AudioMaster IV

Paul Overaa brings you more news on Amiga music applications and that crucial Commodore bidding war...

Offers for the purchase of Commodore International continue to dominate the thoughts of many Amiga developers and end users, and even as I write this month's column (mid‑November), yet another bid, this time from Escom, the German PC clone manufacturer and distributor, has emerged. Despite this late challenge, the Commodore sale is beginning more and more to look like a two‑horse race between the Commodore UK team and the American company Creative Equipment International (CEI). There is even a rumour on the Internet that the CEI bid has already been accepted — but I must emphasise that this is only a rumour at this stage and certainly no official announcement has been made. As I understand it, the acceptance of any of the bids arranged with the liquidator could, in fact, be contested in the courts by the other parties involved anyway!

The Commodore UK team say that they are still quietly confident that their offer will finally win the day, but it is clear that the CEI offer is not going to be lightly dismissed by creditors. CEI are believed to have already put over $1 million on the table (as a guarantee against bid withdrawal); this company ships around 50,000 Amigas a year and has a turnover of over $22 million, and they obviously mean their bid to be considered seriously.

At the end of the day, and certainly before you read this, it will be the Commodore creditors who make the final decision on which offer to accept. If the UK management buy‑out bid does succeed then the Amiga world will get back to business as usual very quickly, because the UK side of Commodore's business has always been strong. If CEI have won, then, being acutely aware that the UK is Commodore's largest and most loyal market, they'll obviously be looking for close UK marketing ties. Needless to say, the easiest way of rapidly achieving this will be to come to a working arrangement with Commodore UK themselves — and again this is likely to ensure that UK operations continue much the same as before. The bottom line is that this particular two‑horse race looks to be very good news — regardless of the outcome, both the Amiga itself and Amiga users in general are going to end up winning.

It's pretty clear, incidentally, that some Amiga developers are holding back on software updates and new product launches until they are certain that the final Commodore deal is signed, sealed, and delivered — so you can expect to see quite a flurry of product announcements shortly after the new owners of Commodore International make their plans known to the Amiga community.

World Of Amiga

Whoever becomes the lucky new owner of Commodore, it is fairly certain that a formal statement will be made in plenty of time for the Commodore UK‑organised World Of Amiga exhibition (Wembley 9‑11th December). Whilst this will certainly be buzzing with rumour and speculation this year, it is also likely to be the showground for some exciting Amiga hardware and software; I'll be bringing you details of products and new developments next month!

Taking The Direct Approach

I've had several letters from people who have been trying without success to get hold of a copy of the AudioMaster IV sample editor package. This editor, as some of you will know, is generally regarded as the best 8‑bit Amiga sample editor around and is essentially the same software as is provided with the Ramscan Audio Engineer sound sampling package.

Now it's certainly true in general that retail stocks of AudioMaster IV have dwindled over the last couple of years, but the product is being stocked by a company called Digital Direct at the quite reasonable price of £39. This company, incidentally, is being mentioned more and more often in the Amiga press in connection with MIDI and music products. Amongst other items, they supply the Microdeal ProMIDI interface, the Megalosound 8‑bit direct to disk sampling system and Aura, the new HiSoft 12‑bit PCMCIA sampler for A600/A1200 machines. Digital Direct can be reached on 0525 718271.

MIDI Without An Interface

Here's a tip for the techies: if you're in the unfortunate position of having created songs with older Amiga software that cannot export sequences in MIDI file format, you may at some stage need to link two Amigas together and transfer the song arrangements in real time, in order to get the material into a more modern sequencer. This is not difficult to do, and basically involves simply playing each sequence on one machine whilst you re‑record it on another.

MIDI message transmission is, of course, based on plain old serial port comms, and you might care to know that, providing you're competent enough to knock up a simple two‑wire serial lead, you do not need to go to the expense of buying a second MIDI interface — you can join the two Amigas directly via their serial ports.

Get yourself a couple of RS232 plugs and some wire, then link the system ground pin 7 at one end of the cable to the corresponding pin 7 at the other end, and the data transmit pin 2 to the data receive pin 3 at the other end. Link the two machines directly via their serial port connections, plugging the end of the lead with the pin 2 connection into the Amiga that will be playing the material, and the MIDI transfer will work just as well.

A Revolution In The Making

In the near future, Amiga users are likely to see an explosive increase in the use of on‑line Amiga Guide help documentation. This Commodore hypertext help system, as many will know, works using text files that contain embedded commands which indicate how the associated text should be displayed and used. Links can be created to specific text sections, and in the final document a user can move between different sections at the touch of a button. You might, for example, be reading a help file for a particular program and come across a term you don't understand. Click on that term and you'll be provided with a suitably enlightening explanation of it. Having read that, you would then click on a Retrace button to be returned to the text originally being read.

What you might not know is that, up until now, most developers have built Amiga Guide databases using ordinary text editors. During recent months, however, a new program has appeared, called Heddley, which is likely to change things dramatically — because it allows anyone to create on‑line hypertext help files (with buttons and links) with incredible ease. Whilst obviously good news for developers, this is not why I'm mentioning Heddley. The really important point is that end‑users themselves are now going to be able to produce Amiga Guide readable documents without knowing anything about the technical ins and outs of Amiga Guide document formatting.

Hypertext‑based MIDI/music tutorials, user‑group sequencing help, disks... the possibilities are endless. The best news of all, though, is the price — Heddley is a shareware program and registration costs just £10. The program is well worth checking out and should be available from most of the larger PD/shareware libraries by the time you read this. It can also be obtained directly from its author, Edmund Dumbill, c/o 13 Giles Avenue, Burnholme, York YO3 0RB.