kdd@well.UUCP (Keith David Doyle) (10/02/86)
References:
[...............]
Bought the SoundScape audio digitizer by Mimetics last weekend, and I
find I am somewhat dissapointed in the accompanying software and manuals.
There are several bugs, lots of things it can't do that I would expect
such a product to do etc., and I've found that the IFF standard for
sound sampled instruments to be considerably lacking. Here are the
particulars:
1. There is no VU indication, that is, how loud you are recording
the sample. I can't tell if the levels are reasonable or not except
by comparing with other sounds previously recorded. So far I have
had some difficulty recording my own sounds to be as loud as typical
Instant Music sounds. I don't usually find out until I've imported
the sound into Instant Music and boot it up and try it.
2. There is no ability to adjust a 'pretrigger' delay. You can set a
trigger threshold, but if it's too sensitive, it triggers immediately
and if it's less sensitive, you *lose* the beginning attack of the
sound. You should be able to set a delay that will allow you to get
the entire attack portion of the sound.
3. There appears to be no ability to *edit* the captured sound to something
smaller. You can set the start point, loop start and end, but it
dosen't seem to make the sample any smaller. With no ability to adjust
a pretrigger delay, I'd like to capture a bigger buffer giving me time
to 'catch' the sound and editing the start and end points down to size
but it's not set up to do that. Thus, sounds become to large and blow
Instant Music out of the water.
4. In fact, you can only set the sample length at capture time, it seems
to be fixed at that from then on.
5. When using with Instant Music, I find that typically the sound is much
too low frequency (bass) to fit in the same range as the rest of the
Instant Music instruments. I end up deleting the lower octaves out of
the sample, and usually keep deleting until even the original unconverted
sample is deleted for being too low pitch, until I can get it to work
reasonably with Instant Music. Instant Music seems to adjust what octaves
are used based on what octaves are defined in the sample (as far as I can
tell). I loaded one of the Instant Music instruments into the sampler
program, and using it as a model re-created the samples with a home-made
sound, and after importing it back into Instant Music, found it was still
much to bassy to be useful and had to go back and delete lower octaves.
Maybe I don't know how it is supposed to work here, but then there are
no doc's in either program that seem to help.
6. There seems to be an undocumented feature (maybe it corrects one of the
problems I have been having?) On the sampling window, there is a gadget
to the right of the copy/convert/microphone set that toggles from an icon
of a little waveform to an icon of a straight line waveform, but I haven't
been able to figure out what it does. Doc's don't seem to mention it.
7. The program sets the pointer up to be a little barred pair of musical notes
in solid BLACK with no outline, though with a little red dot in one of the
notes. The preferences on my workbench were set up for a black background
screen which made the pointer almost invisible (except for the red dot).
In addition, the pointer takes effect at ALL TIMES while the program is
running, even if you select another window. Not too friendly.
8. When you select LOAD, it forces disk label 'SoundScape:' ALWAYS the first
time you start the program up. You then have to cancel when it asks for
it and then retype the disk name to 'df0:' or something. Since I like to
put the utility on several disks (to accompany several sets of captured
files), I have to go through this exercise all the time unless I want to
name them all 'SoundScape:'. This is also one of the few complaints I have
of Dpaint.
9. When you SAVE, it asks you IFF or Mimetics format, but will use the
exact same name, and if you can't remember which format it is, will make
it somewhat more confusing when you try to import into other programs.
10. At one point, after playing with a sound sample for awhile, I
did an IFF save, and the program went off writing to disk until
it was full (over 400k). Tried this several times, and after
deleting a few more files, figure that this is a bug where it
never realizes it's done till the disk fills up. Imagine trying
this on a hard disk! The data was nowhere near 400k large.
11. On somewhat larger samples, (low octave 32k or 64k) I found that
Instant Music would crash upon loading. (this is probably Instant
Music's bug, not Mimetics).
12. The software won't let you play a single sound sample continuously
over several octaves. It will only play a single sample over one
octave, you have to 'convert' samples to other octaves if you want to
play them there, and they then take up more memory space. Though the
fidelity may be better that way (only if they do some smart interpolation
when they convert to lower octaves I suppose) I'd still like the ability
to keep playing the sample slower and faster to cover a wider range if the
software would let me. I know the hardware can do it, I've done it
with my own software. (note: they do provide a High/Low option that
halves the playback speed of all the octaves, but you can't do that
naturally down the keyboard as you are playing.)
14. There is no 'delete' of the sample for an octave that I've been able to
discover, though you can 'copy' the sample for an undefined octave and
seems to produce the desired effect. Not very user friendly though, I
don't always know which octaves have been defined, and the software won't
tell you. You can play them on the keyboard and try to figure it out
that way, but again, not too friendly.
15. There is no documentation on how to talk to the sampler with your own
software, and no device drivers supplied so that you can use the D/A
conversion for other purposes. (Does anyone know if Futuresound supplies
such?) If you want to write your own software to make things better,
it's time to get the disassemblers out.
What the Mimetics SoundScape digitizer DOES do:
Well, just got my MIDI keyboard over the weekend, and it turns out that it
just plugs in and works, and pretty good (SURPRISE, I didn't figure it would
because the software dosen't seem to open the serial device, as I don't think
it is even on my disk). And, it turns out that having no pretrigger delay
adjustment dosen't really make it as useless as I thought. It turns out that
for the most part, you want to catch the sample somewhere into the attack
portion of the sound, because otherwise, there is a little too much delay
when you're playing a key on the MIDI keyboard and when the attack actually
occurs. I still think it ought to have a pretrigger delay adjustment,
as there are a couple of sounds that I found just wouldn't work because
some of the attack was lost because it occured before the trigger. Still,
after using it a bit more, I do find it is getting much of the job done,
at least as far as instrument sampling is concerned. Basically, that is
what the program is good for at this point. The fact that Mimietics has
decided (as I have) that the standard IFF sample sound format is useless and
have implemented their own is good in at least the package provides features
you won't be able to get in a strictly IFF compatible program. I used the
package to setup a 'sound effect' keyboard that had a different sampled
effect on each octave of the keyboard, with all of them having a relatively
long duration, something that I guess you wouldn't be able to do within
the 8SVX IFF format. As an example, study the 'DrumKit' instrument on
Instant Music, and you find that all of the sounds on the high register
are of very short duration. I tried to replace the snare drum sound with
a better one, and found that the sample length was so short that I didn't
have enough time to fit one in.
I think you ought to be able to set different looping points and envelopes
at each octave, while the Mimentics format seems to use the same settings
for all the samples in a given file. In addition, it would be nice to be
able to 'cut & paste' samples from different files to allow one to construct
a file with various instruments on different parts of the keyboard. I might
like strings with a long attack on the low part of the keyboard and a piano
sound with quick attack on the upper part of the keyboard, and though I can
save those sounds seperately, I can't combine them unless I sample them both
at the same time, or at least re-sample one of them on top of a previously
loaded file. If I digitize two sounds at different times and save
them seperately, then later want to combine them, I'm SOL without banging
out some new software.
The package seems to respond to MIDI no matter WHAT channel you're sending
on. I changed the MIDI channel on my keyboard all over the place, and still
the package was responding. It's possible that I haven't fully figured out
how my keyboard works, and am doing something wrong, but it didn't seem so.
I would imagine this would be a big problem if I had other MIDI devices in
my system. I was pleasantly surprised though, to discover that SoundScape
does understand velocity information coming from the MIDI keyboard, and
there is an adjustment for sensitivity here. There also is tuning controls
so you can transpose a sample, but I think this information is only saved out
with the Mimetics format and not with IFF though I haven't fully explored
this.
Looping is pretty difficult. I found it almost impossible to eliminate
the repetitive nature of the cycling of the loop, and when samples are
simply converted to the higher octaves, the problem gets worse because
the loop times are shorter and therefore more noticable, up to the point
where the loop cycling frequency takes over the character of the sound
completely. I'm not sure how one SHOULD solve this problem, perhaps with
some sophisticated waveform processing (FFT or filtering or who-knows-what?)
as even if the sound amplitude is fairly constant, there usually is some kind
of phase-shifting kind of component that produces a noticable cycling. If
someone has seen the Mimetics Pro-Midi-Studio and knows if there are features
that might fix some of these problems, please let us all know. In addition,
if there are some MIDI experts out there who know what some of the pitfalls
of MIDI packages that omit important features are, or a good checklist of
*must have* features I'm sure such information would be useful in evaulating
what is going to be a package worth buying.
*** IFF FLAMES ! ! ***
1. In the IFF 8SVX file format, There seems to be no pitch adjustment that
would fix the fact that the source sound might only be available at one
pitch. Without some playback speed adjustment parameter in the file to
compensate for this, one would have to do some pretty kludgy re-sampling
of the sound to adjust the pitch. If there *are* such adjustments (I
haven't completely scoured the IFF specs) it seems that nobody is using
them (read: Instant Music is the only IFF compatible program I've used
so far). I'm still exploring this issue.
2. Apparently IFF forces the sample waveform length of each octave to be
related. That is, if the middle octave is 200 samples, then the next
higher octave MUST BE 100 SAMPLES long and the lower octave 400 samples.
GIVE ME A BREAK! In cases like the Instant Music Drumkit, each octave has
a completely different sound. Wouldn't it be nice if the snare sound
samples didn't have to be related to the cymbal sample length? Or the
sample frequency either for that matter. In fact, has anybody noticed
that there *isn't* really a cymbal sound in the DrumKit? Well, that's
because a cymbal has a much longer duration than the *clack* sound that
they are using and wouldn't fit it that octave in the IFF format. They
could have put cymbals down low (below the kick drum I suppose) but then
that might seem somewhat illogical as cymbals seem like a higher pitch and
should be somewhere at the top of the register instead of at the bottom.
WHAT A CROCK! And, I'd like to be able to strech the pitch over whatever
range necessary to cover the pitch I'm trying to generate. If I start
getting aliasing noise from trying to play a high flute sample at a
very low pitch, FINE, I won't use it if it's objectionable. At least
I want that option.
3. Also note that Musicraft dosen't use IFF instruments, so you may not be
able to use SoundScape or similar products to produce files for that
program. Music Studio won't allow MIDI keyboard *input* so you can't
capture what you're playing, and to me that makes it pretty useless as
I really don't have much use for standard music notation. Or at least
I expect a package to automate it's generation for me by letting me
bang the score out on a synthesizer type keyboard. I suppose there's a
slight chance that Musicraft instruments might be compatible with the
SoundScape program, but there's no documented information and I haven't
tried all of the combinations yet.
*** end IFF flames ***
At any rate, if any of youse out there end up with Mimetics Pro Midi Studio,
or DeluxeMusic or other such products, please post a review as some of us out
here are frothing at the mouth for a good package and am a little tired of
getting burnt by packages that don't quite do what common sense seemed to
imply they ought to do. (I can't help it, sometimes I just have no sales
resistance. You know,... when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.)
Thanx,
Keith Doyle
# {ucbvax,ihnp4,decvax}!trwrb!cadovax!keithd
# cadovax!keithd@ucla-locus.arpa
"Paying to know what I really think"kdd@well.UUCP (Keith David Doyle) (10/02/86)
[........]
After a little further investigation into the IFF 8SVX format, I find that
it apparently DOES provide for envelope information. Still, the SoundScape
manual explicitly states that no envelope is saved when you do an IFF save
with their software. My guess is that some developers are lazy and may
only implement a minimum version of IFF. In addition, the 8SVX standard
implies that you would use multiple 8SVX types to achive different instruments
on each octave. This implies that the features I'd like to see CAN be
done within the IFF format, but again, maybe some developers are too lazy
to use the standard. It's unfortunate that the IFF image standards are
being so widely adopted (to the benifit of us all in a myriad of ways)
yet the IFF sound standard may be falling throught the cracks.
In fact, after closer investigation of the IFF spec, MOST of the required
features are documented, though the restriction of all octaves being
multiples (i.e. low octave = 400 samples, next = 200 samples high = 100
samples etc.) does appear to hold. I can't imagine WHY such a restriction
might exist. Still, a standard that is not being used is as good as no
standard (sigh).
Keith Doyle
{ihnp4,decvax,ucbvax}!trwrb!cadovax!keithdbj@well.UUCP (Jim Becker) (10/02/86)
Isn't it so easy to take the work of people and degrade it and tell others that it is incomplete. Those that are just users of software have free reign to expound about all the things that the software DOESN'T do without realizing the amount of work that went into the product for the state that is is in. Software is an imperfect world, the best for some doesn't cut it with others. If you are so high an mighty with what you think is best lets see you create it -- I hope it pleases all but I will await the word from your peers. Let's enjoy more and criticize less.... please. -Jim Becker
kdd@well.UUCP (Keith David Doyle) (10/04/86)
[..................] >Isn't it so easy to take the work of people and degrade it and tell others >that it is incomplete. Those that are just users of software have free reign >to expound about all the things that the software DOESN'T do without realizing >the amount of work that went into the product for the state that is is in. >Software is an imperfect world, the best for some doesn't cut it with others. >If you are so high an mighty with what you think is best lets see you create >it -- I hope it pleases all but I will await the word from your peers. >Let's enjoy more and criticize less.... please. >-Jim Becker Now wait a minute... What I did (or at least thought I did) was post a REVIEW of a product, so that other people might learn from my experiences with it. If it seemed like a *flame* well, that's perhaps because I had some problems with it. If more people posted *critiques*, even *opinionated* ones, perhaps more of us would end up spending our hard earned money on software packages that do what we need them to do, and bypassing ones that may not be so useful. For the most part, the only way to find out whether or not a product is useful enough to be worth the money, you have to buy it and use it for a week or two. Unfortunately, by that time you've already shelled out. In a relatively new marketplace where everyone is hungry for new products and software developers know it and hurry to crank out something into the market window, I think it is important that people say what they think about these packages, *however opinionated* in SOME kind of attempt to compensate for less than optimal product quality. So far, I think that the one thing that hurts the Amiga marketplace right now most is, the quick and dirty programs proliferating and obscuring the really good ones. I'm not complaining so much about BUGGY programs, though I'm not crazy about them particularly, I know how hard it is to find that *famous last bug*. What I'm complaining about are programs that appear *unfinished* or are lacking in major important features. How would you feel if you bought a spreadsheet that knew how to add, subtract, and multiply, but didn't have divide? Or couldn't save your work after you were finished with it? Would you just *lie back and enjoy it*? Or would you attempt to let other people know what the product is like *in your opinion* (who's else do you have?) so that perhaps someone else might learn from your experience *before* they buy it? I find that magazine reviews are many times 1) very very late, and/or 2) biased in favor of the product because the company is an advertiser. If we had a 'consumer reports' for Amiga software that could get the info out to us shortly after the product is on the shelves, then maybe I could *lie back and enjoy it*. Otherwise, everytime I buy a product and have something to say about it *you're likely to hear from me*. Why? Because I'm mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. Don't give me this *those that can't, talk* kind of bullshit. That implies that if someone can't write programs he has nothing to say about the quality of the ones he buys. If we all took that attitude, we'd all have to shut up and nobody would ever learn anything. If you don't like my approach, OK, no ones asking you to like it (or even to listen). If my approach seemed a little heavy on the emotions or flamage, and perhaps even proves out to be a little uneducated on some of the details, well that's because that is where I was at at the time. Sure, after further investigation, I cooled down a bit (but as you can see, just a bit :-) and, am actually finding the program somewhat useful. If I caused at least one person out there to step back and take another look before they buy, then I'd say it was useful. I want to see the Amiga succeed as much as anyone, but I DON'T think the way to do it is to keep quiet about things I don't like about programs I buy. If you look back a bit, I think you'll find that I've made some positive noise about programs too (DPaint for example). POST REVIEWS GANG! Good or bad, let's find out what's going on out there. Keith Doyle # {ucbvax,ihnp4,decvax}!trwrb!cadovax!keithd # cadovax!keithd@ucla-locus.arpa
dyer@spdcc.UUCP (Steve Dyer) (10/05/86)
Hey, I'm all for reviews, good AND bad, since I agree that software is
expensive and generally not returnable. A few suggestions, however:
first, net.music.synth might be a good place to discuss MIDI software,
arguably better than net.music.makers (but I'm not going to argue!)
Also, a few paragraph breaks (or, hell, just a few random blank lines)
makes any kind of review or flame more readable. If I see a 24X80
mass of text, I generally flush it...
--
Steve Dyer
dyer@harvard.HARVARD.EDU
{linus,wanginst,bbnccv,harvard,ima,ihnp4}!spdcc!dyer