*************************** AudioZap v2.0 Release Notes for 2.0 FREEWARE RELEASE *************************** April, 1998 By Ian Schmidt (irsman@iag.net). AudioZap is copyright (c) 1990-1998 Ian Schmidt. All Rights Reserved. This program is now FREEWARE. Please distribute it to everyone you can, but do NOT modify anything. Freeware release prepared using a customized version of Joshua Thompson's XGS version 0.50 under Linux version 2.1.97 on an Intel Pentium 200. (and yes, this setup is faster than my real GS :) System Requirements: ROM 01 or 03 Apple IIgs or emulator. System 6.0 or 6.0.1. At least 2 megs of RAM. A stereo/digitizer card would be nice :) This freeware release comes with no warranty whatsoever. It probably contains bugs - please save your work often. I cannot be held liable for any damages to your computer, data files, or anything else resulting from the use of this program. Intro to the Freeware Release (or, "didn't you used to be starving?") ============================= For quite some years now, the latest publicly available version of AudioZap has been version 1.2.1s (the "s" meaning it has annoying shareware notices that pop up at inopportune intervals). I'm now changing that by dusting off the last beta version of 2.0 and releasing it as 2.0 freeware. Why? I figure for those still using the GS, they may as well have a cool audio editor :) A few Extras are included: one (Stats) lets you see some stats on a wave. The other (Smooth) "smooths out" a wave, removing the static you often get on crappy GS digitizer boards. Documentation and source code are included so you can write your own Extras too - check it out. What Else Is Going On? ====================== Way back when I promised all manner of odd and wonderous things like an OS/2 version and other stuff. Bad news: I'm not planning to make AudioZap for any other machine or OS - frankly there are audio editors on all popular OSes today that meet or far exceed AudioZap's functionality. Here's a few: Windows: Sound Forge, Cool Edit '97, GoldWave Mac: Sound Edit 16 Future of AZ? ============= I don't currently plan to release source to AZ, or to make any interesting updates to it. Believe me, I wrote this crap when I was 16, you wouldn't be able to read the source anyway :) If any horrible major bugs appear, I may fix them (then again, I may not). What's This Stuff? ================== Following are the release notes for versions up to 2.0b15, which is what this freeware release is based on. 2.0b15 was the last version I worked on, back in 1994 before I joined the "real world" and got a job and car payments :) Note: the "help" button in the menu bar only works for menu items - you cannot get help on any other screen objects with it. New Features and Significant Changes added ========================================== 2.0b15 ------ o Added new abilities to Extras so they can both save and load files. Began moving out handlers for filetypes into Extras to make maintenance on AZ itself much easier. Since this in itself suddenly raises the spectre of having more than 32 Extras, the limit has been doubled to 64. See AZExtraSpecs for more on this. o Fixed bug where About... would crash after showing all about dialogs if any Extras were installed. o When loading a resource sound either from */system/sounds or a HyperCard stack, the wave's name now becomes the rSound's name. 2.0b14-2 (primarily a bugfix release) -------- * Known bug I didn't have time to fix: If any kind of GS/OS error occurs loading a file, the file in memory will get the new file's name. o AZ now can recognize .AU/.VOC/.WAV/.PAT files which are type $00 in addition to TXT and BIN. o Fixed bug where loading an ASIF would set the play rate to 102 Hz. o Fixed boneheaded bug where the Preferences window would be unable to refresh itself. o Fixed to set both prefixes 0 and 8 when loading Extras, so that they only need be in the AZExtras/ folder. o Added ad-hoc support for loading (IBM PC) Gravis UltraSound .PAT files. This works with all the patches shipped with the current GUS distribution, but doesn't follow any rules at all at the moment (ie, all offsets are hardcoded, and two's complement 16-bit samples are assumed). 2.0b14 (skipped lucky 13 ;) ------ o Fixed botched AND where Extras wouldn't properly see their own menu items if there was more than one Extra installed at a time. o Wrote "Smooth" Extra which uses 3-sample-frame linear interpolation to smooth out staticy waveforms and generally make 'em sound cleaner. A very cool addition to AZ :) o Wrote "Stats" Extra which shows the peak-to-peak and average sample values plus size in K of the current wave. This is handy for checking if you are recording at as high a level as you like. o Upgraded from MegaSwap II (filtered swap mode) to MegaSwap III (loop mode). This makes for noticibly cleaner playback and better S/N ratio on playing. 2.0b11(unreleased) and 2.0b12 ----------------------------- o Corrected screen refresh code so that NDAs and selection ranges no longer cause a 'phantom' wave to be drawn or other bizzare behavior. o Added entries to Reserve on Launch up to 1024k (1 meg). 2.0b10 ------ o Fixed spacing around menu titles so its all even. o Finally! Implemented code so that if there's any kind of 'difficult' situation onscreen (a selection range, an NDA, some other window), AZ now uses QuickDraw to correctly follow clipping regions and good stuff like that. This takes care of all kinds of cosmetically related bugs, with only a minor decrease in speed (when AZ's doing a slow refresh, its still faster than AE's screen slam :) o Fixed a screwy bug where Preferences did wacky things. If you used 2.0b9, you should delete AZ.Parms and reset everything in order to escape any lingering effects from this bug. o Fixed annoying bug where saving wouldn't correctly update the window's title to reflect the new name. o Added a new Prefs option, "Set Play Rate to Estimate". This if selected sets the playback rate automatically to the estimated record rate when you finish recording. This is mondo convienent :) o Added support for the 'AVR' format. The specs were in the Audio Formats Guide, with the notation that this format is quite popular on the Atari ST. For my part, I've not found any AVR files beyond those AZ now saves, so if you know someone with an Atari and can test it on 'real' files, let me know. AVR is quite flexible; AZ supports only 8-bit signed and unsigned files. o Added Windows 3.1 .WAV file support. This was done according to the RIFF specs; all the sample files I tested work well. Error checking isn't as great as it should be; if you find any non-standard RIFF files let me know. o Added Sun .AU file support. There are tons and tons of these for anon. FTP at sounds.sdsu.edu for you Internet people. o Made Card Setup dialog smaller and more attractive. o Fixed visual anomoly with Record and Play rates not being vertically lined up. o Allowed for larger Record Rate values so that accelerated machines can record at lower rates without disabling their accelerators. o Fixed bug where dragging the Volume thumb caused the Play rate to get messed up. o Fixed bug where buttons were reversed in the Warning dialog. from 2.0a1 to 2.0b9 ------------------- o Added new filtering routines from MODZap; this means AZ now has the cleanest playback of any sound editor, bar none! o FutureSound (TXT/aux 0) files are now supported for both reading and writing. There aren't many around, but this provides a nice upgrade path for people who have samples in FutureSound format and are now upgrading to a card AZ supports. o Now if you select "Paste" and AudioZap's private clipboard is empty, AZ will attempt to bring in data from the system clipboard (ie, select a sound in System 6's Sound Control Panel, select 'Copy', and then close the CP and 'Paste' into AZ!) o Eliminated a redundant GetEOFGS call in the Open routine; we use a full-blown OpenGS with all parms now instead. o IBM Sound Blaster .VOC files are now supported automatically for both Open and Save. Zeros are filtered automatically when opening a .VOC file. o An estimated record rate is now shown in the menu bar each time you finish making a sample, so now its easier to figure out what record rate is what. o Sound wave graphing is now even faster than before; a _UDivide tool call has been replaced with a look-up table. On a Zip, its not possible for me to even see it graph anymore. o Error trapping is much more thourough, and rErrorStrings are provided so that meaningful messages appear for many tool errors. o Zooming in and out of a wave is now accompanied by a _WhooshRect. This provides a 'slicker' visual metaphor. o ACE now displays a small window with a progress thermometer for both compressing and decompressing. This is quite a bit more useful and informative than the border flashing done previously. Many annoying bugs which caused ACE to malfunction on occasion are now toast also. o Vastly cleaner sound playback is now avalible courtesy of an experimental and powerful new swapper developed as part of the MODZap project. MegaSwap II (tm) also is up to 900% faster than the 1.2.1 swapper; you'll notice that the cursor no longer becomes jittery at high playback rates, and the maximum playback rate has been cranked up. o The old playback tick mark has been retired in favor of a thermometer which is more accurate by far and doesn't disturb the cursor or desk accessories. o The AZ.Parms file now has type $5A (CFG) aux $0000. o The Setup Card menu item is now only avalible if you have selected the Sonic Blaster (tm) card in the new Setup dialog. o AudioZap now has a resource fork, so you'll need to use GS-ShrinkIt instead of ShrinkIt. The resources are important...a lot of the user-interface type items are now in there, so foreign versions of AZ and stuff like that are now a lot more easily possible. o The ZipGS and TransWarp GS accelerators are now automatically supported. Monitor Input shuts them off and then turns them back on again when it is finished. AZ now also calls _SetIntUse(0) so that the cursor doesn't flicker or disappear on accelerated systems (the ZipTalk INIT by Todd Whitesel does this also FYI). o Several dialogs have been rearraged, and the entire 'Card' menu except for Setup Card has been put in a dialog box called "Preferences". Setup Card is now in the Sound menu for you Sonic Blasters. o AudioZap now requires System 6.0 or later...it takes advantage of several new tool calls and the like. o Lots of minor visual changes have been made to solidify the user interface... menus are now spread out more, etc, etc. Additionally, wherever possible the interface has been made 'slicker' and more professional looking. o There now is an online help system similar to the Macintosh's System 7 Balloon Help. Click the "help" icon in the right end of the menu bar and the cursor will change to a triangle with a question mark in it. You can then select a menu item or click on an item and a help window will appear which describes that item. Menu item help is in rCString resources with ID $0001xxxx where xxxx is the item number (see AZExtraSpec for item numbers). ID $0001FFFF is the text for an item which has no help avalible. o Operations that used to disable interrupts now do not, and use _IntSource instead to kill only certain offending ones. As a result, AudioZap now works better with AppleShare, Easy Access, screen blankers, menu clocks, etc, etc. o The window title now changes to reflect the current filename. For example, Open-ing a file named "Way Cool!" (an HFS name of course) would change the window title to "AudioZap 2.0: Way Cool!". o The Oscilloscope has been given an extensive internal re-write. It looks the same, but now leaves interrupts enabled and has a significantly faster frame rate, making it possible to see the waveforms of higher frequencies. (as a side effect, moving the mouse will now cause blips in the display). o Input Monitor has been fixed so it doesn't speed up the sound. It also leaves interrupts enabled and automatically supports TransWarp and Zip cards. o The maximum internal pathname length has been extended to 350 characters so you can create nasty nesting on your harddisk and not crash things. Recent Version History ====================== (not all versions were distributed, and only vX.Xs versions were publicly avail.) v2.0 - Major rewrite.