CompuServe Thread

Hokay, let's get you up on the foot of the learning curve, at least. There are two main IFF formats. 8SVX is for sound samples. They contain a header telling the player program what sort of samples they are, the sampling rate, amplitude envelope, and so on. Within the 8SVX format there are sub-types. A one-shot sound is usually a "sound effect" or recording. It plays once and only once. A good example are clips digitized from movies (Good Morning Vietnam, Roger Rabbit, 2001) and special effects (screams, dogs barking.) An "instrument" is usually made up of a number of samples, each being a different "octave". These usually ARE octaves of the same instrument, but in fact can be different instruments (for example, a drum kit containing bass drum, snare, hi-hat, and crash cymbal; this is called multi-sampling). The program SOUND is an 8SVX player. If you use it on a one-shot sound it will work just the way you expect (look for "SAMPLE" or "IFF" in the file keywords). If you use it on an instrument it will still work, but what you'll get are all the octaves, one after another. It won't be useful other than for letting you hear what the instrument sounds like. The other IFF audio format is called SMUS, and this is for SCORES. A score by itself is just a listing of what notes to play when, using what instruments. By itself it makes no sounds; you need a player program which can be directed to use the various instruments. We do have a SONIX player in DL8, and a few SONIX scores in DL5; you will also need the sampled instruments to go along with them. Most packages will save scores in IFF format, but most people don't use that option. DMCS, for example, uses its own format (for which no one has yet written a PD player to my knowledge) and, although it supports IFF saves, most of our DMCS scores here are in DMCS format. As far as which program, yes, there are compromises galore. Which one to get depends on what you want to do. If you want to compose on staves, the choices are DMCS, Sonix, and Music Studio. If you want to record realtime MIDI, you need SoundScape Pro MIDI Studio, Texture II, MIDI Magic, Dynamic Studio, or something else in that genre'. If you have any specific questions I know we'd be glad to try to help.