Re: OSRL Presents: A World Exclusive - SCAMP has arrived

[cturley2@aol.com (Cturley2)]

On 01 Dec 1999 07:58:11 GMT, supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer) wrote:

>Actually, I'm pretty sure Oversampler does support stereo.
>Just listen to a stereo wave play back.

To which Jeff Blakeney replied:

"I supposedly did and I heard no stereo effects at all."

And I reply concerning the question of: Does Oversampler support the output of
stereo through a Stereo card in the IIgs?  The question should be answered by
the author of Oversampler!   Henrick, if you read this would you please ask
Andre to answer this question for all of us?  We'd all appreciate knowing.  

I used Bernie to test the wav files, play them and save them - in doing so it
seemed to me that Oversampler did play the wav file in stereo via Bernie.  As
to if Oversampler will support and play an output stereo signal with a REAL
IIgs that has a stereo card, I haven't really tried that  so, I can't say if it
does or if it doesn't currently. 

I'd really be grateful if you'd ask your Bernie programming partner Andre
who made Oversampler for an answer on this.  

As to playing the wave file with Oversampler on the IIgs, I wasn't actually
sure myself on this - so, I carefully wording in the SCAMP info file -  it
simply used stereo as the default setting and that without a stereo card you
couldn't hear the wav file in stereo.  I didn't actually claim that the wave
file could be played with a stereo signal output from Oversampler.  But, to be
completely truthful about that matter, I did think that the stereo default
setting with Oversampler would allow a stereo file to be played with a stereo
output through a stereo card in the IIgs.  So, I'm looking forward to a
definitive answer on this - with your help from Andre.
 
Next...Supertimer related:

>As for the frequency settings, it only makes sense you
>need twice as fast a hard drive to play a stereo wave as
>you would a mono wave.  The author should have changed
>the frequency bar to represent stereo (divide the number
>in half), but the documentation gives a clue to why he did
>not.  He is using those numbers to tell how fast the hard
>drive needs to be to play a particular sample.  Thus, while
>214 should mean 214 in stereo and 214 in mono, since
>the hard drive must work twice as hard in stereo, the
>author probably left it at 428 instead to reflect the
>increased hard disk demand.

To which Jeff Blakeney replied:

"Everything I have read in that documentation says to me that the
Output option simply allows you to choose where you want the mono
sample to play back through.  The internal speaker, the left channel
of a stereo card, the right channel of a stereo card or both channels
of a stereo card."

And I reply:  We all read documentation as we see it.  The default for the
program was labeled as stereo.  I read the documentation and my perception was
that Oversampler did support output play of the file as stereo if the file was
in fact a stereo file.  I hope Henrick can ask Andre for a valid answer and
relate it with post to answer this question for everybody to know if
Oversampler does or does not support stereo output.

And, SuperTimer related with this:

>Lastly, a stereo wave would not sound right if you play
>it through a program that only supported mono no
>matter how fast you set the playback rate.  ;-)

To which Jeff Blakeney replied:

"Sure it would.  If the stereo file was built by putting an 8 bit
sample of the left channel followed by an 8 bit sample of the right
channel then playing back the stereo file at twice the recorded
sampling rate would play the sample properly but most likely with some
noise that wasn't present in the original."

And to that I reply:  You do have a valid point with that Jeff.  I can't
disagree with you on that outline of it.

Jeff Blakeney continues with this reply:

"In fact, to prove this to myself I created a stereo, 8 bit, 11025 Hz
sample that played a sound out the right channel, both channels and
then the left channel.

When played in Oversampler at double the play back frequency with the
Output option set to stereo, the sound comes out both speakers kind of
quiet, both speakers a little louder, and both speakers kind of quiet
again.  What is happening here is that the single channel sound is
being made up of a byte with sound data and a byte with silence so it
ends up sounding kind of quiet.  When both channels are playing you
get a byte with sound followed by a byte with sound which ends up
sounding louder."

And to that I reply:  Ah, yes indeed you have another valid series of 
explainations on the supposed stereo output effect then.  Perhaps this is what
I heard with Bernie on my PPC then (as Bernie does do some impressive things
with stereo sound enhanceements) and I simply 
was fooled into thinking the Oversampler program was supporting a real stereo
output signal when listening to it with hi-quality headphones
connected to an SRS stereo system, that was connected to the output from the
PPC.

Jeff Blakeney continues with this offering as proof:

"I then wrote a program in GSoft BASIC to play back the sample in
stereo and it does indeed play from the left channel, both channels
and the right channel just as it should.  In fact, this program can
even load and play any stereo WAV file that can fit into memory.
Unfortunately, the part that loads and splits the file into left and
right channels is very slow but it doesn't work all that great but it
does demonstrate my point.  If you'd like to try it for yourself, I've
created a short web page at:

     http://www.bconnex.net/~jefbla/

There are two test WAV files with it.  The one I described above and
another of a train passing by and the sound pans from the right
channel to left one."

And to this I reply:  I went there and downloaded your program and the WAV
files.  I'll comment on my perceptions of it all - listening to your example
WAV files with your program and with Oversampler via Bernie on a PPC and with
both on a REAL IIgs with a stereo card - using the same headphones and SRS
stereo system.  I post my perceptions on all this tomorrow or perhaps no until
Monday, depending on the time I have to set it all up and check it all out as
such.

Jeff Blakeney continues with this: 

"If anyone has a problem getting the files from that web page, let me
know and I'll post them to comp.binaries.apple2.  In fact, I might
just post them there sometime in the next couple days anyways.  :-)"

To which I reply:  Using Netscape on a PPC to access and download all your
files offered; your .bxy of your program and both WAV files, took me no more
than 5 seconds total.  Your site has a very nice download baude rate BTW :) 
And, using the QuickTime plugin with Netscape, the WAV files came up with the
bar control player in Netscape in a few seconds, loading themm into the PPC
cache and played them promptly - after which I saved each within a second or
two at the most to my HD.

Well, Jeff...thanks for the effort you went to to prove your point on all
matters.  And, I'll post my perceived results on it all as soon as I've made
the time to do it all and make the tests with listening to all of it with
Bernie and with a REAL IIgs as I outlined above.   

In the mean time, Henrick...a definitive answer from Andre, related and posted
to this series of on-going threads to the subject - on does Oversampler support
stereo output with a stereo file on a IIgs with a stereo card or does it not -
would solve the matter and end the confusion.
I hope you can furnish his answer on that question with a post on this.

TIA & Cheers,
Tom

PS: If only my REAL IIgs could do what Bernie can do with sound - I'd be in A2
nirvana :) But, we all know a REAL IIgs just can't do such astounding things,
don't we.  Still, with Bernie we can.