*********************************** AM/FM ***********************************   © Blachford Technology 1993                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             16-Bit Sound Processor for the Amiga  REVIEW WRITTEN BY GRANT MEARNS IF YOU ARE reading this article then you will no doubt have an interest in writing music using MED, or dare I say it, another "tracker" style sequencing program. Now, no matter what type of music you create with MED, you will need some form of data which will produce a pleasant sound when sent to the Amiga's sound chip. With MED this data falls into two primary categories, namely synthsounds and sampled sounds as I'm sure you will all be aware. Synthsounds like a synthesizer produce a sound, whereas sampled sounds are a recording or reproduction of a sound. Sampled sounds normally have a much greater number of harmonics than MED's synthsounds and as such they not only sound better, but are much more popular with users of the program as I'm sure you will all agree. There are thousands of sampled sounds spread throughout the Public Domain and there are more than enough sampling programs released into the commercial field, so why would someone want to create another? Well, how many GOOD samples have you obtained from the Public Domain? Not many I'm sure, and even if you have are they really what you want? Do they sound original? Or does your sampling package have the power to transport them from good samples into monster samples or change them into totally different sounds without any noticeable drop in quality? I bet you it doesn't. This is where Aural Illusion fits in. The program itself is not the software part of a sampling package, indeed it does not "sample" sounds at all. Instead, this program has the power to manipulate samples in a manner that no other program on the Amiga can touch and all at a resolution of 16 bit! Interested?..........read on. Aural Illusion is a 16 bit sound processor with the ability to load, save and manipulate in an incredible number of ways 8 and 16 bit raw sample files. When loading an 8 bit sample, it is converted and stored in memory in 16 bit format, which doubles it's size but provides the program with 65,536 (2 to the power 16) quantizing levels to work with as opposed to 256 (2 to the power 8). This makes it possible to perform manipulations of a very high quality on the humble 8 bit samples you and I have grown to love. To use Aural Illusion Workbench/Kickstart V2.04 or higher and 1Mb of ram are the minimum requirements, but of course as with all productive software the more ram you have the better. Upon loading you are presented with two sample windows and a window full of gadgets, radio buttons and sliders, all of which confirm rigidly to Commodore's guidelines. Taking this into account, the user interface not only looks pleasant, but also makes using the program a very simple and logical process. If you can use a sample editor then you will have no trouble at all with Aural Illusion. Indeed, I would go as far as to say it's just about the simplest I have ever used. The program is very memory intensive and allocates virtually all of the available memory you have in your machine. This is to provide you with the maximum amount of working space possible and you will need it as three buffers of equal length are required. One for each sample window and one to act as a double buffer for for some of the effects. The sample playback also has it's own buffer, in which the samples are converted from 16 bit to 8 bit in real time! A standard A1200 with 2Mb of ram will provide approximately 250,000 samples per buffer. Before you can do anything with Aural Illusion you have to load a sample into memory and this where the program starts to differ from every other piece of sample editing software I've used. Prior to loading a sample a range must be specified within one of the two sample windows into which it will load. This may sound like a backward step to some of you, but believe me this is one of the greatest assets I've come across with regards to sample editing/ processing. Firstly, since all your memory has already been grabbed and split up into equal chunks, it allows you to load a sample anywhere within the two sample windows, NOT just the left hand side of the windows. Also, you can load as many samples as you like (memory permitting) into the windows and copy over, into or replace samples between each window. One of the biggest benefits from having two editing windows, is that it allows you to keep the same sample in memory while you are working on a copy of it, saving you from having to load it every time you make a mistake. I know you can do this with a copy buffer on most sampling packages, but the beauty is you can have more than one sample within each window. The main purpose of Aural Illusion is to process samples and this is where it really shines. With 16 highly variable effects, 3 preset effects and 12 preset manipulations you will probably find yourself taking forever to choose the correct one or the correct combination for your desired need. Not only are the number of available effects impressive, but the quality of them is simply stunning. You can layer effect after effect on a sample, sometimes creating an entirely different sound and there will be very little or no degradation in quality. In actual fact, when playing around with the flange effect on a vocal sample which contained noticeable background noise, the noise was totally masked and the sample sounded much warmer and smoother. Do I sound impressed with this piece of software? You better believe it, but that's not to say I think it's perfect. In fact all of the editing functions could do with some fuel injection and any programs that are running at the same time are significantly slowed down. The sample playback only comes out of one speaker and you cannot scroll through a waveform. The program is only at V1.0 and I have been told most of these imperfections along with IFF support, built in synthesises with envelope shaping, loop controls, more effects, more manipulations and more memory for hard disk users will be added to V1.1, which incidently will be supplied free of charge to registered users of V1.0 All in all for the price of £40.00 inclusive, including printed manual and free upgrade, Aural Illusion is a definite must for anyone who produces or even tinkers with music on the Amiga. The quality of the results are absolutely excellent, it's ease of use is simplicity itself and as far as I am aware it will load any 16-bit sample via Amiga DOS or a MS DOS driver such as "CrossDos", provided the sample data is stored in the same way. For example, the sample "0101010101010101" may be stored as "1010101010101010" by some formats, resulting in nothing more than a lot of noise. If you don't take my word for it try out the FULLY WORKING junior version supplied with this issue of AM/FM. It's not save disabled, but won't load samples larger than 22K.  Innovation 95%   I'll let you judge the rest for yourself  Aural Illusion is available from:- Blachford Technology Glendale House 77 Southwell Road Bangor Co. Down Ulster BT20 3AE U.K. Price £40.00 *********************************** AM/FM ***********************************