[comp.music] SPARCSTATION1 has D/A & A/D

cocteau@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Daniel J Pirone) (10/26/89)

Howdy,
	Any of you privillaged/lucky enough to have access to 
	a Sun Sparcstation.  It seems that that have sampling 
	capability, but the manuals are week as far as specs
	go.  Any details, comments, references would be great.


					Thanks
					Daniel Pirone

dmy@Solbourne.COM (Doug Young) (10/26/89)

cocteau@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Daniel J Pirone) writes:

[re: SparcStation audio chip ]
> Any details, comments, references would be great.

The audio feature of the SparcStation has been pretty well described
in comp.sys.sun; inquiring minds who want to know should look there. Briefly,
there is a directory (/usr/demo/sound) that includes a little Sunview program
to display and playback a sample. It comes with a sample of the Sun CEO
blathering about Sun meeting challenges, or something like that. The
chip is a stock 8-bit, 8k samples/sec telephone chip (similar, if not
identical, to the one in the NeXT). It's raison d'etre is voice email. It
is not suitable for reasonable quality audio reproduction. The chip is
accessed via /dev/audio; you can cat a digitized sample to this device and
hear it.  Comp.sys.sun had pin-outs for the non-standard cables you'll need
if you want to record your own samples via the mic input. The program sound.c
in the /usr/demo/sound directory will provide all the gory ioctl details
for anyone who is interested.

Doug Young                            Solbourne Computer, Inc.
dmy@solbourne.com                     1900 Pike Road
...{boulder,nbires,sun}!stan!dmy      Longmont, CO 80501
                                      (303) 772-3400 ext 767

cook@iris.ucdavis.edu (Doug Cook) (10/27/89)

In article <4797@udccvax1.acs.udel.EDU> cocteau@vax1.acs.udel.EDU 
	(Daniel J Pirone) writes:
>Howdy,
>	Any of you privillaged/lucky enough to have access to 
>	a Sun Sparcstation.  It seems that that have sampling 
>	capability, but the manuals are week as far as specs
>	go.  Any details, comments, references would be great.

Yes,
	The SPARCstations do have A/D and D/A built in. However,
note that this is 8-bit D/A. It's really only "voice-quality,"
clearly not good enough for a music application, but still fun to play
around with. I can't point you at any docs, but there is a 
sample audio program, including source, that comes with SunOS.
It's rather limited, but it will sample and playback, showing the
waveforms in real time.  You might want to check it out. Look in 
the directory /usr/demo/sound.

	-Doug

Doug Cook				dmc@sun.com
XView Group				cook@gandalf.ucdavis.edu
Sun Microsystems, Inc.