D-SoundPRO 2.5 & Ambrosia ColorSwitch

This month Martin Russ looks at technical support, operating system updates and shareware...

I'm a great fan of shareware. Ever since one of my own shareware programs for the Atari got a 75% rating in a computer magazine, I've regarded it as an excellent way of supporting the on‑going development of high‑quality software from ordinary individuals, instead of merely contributing to the profits of huge faceless organisations. So it probably comes as no surprise that I use a shareware utility to change the resolution on the Mac that I'm writing this on, or that I'll be compressing this month's column to SOS into an emailable form by using a shareware utility. Even the screenshots here are prepared using a shareware application!

In the past, the major problem with shareware has always been the money. How do you send 20 US dollars to someone in Arkansas or Osaka? The wide availability of modems (because of the WWW and email) now means that this is all much simpler. My most recent shareware has all been paid for by credit card, to companies that act as intermediaries for shareware authors. You enter your details using a small application built into the shareware program (or included with it) that you want to register, and it produces an encrypted block of ASCII text which you email to the relevant people. Your credit card, name, email and address details are hidden in the message, and within a few days (sometimes the next day!) you get a software key by email (or post) which unlocks the full version of the application — there's no messing with International Money Orders, foreign cheques, postage and so on. Instead, you often get to influence the next version, bugs are fixed by the author, and you can save yourself lots of money as well.

D‑Soundpro

For something that illustrates the real value of shareware, you only have to look at Stefano Daino's D‑SoundPRO. This Italian‑developed program is a comprehensive sample editor for the MacOS computer platform. It uses both AIFF sound files and MIDI Sample Dump Standard I/O, which means that it's very useful for synthesizers like my Yamaha SY99, which only use MSDS (MIDI Sample Dump Standard) and have very limited sample editing functions.

D‑SoundPRO has sound‑manipulation features to rival those you find in professional editors: crossfade looping, time‑stretching and frequency‑shifting, spectral re‑synthesis; a special rhythm loop; a synthesizer oscillator; and interpolated resampling. The user interface includes undo‑able sample edits, a sample clipboard, floating palettes for edit tools, loop monitoring, easy zooming, and a 'Virtual Keyboard'.

It supports mono and stereo AIFF audio files with sample rates of up to 48kHz, as well as MSDS, Roland S‑series, Yamaha SY99, and Akai sample dumps. It can use Opcode's OMS (v1.2 upwards) for its MIDI connections, and even allows MIDI sample playback control using a 'Virtual Synthesizer' module. The application is a Fat binary, and so will run on both 68K and PowerPC MacOS computers — and it's available in English, Italian and Japanese versions.

And for all this the price is a mere 30 US dollars — less than 20 quid! So if you've been put off by the cost of sample editors for your MSDS‑based synthesizer or sampler, try supporting a fellow Mac musician and programmer from Italy. You can get the program from:

www.harmony‑central.com/Software/Mac

www.synthzone.com/dsound.htm

• Compuserve's MIDI Forum
• Any of the 'Info‑mac' database mirrors (use Alta Vista to search)
• Mac Shareware CDs: try www.amug.org/amug/store/order.html

How It Works

After all the performance enhancement tips that I've published over the last few months, it's time to take a break and look at something else. So to temporarily close the series, here are some final thoughts.

• If you have a 68K‑based Macintosh, and you never use System 7 features such as aliases, the 'recent' folders, drag‑and‑drop clippings etc, then you might well find that your Mac will run much faster if you use the last of the System 6 operating systems: 6.071 or 6.08. You may well have the original floppy disks with one of these old operating systems all ready to install. Before you do this, make sure that your current software will still run — many of the newer pieces of software require the internal features of System 7 (for example, Opcode's Vision v3.0, Galaxy v2.0, and Max v3.0 require System 7.01 or higher).
• If your MacOS computer is running really slowly when you're using the Finder to display files and folders, then go to the Views control panel and look at the 'Calculate folder sizes' option. It should be off — turning it on will dramatically reduce the speed with which the Finder displays information about your folders. If it is on, turn it off and stand well back.
• Perhaps the simplest and easiest way of improving the performance of a MacOS computer is to put it into black and white display mode: two colours only. You can either use the Monitors control panel, or one of the many menu‑bar shortcut utilities — I use Ambrosia Software's excellent ColourSwitch. One some MacOS computers, this simple change can give huge increases in speed — and for most music sequencing software I reckon that you rarely need all that colour and three‑dimensional shading.
• One very effective way of improving your working environment may actually slow your MacOS computer down, but you might be prepared to put up with that side effect. Replacing that 14‑inch colour monitor's 640 by 480 pixel display with a modern 17‑inch display (around £500) could easily double your screen area — which saves you from all that searching for buried windows, and lets you see more of the music at once. You will need to check that your computer can cope with a larger monitor first, of course!