Using the SunRize Studio16 with Bars&Pipes Professional: -------------------------------------------------------- Your SunRize Studio16 software integrates seamlessly into Bars&Pipes Professional, the Amiga's premier MIDI composition and sequencing program. We've included four modules that load directly into Bars&Pipes Professional and turn your Amiga into a complete music and audio production environment. Once you've installed these modules (Tools and Accessories in Bars&Pipes Pro parlance) into Bars&Pipes Professional, you can: Synchronize your MIDI composition with SMPTE via the SMPTE input in the SunRize card. Access all Studio16 features and windows within the Bars&Pipes Professional screen. Cue samples to MIDI notes. This is extremely useful for cueing sound effects to music as well as video. Record and play back a virtual digital track in sync with your MIDI tracks. To install the SunRize Tools in Bars&Pipes Professional, copy the tools from the "Bars&Pipes/Tools" drawer on your SunRize disk into your Bars&Pipes Tools drawer and copy the accessories from the "Bars&Pipes/Accessories" drawer on your SunRize disk into your Bars&Pipes Accessories drawer. From within Bars&Pipes Pro, open the Tool window and select the menu option "Load Tool..." to load in the desired tools. To load the accessories, open the Accessories window and select "Load..." for each accessory you wish to load. ACCESSORIES: NAME: SunMPTE DESCRIPTION: The SunMPTE Accessory allows Bars&Pipes Pro to synchronize to SMPTE input entering the SMPTE port on the SunRize board, or generated by the SunRize SMPTE Generator module. When you double-click on this accessory's icon, a control window opens. At the top the current SMPTE time is displayed. Underneath are two buttons, Activate and Run Lock. If the Activate button is depressed Bars&Pipes Pro will receive SMPTE and will start and stop in sync with SMPTE input. If both the Activate and Run Lock buttons are depressed (default) Bars&Pipes Pro continuously updates its internal time based on SMPTE input events, ensuring proper synchronization. NAME: SunSet DESCRIPTION: The SunSet Accessory allows you to run all the SunRize Studio16 modules within the Bars&Pipes Pro screen. When this icon is double-clicked on the Studio16 Instance window will open, allowing you to access all of the Studio16 software. The SunSet Accessory also allows you to have a unique environment setup within Bars&Pipes Pro. When the Instance window opens, there will always be a module named "B&PSavePrefs". Selecting this module saves all preferences in the Master Preferences (except the color map) and the size, position, and configuration of all modules currently open. This information is saved independantly of the normal Studio16 preferences. The files used to save this information are in the S: directory, Studio16BPP.config holds the defaults from the Master Preferences, and BPPInstance holds the configuration of all the open modules. Bars&Pipes Pro keeps track of whether the Instance window is open and if Quit is selected to leave Bars&Pipes Pro and the Instance window is open, all other modules will be automatically closed. If you close the instance window, make sure that you close all other Studio16 windows before leaving Bars&Pipes Pro. NOTE: Using this accessory may have unpredictable results if you are already running Studio16 on another screen. TOOLS: NAME: SunRize Out DESCRIPTION: The SunRize Out tool translates MIDI note events into samples to play out of the SunRize audio card. You may assign a different sample to each of the 128 midi notes. You have the option either of playing each sample out to its full duration or stopping playback when a Note Off is received. SPECIAL TYPE: Output. USAGE: PipeLine. CONTROLS: The Sample button states the name of the sample associated with the note displayed in the Note slider, or "Undefined" if no sample is associated with that note. The Note slider allows you to select the MIDI note to be displayed. To the right of the sample button is the Load button. Clicking on this button brings up a file requester so that you may select a sample to assign to the current note, as displayed in the Note slider. Sample file names are stored internally with their full path name, so if a sample is renamed or moved from one directory to another it will invalidate that entry in the sample list. To the right of the Load button is the Record button. Clicking on this button loads the Studio16 Recorder module. This button is provided as a convenient way to record new samples quickly without having to load all of the Studio16 software. To the right of the Note slider under the Record button is a button labelled Test. Clicking on this button plays the current sample, based on the current note. At the bottom right of the window is a button labeled Force Duration. If this button is depressed, samples are clipped to be equal to the note length only. Otherwise each sample is played out in its entirety. The Driver button at the bottom of the window displays the current SunRize device drive that is used to play back samples. If you have more than one SunRize card, clicking on this button will bring up a scrolling list of all available drivers to choose from. Once this tool is set up, whenever it receives a note from the pipeline that corresponds to a sample, it will begin playing. In all cases, pressing Stop from the Transport Controls will stop the sample playing. The SunRize Out Tool is sensitive to both velocity and Control Change 7 (Volume) for determining the volume of the sample. When used with the AD516 board, Control Change 10 (Panning) is used to determine the panning of the sample. NAME: SunRize Virtual Track DESCRIPTION: The SunRize Virtual Track tool acts as a separate track in the Bars&Pipes Pro evnironment. It allows you to record and playback digital audio via your SunRize card, synchronized to begin at any specified point in time. SPECIAL TYPE: None. USAGE: PipeLine. CONTROLS: Two different setups may appear, depending on whether the current handler is the AD1012 handler of the AD516 handler. If you have both, the window will change its setup when you select a new handler. FOR THE AD1012: --------------- The string defined by Name: is the full path name to the sample that is to be recorded or played back. The default is "Untitled". The Load button to the left opens up a file requester so that you may find a previously recorded sample; the name of the file selected is put into the Name: string. While recording, if a sample of the same name already exists, that sample is deleted. Directly under the "Load" button is the "Monitor" button. This button merely turns on and off monitoring of the input stream. Several sliders and the Auto Filter button control the parameters for recording samples. The Gain slider adjusts the input gain, and the Rate and Filter sliders determine the sampling rate and filter setting. With Auto Filter on (the default), the Filter automatically adjusts to a good value based on the rate. None of these options has any effect on playback of samples. Below the filter setting is the Start time. This is the time that the sample will actually start playing or recording. By default this time is in music time, but by selecting the SMPTE button to the left of the start time, the time may be specified in SMPTE format. Because of disk access time it is not always possible to start a large number of samples playing or recording at the same time, so staggering the start times is recommended when playing more that two samples at a time. The Meters button in the bottom left of the screen is a convenience provided to open up the Studio16 Meters window within the Bars&Pipes Pro screen. This will help you to adjust the input levels to get maximum response when recording samples. The Driver button at the bottom of the window displays the current SunRize device drive that is used to play back samples. If you have more than one SunRize card, clicking on this button will bring up a scrolling list of all available drivers to choose from. To playback a sample using the SunRize Virtual Track Tool, simply place this tool in a pipeline, type or use the file requester to assign the name of the sample, optionally modify the start time to begin playing the sample, and then press start from the Bars&Pipes Transport Control. The sample will begin playing at the requested time (or as close as possible if disk access time is slow) and will stop when either the sample ends or Stop is pressed in the Transport Controls. If the song begins playing after the requested start time, the sample will not be played. If the track that the tool is in is muted, the sample will not play. To record a sample using the SunRize Virtual Track tool, set up the name and start time as for a playback sample, but also set up the desired rate, filter, and gain settings. Use of the Monitor and Meters Window may come in handy to determine the proper settings. Just as in a regular MIDI track for Bars&Pipes Pro, the track that contains the SunRize Virtual Track Tool must be in Record mode and the Record button in the Transport Controls must be set for recording to take place. Once the record mode is set, press Start in the Transport controls and recording will begin at the start time specified in the tool. If the song begins after the requested start time, the sample will not be recorded. The only way to stop recording is to press Stop in the Transport Controls. The SunRize Virtual Track Tool is sensitive to Control Change 7 (Volume), and if placed in an output pipeline can be used with MixMaestro. FOR THE AD516: --------------- The two strings defined by "Left:" and "Right:" are the full path names to the samples that are to be recorded or played back. The defaults are "Untitled_L" and "Untitled_R". The "Load" button to the left of each string opens up a file requester so that you may find a previously recorded sample; the name of the file selected is put into the string immediately to the right of the "Load" button selected. While recording, if a sample of the same name already exists, that sample is deleted. Directly under the "Load" buttons are two buttons labelled "L" and "R". These buttons define which samples of the two listed (Left or Right) will be recorded to or played back from. Either one of these buttons or both may be selected. If only one sample is being recorded, it is recorded as a mono track (default pan is centered). If both are selected the left sample is recorded with pan set full left and the right sample is recorded with pan set full right. Directly under the "L" and "R" buttons is the "Monitor" button. This button merely turns on and off monitoring of the input stream. The "Gain:" and "Rate:" sliders control the parameters for recording samples. The Gain slider adjusts the input gain, and the Rate slider determines the sampling rate. None of these options has any effect on playback of samples. Below the "Rate:" slider is the Start time. This is the time that the sample will actually start playing or recording. By default this time is in music time, but by selecting the SMPTE button to the left of the start time, the time may be specified in SMPTE format. Because of disk access time it is not always possible to start a large number of samples playing or recording at the same time, so staggering the start times is recommended when playing multiple samples at one time. The Meters button in the bottom left of the screen is a convenience provided to open up the Studio16 Meters window within the Bars&Pipes Pro screen. This will help you to adjust the input levels to get maximum response when recording samples. The Driver button at the bottom of the window displays the current SunRize device drive that is used to play back samples. If you have more than one SunRize card, clicking on this button will bring up a scrolling list of all available drivers to choose from. To playback a sample using the SunRize Virtual Track Tool, simply place this tool in a pipeline, type or use the file requester to assign the name of the sample, optionally modify the start time to begin playing the sample, and then press start from the Bars&Pipes Transport Control. The sample will begin playing at the requested time (or as close as possible if disk access time is slow) and will stop when either the sample ends or Stop is pressed in the Transport Controls. If the song begins playing after the requested start time, the sample will not be played. If the track that the tool is in is muted, the sample will not play. To record a sample using the SunRize Virtual Track tool, set up the name and start time as for a playback sample, but also set up the desired rate and gain settings. Use of the Monitor and Meters Window may come in handy to determine the proper settings. Just as in a regular MIDI track for Bars&Pipes Pro, the track that contains the SunRize Virtual Track Tool must be in Record mode and the Record button in the Transport Controls must be set for recording to take place. Once the record mode is set, press Start in the Transport controls and recording will begin at the start time specified in the tool. If the song begins after the requested start time, the sample will not be recorded. The only way to stop recording is to press Stop in the Transport Controls. The SunRize Virtual Track Tool is sensitive to Control Change 7 (Volume) to determine the volume of both samples. Panning via Control Change 10 is also supported. For samples recorded Mono panning works normally, but for stereo samples (two samples playing simultaneously), panning reacts as if the Right sample is supposed to be full right and the Left sample is supposed to be full left. Panning to the right will move the Left sampleto the right; panning to th left will move the Right sample to the left. If placed in an output pipeline MixMaestro can be used to control both volume and panning. NOTE: Disk access time is a limiting factor in playing back and recording samples. Many samples playing at once and/or slow hard drives can cause samples to get out of sync with Bars&Pipes Pro. In many cases you may be able to get around these problems by optimizing our buffer sizes in the Master Preferences or moving critical samples to RAM:. In other cases the only solution may be to stagger your samples so that fewer are playing at the same time.