mb@munnari.UUCP (05/06/87)
re: DMCS and its shortcomings: I tried to enter the Bolero by Ravel. Four systems, first=percussion, second and third Flute/Clarinet/Trumpet/Strings in various combinations, fourth=Elec.Bass for the bass cantus firmus. On at least 20 occasions DMCS would refuse to play a note on the 2nd/3rd system for its full duration. I had to delete notes from the 1st/4th system in these cases until only two notes were played simultaneously. After about 50 bars memory got so low and I so frustrated that I gave up. (512k, no external drive, no WB but: 1> DeluxeMusic When I entered Beethoven's "Albumblatt Fuer Elise" I discovered that the instrument Piano is not able to play notes beyond b''' as needed in the 25th bar before the end. Has anyone got instruments other than those on the DMCS disk? Especially in the bass area, like tuba, cello, bassoon? [Sorry, Alan. I had to.]
wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew) (05/09/87)
Hi, While were on the subject of shortcomings of DMCS, I'm surprised that more poeple haven't complained out some of the pretty awful sounds that come from some of the instruments. Perhaps, it's just my computer-- about a year ago my computer's Agnus suffered a mild stroke and cuased random crashes, disk errors and one sound channel to go south. It took me three trips to the dealer for replacement Agni. Finally, I got one that seemed to cure all the problems. I'm presuming that the aliasing sounds in lower registers of the instruments are caused by sampling a high note on an instrument, and then progressively decimating samples for each lower note. In the case of the DMCS instruments, it seems like very little has been done to smooth the decimated samples. It seems like it would be reasonable to write a program to clean up the samples. If my reading of the 8SVX IFF format is correct (mine is rather old and marked `preliminary') there is no particular need for every note in an instrument to have the same number of samples, or even a related number. Low frequecy notes should be decminated, the original sampling rate restored by duplicating samples, and then some interpolation done to remove the jaggieness. Of course, the result won't sound exactly like the original instrument, but then what we get now doesn't sound very natural either! Of course, even better would be to sample every note, but then that's *work* (grin). Doing that would help maintain some of the tonal character difference between the low and high registers of the sampled instrument. Obviously, somebody out there has done some cut and paste work as is evidenced by Drumkit on Instant Music and DMCS's Percussion. It's also rather annoying that EA's manuals never mention technical information. It would be nice to know something about file formats, etc. They shouldn't assume that all interested user's have sent their checks in to get the IFF dox from Westchester. Probably the majority of real world user's aren't aware of that support function (luckily for the support people's sanity). --Bill (wtm@neoucom.UUCP)
val@wsccs.UUCP (Val Kartchner) (09/15/88)
Does someone have the complete specifications for the DMCS IFF format?
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/\/\ . /\ | Val Kartchner {UT@WSC} | 'vi' must go, this
/ \/ \/\/ \ | #include <disclaimer.h> | is non-negotiable.
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