Tired of the silence emitted by your Mac while you work? Don’t have a CD drive to pipe in music with? Ambiance is an application designed to play random and/or looped sound effects while you work with other programs. Ambiance comes with several “sound collections,” including bird calls, ocean surf, coughs and sniffles, and so on.
How Does It Work?
When launched by itself, Ambiance can be configured to look for a default file or choose from a folder of collections for sounds to play. If no such file is readily available, you can manually “Open” a collection from the “File” menu. Ambiance can be set to fall into the background when first opened so it can be conveniently launched from the “Startup Items” folder or from HyperCard or AppleScript. This can be overridden by holding down the command key while opening the application. You can find out more about using Ambiance by using Balloon Help on the menus. Sounds are played “asynchronously” so that performance is not seriously affected, and longer sounds will not tie up your machine.
What Does It Need And Offer?
Ambiance requires System 7. Sound Manager 3.0 is strongly recommended for looped sounds. Otherwise, any Mac running the above should be able to use Ambiance without any problems. Needing only 48k of memory itself, Ambiance will cooperate with other programs that are multi-tasking aware. The application takes advantage of dynamic (aka temporary) memory, so Ambiance’s memory partition should never have to be adjusted except in extreme cases. Ambiance supports the required Apple Events. The application is customizable based on the sound collections that it can open.
Why Ambiance?
Ambiance was inspired by a system extension written by Ted Lowery called “Tweety.” However, being an extension, it was problematic with the extensions I already had installed. So, I wrote my own program to do the same thing, only more system friendly. Unlike an extension, you can start it up or turn it off without a reboot.
How Much Will It Cost Me?
Like other software I have written, Ambiance is “Barterware.” If you have paid for shareware before, it is free. If you haven’t, pay someone. (Me, maybe?) If you write shareware, I would appreciate you waving the shareware fee of one program that you wrote. You don’t have to personally send me a copy, but let me know how I can get a copy via the Internet.
How I Can I Contact You?
As I write this, my current e-mail address is…
mailto:dcourtn@opie.bgsu.edu
During the summer, I have difficulty getting e-mail, so I can be snail-mailed at…
Des Courtney
1411 Park Street
Findlay, Ohio 45840
You can find out more about other software I’ve written by visiting my Web site…
http://nether.net/~dcourtn/www
Disclaimers
Des Courtney, or Flair Diversions, cannot be held responsible for any possible damage or loss of productivity (read: daydreaming) caused by the application “Ambiance” to the software, hardware, or “wetware” used to execute it. In some states, however, the previous statement might not apply. Ambiance can be bundled with disk collections or CD-ROMs provided you have secured permission from me first. Likewise, profit-based use of my program is forbidden without such permission.
Version History
1.6
Ambiance can now be set to choose a random file from the default file’s folder
Added a mute option
A file no longer has to be closed for temporary silence
