Universal Sound Edit: (USE) June 19, 1992 Instructions: This program requires GS/OS 5.04 or 6.0. With GS/OS 6.0. do not load EASY ACCESS. SPECIAL NOTE: USE will prevent the Signature modules from crashing the computer or messing up the color palette. Use this program to edit 8 bit digitized sound wave files. If you are using a mouse, you may choose items from the menu with the mouse button. Position the pointer over a menu title, then push and hold the mouse button. A menu will appear below the menu title. Move the pointer over an item in the menu. When the desired menu item is highlighted, release the mouse button. The chosen item will blink rapidly and then execute. If you decide you don't want an item from the menu, move the pointer off the menu and release the button. If the item you want is dimmed and can't be highlighted, this means that item is not currently selectable. If you are not familiar with this procedure of choosing an item from the menu, read you IIgs users manual. When the program is first started, a window will open, informing you that a processor speed calibration in being done. This procedure very accurately measures the speed of your computers processor. This is necessary to insure accurate recording speeds. If you do not intend to do any recording, click on the button or push the Return key. (If you do decide to record later, the calibration will be performed again before recording can begin.) Please heed the warning not to move the mouse or push a key. Doing so will cause extremely inaccurate speed values, which will cause the record values to do very undesirable things. If you would like to see the effective operating speed of your computer, press the C key. There are 15 generators available to play sounds. When you choose Play Sound from the menu, the first available generator will be used. The first generator plays out of the right speaker. The second generator plays out of the left speaker. The third generator plays out of the right speaker. And so on, with the 15th generator playing out of the right speaker. Fifteen circles on the top right of the screen tell you which generator is playing. The first generator corresponds to the circle on the right. To play the sound in the sound buffer, you can choose Play Sound from the menu, type the key equivalent OA-`, or click on one of the circles. The corresponding generator will play the sound and the circle will turn multicolor. You can stop that generator from playing by clicking on the circle while it is multicolored. Here is a description of all items selectable from the menu. Most of these items have keyboard equivalents (which are displayed in the menus), if you do not have a mouse or prefer to use the keyboard. These keyboard equivalents are summarized later in this document. Waveform About... Brings up a dialog box telling you a little bit about the program. You may clear the dialog box from the screen by positioning the mouse pointer over the OK box and pushing the mouse button, or if you do not have a mouse, push the return key. Use this technique for all dialog boxes. (Positioning the pointer on a text box and pushing the mouse button could be described as "Clicking on OK". This terminology will be used in the rest of this document.) Key equivalent is OA-@. Waveform Help... Displays a help menu. This item is not yet implemented. Key equivalent is OA-?. Waveform Preferences... Displays a dialog box allowing startup preferences to be saved to disk. This item is not yet implemented. File Open Sound... Displays a dialog asking for a file name. Click on the file you wish to load. Then click on open. Or, double click on the file to load it. Click on cancel if you do not want to load a file. Key equivalent is OA-O. File Append... Displays a dialog asking for a file name. Click on the file that you wish to append to the currently loaded sound file. Key equivalent is OA-&. File Save Sound... Displays a dialog asking for a file name. Type the file name which you wish to save the current sound wave into, or click on cancel to cancel the save. Key equivalent is OA-S. File Save Selection... Displays a dialog asking for a file name. Type the file name which you wish to save the currently selected portion of the sound into, or click on Cancel to cancel the save. Key equivalent is OA-^. File Page Setup... Allow various printer options to be changed. This is not yet implemented. File Print... Prints the current screen to the printer. This is not yet implemented. Key equivalent is OA-P. File Quit... Terminates the program. Key equivalent is OA-Q. Edit Undo Not yet implemented. Key equivalent is OA-Z. Edit Cut Deletes the selected (highlighted) portion of the wave from the current buffer, and saves the selected portion in the "Clipboard". The wave will be redrawn in its entirety. You cannot cut a selection larger than memory available. Key equivalent is OA-X. Edit Copy Copies the selected portion of the wave into the clipboard. You cannot copy a selection larger than memory available. Key equivalent is OA-C. Edit Paste Inserts the waveform in the clipboard into the waveform at the beginning of the currently selected wave. You cannot paste a clipboard larger than memory available. Key equivalents is OA-V. Edit Clear Deletes the selected portion of the wave from the current buffer and throws it away permanently. Key equivalent is delete. Edit Keep Keeps only the selected portion of the wave in the current buffer, disposing of all of the unhighlighted part. Key equivalent if OA-K. Edit Select All Selects the entire wave in the buffer. Edit Clear Clipboard Disposes of the wave stored in the clipboard. NOTE: This program uses a local clipboard. The system clipboard is ignored. Edit Play Clipboard Plays the wave stored in the clipboard at the currently set play rate and volume. Key equivalent is Control-`. Display Show All Causes the waveform to be redrawn, with the entire waveform on the screen. Key equivalent is OA-A. Display Redraw Causes the waveform to be redrawn, with the currently selected portion of the waveform on the screen. Selected portion will be deselected. Key equivalent is OA-W. Display Adjust Play Speed... Allows waveform play speed to be adjusted to a different play speed. Adjusting to a slower play speed may have serious detrimental affects on the quality of the sound. Adjusting to a faster play speed will not improve the quality of the sound, but will not decrease the quality either. Increasing the play speed and then decreasing the play speed back to the original play speed may not result in the same quality you started with. It is recommended that the waveform be saved to disk before adjusting the play speed. This function is not yet implemented. Display All Memory Causes the waveform buffer to include all available memory. If you have an Applied Engineering Ramkeeper in your computer, you can load a sound into memory (or record one), turn the computer off, and then turn the computer on, run this program, and select All Memory. Sometimes you will find that the sound is still in memory. If it is not still in memory, it is because it was overwritten by GS/OS or some other program. This command will delete the clipboard (whatever was in the clipboard will be in the main buffer). Key equivalent is OA-M. Display Amplify... Increases or decreases the magnitude (volume) of the currently selected portion of the waveform. If nothing is selected, the entire waveform will be amplified. The maximum amplitude of the selected portion will be marked with red lines in the waveform display. The green lines show the desired maximum amplitude. You may select a higher or lower amplitude by clicking on the Up and Down buttons. Or let the program calculate the maximum amplification required to make the sound as loud as possible without distorting the waveform by clicking on Maximum. The red lines may indicate a higher amplitude than the waveform displayed. This is because every point in the waveform cannot be displayed in the 638 pixel display on the screen, and the higher amplitude bytes of the waveform may be the undisplayed bytes. Click on Amplify Now to start the amplification, or Cancel to cancel the function. NOTE: The amplify function and most of the other functions under the Display menu take quite a long time to perform. If you choose to amplify a megabyte or two, you may have to wait several minutes before you may continue. Key equivalent is OA-+. Display Clip... Allows the selected portion of the waveform to be clipped at a certain level (for special sound effects or some other reason). The current maximum and minimum levels will be indicated by the red lines. The green lines are the desired clip levels. Choose the desired maximum and minimum clip levels by clicking on Top Up or Down and Bottom Up or Down, then click on Clip Now. Click on Cancel to cancel the function. Display Dub... This function is active only if there is a wave in the clipboard. It allows the selected portion of the wave to be combined with the wave in the clipboard. Only the beginning spot of the selected waveform is important. This is where the clipboard waveform will start. The entire clipboard will be dubbed into the main waveform. If the clipboard extends beyond the end of the main waveform, the main waveform will be extended with silence. Enter the percent of amplification to perform before dubbing is to be performed. Then click on the kind of dubbing to perform. Average will add the two waveform bytes and then divide by 2. Add and Clip adds the two bytes and clips any values above 255 or below 1. Add & Adjust adds the two bytes and divides by 1.4. Add & Adjust usually results in the best sounding dub. Save the waveform to disk, then try dubbing with each of the different dub types, and at different percentages, until you get the best sounding dub. Dubbing may be limited by available memory. Key equivalent is OA-D. Display Duplicate... Duplicates the selected portion of the waveform the indicated amount of times. Available memory may limit the amount of duplicates you can make. Display Echo Causes the selected portion of the waveform to be repeated on top of the wave following the selected portion. The echo level and duration can be set by the user. The current play rate is entered into the For Play Rate box. This value can be changed if desired. The reason for the play rate is so that the program can calculate the echo delay in seconds for the play rate, based on the number of bytes to delay. You may enter the delay either way. If you enter the number of seconds you wish to delay, the bytes will be calculated. If you enter the number of bytes to delay, the seconds will be calculated. For very short delays, use the bytes box. The seconds is only accurate to .01 seconds. The Echo Decay % box indicates how much each progressive echo is from the previous echo percentage. A 100% echo will not decay at all. 50% would give each echo half the volume of the previous echo, 200% would give each echo twice the volume. Echo decays greater than 100% very quicker exceed the volume capabilities of the hardware (and the 1-255 range of the byte). The Number of Echoes allows you to stop the echoing after the desired amount of echoes. If the echo is less than 100, you will probably usually want the echo to die naturally, so set the number of echoes to a large number. Number of echoes may be limited by available memory. Click on Do Echo to perform the echo, or Cancel to cancel the function. Key equivalent is OA-E. Display Fade... Allows the selected portion of the waveform to fade out to silence or fade in from silence. The beginning and ending percentage can be set. To completely fade out, set Start to 100 and end to 0. Set Start to 0 and End to 100 to fade in. Incomplete fades can be done by using values between 0 and 100. Two ranges can be entered and selected between quickly. Click on Do Fade to perform the fade. Click on Cancel to cancel the fade. Key equivalent is OA-F. Display Offset Allows the user to add or subtract a value to the selected portion of the waveform. This could be useful to adjust a wave that was not centered around a value of 128. The current maximum and minimum values are indicated by the red lines. The green lines can be adjusted with the Up and Down button. Or select center to let the program calculate the offset required to center the maximum and minimum points in the wave within the display. Click on Do Offset to perform the offset, or click on Cancel to cancel the offset. Display Reverse Reverses the selected portion of the waveform. Key equivalent is OA-R. Display Silent Sets the waveform values of the currently selected portion of the waveform to 128, effectively causing silence when played back. Key equivalent is OA-T. Display Wipe... Similar to Fade and Dub, but allows the main waveform to fade out to silence as the clipboard fades into maximum level. The clipboard can be inserted before the selected main waveform and faded out, while the main waveform fades in. Or, the selected portion can fade out, while the remainder of the main waveform is dubbed over the selected portion and faded in. This function is not yet implemented. Sound Play Sound Plays the entire waveform or the selected waveform. You may perform most program functions while the sound is playing, including Play Sound again. The selected sound will play in addition to the currently playing one. Key equivalent is OA-`. Sound Record Sound Allows recording of sounds if you have a sound digitizing card in your computer. Key equivalent is OA-'. (MDIdeas Supersonic Digitizer requires a modification to the card. Register your copy of the program and you will receive instructions on how to do this. This modification will result in better sound digitizing quality from your card, do to a cheap recording level control implemented in this card.)(If you have an Applied Engineering Sonic Blaster card, you can record with this program, but only in mono. I am working on a procedure to get the best sound out of this card. You cannot yet set the input level of the card with this program, and in some instances you may have to run to Sonic Blaster editor to enable the card before using this program to record. Sorry about that. I will be fixing this very soon. When I add level control for the Sonic Blaster card to this program, you will not be required to set the slot selection to "Your Card" for the slot holding the Sonic Blaster card, and it should be able to go into any slot.)(Are there any other Sound Digitizing cards out there that I need to support?) The Record Sound window will open up. Type the desired recording speed in the rate box, or click on Rate Up or Rate Down. The Level value currently does nothing. Select other options. Echo to speaker plays the sound being recorded to the computer speaker while recording. The sound quality is bad, but I find it useful occasionally. Note that echoing to the speaker reduces the maximum recording frequency that the computer is capable of doing. If you have an accelerator card installed, this will not be a problem. Select Set Play Rate to Record Rate to make playing back the recorded sound easier. Select Append to Current Wave to allow the recorded waveform to be appended to the end of the wave in the buffer. Click on Cancel if you decide not to record. Click on Start Recording to initiate the recording procedure. If the value in the rate box cannot be matched exactly, it will be changed to the closest matching value that can be made. Push a key to stop recording, or wait for the buffer to fill. Pushing the mouse button will not stop recording. (If you have EASY ACCESS loaded, pushing a key while recording will have no affect.) Sound Rate Up Increases the playback rate by the smallest increment possible. Key equivalent is arrow up. Sound Rate Down Decreases the playback rate by the smallest increment possible. Key equivalent is arrow down. Sound Up Alot Increases the playback rate by a larger amount. Key equivalent is OA-arrow up. Sound Down Alot Decreases the playback rate by a smaller amount. Key equivalent is OA-arrow down. Sound Settings... Allows setting volume and play rates. Enter the desired values. Click on Test to hear the main waveform at the entered values. The play rate will be adjusted to comply with the limits of the hardware. The volume can be from 0 to 255. NOTE: Loading a Sonic Blaster or Hyperstudio sound may change the volume. Click on Stop to stop the playing sound. Click on OK to keep the entered values. Click on cancel to throw away the entered values. Sound Memory... Allows the program to control the amount of memory allocated for the sound buffer. If you have a lot of memory but want some of your memory reserved for Desk accessories or something else, you may tell the program to use only a certain amount of memory. Or, if you have little memory, you can ask the program to try to purge memory, possibly making more memory available for the sound buffer. You may also set the program to allocate only the memory necessary to hold the waveform loaded from disk. In this mode, recording cannot be performed, and editing functions cannot increase the size of the waveform. This function is not yet implemented. Sound Stop Sound Stops all currently playing sounds. Key equivalent is OA-\. Format Binary Changes the format for saving the file to pure binary (no header, no compression). Format Sonic Blaster Binary Changes the format for saving the file to binary with Sonic Blaster header type 0, no compression. Format HyperCard IIGS This item is currently disabled. It is the next format that I will be adding to the program. (This is the format GS/OS 6.0 uses.) Format Coming Soon This item is currently disabled. Format Sound Blaster Changes the format for saving the file to binary with Sound Blaster header, no compression. Format Hyperstudio Changes the format for saving the file to binary with Hyperstudio (and Sound Studio) header, no compression. Format Macintosh Changes the format for saving the file to binary with Macintosh FSSD header, no compression. Format Next Linear Changes the format for saving the file to 16 bit 2's complement binary with Next header, no compression. The program will convert the sound upon loading to 128 centered sound, and back to 2's complement sound for saving. Current implementation is untested. Format Next Linear Changes the format for saving the file to 16 bit 2's complement binary with Next header, no compression. The program will automatically convert the sound wave to 16 bits, save the sound, then convert it back to 8 bits. Note that, with large files, this could take a minute or two to convert. When loading the NeXT waveforms, (8 bit or 16 bit) the sounds will be converted to 8 bit 128 centered. For 16 bit waves, the progress of the conversion will be displayed. Format Audio Master II Changes the format for saving the file to 8 bit 2's complement binary with Audio Master II header, no compression. The program will convert the sound upon loading to 128 centered sound, and back to 2's complement sound for saving. Not all features of the format are available. This format has been tested only with the MSDOS program Disney presents The Animation Studio. Other implementations of the sound format may not work. To select a portion of the waveform with the mouse, position the mouse pointer at the beginning of the desired portion, hold down the button and drag the cursor over the portion of the waveform to select, then release the button. The selected portion can be adjusted by repositioning the mouse, then pushing a shift key and the mouse button. The beginning or the ending of the selection will be moved. Or, push space to move the beginning of the selection to the cursor position. Push return to move the end of the selection to the cursor position. Note that if the beginning and end of the selected portion are on the same position (as can be noted in the Selection Info box at the bottom right of the screen), no portion of the waveform is actually selected. You must select at least two bytes in the waveform for the program to accept any part of the waveform as selected. This does not hold true for the Dub function, which uses only the Start position. Push escape key to remove the selection (that is, deselect the wave). Keypress functions that are not available from the menu: Tab Moves the screen display to the left, putting the right edge of the wave on the screen onto the left edge of the screen. Note that this will not reset the selected portion of the wave. Open Apple (or command)-Tab Moves the screen display to the right, putting the left edge of the wave on the screen onto the right edge of the screen. Note that this will not reset the selected portion of the wave. CA- button Edits the waveform on the screen. Current implementation does not work well. This function is not yet implemented. Summary of key equivalents and commands: OA-A Show All OA-C Copy OA-D Dub OA-E Echo OA-F Fade OA-M All memory OA-O Load Sound OA-P Print OA-Q Quit OA-R Reverse OA-S Save OA-T Silent OA-V Paste OA-W Redraw OA-X Cut OA-Z Undo Space Place selection beginning OA-+ Amplify selection OA-/ Help OA-? Help OA-@ About OA-^ Save selection OA-& Append TAB Move to next portion of waveform Shift-TAB Move to previous portion of waveform ( Select from cursor position to end of buffer ) Select from beginning of buffer to cursor position ~ Play sound Control-` Play clipboard Arrow up Play rate up Arrow down Play rate down OA-Arrow up Play rate up faster OA-Arrow down Play rate down faster C Display effective processor speed R Perform processor calibration 1-9 Set movement amount to 1/20 thru 9/20 of the screen * Set movement amount to 1 pixel amount of screen Right Arrow Move selection beginning by movement amount set above Left Arrow Move selection beginning by movement amount set above NOTE: Editsnd is a shareware product. This version is still in it's development. If you intend to use this program, after a two week evaluation, please send $20.00 to the following address. You will then be assured of receiving a copy of the final version. The final version will have all items in the menu enabled. Support for more sound file formats will be added. (Sound Blaster .VOC, Sonic Blaster for the Apple IIGS, Hyperstudio for the Apple IIgs, Macintosh FSSD, NeXT, and Audio Master II are currently supported. I plan to add more formats as soon as I can decode them, including ASIF, Audio IFF, Hypercard 1.1 (Sound resource), and Atari Amiga formats. If you have information about other formats and would like them included, send me the information.) Another enhancement I plan to add is the implementation of multiple sound buffers, which will hold different sounds, which will be playable individually, or sequenced using a sound sequencing window. With the addition of multiple buffers, I will be able to load instrument files into memory. If there is enough interest, I may even add the capability to load, play, and edit SoundTracker files. Send the $20.00 shareware fee to: Gary Osborn 823 Lewis Road Watsonville, CA 95076 Please mention the name and version of this program. You will also receive a "catalog" of all of my currently available shareware products. I also welcome your input for development of this program. (I need a new name for the program.)