Few things here:
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Dee, are there any plans to support MP3 or other formats that quicktime is capable of playing? I know my way around Logic Audio and ProTools, and producing standard waveform audio is what is most familiar to me. I know there is tons of music already in the MOD/S3M/IT formats, but I'd rather write it myself than find something. Player Pro is currently the only Mac based tracker, and IMHO, it stinks. I'd rather not have to learn it, or get Virtual PC and Impulse Tracker or something. If not, I'd really appreciate knowing so I can familiarize myself with a tracker. Thanks.
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For the curious, here's a little breakdown of computer music formats:
Waveform Audio: CD, MP3, AIFF, SD2, WAV, and the like
Here, the music is stored as a waveform, and all the computer has to really concentrate on is pumping that waveform to the speakers. Anything such as vocals, synths, guitars, percussion, special effects, etc, are fair game, but they have to be recorded and mixed ahead of time.
Sound Effects for almost all contemporary games are typically in these formats as well.
MIDI
Standing for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, this is a language for getting keyboards, samplers, synthesizers, and your computer talking to each other. If you don't own a MIDI keyboard or sampler or synth, then your experience of MIDI on the Mac is probably limited to Quicktime's MIDI synth, which stinks.
Information is stored as instructions--something like "Bass Guitar: Pluck C2, wait 1 second, pluck E2, wait 1 second, play G2 w/Vibrato and hold for 2 seconds." The quality of the audio really depends on the quality of samples in a sampler and the quality of the synths.
Tracker Formats: MOD, S3M, IT, and many others
This is sort of like a MIDI file, but with a built-in sampler. This means you can take a waveform sample of something, for example, a Stratacaster Guitar, a Synth Pad, a person singing, etc, and trigger it at different pitch variations.
This format was originally developed on the Amiga many, many years ago. It's a fairly good way to get decent-sounding music without the disk-space required for waveform audio. Due to their relatively compact size, these formats are commonly used for computer games. Unreal uses tracked music, for example.
The ONLY native tracker for the Mac is Player PRO, available at (url="http://"http://www.quadmation.com/pphome.htm")http://www.quadmation.com/pphome.htm(/url) ; It costs $70 and was designed to rise above and beyond the constraints of a traditional tracker, for example it will let you run waveform audio next to tracked audio and run a VST plugin (for say, reverb) on top of it. It's kind of overkill, IMHO, but then again I can do all that stuff and more in Logic Audio (except export to a tracker format...).
If you don't want to shell out for Player PRO, they do have a freeware version, but that's really only good for playback. If you have a PC or a PC emulator with good sound reproduction (VPC 3.0 or later), there are links to free DOS trackers at (url="http://"http://www.united-trackers.org/resources/handbook/6.htm")http://www.united-tr.../handbook/6.htm(/url) (look under trackers/dos); there are also tutorials for using these programs at the main united trackers site ( (url="http://"http://www.united-trackers.org")http://www.united-trackers.org(/url) ).
I guess if you don't know a whole lot about music production, and don't have you own noise-making gear, than PPro is probably a good start. The United Tracker's site has some decent tutorials and music theory information as well.
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My interest in MP3 / waveform support is primarily because it's what I already know how to produce. I do plan on writing my own music; if I have to learn another program to write music with than so be it.
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--You notice that you have been turned into a pile of ashes.
(This message has been edited by sanehatter (edited 11-24-2000).)
