Vivaldi User Guide

Samp-Edit

This is the sample editor, and it has two main windows. These are the keyboard - simply click on a key to play the current sample at that note - and the data display window, shown below. Incidentally, the sound cuts off as soon as the pointer is moved out of the keyboard window - and if you have a music file playing, pause it before playing a sample in Samp-Edit or strange things will happen!

This main window (left) is blank until you load a sample, either by dragging it in or by double-clicking it.

The boxes show the sample's attributes. The top left box contains the sample name ("440Thick-Bk" in this case). "Length" refers to the size of the sample; it is given in bytes.

"Rep. offs" is short for repeat offset and gives the place where the sample starts to repeat when it gets to the end. It is given in bytes from the start, and shows up on the display as a black bar. "Rep. len" is short for repeat length, and gives the number of bytes which are repeated. This means that when the end of the sample is reached, the part of the sample which begins at offs and is len bytes long will be played continually. The end of the repeat is shown as a blue bar on the display. If you do not want the sample to repeat, make the repeat length less than or equal to 2 (two is the usual value given).

The sample volume is how loud the sample is to be played in Vivaldi when no "set volume" commands are issued. 127 is the loudest; 0 is off. The fine tune allows you to fine-tune sample which are not quite at the right pitch; the value is approximately given in ¹/₇ to ¹/₈ths of a semitone, and can go from -113 to +127. Note, however, that SoundTracker and Digital Symphony type music files can only store fine-tuning values up to +/- 7; Tracker types are not supposed to store fine tuning values at all (this includes the STSample format) but Vivaldi manages it, and this means that if you play a Tracker file with fine tuning on a non-Vivaldi playroutine (eg Desktop Tracker) then the fine tuning values will be ignored by it.

"Line A" and "Line B" are the markers. Line A shows up on the display as a red bar, and indicates the starting point of the marked section. Line B appears as a green bar, and this marks the end of the marked section. Selecting "marked" on the keyboard makes it play only the marked section. "Wipe values" clears the repeat offset, repeat length, volume, and fine tune to the default values. "Select none" and "Select all" refer to the marked section, and speak for themselves.

To alter the actual sample itself (to remove clicks, which appear as spikes, and so on) simply click SELECT on the appropriate part of the display, and the sound level at that point will be determined by the height of the mouse pointer. Clicking ADJUST on a bar allows you to drag it; alternatively, use the buffer arrows in the main window.

The tool bar gives many of the functions described below; point to a tool to find out its function.

Clicking MENU in either window, or over the icon bar, will bring up the main menu. If there is no sample loaded, you will only be able to see the information window, quit, zoom, or alter the handling of unknown file types - the rest will be "greyed out" and not selectable.

The main menu consists of one option and four submenus; these will be examined in turn. The first submenu, "Info", will be ignored here since it simply leads to the standard program information window.

"Quit" removes your sound sample, and the sample editor itself, from memory.

The "Edit" submenu
- "Cut marked" removes the marked section from the sample, putting it on the internal clipboard.
- "Copy marked" copies the marked section into the clipboard memory, not deleting it from the sample.
- "Paste at A" inserts the contents of the clipboard memory into the sample at marker A, and then clears the clipboard.
- "Paste at B" is identical, but the clipboard is inserted at marker B instead of A.
- "Insert at A" inserts the given number of blank bytes at marker A if there is enough memory.
- "Remove waste" deletes any blank parts at the beginning and end of the sample.
- "Blank marked" makes the marked section become blank (silent).
- "Zoom" leads to a zoom box. You can then alter the zoom ratio. When it is done, click on the button marked "Set".
- "Unknown" leads to a window allowing you to change how the sample editor handles file types it does not know how to handle. If you know what you are doing then it is self-explanatory; if you do not, then simply load the file with each of the settings in turn until it no longer sounds like a big long hiss.
The "Effects" submenu
- "Reverse" reverses the marked section, so it becomes back to front.
- "Invert" turns the marked section upside-down, antiphasing it. Use this for mixing effects.
- "Volume fade" allows you to make the physical volume of the marked section fade from one percentage (the "initial" value) to another (the "final" value). This enables "fade-offs" of samples which end abrubtly, and other effects.
- "Transpose" permanently alters the pitch of the marked section. A positive value (given in semitones) makes the pitch higher - i.e. the marked section gets shorter - while a negative value makes it lower.
- "Echo" echoes the marked section. The modulation is the percentage volume of the first echo; the feedback is the percentage of the echo which is fed back into the system. The delay is the echo delay, in bytes. For example, to change a speech sample into a "computer voice", try 90%, 80% and 50 to 160 (try 84 first) respectively.
- "Filter" will allow filtering, but has not yet been implemented. If you know how to do it, tell me and I will have a go at putting the algorithms into the next version of the sample editor.
- "Make chord" turns the marked section into a chord, by transposing and mixing.
- "Mix..." opens a window into which you must drag the sample to be mixed with - this must be in STSample format. Simply specify the mixing percentages, and begin.
The "Save" submenu
Each menu option opens a save box for you to save in your selected format; simply enter the filename and drag the file icon to where you want the file to be saved to.
- "SampleDump" is the standard Vivaldi format. It is compressed automatically.
- "STSample" is the Tracker sample format. To be able to mix a sample with the one in memory, it must be in this format because of the way in which the sample is mixed.
- "Armadeus" is another popular sound sample format. The sample attributes are not stored in this format.
- "DSEdit" is similar to Armadeus in that the sample attributes are not saved.
- "Raw s. lin" saves a data file of raw signed linear data (for if you know what you're doing).
- "Raw u. lin" saves a data file of raw unsigned linear data.
- "Raw s. log" saves VIDC format raw data (signed logarithmic, sign bit is bit 0).
- "Module" saves the sound sample as a Voice Generator module. This can then be loaded and used in BASIC programs, or simple music editors such as Maestro. However, voice generator modules cannot be loaded back into Samp-Edit.