--------------------------------------------------------------------- SND Player v1.00, January 5, 1999 (C) 1997-1999 Assemsoft & Dead Hackers Society --------------------------------------------------------------------- - Programming: Odd Skancke - Interface, this document & website: Anders Eriksson - Latest version can be found at: http://sndplayer.atari.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- What is SND Player? --------------------------------------------------------------------- Over the 18 months SND Player v0.3b has been out, most people have taken it for a samplesound player due to it's name. However, that's not the case at all. Apart from a sampleformat named 'snd', the coding guru Jochen Knaus of Aura has created a unified way of playing many chipsound formats very easily. He named this format 'snd' as well, and it's those files SND Player plays. What's "chipsound" then? Well, it's those lovely sounds coming from the analoge sound processor in our Ataris. Many people into the 'demo scene' or old-time users since the eightbit years adore these kind of songs. Much due to the art of creating sounds that are way ahead of what the soundchip originally was designed for. Making music for the YM- chip (or SID and similar chips for that matter) is not only a matter of hitting the right notes in the musiceditor. No, creating chipmusic that becomes classic, you have to know how the soundchip work, with different waveforms and so on. Many of the old- time musicans (and still a few among them exist, hello Tao of Cream!) wrote their own music-editors and replay routines. Without these genious persons, we would still have the "blipp blopp" sounds that Atari provided us with (Sound machine... arrrgh!). However, a large part of todays computer society doesn't understand the geniality of chipmusic. They call it trash and get mad that SND Player wasn't anohter mpeg audio player. Well, forget these boring persons, and get listening! Hail Hippel, Huelsbeck, Big Alec and the rest! --------------------------------------------------------------------- Functions in SND Player: --------------------------------------------------------------------- First of all, SND Player is totally rewritten since v 0.3b. Not a thing is still there. Even Jochen Knaus SND Format has changed and those parts have been replaced. SND Player features the full (big!) GEM library from Assemsoft, allowing total compatibility over all TOSes and colourmodes. You even get the colouricons in TOS 1.xx! If you have a 68000 machine with graphics card, the init might be a bit long; but you have to live with that. SND Player supports drag & drop, va/av start messages, and a hide- window thing. It runs perfectly in multitasking enviornments, and enters "MiNT Domain" for full compatibility with long filenames and quoted filenames (read: spaces in filenames). However, here ends the similarities with other GEM- applications, SND Player looks totally different. It has a 100% customized look. Why? Well, to be honest - isn't it fun with some refreshments? At least, that's how we see it. It is still a perfectly behaving application in multitasking, just standing out a bit with the looks of it! You can even load the .rsc file into your fave rsceditor and make a new "skin" for it which is so popoular with those ampplayers (x11amp, winamp, macamp...). Naturally, SND Player also works as ACC under singletos and take filenames from commandline. The buttons in the main / about windows does hardly need any explanation, except for the plus and minus buttons; some snd- files have multiple songs in them. With those buttons you can step thru them (try the hippel enchanted lands levels file for example). --------------------------------------------------------------------- Problems: --------------------------------------------------------------------- Yeah... well of course there is a backside as well. Some songs are really not suited for playing in multitasking, or with 030+ machines at all. We have tried to filter out the songs which seems to fail, and those that seems to work. Beware, if you are not certain that a songfile works, make sure that you have saved eventual work.s Extra sad is that all of TAO/Cream songs fail to run. Floppy- drive gets mad and all freezes. TAO is one of the absolute best Atari- musicans, and if you are interested to hear his songs anyway, we suggest that you download his "Steps" musicdemo, it was a classic before relased! --------------------------------------------------------------------- Warrany: --------------------------------------------------------------------- None exists. You are using SND Player completely at your own risk. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Distribution: --------------------------------------------------------------------- SND Player is freeware. It can be copied freely, on CD-Roms, Cover- disks or whatever. Just credit us, alright? end of file