From: Teijo Kinnunen

OctaMED Soundstudio is approaching completion. This is a short overview
of the new features it will offer, and what will happen in the future.

New features
============

* Mixing

Without doubt, the most significant and exciting new feature in OctaMED
Soundstudio will be the new player mode called '1-64 Channel Mixing'.
As it says, this mode can handle up to 64 virtual channels. It is mostly
independent of what kind of audio playback hardware is available, allowing
rather easy support of different sound cards. All PC trackers use "mixing",
and while there has been some work on the Amiga, I hope OctaMED will be the
first tracker providing it for the Amiga on larger scale.

Instructions on just how you save directly to disk will be in the full
release version, no point in placing it here as this is a non save demo
and even if we tell you how to do it, "nothing" will happen!!

How does this mode differ from the old 8 channel mode of OctaMED? Well,
it requires more CPU power... And that's the only drawback! The list of
advantages is much longer. The old 8 channel modes have many restrictions,
which are gone with the new mixing routine, it actually removes many
restrictions which exist in the four channel mode, too. For example, the
octave range has been extended by three octaves (one above and two below
the old three octave range). I think many people will also appreciate the
possibility to store samples in fast memory (in fact, they _should_ be
stored in fast memory for optimal performance). Each track can also have
its own pan position (in stereo mode), and there's a player command to
change it.

You can also finally store the module (or parts of it) onto disk directly
as digital sample data. This could be used, for example, for creating a drum
loop sample by constructing it with several tracks, and then saving it...
the resulting sample only takes one channel and it can be used anywhere.
A special "Smoothing" switch is available for recording onto disk. It
filters unwanted frequencies away, resulting better audio quality than what
you would get in 4 channel mode. On the 68060, it's useful in real-time
playing, as well :-)

The fact that the audio data is mixed by the processor also opens exciting
possibilities for performing digital signal processing at the same time.
OctaMED Soundstudio offers digital 'Echo' and 'Cross Echo' in real time. I
hope to extend the array of DSP functions in the future PC versions.

What kind of Amiga do you need to fully utilize this new mode? First I'd
say that any 68000-based Amiga is far too slow. An A1200 is the minimum,
and you had better have some fast memory, too. Any 68030-based Amiga or
higher will do well, I suppose. Fast memory is recommended in any case.

* Notation improved

The notation front-end was missing in OctaMED V6. It's now back, and
improved from what it was. It works in a bit different way than it used
to. First, the number of staves can be 1, 16, or anything between. Their
width and space between them can be changed, as well as how many measures
you want to display on a line. Each stave can be assigned to display one
or more tracks. Some more improvements exist too, the symbols look better
now and there's an alto clef available, for example.

Some people have been longing for a professional quality notation editor.
Such an editor won't probably ever appear in OctaMED. It would be
practically impossible to cross professional notation with tracking, and
the result would probably be a big kludge that nobody is satisfied with.
For professional quality notation, OctaMED songs can be exported as MIDI
files to a dedicated notator program.

* ARexx triggering

OctaMED V6 could receive ARexx messages and perform the requested
operations. Soundstudio will also be able to send messages, and this can
happen in response to a player command in a song. Up to 255 messages can
be defined, and besides sending messages to an ARexx-capable program,
it's possible to launch ARexx scripts or just external programs. Could be
useful for multimedia use, in e.g. controlling other programs in sync with
the tune currently playing.

* FastMem playing

A much requested feature, it's possible to play samples from fast memory in
all modes, not only in mixing mode. An old restriction, namely the maximum
sample length of 131072 bytes suddenly disappears when FastMem playing is
activated...

* Replacing notes/commands

This little feature allows one to search through all notes for a note/command
combination (with masking), and replace all matching notes with another note/
command. This can be useful, for example, when converting MIDI drum set
mappings. For another example, all 0F commands could be discarded in seconds.

* New MIDI control change commands

Sending control change commands in OctaMED V6 and before involved two player
commands; command 05 for setting the controller number and command 00 for
setting the new value. There's now an easier solution - commands 3cxx can
be used for setting a new value using a single command. In 3cxx, 'c' (1-F)
stands for a predefined controller number, and 'xx' is the new value.

* Default directories

When loading songs or instruments, OctaMED used to initially display the
contents of PROGDIR: when opening the requester. The default directories
can be changed as of Soundstudio... Simple but convenient.

* Miscellaneous

The above features were the most significant changes since V6, but they are
not the only ones. I could mention, for example, that there's a menu item
to open an AmigaShell window, the Song Annotation window can be displayed
automatically when loading a song that has an annotation text etc... But
you can see the rest when OctaMED Soundstudio is released, and I hope you
will like it.


Bug fixes
=========

As most of the problems discovered in V6 have been fixed already in its
several revisions, there aren't any worth mentioning in Soundstudio.


Future
======

OctaMED Soundstudio is most likely the very last major release on the Amiga.
Despite the fact that Amigas are being produced again, the future does not
seem to be bright. Therefore, it really makes sense to continue development
on PCs, which is the dominating computer platform today.

Of course, the aim is to keep OctaMED bug-free, so any bugs in the Amiga
version will still be fixed as soon as possible. Otherwise the development
will be more or less halted, and OctaMED Soundstudio may remain as my
testament for the Amiga community.

On the other hand, the destination platform of the PC version will be
Win 95/NT. I know many Amiga users may have cold thoughts about Microsoft,
but it's the fact that Windows _is_ the dominating operating system. If
you can't beat the enemy, you have to join them... :-)
I don't even own a PC yet, so I can't go into details at the moment, but
the first PC version will probably contain the same features as the Amiga
version of OctaMED Soundstudio. Some parts simply can't be ported, though.
There's no ARexx for Windows, for example.

I do have plans for the future. In particular, there are two major features
I'd like to see in OctaMED some day. First is the ability to store free-form
MIDI data (instead of quantized, one note per track). The second is a
built-in (FM) synthesizer for creating complex, absolutely noiseless
instruments. It may take years until they are reality, what I know for sure
is that they won't appear on the first PC version, but who knows then...

-------

OK, Here is some info on the new notation editor side of things.....


When you choose "Notation Editor" the notation window and a tools
window will open.

The Tools window contains all the note symbols (as in OctaMED V2-V5).
Clicking one of the symbol sets the Length/lines value (line corresponds
to one tracker line), which can be set manually as well.

The main notation window has 3 scroller gadgets. Gadgets on the right and
bottom borders allow scrolling in the notation area, if it's larger than
the window. The gadget on the left allows one to scroll within the song
(there are two modes, see Display Setup window below).
This window should be in sync with Tracker Editor, i.e. the current line
displayed in the Tracker Editor should be always visible on the notation
editor as well.

Staff Setup Window allows one to set/modify staff-specific settings.
Functions in the upper part should be self-explanatory.
Space Above/Below (both in pixels) allow one to set the vertical space
allocated for that staff. Notes are drawn only in that vertical area,
and clipped if required.
With "Clef" you can choose any of the three clefs.
Offs/oct allows one to transpose the staff display up or down. For
example, in songs using MIDI or mixing, the octaves normally in use are
higher than C-1->B-3 as in 4 ch songs. This slider can be used to
compensate this.
Def. Instr will affect entering notes. If a staff has a non-zero
Def. Instr setting, then this instrument will be automatically selected
whenever a note is entered (or played) on that staff. Usually each
staff corresponds to one instrument, this option makes editing much
easier in that case.

Assign Tracks must be used every time when you want to
display anything more than empty staves. You can choose a staff for
each "physical" tracker track. You can place several tracker tracks
on a staff.
You can also choose which kind of stem is used for each track.
(If two tracks are placed on a staff, they can be differentiated by
their stems.) Up & Down are self-evident, Auto means that both stems
can be used (the break point is the middle B, as usual).

Signatures contains the key and time signature settings.
The time signature should be self-explanatory. Key signature can
also be anything from bbbbbb to ######. "Harmonical minor scale" only
affects entering/playing notes, if it's set, then a minor scale is
assumed and the seventh note of the scale is sharp (in contrast with
natural scale in which it isn't).

Display Setup has some general settings about the display:
Display Width is the width of the notation area in pixels. It can
vary between 301 - 9999.
Display Staff Names can be used to hide staff names...
Measures/line (try!). Here "line" means the notation display, not
a tracker line.
Positioning Mode defines the behaviour of the scroller gadget on the
left. "Block-based" means that you can browse through blocks in the
order they appear to be in memory (there are often more than one
screenful of notes per block). "Song linear" means that you can
browse the *song*, i.e. the block in the order they appear in the
playing sequence. Some blocks may be displayed several times (if they
appear several times in the sequence), and some may not be displayed
at all. All depends on the playing sequence.

Editing

The tools window contains notes and rests you can select for editing.
Length (lines) displays the length (in tracker lines) of the selected
note/rest. 'Line/Note' display below this gadget displays the current
tracker line/note when entering notes.

Next to these gadgets, there's display + a slider gadget for selecting
the track. (More than one track can be assigned to a staff.)
The first item of the display ('S1' etc.) is the number of the staff
currently being edited. You can select the staff by clicking on it
(or the area next to it) in the notation display. 'Trk 1/2: 3' (for
example) shows that there are two tracks assigned to the current stave
and the first of them is being edited. '3' is the number of the
corresponding tracker track. The slider gadget allows one to choose
the track which is being edited.

You must have 'Edit' on before you can enter anything!

Printing

Before printing, you have to choose the range. The numbers represent
notation displays, not blocks or sequences. (The current positioning
mode is respected.) The sequence of operations is:
1) Scroll the notation editor display the desired beginning of the
   range
2) Click 'Set' beside the 'Start'-gadget.
3) Scroll the editor display to the end of the range.
4) Click 'Set' beside 'End'.
5) Print...

You can abort the printing by pressing 'Stop' at any time. However, you
may need to reset the printer after that to flush its buffer.

-Teijo