Sample editor ============= MED now has a built-in sample editor for sampling and simple editing operations. The sample editor is activated by clicking the SMPED gadget. When you load a sample, its waveform is displayed on the sample editor screen. At the right top corner of the waveform display, there's a number telling the number of bytes currently displayed. Initially it's the length of the sample (whole sample displayed). The minimum value is 312, which means that there's one pixel for each byte in sample. Below the waveform, there's a red bar. This tells you the size of display relative to the size of the whole sample, and your current display position in the sample (this is meaningful when you zoom in). Buffer size =========== At the left side of the screen, there's a gadget labeled BUFF:. This is the size of the current sample (waveform buffer). If you want to increase the size, you can type in a new value. The whole sample is then cleared. Maximum buffer size is 131072. Selecting range =============== Many editing operations work with a specified range. The range is set in the sample editor by clicking the RMB and dragging. The RNGS/RNGE show the actual byte positions of the start and end of the range. You can also change the start/end positions by entering a new value into them. The RANGE ALL gadget selects the whole display. When you've selected the range, you can readjust start/end point by holding the Shift while dragging with mouse. The other point is the left untouched. Playing ======= Next to BUFF-gadget, there are gadgets PLAY DISP and PLAY RNG. Play disp plays the current display with the current period value (see below). Play range plays the selected range. The whole waveform can be played simply with the keyboard (as usual). Zooming ======= For accurate editing, the zoom is very important. There are many ways to zoom into the waveform. 1. Use the ZOOM IN to zoom in, or ZOOM OUT to zoom out (I wonder if this is too complex...??? :-) 2. Select a range, then click SHOW RNG. The range is then displayed on the screen. When you want to restore the whole waveform to the view, click SHOW ALL. These controls should be familiar to AudioMaster users. When you've zoomed in, it's often necessary to move around the sample. You can scroll the displayed area with cursor right/left-keys. Sampling ======== MED has the basic sampling operations built-in. The MONITOR gadget shows you the real-time waveform input from the sampler (multitasking disabled). Click mouse button to stop. The DIGITIZE gadget is used for sampling. Click it, and the real-time waveform appears. Now you can click the left mouse button to start sampling, and right mouse button to cancel. When you click the left button, the screen blanks, and sampling starts. The sampling stops when the waveform buffer is full. You can also interrupt sampling with the right mouse button. Sampling/playing rate ===================== On the right side of the screen, the current sampling/playing period is displayed (default 428). This is the value that specifies the pitch of the sound. You can change the period by entering a new value into the PER-integer gadget, and pressing Return. E.g. to double the sampling speed, you could type in the number 214. Here are the periods of MED's notes: C-1 856 C-2 428 C-3 214 C#1 808 C#2 404 C#3 202 D-1 762 D-2 381 D-3 190 D#1 720 D#2 360 D#3 180 E-1 678 E-2 339 E-3 170 F-1 640 F-2 320 F-3 160 F#1 604 F#2 302 F#3 151 G-1 570 G-2 285 G-3 143 G#1 538 G#2 269 G#3 135 A-1 508 A-2 254 A-3 127 A#1 480 A#2 240 A#3 120 H-1 453 H-2 226 H-3 113 Changing the sample rate ======================== If you have a sample with period 428 (C-2), and you'd like to transpose it to play G-2 when you play C-2, then you do the following: 1. Make sure that the current period is 428. 2. Type in the value 285 into the PER-gadget, DON'T PRESS RETURN!! 3. Without still pressing Return, click the CHANGE RATE -gadget. Now the sample is transposed (its size will change). If you simply want to transpose the sample one octave up/down, there are two shortcut gadgets for that. Oct (up arrow) transposes the sample 1 octave up, halving its size, while the Oct (down) transposes it down (doubling the size). Selecting the save format ========================= On the bottom right corner, there are gadgets for selecting the save format, labeled RAW and IFF. These affect the operation of the filerequester option Save, sample. If raw is selected (default), no IFF chunks will be saved. When IFF is clicked, the samples will be saved in IFF 8SVX format. The repeat/ repeat length values are then included in the saved sample. Basic editing operations ======================== The sample editor contains the basic editing operations, that exist in every sample editor. They're located on the bottom left corner, and they are: CLR Clears the current range. DEL Cuts the range (it will not be copied to the copy buffer). CUT Cuts the range, and puts it to the copy buffer. COPY Copies the range to the copy buffer. PASTE Pastes the contents of the copy buffer to the position pointed by the cursor (range with length of 1 byte). If you want to get rid of the copy buffer (freeing the memory it takes), click DEL CBUFF. Additional operations: S->CB copies the whole sample to the copy buffer CB->S copies the copy buffer to the sample These can be used for implementing a simple "Undo". E.g. if you're experimenting with echos, you can quickly make a snapshot with S->CB. Then you can do the echo operation, listen to it, and if you're not satisfied, you can quickly get back the original with CB->S. Reversing ========= You can reverse a range with REV-gadget. The area is then turned backwards. This is useful if you want to search for hidden messages from a certain kind of rock-tunes. Anyway, it's fun to record your own voice and then turn it backwards. Mixing ====== This mixes two samples together. The source sample must be in the copy buffer. Then position the cursor (click RMB, but don't drag) to the point where you want the second sample to start, and click MIX. You can also drag a range and then click MIX. In this case, only the area selected in range is affected. Changing volume =============== This effect allows you to change the volume of the sample, and create fades. Next to the CHANGE VOL -gadget are two integer gadgets. The left is the start volume, and the right is the end volume. Both are percentages of the original waveform. First you have to select the range to affect. Then look at these examples: 1. Double the volume: set both start and end volume to 200 2. Make the sound fade out: set start vol to 100 and end vol to 1 3. Make the sound fade in (starting from the half of the final volume) set start vol to 50 and end vol to 100 After you've entered the start and end volumes, click CHANGE VOL, and the magic is done. If you increase the volume too much, the normal waveform limits are exceeded and distortion will occur. Echo ==== With echo you can do some special tricks to the sound. This feature is learnt best by experimenting. Some facts should be known though. The echo-feature in MED's sample editor is controlled with two values: Delay and number of echos. Delay is the distance (specified in steps of 10 bytes) between two echos. If it's very low, you can produce some interesting results. Number of echos is the total number of echos. It should usually be quite low (1 - 10), but you can experiment with higher values. Usually you have to extend the workspace by inserting blank space for the echos after the end of the sample. This is can be easily done this way: 1. Click S->CB. 2. Enter the number of inserted bytes in BUFF gadget. 3. Be sure that the cursor is in the beginning of the sample and click PASTE. Now, start playing. Activate DELAY-gadget, enter value, hit Return, enter the number of echos. Finally click ECHO, and listen... Setting loop ============ Setting the loop (repeat/repeat length) values in MED are not as easy as in AudioMaster, but good loop points can still be found quite easily. The handling gadgets are above the echo-things. R=LOOP range is set to correspond the current loop LOOP=R the loop is set to be the current range S range start point under handling E range end point under handling < move start/end point 1 byte left > move start/end point 1 byte right <0 move start/end point left until a zero is found 0> move start/end point right until a zero is found The S and E gadgets select, if the <, >, <0 and 0> gadgets affect the starting or ending point. The ZOOM IN/OUT gadgets are useful for finding the range, as they allow you to examine the waveform very accurately.