Re: Apple Drops Backward Compatibility for Next MacOS

[email@domain.com (Craig Koller)]

In article <AEA51B6B-1A5720@198.68.42.202>, "Lawson English"
<english@primenet.com> wrote:

> >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.
> 
QTMA started out with a very limited Roland Sound Canvas set. It's since
expanded in size (and I think the resolution went from 12-bit to 16-bit in
the latest release, although I could be wrong ... haven't heard the old
set in a while). The quality is pretty damn good for a pure software
solution. Just for fun, I compared a vanilla SoundBlaster, a SoundBlaster
with SoundCanvas daughter card, and a PMac 9500 with the latest QT. We
went to a midi site and picked out a few files. The SB was laughable, the
SB w/SC was very good (I've worked with the Roland U-Series, and the Sound
Canvases, and they're quite good), the Mac was somewhere in the middle
(closer to the SC, but the lack of built-in reverb brought the sound
quality down). 

A friend built a Director presentation for his company with full music
pieces via QTMidi. It was extremely cool, and the compositions made the
most of the limited set and sound (this was almost two years ago). A full
two-minute piece of music was 17K! and the overhead was minimal. However,
there was *no* documentation at the time from Apple, and my friend wound
up calling the principal programmer on the project, in order to get
answers to some fundamental questions. Once again, another cool technology
that went completely unsupported by Apple (what the hell is new?).