This is an article which I wrote to make some points clear about Digi-Studio. It is written rather less formally than the official sales blurb! I thought you might like to have the benefit it seeing it too. A copy of the mentioned sales blurb can be found in ADVERTS.DOC on this issue.¢-----------------------------------¢¢¢Well, Jeff's mail did eventually get to me, but I might as well explain a few things to other folks who may be unclear.¢¢Digi-Studio is being developed as a tool to allow people to use digitized sounds to create music. Currently 2 "packages" have been completed and released. "Package 1" contains 2 programs: the keyboard player and the tune player. "Package 1.5" contains 2 more programs: the sample editor and the tune compiler. Each package also contains lots of samples (20+ on each) and some tune files (5 on package 1 and 18 on package 1.5).¢¢Package 1¢---------¢The keyboard player is a program to allow you to play music "live" by using the standard computer keyboard. 3 octaves are allowed, but because of the limited number of keys on the keyboard, only 2 octaves are played at a time. The 3rd octave is accessed by using OPTION and START. 3 sounds are loaded into memory at a time, and you can change which sound you are playing in while you are playing music. It's your choice which 3 sounds you have in memory, but 3 default sounds are loaded during boot-up.¢¢The tune player allows you to play special tune files in any of the digitized sounds supplied in either package of Digi-Studio. Currently, tunes are only played in 1 sound. Again, the sound is up to you.¢¢Package 1.5¢-----------¢The sample editor lets you load in any sound sample and fiddle with it! You can reverse the sound, copy chunks of it to other parts of the sound, display the sound as a graph on the screen, and you can edit it very accurately by using a joystick to change speaker position values. This way you can also create your own sounds using "pages" which in this case represent 32 speaker positions. The manual for package 1.5 is very detailed about how sounds are played and what we mean by speaker positions. When you've created 1 or maybe a few pages you can use the various copying functions to create a whole sample which you can then save to disk and use as any other sound sample.¢¢The tune compiler is quite a simple program. It simply creates a Basic module for playing Digi-Studio tunes in Basic programs. Digi-Studio uses a small piece of machine code to play samples. From Basic, USR commands send values to this code to instruct it to play certain notes. The only other thing needed is timing, which is done using the system clock. If the language you are using has an equivalent to USR then you'll be OK! The Basic module created by this program works in both Atari Basic and Turbo-Basic, and possibly other versions of Basic.¢¢"Package 2" is still being developed. This will allow you to create your own Digi-Studio tune files. This package is quite a task to write, and will require more expert help in the music field. Expected release: later this year.¢¢¢Prices¢------¢Package 1 only costs 5pounds in the UK and 7pounds elsewhere. Packages 1 and 1.5 together costs 8pounds in the UK and 10pounds elsewhere. Package 1.5 is not being sold on its own, because it doesn't really have much use on its own. All payments must be made in UK funds using and IMO. I have posted the official sales info on the net many times so I'm not going to bore you with it again! However, if by some chance, you haven't seen this then mail me and I'll mail you a copy.¢¢Hope this helps! Dean Garraghty. djg0@aber.ac.uk or djg0@uk.ac.aber¢¢
