cover disc by the following publications :- Acorn User Acorn Archimedes World Archive Eureka Risc User (ii) SampleCD may be distributed by The Really Good Software Company with their AlphaEdit commercial package and (iii) Oregan can do what they like with it as they gave me a free copy of Prosound for the privilege. This application is supplied “as seen”. No warranty (either implied or stated) is given concerning the fitness of this program for any particular purpose. I will not be liable for any type of damage that the use of this program may cause. It is possible to use this program to infringe copyright on commercial material (audio or otherwise). This program is distributed with the condition that it may not, under any circumstances, be used to store, modify or copy in any format (electronic or otherwise) any material which is protected by copyright. Known bugs ========== As far as I know, I’ve now got rid of all of ’em (yes, even the one that left huge dynamic areas all over the place!). PLEASE let me know if I’m wrong about this. The program should now be StrongArm™ compatible. This will need sorting quickly if it isn't, so please get in touch ASAP if it won't run on your SA machine. Things to do ============ •Find some automatic way to avoid the corruption of samples (any ideas?) History ======= v1.00 13/03/95 First release version. v1.01 22/03/95 Now positions window sensibly on the screen and bumps it back if the mode changes. Also reduced the wimp slot size to a realistic value. v1.10 30/05/95 Added some useful error messages (ie program now tells you if there isn’t enough memory). Also added a variable length sample buffer. Now uses Dynamic Areas on RiscOS 3.50+ instead of increasing the wimp slot. Finally sorted out the uneven sample joining when using a buffer (this proved to be quite easy in the end!). v1.12 09/07/95 Fixed whopping great bug, which I *think* was the cause of most of the incompatibility problems (in particular, all the clashes with SCSI interfaces). Fixed minor (and very rare) bug that used to give extra ½ second of play at the end of Replay files. No longer restricted to sampling from drive 0. v1.14 26/01/96 All allocated memory now freed up on errors. Checks each attached drive for CD_ReadAudio compatibility v1.15 28/02/96 Moved menus to make them more ‘Acorn Style’. Added easy set start and length buttons. Added the facility to turn the compatibility warning off. Displays hourglass and percentage when sampling. Learnt how to spell ‘application’ in the interactive help! v1.16 23/02/97 Should now work on StrongArm™ machines. Time icons no longer get updated if disc is stopped or paused. Seconds icon matches the actual elapsed time better. Sampling functions initially hidden to make use as a CD player more convenient. Acknowledgements ================ Thank you to everyone who got in touch with me since the release of v1.00. !SampleCD is now a much more polished (and hopefully robust) program than before, due in no small part to your comments, suggestions and in *two* cases now, actual material reward! Cheers guys, you know who you are. Compatibility ============= I’ve given up maintaining a list. The program should now tell you if it will work or not. I’ve had positive reports on A5000s, RiscPCs and A7000s. Both IDE and SCSI seem to work, and so do double and quad speed devices. Most successes appear to have been with Cumana and HCCS products so far. Recommended Software ==================== !Zap v1.35 Really *fast* text/memory/code editor. Utterly brilliant and free. !TemplEd v1.32 The best, easiest to use and free-est template file editor. !StrongHlp v2.03 If you can’t afford the PRMs (like me!) this contains mountains of useful information. !BSquasher v1.18 The most efficient BASIC compressor that I’ve found (I’ve tried BasCompress and this is better!) !SoundCon v1.60 A very comprehensive sample converter and player. !Speccy v3.56f An *excellent* Spectrum emulator / nostalgia inducer / time waster!