Martin Russ rounds up the latest Apple hardware and software news, kicking off with tidings of QuickTime with everything...
On the 27th of March, at the Apple Music Industry Day, Duncan Kennedy, Apple's QuickTime Product Line Manager, announced that Opcode's OMS software technology would be incorporated into Apple's QuickTime multimedia product by the end of 1995. This extends the possibilities of the QuickTime music architecture, and should simplify the use of the Mac for musicians and multimedia developers. (A similar announcement was made in December last year about OMS being included in the forthcoming Windows 95 for the PC.) In the case of the Mac, it appears that the important point is that the low‑level serial driver from OMS has been incorporated into QuickTime — which thus makes QuickTime OMS compatible. Presumably, the full OMS package will not be supplied as part of QuickTime, but will continue to be supplied with Opcode software.
OMS 1.2.1 and alpha test copies of OMS 2.0 are also available (for free) from ftp.rahul.net in the pub/opcode directory (AIIST). If you write Macintosh music applications, the OMS Developer Kit might well be useful too — and you can get this via your Opcode distributor; contact MCMXCIX on 0171 723 7221.
Quicktime & Osc
OSC's Deck II version 2.5 claims full native PowerMac compatibility, and now offers recording and playback of 24 tracks of 16‑bit, 'CD‑quality' audio — and with digital video support via QuickTime. Of course, you'll need a fast SCSI hard disk for this sort of task... The combination of the PowerMac processor's speed with Apple's QuickTime enables high levels of functionality in software, without the need for additional expensive hardware cards. OSC will have been demonstrating the new version of Deck at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas in early April (as I write this, in fact!) — which underlines how much Macintosh music software is now part of the broadcast TV, radio, video and multimedia worlds too. The NAB will need no introduction to any reader who has used pro reel‑to‑reel tape recorders...
Quicktime & Plug And Play?
Macintosh users have been enjoying the advantages of a 'plug and play' environment for some time now. Adding new peripherals without needing to make extensive changes to software is definitely how a computer should work. It's nice to see that the eagerly awaited Windows 95 operating system software from Microsoft, extends the 'Plug & Play' idea to MIDI devices too — by incorporating Opcode's OMS software architecture. Since QuickTime is also available for Windows, this should mean that QuickTime MIDI movies will soon be playable on the Mac and the PC
Quicktime & Freemidi
Daniel Rose of Mark of the Unicorn software (Performer, MIDI TimePiece, etc) has revealed that MOTU will be writing code to make QuickTime compatible with FreeMIDI. Next month's Apple Notes will feature an extended question and answer session with Daniel. Don't forget that Klemm Music Technology are now the contacts for any MOTU enquiries: (01462) 733310.
(Hopefully this ends the QuickTime connection for this month.)
Emagic
Emagic's Logic Audio sequencing, notation and digital audio program for the Macintosh can have its functionality extended by adding Logic Extension products. The basic core of the program is common, but you can add the extra hardware and software elements as required. The first three extensions to be announced show the possibilities:
- The TDM Extension allows Logic Audio to run on the Digidesign Pro Tools II system, and this extends the feature set of Logic Audio quite considerably — up to 48 tracks (depending on the hardware), a TDM Plug‑In Configuration Editor, and lots of TDM Plug‑In capability.
- The AV Extension allows Logic Audio to use Apple Sound Manager 3.0 with a PowerMac, 660AV or 840AV Mac, to give up to 12 tracks of 44.1 kHz, 16‑bit digital audio. On any other Macintosh it will provide up to 12 tracks of 8‑bit digital audio. All the usual features of Logic Audio are available for the AV audio tracks, including the Digital Factory DSP options, which include time compression and expansion, pitch shifting, re‑grooving of digital audio, MIDI‑to‑Audio and vice‑versa, plus sample rate conversions.
- The CBX Extension allows Logic Audio to run four tracks of digital audio on one Yamaha CBX‑D5 digital processor. Simultaneous AV Mac tracks are available if you also have the AV Extension. The CBX effects can be fully automated, and again all the usual features of Logic Audio are available for the CBX audio tracks — with the CBX's signal processing too.
Contact Sound Technology (01462 480000) for details on any Emagic product.
Digital Audio On The Mac
Choosing a digital audio and MIDI sequencer for the Macintosh is not easy. Each of the major suppliers now has comprehensive facilities for adding digital audio tracks to their already sophisticated MIDI sequencing capability. There are even quite a few less well‑known suppliers appearing with programs designed for more audio‑specific purposes (OSC, for example). You'll be working with your new purchase for a long time, so how do you go about selecting your next studio companion and getting it right?
As with any major purchase, the method of making the right decision is the same. I advise preparing a list of your requirements, and then compiling a chart which shows how each of the contenders matches up to your needs. In the course of filling in the chart, you may well find that you hear about desirable new features that change your specification, in which case you may often need to revise the basic data. Bear in mind future expansion, but also make sure that you don't rely too heavily on promises of forthcoming features, because they may well be vapourware. The final decision is rarely easy — you're unlikely to get one column completely full of ticks! It's much more likely that you will need to compromise on some features, in which case you should assess their relative importance — and the best advice here is to drop anything with a high 'pose' value and little else. If you never use it, but it looks flash, then it is probably a waste of money!
Tip Of The Month
Telephones have changed quite a lot over the last few years. And our use of phones is changing too — especially with the wide range of add‑on goodies that the phone companies now offer. Modems are increasingly used to enable computers to communicate, and this is where you can come unstuck. I certainly did!
I had just received a US Robotics 14.4 kbaud modem, and was testing it by checking out a BBS (MacTel on 0115 945 5444) when the telephone rang! In the middle of a modem call? Actually the fault was mine, not the telephone's. I had Call Waiting activated on the telephone line, which is that neat service which lets you know when someone else is trying to phone you — very useful when you've been on the phone for ages and suspect that another call may be imminent. Call Waiting lets you know that there's another call waiting by putting a discrete tone in your ear. This is fine in normal circumstances, but if you're using a modem, the modem can interpret this tone as a problem, and it can then drop the line — at which point the 'phone rings!
The moral of the story is this: don't have Call Waiting on a telephone line that you intend to use with a modem. Buying a second line is one solution, and there are some bargains around if you install more than one line at once with some phone suppliers. Try ringing 150 and asking the BT operator.
Apple News In Brief
- MAKING FILES
Until the end of June, Claris's Filemaker Pro database application is available for the bargain price of £399 — and the package includes a sample database of over 1000 wines, CD‑ROM of more example applications, an introductory membership to Compuserve, and a Claris T‑shirt! If you need to keep track of almost anything, then a database could be invaluable. Some ideas: an equipment record to make organising insurance (and insurance claims) easier; a song database — when did you write that one about the green banana?; guitar chords; neat chord sequences; CD, cassette or vinyl information; and lots more. In a future Apple Notes, I may get around to showing you how to produce some of the more interesting databases... - PDS UPGRADE
Centris and Quadra Mac owners who want to upgrade to a PowerMac should find some bargain pricings on the Apple PDS Upgrade card at the moment — and if you buy before the 31st of May you may even get the System 7.5 upgrade thrown in for free as well. Contact Apple on 0181 569 1199. - DOWNLOAD
You can apparently now get QuickTime 2.0 for Mac (or even for Windows) from quicktime.apple.com.
How It Works: Networking
You may have heard of 'Networking' in the context of computers, but it can also mean maintaining a useful set of contacts who can help you. The larger the set of people you know, the better the chances they may have the answers. This is exactly what happens on the Internet: ask a question and you're talking to a potential network of more than 30 million people who might know the answer.
On a smaller scale, Apple Notes reader Francois Rossi wrote to me to follow up on the QuickTime MIDI information in the April Apple Notes. He reminded me that there are also some neat freeware applications that can be useful to anyone who wants to explore QuickTime MIDI. BijouPlay is a QuickTime Player that is MIDI movie compatible, whilst the not‑so‑obviously‑titled All MIDI application can convert MIDI Files into QuickTime MIDI Movies (although I had some trouble when I tried it, so there may be some machine‑dependent problems). Both programs are Fat binaries, which means that they will run on both ordinary Macs and PowerMacs, and they are freeware. You should be able to find them on the major Mac ftp servers like sumex. Francois suggests that you try ftp'ing to somewhere like src.doc.ic.ac.uk and look in the /packages/mac/sumex/snd/util directory.
Thanks for this information, Francois. If anyone else has any useful information that could help other Mac music makers, drop me a line at SOS, or even e‑mail me via SOS at 100517.1113@compuserve.com. The advantage of networking is that you get more than just one person's opinion or knowledge, so let's share some ideas. If it works, all the Apple Notes readers should benefit!
On The Net
World Wide Web browser applications using the HTML page layout language seem to be in 'leapfrog' mode at the moment. Rapid advances in the creative possibilities may come with the news that a future version of the Netscape browser will use Adobe's Acrobat software. Acrobat enables complete pages of finished magazine‑style layout to be easily viewable on most major computer platforms — DOS, Windows, Unix, and Macintosh — without any need for the time‑consuming task of coding up complex pages using HTML.
Simple pages with mostly text and hypertext links will probably continue to be produced using HTML, but for prestige purposes, especially where the appearance of the page is important, the use of Acrobat could turn the WWW into the next century's magazine publishing medium.