HARDWARE REVIEWS....

Yes its about time we did some hardware reviews so here goes...

EIDERSOFTS PRO SOUND DESIGNER  RRP 79.95  OUR 64.95

The Pro Sound designer is a unit that allows you to 'digitize' or 'sample' music or sound effects (ANY SOUND infact) from tape/record/microphone/cd etc and modify it for replay later on, or in any program that uses standard (IFF) sound files. Programs that use this sound format are Sonix, Deluxe Music, Fantavision etc just about any sound program at all! This means you can create your own instruments for use in Sonix/Deluxe Music or create your own music demo.

The unit itself is housed in a small box which fits in the parallel port at the back of the Amiga, and a gender changer (not gender-bender) is supplied to enable it to work on both A500's/2000's and A1000's. The hardware draws power from the Amiga so theres no need for any messing with power supplies although this does carry a disadvantage, which I'll mention later.
<*>More The input to the unit is via a 3.5mm jack plug (stereo) so you'll have to buy a correct adaptor depending on what you intend linking it up to. (Eidersoft reccomend the Headphone socket due to voltage levels - the unit should NOT be attached directly to the output of a CD unit or Tape etc).

The software itself is very well presented and uses icons to the full advantage. The display is also FULL screen which is nice to see. The main part of the display is given
to the waveform display top-centre and the sampled data in the lower part of the screen. The rest of the screen is given over to icons all very nice to look at, and you can even change the colour scheme for the l.e.d. icons!
Some icons are hidden and selecting a further icon slides them down into view which is very good indeed.

So it looks nice but how does it perform ? 

The answer is good, at high sample rates the quality is excellent but it all depends on the quality of the input sound. You have the facility to record/play with the high-pass sound filter on or off which generally enables you to get an even better sample.Although its best to leave the filter on for low rate (9khz and under) samples.
<*>MoreCriticisms....

Just a few things I'm not entirely happy about which could be rectified in future versions maybe...

       i)      When using PRO SOUND it draws its power from 
the Amiga. As the Amiga PSU is already overworked this means that there is not enough power to work the second drive (DF1:) so forget any ideas about using both your drives (unless your external drive has its own seperate PSU)
I would have prefered a switch on the Pro Sound so I could turn it off when I wanted to use the external drive.

       ii)     When sampling you can only sample a max of 280K at a time (mono) and even less in stereo. I would have prefered the option of being able to sample as much data as I have memory available (1meg). This means currently for big
samples I have to use the 'join' command from CLI and also
third party programs such as Audiomaster from Aegis. 512K users must face up to the fact that creating long samples is
gonna be a chore...

       iii)    The Disc is NOT copy protected but IS manual
protected, although a sensible idea I do get peeved having to first find the manual then read through it! <*>MoreOverall...

Sound sampling is fun and useful (if you have a use for it that is!) you can really let your hair down and create some
really strange pieces of music and suchlike - I know I did!

The Pro Sound designer is NOT the cheapest on the market
but it is well presented,packaged and works well. Some people may find the lack of a different input socket a bit
annoying but its just a case of buying an adaptor. 
I was a bit disapointed that it didnt use the same system
as 'Perfect Sound' for sampling data so I couldnt use other 
software such as Audiomaster to create samples - although the saved data IS compatible. Owners of perfect sound can use the ProSound Software which is available by itself.

More Hardware reviews next time....