AweVBank is the explorer to your AWE32/64, SBLive or Emu APS sound card. Everything you can do in the Explorer with files, can be done in AweVBank with patches. You can copy/paste/drag them. This gives you a very intuitive way of working with patches on your sound card and hard disk/CD-ROM.
The basic idea for using a computer to make music is to have all your sound data at your fingertip. If you need a sound, you want to use it without much work. If you need to change the characteristics of a sound (or patch) you just want to change it and not go through all the trouble of creating a new sound file.
For this purpose AweVBank introduces so called Virtual SoundFonts. With Virtual SoundFonts you can save all your data on a per song basis. Only the information about patches is saved. The sample data of the patch still stays in its original place, ready to use for your next song.
You want to compose your own song and need a set of strings and a good brass-section. The strings are in a file called 'classic1.sf2', the brass section is located in 'brass.sf2'. Also you would like to have a very long release time for the Volume Envelope of the brass section. And there is a MOD file that has exactly the rock-organ you need ...
The normal way of doing this would be creating a new SF2 file with your favorite editor and put all the instruments into that file. Also you would very likely need a good conversion program to get the MOD sample into your SF2-bank. After this process you would load the file into the Awe and use it. But then you note that the Release time does not fit exactly for your song and the MOD-piano is a little to bright ...
Well, you would select your source-files ('classic1.sf2', 'brass.sf2' and the MOD-file) and simply drag the patches you need directly into your sound card. Then you would simply change some of the Envelope Parameters in the built in editor and ...
That's it!
The best is that you can do all this while you're sequencer is still running. So if the brass section you chose is not the right one, just select another SF2 (or mod or wav or ...) file and get this patch. You can even let your sequencer play a loop and choose the patches you need.
Also you can save those Virtual SoundFonts and use them later, when you again edit this song. You have then again exactly the same patches, FX etc. for your project. And when your song is finished you can export your Virtual SoundFont to one single SF2 file (including all the WAVs, MODs etc.).
As the sample-data is still in it's original place you can edit them with the best tools you have. AweVBank has an option that it always looks if any of the used files has been changed and reloads those patches automatically.
Parameters you change do not effect the original patch source. So you can use the same SF2 file for more then one song, without having to create new SoundFont file for each new flavor.
You don't need those 16 MB anymore on your AWE soundcard, cause you are able to load just those patches you really need, and don't have to load a full SoundFont only to use one patch.
Via it's unique plugin interface you can load sample data directly from a various list of sound formats.
With the DSP properties of each patch you can quickly adjust frequencies, volumes etc.
With automatic tempo adjustment you can easily fit all your loops into as song that uses a different tempo.
If you want to find out more about AweVBank 98 visit www.megota.com and download your free trial copy.