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AudioWorks

The complete manual...

The Icon-Bar Menu

Clicking Menu over the icon-bar icon displays this menu:

Info

This gives general information about AudioWorks. The most significant item is Version. If you contact Computer Concepts with a query about AudioWorks, you may be asked for the version number.

Preferences...

Clicking this brings up the preference options. These are detailed later.

Alter...

This dialogue box refers to the current sound sample. To change to a different sample, click on the menu icon to the right of Sample name. This displays a menu of samples currently in memory.

Lets you alter the playing speed. It does not alter the sample. (Use the Resample option to change the sample.) There is more information on playback speed in Tutorial.

The speed can be entered in the usual units of hertz, kilohertz, microseconds delay, and two new options:

• Secs playtime This alters the play speed so that the sample plays in the specified number of seconds. This also changes the pitch of the sound.
• Times current The editable field contains a multiplier of Original speed. Thus, for a 12kHz sample, enter 0.5 to halve the play speed to 6kHz, or 2.0 to double it to 24 kHz.

Changing between the different options converts the value in the editable field to the nearest equivalent. For example, a value of 12kHz is changed to 166µs if you change the units to µs delay.

You can alter the value by:

• typing into the editable field
• dragging the slider
• pressing ­ or ¯to change the value in 1Hz steps
• pressing Shift - or Shift ¯ to change the value in 10Hz steps
• pressing Ctrl - or Ctrl ¯ to change the value in 100Hz steps
• pressing + or - to change the value in 1kHz steps

You may find that samples play too fast. Reduce the speed slightly to hear the sample correctly.

Lets you change to a different sample interpretation (Logarithmic, Linear Signed, Linear Unsigned, or µLaw Logarithmic) and format (8, 12, or 16 bits per sample).

The alter window has an "instant effect". That is, you can alter a sample's play speed or sample type even while it is playing. Click OK to make the change permanent or Cancel to revert to the previous settings.

If an imported sample sounds like radio-static, it is probably being played with an incorrect sample format. By choosing a new format from this dialogue box, you can usually find a format that 'looks right' in the sample display, and sounds much better.

Discriminating use of the alter window allows you to load just about any foreign sample and play it correctly, even if AudioWorks is unable to understand the sample file format.

Advanced use:

If you drag a file into this dialogue box to load it, then its type and play speed changes to the current settings, regardless of the settings saved in the file. This is a convenient way of loading a group of samples in a format unknown to AudioWorks, yet still default to the correct play speed and type.

Keyboard...

This option displays a piano keyboard.

If you have any samples loaded, the name of the current sample and its current play speed (in kilohertz) is displayed. As usual, you can change to a new sample by clicking on the menu icon and choosing a new sample.

You can play the keyboard either by clicking on it or by typing:

(For middle-C, press T or Space.)

If there is no sample loaded you can play the keyboard as a normal keyboard.

If there is a sample loaded:

• click on the keyboard to play the sample at different pitches.
• hold down Shift to play the keyboard.

Set mid C sets the play speed of the sample to the pitch of the last note you played with the keyboard.

Spectrum...

This opens a spectrum analyser window, which shows a real-time frequency-spectrum while a sample is playing. This operates upon the last sample that you played (or altered the speed of).

Clicking the Full icon (in the top right corner of the window) doubles the window size and doubles the number of frequencies displayed. However it also makes the update slower. (This is only a problem on Archimedes A300 and A400 series and A3000 computers fitted with ARM2 processors.) On ARM2 machines, the spectrum analyser is more useful if you turn the playback speed down, and quit from all those small applications that suck up desktop time (clocks and other constantly-updating displays are usually the prime culprits).

Closing the Oscilloscope (see below) also slightly speeds up the spectrum analyser. Pause a sample during playback if you wish to study the window for a longer time.

The size of the spectrum window is saved when you save the preferences. You can thus set the default size of the window by opening it to the size you wish and then saving the preferences.

Oscilloscope...

This window works in a similar fashion to the Spectrum window. It displays the waveform being played, like a conventional oscilloscope.

It runs faster if the Spectrum window is closed. As with the Spectrum window, the default size is saved when you save the preferences.

New sample

You can also open this dialogue box by Select-clicking on the AudioWorks icon on the icon bar.

Close All

This option is equivalent to closing the windows of all unmodified sound samples. It is convenient when browsing through a large number of samples (for example when searching your SoundTracker music collection for interesting samples) as you can load many samples in one go, check through them, then discard them all with one easy keypress.

Note that it only closes unmodified samples, and does not close tool windows such as Alter and Keyboard. It also hides the clipboard if this is showing.

Quit

When you have finished using AudioWorks, choose Quit from this menu. If you have not saved some of your sound samples, AudioWorks checks if you are sure you want to quit.

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