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From: mwm@fenris.relay.pa.dec.com (Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Sound Digitizers
Message-ID: <MWM.90Dec6220204@fenris.relay.pa.dec.com>
Date: 7 Dec 90 06:02:04 GMT
References: <901204.205840.CST.C503719@UMCVMB.MISSOURI.EDU>
	<faheyr.660376632@silver>
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In-Reply-To: faheyr@silver.ucs.indiana.edu's message of 5 Dec 90 05:57:12 GMT

In article <faheyr.660376632@silver> faheyr@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Bob Fahey <NECR0SIS>) writes:

   What exactly did Sunrize do to make the 3.0 incompatible with the older 
   units? (Does it have something to do with the internal volume control?)
   Other than that, what other improvements have been made to the >hardware< 
   itself? Does it sample better or something?

They changed the sampling technic. You now _tell_ the hardware, and it
does a sample & hold. They use the CIA timer output tied to the
parallel port to trigger the samples, which (in theory) should lead to
better samples due to better sampling rates.

To get all this done, they had to shuffle the bits around. To get an
eight bit sample, you read 6 bits from the parallel port, then 2 bits
from the parallel port _status_ bits, and paste it together to get an
8 bit sample. Everybody else just puts 8 data bits on the parallel
port.

I'd recommend buying someone else's sampler. It's not that the sampler
is bad; it's more that SunRize is more interested in profits than the
Amiga community. I don't know about 3.1, but 3.0 & 3.01 weren't Amiga
software - they didn't run on advanced technology Amigas (thanks to DH
for pointing out what that means).

Worse yet, SunRize is hostile towards people who want to experiment
with the digitizer. They won't tell you how to read the digitizer
unless you're a commercial developer. They provide a shared library
for reading the digitizer. The usefullness of the library can be
determined by the fact that, even though it limits you to interfaces
that look like theirs, they don't use it.

	<mike
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