Apple II Sound.. sponsor the project!

[Philip Lamb <p.lamb@student.canterbury.ac.nz> (Philip Lamb, UoC-ChCh-NZ)]

If you own an Apple II, and wondered why it was designed with sound
capabilities that suck (not a IIGS!), then wonder again. The Apple II (right
from the II+ up) can play digitised sound and music, and reproduce quite
speech quite accurately, without adding any hardware. I have written a program
to do this. It is a pretty nifty program. It does not cost anything, but it
does have a price. Read on..

The program is called IISound, and it currently allows almost noise-free
playback of digitised sounds such as those available on a variety of
platforms like the IIGS, Macintosh, Amiga and IBM. Huge volumes of digitised
sounds are posted daily to Usenet Newsgroups. IISound plays back sound at a
rate of 11.025kHz, with 5 bits of precision. Not quite CD quality, but still
outstanding for an unassisted II. This magic is woven through a software
digital-to-analogue converter written by a very excellent dude called Michael
Mahon, and requires only a standard II. Around Michaels code I have built a
program which allows up to 16 sounds to be loaded into memory and keyed for
instant playback, and which recognises additional auxiliary slot memory in
a IIE allowing much larger files to be loaded and played back. Non IIe users
will think that this leaves them out of the running, but NO, it doesn't have to
be this way! I have several squillion great ideas (some already coded!) for
additions, extensions and modifications to IISound, but I cannot yet justify
putting in the time to implement and debug them....

What I am looking for is sponsorship. I tried getting people to register their
programs but it seems that you Apple II users out there are good at grumbling
and moaning about how no one writes for the II, while all the time you use
Shareware without paying for it. So NO ONE registered. Shit happens. Instead as
I sat at my II one day staring blankly at the screen I came up with the idea..
"What if Apple II _user groups_ sponsored the project? With say, only 10
sponsorships of $100 I could spend weeks writing and writing, to make IISound
the best piece of II software ever created! World domination but a step away!"
After I fell off my chair and banged my head I sat down and wrote what you are
reading now... scary eh? Anyway, back to the storyline. If you are a II owner,
and belong to a user group, or if you could just get together with some friends 
or maybe even just yourself, and sponsor the "IISound Project" for as much as
you wish, maybe, just maybe, we can do this!

SO, what would your user group/you get for your money?
These are the features currently implemented in IISound v4.2, which
requires an Apple IIe with 128k or better:
   o 11kHz playback of digitised sound
   o 2 times oversampling to eliminate carrier noise
   o Up to 15 sounds loaded in memory at once
   o Instant playback of any loaded sound
   o Automatically recognises and uses RamWorks-style add-on memory
   o File selection dialogue
   o Revised mousetext interface
   o Output out either internal speaker or cassette port
   o Ability to unload sounds
   o Will load 11.025kHz, 22.05kHz or 44.1kHz sound data
   o Loads and plays most IIGS, Mac and IBM .wav files just fine!
These are features I can add real soon, if people send me money!
   o Provision for editing of files, inluding cut and paste
   o Loading and saving of ADPCM compressed files
   o A version for 64k Apples including the II+
   o Release of sourcecode modules for use in system programs
Further down the track (good sponsorship money rolling in)
   o Loading and saving of Audio-IFF and IBM .wav files in native format
   o Loading of compressed IIGS / Mac sounds
   o Extraction of Mac/IIGS sounds from resource forks.
Every person/persons/usergroup which sponsored the project would of course
receive, either by Internet or mail, the full program, plus several other
little tidbits and goodies I have floating about waiting to be tidied up and
released. Updates would be sent for free, as well as any other software that
big sponsorship might enable me to devote time to writing.

If you know of a usergroup, or an organisation which might put a few dollars
towards this project then tell them! Show them this literary masterpiece!
Needle and pester them until they do! I want to finish this software for you!

Philip Lamb, a.k.a. The Wooly Bleater.

And my address for registrations, donations and standard mail is:
              mail:  Philip Lamb
                     30a Blighs Rd
                     Bryndwr
                     Christchurch 8005
                     New Zealand

You can retrieve the current version of IISound from most popular Apple II
ftp sites on the Internet, notably cco.caltech.edu and grind.isca.uiowa.edu.
-- 
--  Philip Lamb --                        \ "That is amazing. That is really
p.lamb@student.canterbury.ac.nz (mail)     \  amazing. That is so amazing I 
misc1058@cantva.canterbury.ac.nz (talk)     \  think I'd like to steal it"