Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!world!decwrl!ucbvax!GRIN1.BITNET!THROOP
From: THROOP@GRIN1.BITNET ("Throop,Henry B")
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: Soundsmith
Message-ID: <9011102209.AA21922@apple.com>
Date: 10 Nov 90 22:03:08 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 22

Robert MacAusland writes:
> The thing about SS I really have is that it doesn't allow you to vary the
> duration of the note.  Also, for some bizarre reason, notes played on the
> left end of the scale have a much longer duration than notes on the right
> hand end.

These two things go together.  Soundsmith varies the frequency of the note by
simply playing the (fixed byte-length) sample at a higher or lower rate;
notes on the left end are the same sample but played slower.  This causes the
frequency to be lower, and because it takes longer to play the same number of
bytes, the length is longer.  Varying the note length independently would
entail either chopping off the sample after a length of time, or somehow
compressing the same sample into a shorter time, with the same frequency.
Obviously this can be done, as programs like synthLAB do, but I'm not sure
exactly how that works.

Btw, Music Studio uses the same method of playing ASIF as SS does.

--
Henry Throop
THROOP@GRIN1.BITNET
throoph@jacobs.cs.orst.edu