Re: Reality in the A2 World Today! (was: Re: NUTS)

[cturley2@aol.com (Cturley2)]

Jeff Blakeney kindly replied to my question and request as follows:

>Well, I know I did reply to that question in e-mail and just checked
>my e-mail program and found that I did reply to the second e-mail on
>the 23rd of January.  

I beleive you Jeff - but,  I never got the either of the emails you sent in
reply to mine.  AOL has been having many problems with email send and receive
laterly, as has grin.net too :(   It seems like there's just to much of a load
on the Internet or some such thing.

>At any rate, here is what I said about this:

>I didn't see this question earlier but I'll answer it
>now.  It would be extremely difficult to patch
>Oversampler to play stereo WAV files.  It would be
>easiest to disassemble the entire program and change
>that source and then recompile it but that would require
>a lot of work.  Not to mention that this type of thing
>would best be done by Andre Horstmann as he wrote the
>program and it was released as Freeware which means he
>has a copyright on it.

Like you say and I figured as much - a patch would be extremely
difficult and of course it's Andre's program.  Although I doubt that he's
interested in an update of it to include  REAL stereo support - doing a
disassembly and recompile is out of the question, as it probably wouldn't work
and it's his program anyway - so, I agree - it's not the right thing to do!

>Then there is the problem that Oversampler can play
>samples that won't fit into memory.  Unfortunately,
>stereo WAV files are stored with a left channel byte
>followed by a right channel byte and so on.  This means
>that instead of just loading a section of the sample and
>playing it, the program must load a section of the
>sample then strip the left and right channels from that
>section and then play those sections.  This could end up
>slowing the program down too much to be able to keep up.

Good points to consider.  So, it sounds like a "NO GO" to me.  I guess (for
now) we will just have to be happy with what it will do. I love the program
but, it sure would be nice if it could play in stereo.  I guess there's always
the binaural and bineural audio tricks that could be applied to the final snd
or wav file - to give the illusion of seperation and dimensional enhancement. 
I just did one such snd or wav file (I forget which) - that I put in the GS
WorldView Feb2000 issue - in the 
"For Oversampler" folder and also archived it in ShrinkIt file format,
uploading it to the Ground Apple2 ftp site.  I give these types of snd or wav
files the name: "Ambionics" - a word I invented to relate to the effect I get
from listening to them.  

>Probably the best way to handle this situation is to
>just write a stereo WAV player program that can spool
>from disk from scratch in assembly.  I personally don't
>have the time to do so at present but if no one else
>tackles it, I might get around to it someday.

Agreed!  That would really be great to have such a program.  Well, there's
another programming project to add to your long list of cool IIgs programs we'd
all like to see made and released  :)   I hope you will do such a program for
the IIgs someday and I trust it will be in GSoft too.

I've seen so little done with GSoft and it seems ashamed to - as Mike worked so
hard to get it out and released.  It seems like the perfect IIgs
language to write applications with also and the price is certainly very
reasonable.  I just wonder why more programs for the IIgs haven't been made 
with it - so far???  I guess it's like everything else, I see happening in so
many places today, with so many people.  No time, no motivation, no money and
no passion :(  

Let's hope it all changes for the better in the near future.  We all need to be
more understanding with each other - in so many ways.  I'm glad we have
somebody like you with the talent, skill and desire to program for the IIgs
today.  

Cheers & Best Wishes,
Tom