frontah@pawl.rpi.edu (David J Sotnick) (02/22/90)
One thing that never gets discussed when comparing a Mac II with an '030 Mac, is the fact that the 030 Machines have a stereo sound chip. Does anyone have any technotes or programming informtaion on how to utilise that chip? I would like to be able to play stereo samples at 44.1KHz from my Mac IIcx. ANY help would be appreciated. I plan to use Lightspeed C. Thanks in advance. -Dave Sotnick -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer: I'm innocent of anything. INTERNET to "frontah@pawl.rpi.edu" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
meuchen@grad2.cis.upenn.edu (Paul Eric Menchen) (02/22/90)
In article <$&%#!$&@rpi.edu> frontah@pawl.rpi.edu (David J Sotnick) writes: >One thing that never gets discussed when comparing a Mac II with an '030 Mac, >is the fact that the 030 Machines have a stereo sound chip. > The Mac II has a stereo sound chip as well. I believe it is Apple custom VLSI which then drives two Sony sound chips. Paul Eric Menchen meuchen@grad1.cis.upenn.edu
dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) (02/23/90)
In article <$&%#!$&@rpi.edu> frontah@pawl.rpi.edu (David J Sotnick) writes: > One thing that never gets discussed when comparing a Mac II with an '030 Mac, > is the fact that the 030 Machines have a stereo sound chip. So does the Mac II. > Does anyone have any technotes or programming informtaion on how to utilise > that chip? I would like to be able to play stereo samples at 44.1KHz from > my Mac IIcx. ANY help would be appreciated. I plan to use Lightspeed C. Sigh. Although the Mac II family has been out for almost three years now, the MacOS Sound Manager _STILL_ does not provide any way to play stereo sound. As you may have noted, the Sound Manager chapter in Inside Macintosh V is... shall we say... somewhat unclear in a few places :-(. Apple released an updated version of this chapter last year... it's available as a Microsoft Word document, and can probably be FTP'ed from Apple.com or from SUMEX-AIM.Stanford.Edu. The updated chapter clarifies many of the formerly-fuzzy issues involved in dealing with the Sound Manager, lists a whole bunch of bugs, and summarizes the features which simply do not work in the current Sound Manager. Stereo sound is one of them. The chip can handle it (I've heard some very impressive stereo demos), but the Sound Manager won't let you play one waveform through the left channel and a different one through the right. As far as I know, Apple has not released any technical description of the chip interface which would make it possible for individual hackers to work around these limitations. I could well be wrong... Partners may have access to this info... but I haven't seen any such data available through APDA, for example Apple actively discourages people from accessing the Mac hardware directly... "Use the appropriate traps and Managers" seems to be the party line... but in this particular case, the Manager doesn't do the job. >SNARL<. Apple ads and technical-descriptions which describe the Mac II family as having "stereo sound capability" are skating on the fine edge of false representation, I think. -- Dave Platt VOICE: (415) 493-8805 UUCP: ...!{ames,apple,uunet}!coherent!dplatt DOMAIN: dplatt@coherent.com INTERNET: coherent!dplatt@ames.arpa, ...@uunet.uu.net USNAIL: Coherent Thought Inc. 3350 West Bayshore #205 Palo Alto CA 94303
minich@a.cs.okstate.edu (MINICH ROBERT JOHN) (02/23/90)
> In article <$&%#!$&@rpi.edu> frontah@pawl.rpi.edu (David J Sotnick) writes: >>One thing that never gets discussed when comparing a Mac II with an '030 Mac, >>is the fact that the 030 Machines have a stereo sound chip. >> Don't forget that the portable uses the stereo chip as well. I wonder if we'll see it in other (future?) non-68030/020 Macs as well. Maybe there is something about running at 8MHz but i really doubt that would be a prob. My best guess is that all the new Apple CPUs (excluding the low-end, likely) will have it, since it improves greatly an area of Macing that Apple seems to be pusing real hard now, Desktop Multi-Media... Anyone have gutty, low end details on this chip? I know it offloads considerable processing that Mac SE and down struggle with. Robert Minich minich@a.cs.okstate.edu OKlahoma State U. "Followups to comp.sys.mac.hardware" seems to be in order here. Have a nice day. :-|
wilkins@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Mark Wilkins) (02/23/90)
In article <5405@okstate.UUCP> minich@a.cs.okstate.edu (MINICH ROBERT JOHN) writes: >> In article <$&%#!$&@rpi.edu> frontah@pawl.rpi.edu (David J Sotnick) writes: >>>One thing that never gets discussed when comparing a Mac II with an '030 Mac, >>>is the fact that the 030 Machines have a stereo sound chip. Wait, the Mac II I had in 1987 had a stereo sound chip. I was using SoundEdit and my stereo for some neat effects as early as the summer of 1988. -- Mark Wilkins wilkins@jarthur.claremont.edu
hpoppe@bierstadt.scd.ucar.edu (Herb Poppe) (02/24/90)
In article <47517@improper.coherent.com> dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) writes: >In article <$&%#!$&@rpi.edu> frontah@pawl.rpi.edu (David J Sotnick) writes: >> One thing that never gets discussed when comparing a Mac II with an '030 Mac, >> is the fact that the 030 Machines have a stereo sound chip. > >So does the Mac II. > >> Does anyone have any technotes or programming informtaion on how to utilise >> that chip? I would like to be able to play stereo samples at 44.1KHz from >> my Mac IIcx. ANY help would be appreciated. I plan to use Lightspeed C. > >Sigh. Although the Mac II family has been out for almost three years now, >the MacOS Sound Manager _STILL_ does not provide any way to play stereo >sound. > A couple of weeks ago I attended an Apple seminar. One of the speakers discussed System 7.0. If I remember correctly, he said: The Sound Manager had been completely re-written. The sampled sound synth will handle four voices. Stereo will be supported. Sound compression is handled. I think he said de-compression is handled in real-time. I don't remember mention of the maximum sample rate. Having programmed for the current SM (which was an exercise in SM :-|) I am looking forward to the new release. Hope they got the bugs out, too. -- Herb Poppe NCAR INTERNET: hpoppe@ncar.ucar.edu (303) 497-1296 P.O. Box 3000 CSNET: hpoppe@ncar.CSNET Boulder, CO 80307 UUCP: hpoppe@ncar.UUCP