Digi-Studio -- What it is and how¢we did it.¢¢Article by Dean Garraghty.¢¢Most News-Disk subscribers should have received details of Digi-Studio, but this article is designed to tell you a little more about it, and also a bit about what went on "behind the scenes" during development.¢¢¢Part 1 - About Digi-Studio.¢---------------------------¢¢ Digi-Studio is my latest commercial software release. It is another digitized sound manipulator, but is far more advanced than its predecessors.¢¢ The main feature of Digi-Studio is that it plays samples in real musical pitch, over a 3 octave range. The keyboard player also has fully responsive keys. This basically means that the sound will only play for as long as you hold the key down. This is exactly how synthesizers work, and pianos to some extent (the sound here still lingers after releasing the key). This feature means that you can play real music using the keyboard like a piano keyboard. Digi-Studio also allows you to have 3 samples in memory at once, and you can change the playback sample very easily while actually playing music. Another feature added to Digi-Studio, is that samples are wiped before new ones are loaded. This avoids the overlapping which was a problem with the old DMS.¢¢ At present, only the keyboard player and the tune player are available to the public. The song editor is still in development (more on this in section 2). The tune player will play pre-programmed tune files using any of the samples on the Digi-Studio disk. Five tunes are supplied with Digi-Studio for you to play.¢¢ The keyboard player and tune player are currently being sold as "package 1". Also supplied are about 25 samples of all types with lots of synth sounds, animal sounds, churchbells, a baby crying, and lots of other sounds. The manual has been printed using Daisy Dot 3, and is supplied as an A5 booklet with a nice green stiff cover. The manual is quite detailed, though only 6 pages long.¢¢ Package 1 with DS/SD disk, A5 manual, and P&P costs 5pounds. It is only available direct from me. Side 2 of the News-Disk (the catalogue disk) contains a copy of the official sales blurb along with an order form. If you are unable to print the form out, then just write your order on paper and send it with your cheque/PO.¢¢¢Part 2 - Behind the scenes!¢---------------------------¢¢ Well now we've got the sales pitch out of the way, I can go on to talk about what went on during the development of Digi-Studio, and also what is planned for the future.¢¢ In the summer of 1990, I decided that DMS just wasn't up to much! I knew that I needed to get round the problem of not having real pitch. Solving this problem proved to be easier than I first thought! In fact, the clue came from the crummy 800XL manual supplied with the machine. The relationship formula between frequency and time is what I needed. Unfortunately, the Replay M/C player routine was just not up to coping with this. Stuck again!¢¢ Soon after, though, I got a copy of the new Antic Sampling Processor. The M/C player with this was radically different to Replay's. It could do exactly what I needed it to with little modification.¢¢ The next step was to work out count-down times for each sound frequency. My first thought was to use the 800XL manual again. This hada diagram of pitches and the corresponding number for the Basic SOUND command. Theoretically, these would be what I needed. Wrong! Some worked, some didn't! I needed help!¢¢ At this point I employed the help of David Robinson. He's an old friend of mine from way back. He's currently a 3rd year student in maths at Hull University. But, his musical talents run just as far. He's an accomplished organist, and is highly qualified in music theory. We spent days working out these count-down values! Some were still not right, and it was time for us to depart to University (me for the first time!) The small holidays at Christmas and Easter aren't long enough to do any serious work, so we put Digi-Studio on ice until the next summer holiday.¢¢ Summer 1991 came, and back to work we went. We finally worked out a complete set of pitch values! Back in summer 1990 we started writing a tune editor, but hit problems, so many of the early test routines were hard coded in Basic. One thing we managed to do last year, was to sample plenty of sounds, so we didn't spend to long this year sampling. One thing I realized this year was that I wouldn't be able to use the ASP code because of copyright reasons. So I had to write my own M/C play routines! This was perhaps the hardest part of writing Digi-Studio! It drove me up the wall! The finished code contained the techniques used in the ASP code, but without directly ripping code off. It also had to remain compatible with Replay samples.¢¢ Because we hit problems with the song editor, we decided to work on a keyboard player. These are easy to write, and would also give usa chance to make sure that the pitch values we worked out really were correct! But, it still had the same problems as DMS did. You had to specify in advance how long each note would play for. This just wasn't acceptable anymore. It was at this point that I remembered a program in Computer and Video Games magazine from 1985, which dealt with the volume only sound technique. So I dug through the archives and found the article, and also a copy on disk. The answer was in there, and my M/C player code only needed a little tweaking to do it! This is why Digi-Studio has two player programs on the disk - one for the keybaord player, and the other for the tune player.¢¢ The early test version of the keyboard player was a bit primitive. You had to have your sample (only 1 allowed!) in the correct part of memory beforehand, and had to run another program to load in a new one. You also had to make sure you had the correct M/C player routine loaded. It didn't have any pretty front-end, or menu like it has now. Only when we were satisfied that it worked, did I add the menu and load options and add the 3 sample banks option.¢¢ Then I realized that we had some tunes ready with our very primitive song editor, and that it would be nice to include them with Digi-Studio. So, I wrote a song player which didn't take too long. This is just meant as a taster for what is to come.¢¢ The next problem we encountered was the fact that everything was written in Turbo-Basic, which is PD. We wouldn't be able to charge for this, and may not even be allowed to put it on the Digi-Studio disk. But, as long as we made it known that Turbo was being supplied as a freebie then we'd be OK.¢¢ At the end of the summer we had all the development done, and lots of samples, so you'd probably think that would be it! Wrong! There was the dreaded manual to write. I started this in late September. The first draft was scribbled on paper, adding a bit each time I had a spare minute. After it was ready on paper, I typed it up using Atariwriter. I printed it out on my XMM801, and I thought it was good. Wrong again! I gave it to a mate to proof-read (Thanks to Mike Watson for this) who pulled it to pieces! Lots needed doing to it. His first reaction was "What? It's gonna look like THIS!!". I had to rethink presentation, and contents! Several drafts later and it was ready. Presentation was still a problem, so I printed it using Daisy Dot 3 and it looked quite good. The cover was done using the little DTP on PD100. Not really much of a job for a DTP, but it looks OK!¢¢ It was now looking likely that I would be able to release it at AMS5 in November. So, out came the programs for tidying, out came all the samples and tunes (at this point Digi-Studio was on about 15 disks!), and a master disk was created. A little intro was done (the nice little scrolling bit at during boot up!), and there it was. The next step was to create a release master, the difference being that the programs are protected. This caused problems in Turbo-Basic, so a compromise had to be used. And there it was. Pre-release copies were sent to Mike Blenkiron and Mark Keates about 5 days before the show. Thanks to Mark for his radical suggested changes to the manual, but 5 days before release is NOT the time to make changes!!¢¢ Then it suddenly struck me. The manuals hadn't been printed. So, the day before the show I turned up at Kall Kwik printing in Doncaster with a pile of A4 printouts, and asked them to turn them into A5 booklets to be ready the same day - caused a few laughs did that one! "What colour would you like the cover?", he said. Err, woops! I had no idea! So out came samples of the available colours. I just closed my eyes and picked a colour at random! Yes, lots of thought and consideration goes into my manuals!!¢¢ Digi-Studio was officially released at AMS5. We had a machine playing it all day, and we had quite a bit of positive feedback. Thanks to all those who parted with their cash!¢¢ Currently, the song editor is still in production. We are hoping for a release in the summer.¢¢ I have very nearly finished a sample editor, to allow samples to be changed and new ones created using a joystick and sample patterns on the screen. It also allows you to reverse parts of the sample, and copy chunks around to create some really weird samples! Release of this will be in a couple of months. This disk will also contain more samples and tunes, along with a utility to allow you to put tunes in your own Basic programs.¢
