Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

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Audio Engineer complete with a
dedicated sampling cartridge designed
by G-Sof, a little known Australian
hardware manufacturer.
G-Soft's unit, which they call an
Audio Imager, is a large box - about
the size of an average hard-backed
book - which connects to the Amiga
parallel port via a ribbon cable. G-Soft
designed their sampler specifically to
support Audio Engineer's impressive
56 KHz maximum sampling rate. It
offers a pair of separate Mic and Line
inputs, independent level controllers
for the left and right sampling
channels and a damned impressive
audio bandwidth (100Hz to 50KHz+,
for those of you in the know). Not only
that, but it even offers a printer passthru
connector.
Once you've connected everything
up, the first thing you'll want to do is
to actually sample something.
Provided you've got a suitable sound
source, Audio Engineer can sample in
either mono or stereo, Selecting
Sample from the pull down menus
brings up the sampling requester.
From here you can alter the sampling
rate (up to a maximum rate of 56 kHz)
and the size of the sample to be
grabbed. To actually grab a sample, a
single mouse click on the Sample
gadget gets things going.
Amongst the list of new features.
Audio Engineer allows you to pause
sampling at any point simply by
pressing the right mouse button. As
soon as you release the mouse button,
Audio Engineer then continues
sampling. This can be particular
useful for exclusing sections of a
sound during sampling,
U Audio Engineer will happily
sample N into Fast RAM, therefore
allowing L you to grab incredibly long
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samples on a niachine equipped E•
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expansion RAM. T-
Sampling on a 9 Mbyte ' Amiga, it is
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actually possible to sample P entire
tracks into memory. ;
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Obviously, the quality Lof
samples
depends heavily upon the ' quality of
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the sound source: After all, a chain is
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only as good as its weakest link.
Ideally, it's best to sample directly
from a ED player, but even with
something like a low-proce personal
stereo, you can produce some very
exceptable results.
Sampling from a CD source, the
combination of Audio Engineer and G-
Soft's Audio Imager produced some of
the cleanest samples I've ever heard
from an Amiga. The samples showed
plenty of depth, with sparkling clarity
- in some cases, the quality of samples
that I was able to obtain could easily
compete with some 12 and 16-bit
samplers that I've had the displeasure
of using!
A Engineer boasts an impressive
range S of editing tools. Amongst the
usual y cut, copy and paste operations,
Audio o Engineer lets you to add echo
to u samples, allowing you to simulate
such m effects as reyerb quite easily. You
can i also edit the sample manually by
"drawing" g the waveform with the Edit
Freehand h option.
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This also allows you to create
completely new sounds without even
e
haying to own a sampler.
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You can also mix (combine)
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waveforms, change their volume.
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Audio . Engineer also provides a
number A of realtime effects such as
Echo, u Delay and Flange that add the
desired d effect to an incoming sound
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signal and then sends it straight back
out again.
One of the most useful tools available
is the nine Waveform option which
allows you to alter the pitch of a
sample. If you're using Audio
Engineer to produce samples for your
favourite music package, then you'll
find the Tune Waveform facility to be
a true godsend. Like all samplers, the
process of tuning relies on the trusty
old ears to carry out most of the hard
work - by activating a tuning tone, it's
then up to you to time the sample to
match.
Potentially the most useful application
of sample tuning is the ReSample
Data option which allows you to
convert samples between different
sampling rates without effecting the
pitch or length of playback: Something
which even most professional
samplers can't do! A large amount of
memory can be saved by sampling
something at the highest possible rate
and then knocking it down to a lower
sample rate for playback, In some
cases, you gain a better quality final
sample by using this technique.
Sample sequencing is nothing new,
but Audio Engineer takes it one step
further with a new sequencing system
that allows complex arrangements to
be built up in seconds.
Audio Engineer uses a unique
system that works by assigning
multiple loops to a single sample. This
system works on the theory that most
music is constructed from a series of
patterns that are repeated over and
over again to create the resulting
music: Intro, melody, chorus, melody,
chorus and so forth. By simply
sampling each of these patterns once,
you can use multiple loops to give the
impression that the entire peice has
been sampled. Coupled with Audio
Engineer's ability to save samples in a
AMIGA COMP( 'TING November 7.990 77