Ultimate GS Digitized Sound Quality

Edited and compiled by Charles T. 'Dr. Tom' Turley
11/6/97

A recent original and novel series of digitized songs have been made available
from the Apple2 ftp site 'Ground' from an anonymous cretor and uploader, (most
like IMHO, Scott Gamon).


Sound format: GS Binary
Type: Digitized song (file type .BIN)
Player used : Oversampler 

Disk space required: usually about 6MB on a hard drive

Memory (RAM) required: 1 to 1.5MB (enough to boot GS/OS and load
the 16K Oversampler player.)

Other equipment recommended: A IIgs stereo card, a good set of external powered
stereo speakers or a stereo system connected to the headphone jack and a high
quality electrostatic set of over-the-ear full range headphones.

A listing of these digitized songs with their direct ftp url link 
can be accessed for download from the following folder; 

ftp://ground.isca.uiowa.edu//2/apple2/apple16/Music/Songs/

The listing of each digital song ShrinkIt srchive and text information files
for each follows;

ftp://ground.isca.uiowa.edu//2/apple2/apple16/Music/Songs/joeletaxi.shk
ftp://ground.isca.uiowa.edu//2/apple2/apple16/Music/Songs/joeletaxi.txt
ftp://ground.isca.uiowa.edu//2/apple2/apple16/Music/Songs/shebelievesinme.shk
ftp://ground.isca.uiowa.edu//2/apple2/apple16/Music/Songs/shebelievesinme.txt
ftp://ground.isca.uiowa.edu//2/apple2/apple16/Music/Songs/streamsound.shk
ftp://ground.isca.uiowa.edu//2/apple2/apple16/Music/Songs/streamsound.txt


The most current upload with a complete outline of the digitized song, the process
used and notes on other past processes that were not the best for quality along
with the best proceedure found to be useful in producing the 'Ultimate GS
Digitized Sound Quality' follows.

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Here is a special full length digitized song for the GS.  This was the
song Elton John wrote and sang as a tribute to Princess Diana.  The
song was captured off the radio onto cassette tape and digitized as
cleanly as possible.  All that's necessary to play it is 1 to 1.5MB of
memory and a bit of hard disk space.  The player, Oversampler, is only
16K and is included.  Quality is excellent.  Using stereo speakers or
stereo headphones connected to the headphone port is a must for best
results.

A few words about digitized songs on the GS.  I originally tried to
us a PC to digitize songs for the GS.  I recorded songs from FM radio
onto cassette tape using a good quality radio receiver and took those
tapes to the PC, where I experimented.  I found that there was no
difference in quality between 16-bit and 8-bit recordings with the
PC's sound card.  The FM radio and cassette mediums, unlike the audio
CD medium, simply do not have the same capture requirements as
capturing from an audio CD.  Next, I experimented with 8-bit 22khz
and 8-bit 44khz recordings of the tapes with the PC sound card.

The 44khz recordings sounded great, but the 22khz ones sounded quite
degraded.  When I took the 44khz .wav file over to the GS and
converted it, however, it sounded like crap.  Taking 22khz .wav
files over and converting them with rSounder 3 also turned the sounds
into trash.  Much quality is always lost in the conversion from .wav
format to GS format.

When I tried recording the taped songs on the GS, dramatic change.
Unlike the PC, the GS is not limited to either 44khz or 22khz.  I
was able to adjust the sampling rate to just enough to capture the
full quality of the FM radio recordings on cassette tape.  One key
to clean recordings seems to be in having an external power supply
for the GS and taking off the cover also helps.  Noise seems to
originate from the power supply and bounce off the shielding in
the GS case.  To make a long story short, using an external power
supply, a carefully selected sampling rate, and recording directly
on the GS, I was able to record a digitized sample that was a clean,
faithful reproduction of FM radio/cassette quality music.

The moral of the story is that if you want high quality sound
samples for the GS, you must record them on a GS.  The GS sound
hardware is fully capable of radio/tape quality and digitizing from
such sources on a GS yields no different results than recording on
a PC because these sources themselves (unlike a medium like CD)
can't exceed what the GS hardware can do.

Take a look at this file and judge for yourself.  Again, you do
not need much RAM because Oversampler format is a streaming format
and the song plays as it loads from disk.  Also, use the
oversampling feature to maximize playback quality.  The faster
your hard drive, the faster this feature can go and the higher
quality the playback will be.  Any hard drive should be fast
enough to stream the sample (but don't try to play the song off
a server volume, which is too slow to keep up with the playback
rate).  Grab this song and listen to the best music the GS is
capable of.  NoiseTracker, SoundSmith, and synthLAB are nothing
compared to what high quality sampling on the GS can do.

Please enjoy this song and consider purchasing the alblum version
if you have not already done so.  The proceeds from the sales
are donated to charity.

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