SMPED version 0.04

by Robert A. Knop Jr.  (rknop@mop.caltech.edu)

April 19, 1996


INTRODUCTION

Smped is a low-frills quick&dirty audio sample editor that I wrote for use
myself because I needed one and I wasn't able to quickly find a free one that
had the feel that I wanted.  I've been writing this over the course of the
last two years; every so often, I add another feature.  It's up to the point
now where it might be useful to somebody else.

Smped reads and writes only the Amiga standard IFF-8SVX audio sample format.
It is designed to work on one-shot samples; it probably won't work very well
as an instrument editor.

Smped requires at least WB2.04 and ReqTools.  (You can get reqtools.library
from Aminet and presumably elsewhere.  Many other programs available on the
net either require reqtools or come with reqtools.  If you download a lot of
stuff, you may already have this.)

I've done things like make my answering machine messages with this.

Smped does things like use floating point arithmetic all over the place, and
as such is probably slower than it needs to be.  Basically, I wrote the
program to get the job done.  Since I don't do the job that often, I haven't
spent any time optimizing it or making it effecient.   Perhaps someday, though
the truth is there are other programming projects for the Amiga I have going
which are significantly higher priority.


DISTRIBUTION

Smped is Freeware, (c) 1996 by Robert Knop.  You may use it for free,
distribute it for free, etc.


USE

Should be pretty obvious.  If not, then you have to wait until I get around to
writting a better documentation file :)

Most of the functions operate on the currently selected range.  If there is no
currently selected range, then the operations operate on the full sample.  (Or
the currently visible portion of the sample... to be honest, I forget which.)
Click with the left mouse button to select the current "point".  Then, shift
click with the left mouse button to define the other side of the range.  You
can expand and shrink the range by shift-clicking.  An unshifted click cancel
the range (so that there will be no range selected).  You may also define the
range using the provided text gadgets.

Functions such as scale, fade, etc. ask you for a scaling parameter.  This
parameter is multiplicative.  For instance, with scale, a scale factor of 1.0
is no change to the sample; a scale factor of 0.5 will make the range half as
loud, a scale factor of 2.0 will make the sample twice as loud.

When you play a sample or a range of a sample, everything but the "play"
gadget is ghosted.  If you click on the "play" gadget, the sample will stop
playing sometime in the "near future."  Because of the way playing is
implemented, it won't stop playing immediately, but be patient, it will stop
before too terribly long.

Recording isn't implemented.  (Sorry.)  I use AGMSRecordSound for this purpose
myself upon those infrequent occasions when I need to record something.

Smped can only edit one sample at a time.  If you need to edit more than one
sample at once, and mix multiple samples, just run smped more than once.  Hey,
the Amiga's a multitasking computer!  And the executable isn't that large, so
it's really not a terribly inefficient way to work.  Smped uses the Amiga
Clipboard for its cutting and pasting, so you can cut a range from one sample
and paste it into another sample.

If you have questions, feel free to send E-mail to rknop@mop.caltech.edu.  It
may take me a long time to answer, though.