lchirica@polyslo.UUCP (Laurian Chirica) (03/14/88)
For about ten days now I had a great time playing with MacRecorder version 1.0 from Farallon Computing, Berkeley, CA ($199-list, $149 various mail order houses). Although my experience with the product is anything but extensive, I am happy to report that it works and it works quite well. I used it on a Mac II, with 1Mb-RAM, 8 bit color Apple monitor. I cannot give a complete review of the product, but here are some of the first-few-hour-of-use impressions. MacRecorder consists of a hardware sound digitizer and three floppies with software. The digitizer is slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes and plugs into the printer or the modem port. It comes with a built-in mike, a separate mike line, and an auxiliary, low-voltage input line (to input, say, from a radio, tape player, or CD player-- cable included). The software comes on three floppies. First floppy contains a sound editor -- SoundEdit-- and a few sound samples. The second contains HyperSound stackware with a small demo stack. The third floppy contains a lager demo stack with more interesting sounds. The documentation is not fancy, but I found it to be complete and accurate. I had a problem in the beginning: the third floppy with the demo stack would not load. I sent it back to Farallon with the registration card and in four days I got a replacement floppy (marked version 1.05) with a nice letter of apology. This time the stack demo worked. I am most impressed with the SoundEdit program, which alone is worth the money. After sampling a sound (at 5.5, 7.3, 11 or 22Hz, giving, respectively 3, 2, 1.5, or 0.75 minutes of mono-sound per Mb of Disk or RAM), you can display the sample graphically and massage it with all kinds of sound effects: change pitch up and down, bender and flanging effects, amplification (up/down), echo (strength and delay adjustable), envelope setting, loopback, filtering, backwards playing, etc., etc. The filter has a nice equalizer-type interface with five adjustable frequency ranges. You can generate new sounds in the editor with a tone generator (sine, square, and triangle waves) or an FM synthesizer. Of course, the sample can be edited (cut and paste, with click-shift and all the good Mac-style stuff), labelled and colorized for easy reference. All changes can be test-played without leaving the editor. Several sound files can be open at the same time with the usual cutting and pasting to/from the clipboard. The editor can display the recording input level (eg. to test for clipping) or a frequency spectrum (e.g., to decide on the sampling frequency) of the sound to be recorded. These functions (input level and the frequency spectrogram) are *not* available during recording (is Mac II too slow for this?). Still in SoundEdit, you can do four-channel mixing and real-time recording in stereo (I did not try it, because you need two sampling units for real-time stereo recording). However, using the editor you can separately record two samples, put them on separate channels, and make a stereo sound from them. Copying one channel into the second channel with a slight delay makes a nice pseudo-stereo sound. Since the Mac II speaker plays only the left channel I used stereo headphones to test the results. Sounds can be saved in a SoundEdit file, as a resource, or as "instrument" files for the Studio/Jam Session (I don't have S/J S so I did not try it). Using ResEdit I pasted sound resources produced with SoundEdit into the System file and I have all the beeps I can stand (for a while). I also edited some of the existing System beeps (they appear as "instruments" to SoundEdit) and it worked very well. WIth 1Mb of RAM I do not use the Multifinder much (I use HC a lot). The only thing I can say is that SoundEdit launches successfully under Multifinder, complains about not having 1Mb available, but starts with whatever memory is left and works well. Of course the size of the sound samples is diminished. The second piece of sofware that comes with MacRecorder is a HC stack called HyperSound. The user interface looks like a casette recorder with obvious and clear functions. After recording a sound, a HyperSound button will paste the sound on any card of and any stack you want together with a button to play it (ResEdit could be used but it is not needed). HyperSound puts an XCMD into that stack which can be used to play other snd resources (e.g., pasted in with ResEdit). The HyperTalk interface is simply a "play sound <number>" command. Another button on HyperSound exits to SoundEdit for further processing. Finally, another button installs the HyperSound stack into your Home card. I am very enthusiastic about MacRecorder system because it gives me all the functionality I need for a while. (I am working on an HC prototype multimedia database for a company in LA. The final product, if funded, will be implemented on a back-end DBMS server with Mac's as user front-ends. BTW, DOES ANYONE KNOW OF AN INEXPENSIVE VIDEO DIGITIZER? Does anyone have experience with Koala Tech.'s Mac Video? I understand that it is not running on Mac II yet. Any rumors as to when it might be ready?). I saved the most important thing for last. During more than six hours of use, *neither SoundEdit nor HyperSound crash one single time*. Pardon me, but recent experience with Mac II software made me quite edgy when I try any new piece of software. I tried quite a few painting, drawing, animation, music, etc. software recently. Somehow, I managed to break all of them in the first fifteen minutes. I *dread* the sight of the BOMB!!. Now, imagine how I felt when after an hour or so of using SoundEdit, I pulled down the Apple menu, selected the "About SoundEdit" and .... Well, I won't spoil it for you. I remember reading on the net that MacRecorder existed, in a previous incarnation as a PD, or Shareware product at 1/3 of the price. The original designer (could some one help with his/her name?) and Farallon did a good darn job with MacRecorder. As far as I am concerned, it is well worth the money. Sure, I can think of many features that would be desirable, but as it is Farallon earns a good, solid A in my book. I am looking forward to the next release. PS. I have no connection whatsoever with Farallon computing. [ My employer couldn't care less about my opinions :-)] -- Laurian M. Chirica (lchirica@polyslo.UUCP) Computer Science Department California Polytechnic State University (CAL POLY) San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 - (805) 756-1332