Re: Apple Drops Backward Compatibility for Next MacOS

[elisha@dot.net.au (Luci Ellis)]

In article <55p0kc$27tg@r02n01.cac.psu.edu>, ericb@pobox.com (Eric Bennett)
wrote:

> In article <AEA51B6B-1A5720@198.68.42.202>
> "Lawson English" <english@primenet.com> writes:
> 
> > >But it dosn't do this by synthesis.  It basically has a bank of
> > >samples and plays them in accordance with MIDI data.  This is more
> > >like playing MODs or SoundSmith than something like synthLAB, which
> > >was what Mitch was refering to.
> > 
> > AFAIK, you are incorrect. The QTMA is using a 16-bit synthesizer supplied
> > by another company. You can also "roll your own," but I'm not certain how
> > sophisticated this is yet.
> 
> I'd love to know how Apple could have crammed that many 16-bit
> instrument samples into a 455k file (that's how big the musical
> instruments file is after you delete all the icon, PICT, and other
> obviously non-musical resources).  Try loading the resource fork of the
> musical instruments file into a sound editor and see what you hear. 
> You can get instrument-like noises by doing so, but they quite clearly
> are not full digitized samples.

This is probably because MIDI definitions aren't digitised sound at all.
I'm not up on all the technical details, but it's implemented completely
differently to digital sound � la CDs and other digital music.

Regards,

Luci

PS: check out http://www.dot.net.au/~elisha/luci/songlist.html  for a
demonstration of midi designed for and using QT 2.5.

*********************************************************************
Luci Ellis                           elisha@dot.net.au

"Who needs horror movies when we have Microsoft"?
                -- Christine Comaford, PC Week, 27/9/95
NB: The email address has changed but the old one still works.