Re: Applied Engineering (was: Re: Beagle Brothers

[spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article Robin L Darroch <robin@effect.net.au> writes...

>>     From my own experience, I feel every product Applied Engineering
>> made for the Apple IIgs was a flop. The only expection to this would
>> be the AE Audio Animator, but then, even that had a few minor quirks.
>
>Actually, the AA didn't even do what it was meant to.  Sure, for most
>people, most of the time it would have worked exactly like the publicity
>said,

    I've only been using an Audio Animator for a couple of months now,
before that I had been using MDIdeas' SuperSonic. What's annoyed me is
that the AA has the stereo channels reversed (L/R are flipped), that the 
mixer volume sliders crackle _terribly_, and finally, there seems to be 
a very slight "cross-talk" with stereo (sometimes one channel leaks into 
the other). I also think it was wrong to use 1/4" phone connectors and,
IMO, it should have supplied two mixer inputs on back. 

    Also, I'm not sure if it's a software bug, but if you try to sample 
at 37 kHz (maximum rate), you cannot playback the sample at the same 
frequency rate or it's too fast. Nevermind if you sample at 11 kHz or 
22 kHz, it sounds much lower that it claims to be. I do get much cleaner
samples that what I used to with my SuperSonic card, but I can still
hear background hiss in sample recordings.

>but there was the one *minor* detail of *not* having the utility
>listed in the ads which was to be able to record sounds and controll
>them from a MIDI keyboard, i.e. to use the GS as a sampler.  As an
>electronic musician, I have to say this p*ssed me off more than a little
>with AE, since that was one of the major reasons I bought it.  I still
>use the AA, but not for much that my FutureSound (which I had long
>before the AA) wouldn't have done for.

    That annoyed me as well, even though I don't have any MIDI devices
connected to my AA at the moment. :) The closest thing would be using 
waveLAB in combination with synthLAB, though that of course requires 
several steps. Then there's the fun part about having only 64K space 
for patches, and only 32K maximum for each instrument. I still wish
someone would write an application to swap large patches between main
RAM and DOC-RAM, much the way MOD players do, only it would be for MIDI.
With a fast accelerator it would probably be doable.

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca