How To Use AkaiTalk AkaiTalk is a utility which lets you tansfer sounds from an Akai S700, S900, or S950 sampler to the Amiga, and back. The sounds are stored in MSW1 format, and may then be loaded into Wrench for editing. AkaiTalk lets you do three specific things: 1) Send an MSW1 format sound to the Akai. 2) Receive a sound from the Akai and store it in MSW1 format on the Amiga. 3) See the sound sample catalog of the items presently in the Akai. Two way MIDI connection must be used. ( Amiga MIDI Out to Akai MIDI In, and Akai MIDI Out to Amiga MIDI In. ) To use AkaiTalk, double click on its icon. A moderate sized window will open on Workbench. At the top are three string gadgets, one for the MSW1 sound name, one for the Akai slot number, and one for the MIDI channel. Below this are four buttons; Send, Cat, Receive, and Adjust. Cat Cat is used to get a listing of the Akai sounds and their corresponding slot numbers. After clicking on this button, a list of sound names will be presented to you, along with their slot numbers ( ie where they are stored in the Akai's memory. ) The sounds will be listed alphabetically. The controls allow you to scan through the list quickly. They operate just like the standard FileIO window controls in Wrench. By double clicking on a given name in the list, the name list requester will disappear, and your choice will appear in the Name and Slot Number string gadgets. You may now either receive this sound, or copy to it. This function will only work with the S900 and S950. Receive Clicking on the Receive button brings up the FileIO requester. Here you create the name for the Amiga sound file. Clicking on Okay will start the receive process. If desired, you may change the value in the Name gadget to some other name. Send To send a sound file to the Akai, click on the Send button. The FileIO requester will come up and ask you for the sound file which you would like to send to the Akai. After selecting this, click on the Okay button. The sound will then be sent to the Akai. The value in the Name gadget will be ignored. The Akai will save the sound with the slot number as its name. This name can then be changed to something else by using the Akai's Rename function. On S900, the sound will be copied to the next available slot unless a sample with that name already exists. In this case, the new sound will copy over the old one. On the S950, the sound will be copied directly to the slot specified. Adjust Since the S900 / S950 forces the end of a loop to be the end of the sample, this can create problems when transfering sounds to and from other samplers. When Adjust is highlighted, the sample will be modified to work properly with the Akai. When receiving a sample from the Akai, portions before and after the sample start and end points will be ignored. When sending a sample to the Akai, portions after the loop end will not be sent. Adjust is particularly useful when sending sounds to the Akai. If your sample end point and loop end point are not the same, the Akai will not properly play back your loop, and you will have to adjust the sample end point from the Akai front panel to compensate. Using Adjust eliminates this problem. Adjust is only used with looping samples, not one-shot types. Example You would like to take a sample from the Akai called "SNORT", edit it, and then send it back to the Akai. First, call up AkaiTalk and do a Cat. The Cat requester list will now pop up. Somewhere in this list should be a sound called SNORT with its slot number. Double click on SNORT. The requester disappears and the name SNORT is copied to the Name gadget. SNORT's slot number is also copied to the Slot Number gadget ( let's assume that the slot is 7. ) Now, click on the Receive button. The FileIO requester pops up, allowing you to specify the save name. Let's say that this is on the RAM: disk, and will be called "AkaiTemp". Use the Next Disk button to find out what's on the RAM: disk. Hopefully, a file called AkaiTemp isn't already there. Now, type AkaiTemp into the FileIO Name gadget and hit RETURN. The requester disappears and the Receive process starts. You will notice that the Akai front panel now says "Sending sample SNORT over MIDI". When this is done, the Akai front panel will go back to its normal state and the normal mouse pointer will be seen in place of the "sleepy cloud" pointer. At this point, the sound sample has been saved and you may exit AkaiTalk. If desired, AkaiTemp may be copied to other Amiga disks as part of your master library. At this point you would call up Sample Wrench and load in the sound sample AkaiTemp. Once all of the edits are in place, The new version of AkaiTemp may be saved. To transfer this back to the Akai, call up AkaiTalk and enter a value for the Slot Number. If you want this to copy over the original version, use the original slot number ( in our case, 7. ) Now, select Send. The FileIO requester will ask for the file to send. Select AkaiTemp from the RAM: disk and then select Okay. The Send process starts and the Akai front panel now reads "Receiving sample 7 over MIDI". Once the process is complete, the Akai and Amiga go back to their normal states. You may now exit AkaiTalk. At this point, you might like to hear the actual Akai sound. This can be acheived through Wrench itself, or through the Play_Remote utility. Remember, the Amiga is a multi-tasking machine, so you don't need to exit one utility in order to use another. You should NEVER try to access these utilities simultaneously though, as the Amiga has only one internal serial port. In other words, don't try to use Play_Remote while AkaiTalk is in the process of sending or receiving! Adjust Example The best way to understand how Adjust works is to see what happens with a specific sample. Let's say that you have a sample with the following parameters: Size = 6336, Sample Start = 54, Sample End = 6261, Loop Length = 97. Therefore, the Loop Start = 6261 - 97 = 6164. If this is sent to the Amiga and loaded into Sample Wrench, you see the following if Adjust is not used: Size = 6336, Loop Start = 6164, Loop End = 6261. If Adjust is used, the un-used front and back portions are discarded and the loop is adjusted to compensate: Size = 6207, Loop Start = 6110, Loop End = 6207. If these two sounds are sent back to the Akai, the following will be seen: Sample No Adj In No Adj In Adj In Adj In No Adj Out Adj Out No Adj Out Adj Out Size 6336 6262 6208 6208 Start 0 0 0 0 End 6336 6262 6207 6207 Loop 97 97 97 97 Note Bad Loop OK Loop OK Loop OK Loop The last two columns show a size of 6208 because the Akai requires an even number of sample points, and automatically adds one if the incoming size is odd. Final note: you may have to reset the default loudness and pitch of sounds which are sent to the Akai. Also, depending on the application, the sample start and end points may need to be adjusted ( see discussion on Adjust ). These parameters may be quickly changed using the Akai's Edit Sample functions.