New "Grand Piano" ins

New "Grand Piano" ins

Post by Jeff Blaken » Tue, 19 Mar 1996 04:00:00



Subject: Re: New "Grand Piano" instrument bank for MIDIsynth

Another thing to keep in mind about IIgs sound versus PC sound cards is
that most of the IBM software out there today is written to support as
many machines as possible.  This means that most software is written to be
used with SoundBlaster and compatible cards (4 8 bit digital channels plus
the FM synthesis Adlib stuff) and not these new wavetable cards.  Don't
get me wrong though, there is support for these newer cards, it just isn't
really widespread yet.

And another thing, most of the multimedia packages on the market today
don't even use your sound card.  They simply play CD audio directly from a
CD-ROM.  These type of samples would sound the same on a 8 bit
SoundBlaster as they would on a wavetable card with 8 MB.

Just my two cents.

 * 2qwk! 2.01 * "Gene Police! You -- out of the pool, NOW!!"

 
 
 

1. New "Grand Piano"...

 >I see only two ways to bring the Apple IIgs up to par with
 >current PC wavetable sound boards. Either use what hardware is
 >available and find some way to make use of standard GS memory as
 >DOC-RAM (swap between 64Kb and system memory when playing MIDI
 >files). This should be possible with a very high-speed accelerator
 >and the GS doing nothing else but playing music, but programming
 >it would be quite a task. I'm not even sure if this is doable.

Mitch, the technique you describe has been already implemented on
the GS for *a couple of years*. What do you think are programs like
Shellplay, MODZap or Beatbox doing to play those huge MOD files?

You don't even need an accelerator for the sample swapping, yet it
eats over 50% of processor time...

Well, well, the 64k limitation: Another design flaw of the GS - blame
Woz for it ;)  Why didn't they just do it the way the Amiga handles/
handled it? The standard RAM can be used as DMA (!) sound RAM. That
would have been the way to go... Oh, well... The GS - still a great
machine... :)

-- Clue / Ninjaforce

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3. New "Grand Piano" instrument bank for MIDIsynth

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