Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!decwrl!ucbvax!dewey.soe.berkeley.edu!oster
From: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Sound Manager vs. Sound Driver
Message-ID: <33381@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 26 Dec 89 13:19:56 GMT
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (David Phillip Oster)
Organization: School of Education, UC-Berkeley
Lines: 56

I just got through re-implementing the phone dialer
module of an application. In the process, I've butted
my head against the wall of the Sound Manager, and I'm
using this soap box to complain.

When you send phone dialing tones to the speaker, you
send a pair of frequencies. There are two basic techniques
for doing that:
1.) sampled sound: Just digitize the tone you want from a
real phone. I didn't want to use this one for a number of
reasons, not least is the amount of space the samples take
up.

2.) the 4-voice wave table synthesizer. Clean and simple.

Now, there are 2 ways to use the 4-voice wave table synthesizer:
Sound Driver (the old way, documented in Inside Mac Vol II)
&
Sound Manager (the new way, documented in Inside Mac Vol V., but
	that documentation has been superceded by a new chapter which
	is on Phil & Dave's Excellent CD.)

The Sound Manager documentation says, "The older Sound Driver should
no longer be used. The Sound Manager is its replacement, providing
all of its predecessor's abilities and more. ... Support for the older
Sound Driver may eventually be discontinued."

That's pretty clear. So, I set out to write my code using Sound Manager.
Then I read a little further. I discovered the Sound Manager version of
the 4-voice wave table synthesizer:
		1.) doesn't work at all in the Plus or SE
		2.) has a bug in the channel synchronization command that 
			requires a funky, version dependent work around.
		3.) does not define how one sets the frequencies
			appropriately to produce anything other than an
			official "note".  In particular, there is no
			documentation on producing the wierd frequencies a
			phone dialer needs.

I sat down and wrote the thing in Sound Driver in about an hour.

The whole experience left a bad taste. Apple, it isn't enough for you
to tell me that a new manager is better than an old one. The new manager
must _actually_be_ better than the old one. Change the code, or change the
documentation, but the current situation is ridiculous.

By the way, my telephone documentation doesn't say what wave shape the
phone company recommends. I've been using a sine wave, but possibly a 
triangle or a sawtooth would work better. Can anyone give me a hint?


> The mac is a detour in the inevitable march of mediocre computers.
> drs@bnlux0.bnl.gov (David R. Stampf)
--- David Phillip Oster          -master of the ad hoc odd hack. 
Arpa: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu 
Uucp: {uwvax,decvax}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edu